Flow

‘Therefore I tell you, [Jesus said] do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (Matthew 6:25)

I saw it again the other day. Flow.

It started with a TV interview with Al Pacino, the Academy Award winning actor. Pacino described the day his eighth-grade teacher came to his house and told his mother to encourage him to keep acting, keep getting up on stage. She saw something come alive in him every time he performed in a school play.

Pacino shared early days working in small theaters in New York City, amazed and totally one with some elixir of life in his soul, knowing he had to do this. It didn’t matter if I was successful or not, he said, whether I had money or not, whether anyone liked me or not. This was my life. I had to do it.

On the stage, bringing a character to life, he came alive. The outward expression of his life and work flowed seamlessly with an inner current of creative love and joy he didn’t create but discovered within himself. He was one with himself and, as a person of faith, I’ll venture to say he was one with the Creative Love who fashioned the mystery of his soul.

‘It is in this unity of love that life consists,’ Julian of Norwich, writes in her Showings of Divine Love.

Yes, not in what we wear or how we look or whether we have money or success or comfort or struggle, life is oneness with a love that makes everything else but itself irrelevant.

When the love that is our true nature finds its natural expression, a flood of joy and freedom flows like a fountain, filling our soul, lighting our eyes, awakening our energies. We flow, one with ourselves and with the Love who made us, each of us an embodied expression of the Loving Mystery who transcends our knowing.

But as we flow with this love, we do know.

We know God, for we are one with the Love who made us, fulfilling the hope for which we were created. And we are free. Distractions disappear. Worries about how we are doing evaporate. We go with the flow, knowing we were made to enjoy this grace, this bliss, this comfort, this joy, this unity of hearts.

Sometimes, this happens in prayer or song, when love surrounds and silences the heart, words having become both unnecessary and meaningless because a great love has swamped our being.

Two friends, professors at college and graduate school levels, speak of moments when they totally forget themselves and are ‘carried away,’ a most helpful phrase. Doing becomes being, and being becomes doing as they give themselves fully to the moment, freely pouring out what they know, utterly forgetful of all other concerns.

As a boy, I recall adults in my life counseling me or someone else not to get too carried away with what we were saying or doing. All things in moderation seemed to be their message. Certainly, there is some wisdom in this.

But the life to which Jesus invites us, the life that he gives us is all about being carried away in the flow of a great love, carried away by beauty, carried away by the surge of joy that fills us when we fall upon that which God fashioned us to be and do.

It takes years, really decades, to discover what Pacino found on his eight-grade stage, and then only if you are awake, careful to notice when and where the love that you are, the love that lives at your core, begins to flow and render everything else … irrelevant.

David L. Miller

If only

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus (tired from his journey) said to her, ‘Give me a drink’.  ^… The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’  … Jesus answered her, ‘If you only knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ (John 4:7, 9-10)

‘If you only knew,’ how does Jesus say this? How does he sound?

Is it a weary sigh of resignation, Jesus, moist with sweat, collapsing at the village well after a hard walk in the mid-day sun? Hearing the woman, is his voice but a mumble, ‘if only,’ trailing off, all the while knowing she doesn’t know and likely will never know? ‘If only’ … hanging heavy with the regret of graces unknown, beauty untasted and love lost.

Or shall we hear him a different way?

If you only knew, perhaps Jesus’ words tug the corners of his mouth into the faintest grin, a small tired smile, a sideways glance, knowing what is his to give, knowing she soon will know, soon will wake and feel something she has never known, the love who sees the jagged ruins of her life, of marriages and lovers found and lost, the condemnations of self and community, knowing she may yet know herself in the circle of a loving light that makes everything but itself … irrelevant.

If you only knew, a low chuckle plays at his throat, the gladness of giving, finding joy in the woman’s surprise soon to come as she finds herself found, finally, by a love who wakes a spring of joy, wetting her long-parched heart, flowing from a depth of soul she’d long since forgotten, having lost who she truly is.

It’s a mystery to me how this happens, how living water first trickles among the cracked earth of sadness, cynicism and despondency, how it moistens the soil of our discontent, rising to crack the hard shell around our hearts and wash away the bondage of dark moods and desolating disappointments with ourselves and others.

It doesn’t happen quickly enough, as far as I’m concerned, not when the heart is dry, dark moods prevail and I can’t find my way to sunlight. I understand the woman at the well all too well. ‘Give me this water, so I will never be thirsty again,’ she asks.

But how? And where? Ignatius Loyola counsels that in times of desolation we should avoid being alone with our darkness, tell someone else and go to places of consolation. He sang Basque folk songs, gazed into the wonder of the night sky, felt the warm sun on his back and prayed his sadness, remembering and savoring moments of Jesus’ loving nearness, when grace and love awakened tears of gratitude for the gift of being alive.

Just so, I listen as the music swells from the stereo, Tchaikovsky, today, then turn my sideways glance toward Jesus’ face, weary at the well. ‘If you only knew,’ he says, gladness tugging at the corners of his mouth, a knowing smile, knowing, as he does, that the time of my knowing will come with joy and tears as living water finds and flows into the parched places of my heart.

Somehow, seeing his ‘if only’ smile is enough. It cuts through the sadness. I feel his humor, his playfulness, the gladness of his giving … and know that I am known. Drinking in his smile, there is no ‘if only,’ for I am with him.

David L. Miller

The center holds

 ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell. (Mark 9:42-43)

At first blush, there is no good reason Jesus’ words should move spiritual consolation in anyone’s heart, let alone mine. A cold wave of nausea churns at the hollow of my gut as I imagine his image. Surely, it is intended for me.

I have caused little and not-so-little ones to stumble, my words, attitudes and actions falling far short of faithfulness any number of times. I doubt I’ll ever stop carrying the moment I extended my hand to a parishioner as the congregation passed the peace during worship.  ‘I’m ashamed to know you,’ he said, refusing my hand. ‘No kind of leadership at all.’

He spoke for himself, but I’ve no doubt others share his judgment, and some for better reasons than he had. I pray they will find ways to release those judgments, not for my sake but for their own peace and spiritual health.

Ironically, or not, my consolation is found exactly in the words that would condemn me. Re-reading Jesus’ words, tears spring to my eyes as a wave of love rises and swamps my soul, filling me with love for everything he is. For Jesus speaks in great love, calling me from all peripheral concerns to the center of life, to its purpose and goal—eternal life.

This is what most matters, entering, knowing and living intimately with God whose love shines in the face of Jesus. Even his dire warnings speak his great love as he calls us to throw away everything and anything that would keep us from the fulfillment of our existence, which is to live, heart-to-heart, now and forever, with the Love who is the Source of all life.

‘Everything and anything’ include the judgments of others and those we exact on ourselves for the sins and failures that haunt us. There is one cure. All of them evaporate like morning mist in the warm rays of the Love who keeps calling us to life’s true center, the love of the One who showers mercy on his failing friends and forgives even his persecutors.

There is no end to the number of times we need to remind ourselves of this, lest something other than God’s love rules at the center of our hearts. Perhaps we need to be like my old friend, Bob. I held his hand and prayed with him in his final weeks. ‘Tell me that verse again,’ he’d ask on every visit. ‘You know the one. I need to remember.’

‘Yea, Bob, I remember,’ I’d say. ‘There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.’

Bob would exhale, long and deep, and lie back in his bed feeling something that looked a lot like peace. And I fell silent. There was nothing more needing to be said. We rested in life’s true center. Nothing else mattered.

David L Miller

Old souls, needed now

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. (James 3:17-18)

The goal of my life is to become … or increasingly become … an old soul.

I’ve known my share of them through the years, men and women, no two quite alike. But each stirred a desire to be like them … in one way or another.

Every one of them was more patient that I am and not as angry. There was an oasis of peace around them that invited you to drop your guard and just … be. They never seemed to hurry as if there was somewhere more important to be or someone more important to see.

They breathed contentment with their lives, a warm acceptance of what is … even though nearly every one of them had suffered loses and pain which they carried to the end of their days.

What I appreciated most was that they were gentle, gentle with themselves, gentle with the world around them and gentle with me.

They made a deep impression on me, especially when I was very young. For reasons buried deeply in my nature, I desperately wanted to be seen. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to find a few gentle voices where I knew I was safe because the world was filled with rigid rules and critical eyes, eager to judge.

Looking back, I am sometimes thankful for those harsh voices and the wounds they inflicted. They sensitized my heart to the presence and ways of love, which is to say the voice of God. They moved me to seek that love all the more, and because of them … I know God all the more.

But I am far more grateful for the old souls in whom the Soul of the Universe sought and found my heart, suffering, now, each day to awaken in me the gentle beauty the Holy One breathed in them.

Not only in me, of course. For this is the holy labor of God’s Spirit within every human heart, a labor in which we share through our prayer and by placing ourselves in tender places and with gracious faces where God finds and awakens the beauty of love deep within us.

The curation of love is our contemplative work in these days, not first loving … but letting ourselves be loved, bathing in Love’s holy sacraments that gentle our hearts and make us fit instruments to balm the bitter, divisive times in which we live.

The voices that dominate our social and political life are neither peaceable nor gentle. Rancorous party spirit, bitter divisions, character defamations, hatred and hypocrisy run rampant in a virulent battle for dominance, in which I want no part.

But to one extent or another, the conflicts of our age won’t leave us alone. They touch our families and relationships, our communities, churches and nation, poisoning hearts with the toxic venom of sarcasm, cynicism, contempt and despair.

The antidote, the only antidote, to the poison coursing through many hearts, is the Love who makes souls old and wise, gentle and peaceful, full of mercy … and hope.

Abide there.

David L. Miller

Something to see

He [Jesus] took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me. (Mark 9:36-37)

I’ve seen it six or seven times now, a photo inside a café, every table filled with diners. It appears in my Facebook feed always with the same text, telling me the diners are the people of Springfield, Ohio, flooding a Haitian restaurant in protest of the ugliness being hurled at their immigrant neighbors.

I hope the photo is real. I hope it is not AI generated or the photo of a café in California someone used to make a political statement, suggesting the picture is from Springfield when it is not. I, for one, would love to have final verification of its authenticity.

Here’s why. Long ago, reporting from a few of the world’s most brutal, deadly places, I learned something. Whenever you see hatred and death, brutality and the most callous disregard for human life you can imagine—no, beyond anything you can imagine, whenever that happens, where ever you see it, don’t stop looking. Don’t stop listening.

Pay attention because, exactly there, in the midst of hell on earth, sooner or later you will see the most beautiful, gracious, loving, merciful expressions of the human heart, sacrifices that will take your breath away.

You will see God, living in the spirit of human souls in ways that will bring tears of gratitude and longing to your eyes.

Longing? Yes, for those tears flow from the deepest well of the human soul, reaching out for a world not fully born, the kingdom of God, the reign of love. And you weep because you see God’s kingdom breaking forth with unspeakable beauty amid the world’s great ugliness, as human souls take the wounded into their embrace and do whatever they can.

It is through these eyes, tutored, I believe, by God’s own Spirit, and through these ears that, however faintly, have begun to hear, that I take in that photo, reading the meme and savoring the scene on my Facebook page.

I hear the clink of knives and forks, smell the aroma of coffee and eggs sizzling on clean white plates. I see the waitstaff hurrying to fill orders and clear tables. And amid the murmur voices and morning laughter, I feel and know the Love who labors in every time and place to draw us beyond ourselves to embrace the wounds of the world.

It’s really something to see, and once you catch a glimpse of it you want to see and feel it everywhere, which is why I am beyond thankful for those diners in Springfield, hoping that photo is as real as me sitting in this gray chair. For it is a scene of the coming kingdom if ever there was one, all of us gathered in one great love.

When I was a young man I was like Jesus’ disciples, dreaming great things for myself, most of which was compensation for feeling small, weak and insignificant, as if some accomplishment would prove to others (and myself) that they were wrong about me.

If you’re really blessed, sooner or later, the realities of living strips away self-aggrandizing illusions like this … so you can finally see the greatest thing you can ever do is to be like those diners in Springfield. Embrace what is right in front of you with as much love as you’ve got.

And pray, ‘thy kingdom come.’

It will, and you just may see it.

David L. Miller

Postcard from the kingdom of reality

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’ (Luke 17:20-21)

There we were, four of us, walking a corridor in the kingdom of reality.

Truth be told, only three of us were walking. My mother rode in a wheel chair as I pushed, rolling across the skyway between St. Mary’s Hospital to the clinic just north. Dixie walked beside me as we followed a stoop-shouldered 80-something in sneakers, a blue sport coat and a white shirt open at the neck.

Our destination was an orthopedic surgeon’s office to see if my feisty 95-year-old mother could have one more back surgery to free her from pain, without the drugs she preferred not to take.

Entering the elevator, our guide turned and said, “I retired in 2012, but I couldn’t get this place out of me.” He’d been an anesthesiologist here for decades. Now, he keeps people like me from getting lost.

I suspect his smile reassured many anxious hearts in the surgical suite over the years, even as it heartened us as we stepped from the elevator toward the surgeon’s office to learn what the next chapter held for Mom.

She’d set up a challenging itinerary: Monday, going through her files and making sure her computer was working; Tuesday, the surgeon and whatever referral might be made; Wednesday, the bank, the lock box, the funeral home and an insurance agent, all to make final arrangements which she has no intention of needing for years if not another decade. Longevity is in her genes, iron in her will.

Emotional? Yes. Draining? You bet. Overwhelming, strangely, no.

At each step, questions and conversations interspersed with moments of checking out how we each were feeling and what we needed, revealing no great stress.

Each stop, each step followed the next and the next and the next as if ordered by a gentle hand bearing us forward in the flow of an abiding sense of ‘this is how it should be;’ all the while assuring us that this is what life is, and if you take it with honesty, humor and with good and gentle companions, you step into a great flow of … well, it certainly felt like love.

This love was not only within us but all around like the air, surrounding, enveloping and meeting us in the faces of those with whom we consulted about everything from aching backs, to bank accounts, to wills and trusts, to funeral caskets, vaults and insurance policies to pay for it all.

We were carried in a stream that required nothing more of me than to attend to the next thing with patience and care, fretting not about what might come after.

I knew … this is my place. This is where I was intended to be by the Mystery who made me. These are the people I was meant to know and love and trust, and by doing this—surrendering illusions about other lives I might have lived—I was releasing myself into the love that flows from eternity to eternity, beseeching me to let go and be one with this Love as it flows through my little moment of time.

It takes a long time, I think, (certainly for me) to tell your ego to shut the hell up, lay down your defenses and trust that Love. When you do it will tell you who you really are, what your heart truly needs and what you most need to do—like that retired anesthesiologist in his tennis shoes.

The place got into me, and I couldn’t get it out, he said of St. Mary’s Hospital. That’s one way to look at it. Another is, this is the place that Love’s eternal flow found him and set him free to be, well, the soul he was always intended to be.

Whenever this happens, wherever it happens, God smiles and welcomes us into the kingdom of reality.

David L. Miller

Wondering about pinwheels

So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:67-68)

Eternal Life? How dare anyone speak of it as if they understood … anything. Except, of course, there are moments, experiences that take us beyond ourselves, absorbing us in something much greater in which we are truly there but the boundaries between our own hearts and a much greater reality grow thin, then disappear, if only for mere moments as every fear, worry and anxious thought evaporates in an all-embracing love in which we share and of which we are a part.

That’s why I think of pinwheels. It been decades since I held on in my hands, but I remember playing with them as a child and fascinating my children a circus-colored pinwheel with stars and clouds, red and blue, white and green, blowing on it so that it spun faster and faster until the colors blended together into a whirl in which each individual color and blade shared its uniqueness, a twirling color wheel more beautiful and fascinating than any one of them individually.

Something like this happens in conversations and caring relationships when people share what is in their hearts, listening, laughing and letting the flow of the exchange carry them along without the need to steer its direction or determine its conclusion. Joined in a love, a care, an atmosphere larger than themselves, they become more truly themselves than anywhere else. Liberated from the need to protect egos and reputations, they inhale freedom and love in a unity of hearts with every breath.

I know it’s a leap, but … I wonder … is this why Peter answered Jesus, ‘You have the words of eternal life.’

I have no idea what was in his mind or exactly what may have moved him to speak as he did. But I wonder if he came to love what was happening in his heart as he felt himself being drawn ever more fully into the love that met people where they were and welcomed them as they are. Absorbed into the flow of this love, I wonder if the thought of being anywhere else but with Jesus felt like death and despair. I wonder if he felt a great love come alive inside himself so that he felt more alive … and more himself … than he’d ever been or ever imagined he would be.

I wonder if he wanted to let go of everything else and be caught up in the twirling pinwheel of the Love in which he finally knew himself … and the Love for which we are born.

I don’t know. But I wonder.

David L. Miller