This not that

 Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten young women took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. (Matthew 25:1-4)

The joy we crave has a door, and it is this, not that.

This is the present moment, right in front of us. Often as not, we miss this … because our eyes and heart are fixed on that … over there, something that isn’t here, or at least not yet and maybe never will be. Like it or not, we are where we are.

Sometimes our this is eminently embraceable, like when Dixie trundles sleepy-eyed down the hall each morning and into my arms as she has for decades, longing for touch, knowing, too, that I have her coffee set up for her.

But sometimes our this is exactly what we most fear. My friend receives a diagnosis nobody wants, and his wife wonders if the foundation of their life together will soon crumble to dust. Who can throw their arms and heart around this … as it threatens to still the sweet grace of long-shared laughter?

It feels insensitive or even inhuman to suggest human hearts should or even can embrace such a moment, but the importunate truth is that this … is the only place grace and love can be known. This moment, with whatever quagmire of emotion warms or chills the blood, is where we meet or fail to greet the Love who awaits us there. Every moment is filled with the potential to draw fuller love and life from the well of our souls where the Love Who Is … is pleased to dwell.

The bridegroom approaches, according to Jesus’ parable of the wise women, ready to be welcomed by souls who manage to stay open to Love’s nearness, no matter how troubling life can be. It is they who enter the feast to celebrate the marriage of heaven and earth, drinking the sweet wine of divine love, which never runs dry, not in this life or in the mystery beyond.

Lord knows, I do this poorly. Aggressive drivers, casual disrespect and about a thousand other things can roil my heart, evaporating awareness that the present moment is a door through which to enter—and be—the joy of Love’s living nearness. Missed opportunities litter most lives, and I am no different.

But each day comes anew. Letting go of what was, I light the lamp of awareness once more, hungry to greet the One who breathes joy into willing hearts.

David L. Miller

Treasure hunt

 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44)

The cinder trail at McKee Marsh splits a few hundred yards into the hike. You can walk east or west from that point, but if you continue straight, into the cattails and eye-high marsh grass, you would slosh your way to the place where a treasure was unearthed in 1977.

Workers scooping sticky mud from the bottom of the marsh came upon the thick bones of a wooly mammoth from the last ice age, more than 10,000 years ago. All in all, 75 percent of a complete skeleton was painstakingly discovered and reassembled.

Hard to imagine that this place on the edge of suburbia was once so wild, but walkers still come here looking for treasure, although few of them might put it that way. The treasure we seek is ourselves, or at least that deeper, more human part of ourselves we call heart … or soul.

Turning east, I find mine about a mile into the hike on a weather-worn wood platform, built above the level of the cattails.

It’s a place to watch herons and egrets picking their way among the shallows, looking for small fish, but they are not here today. The water level is too low, the pond nearly dry, sending the birds to seek their lunch in the West Branch of the DuPage River a short flight away.

Pausing on the platform reveals only the crystal blue dome of a summer sky, and lazy white cumulus clouds lingering high, with nowhere to go and no need to hurry off. The luminous dome encircles green horizons in every direction, holding everything I see and feel and am in a single embrace.

Standing here, it is easy to understand why ancient souls imagined the earth was flat, encircled by the dome of the sky, awed by the expanse of the heavens into which they gazed. Equally ancient, is the gratitude that cries from hidden depths within me, as an unseen rooster crows from a leafy ridge far to the west.

Encompassed within the embrace of an august sky, my heart gives wild praise for everything green I see, for trees and meadows, grasses and cattails, for the winding cinder path that leads me, for the rooster whose song I join, for the awareness of being one with the profusion of life that surrounds me at every hand and for the love I feel for it all and even for my own life, diminished some by age and ailment, but my heart able to feel more than ever it has … and certainly more than I ever can say.

I don’t know if is best to say our souls are saved or simply discovered in moments when love fills every space within you and wild gratitude bursts the seams of your heart. Perhaps both. But I do know that this love is a great and holy treasure that points to a far greater love more luminous than a summer sky. And the greatest treasure of all is to find this love hidden in your own mortal heart.

If you look outside yourself, you will never find God, according to Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart. But once you discover God there, well, life becomes a treasure hunt.

 David L. Miller