Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Today’s text

John 14:25-27

'I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you. Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you, a peace which the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.'

Reflection

What is your peace, Jesus, if not the inseparable oneness you shared with the Holy Mystery, the Father?

Most often I confuse peace with imperturbability. It is undisturbed serenity, free from distress and disordered desire. But if this is peace, you didn’t have it yourself, Jesus, so how can you give it to me?

You were disturbed, angry, disappointed, distressed and deeply moved. Your generous heart knew pain and impatience over suffering and cruelty, hatred and apathy.

But did you also know some paradoxical peace amid the swirl of distress?

Part of me wants peace without distress, serenity freed from the tensions of living. But this doesn’t exist. It can’t be had, and I wouldn’t want it even if you gave it to me. For it would be a peace stripped of feeling for life. It would not know revulsion at hunger and suffering, or the swells love that wash over me when I touch and bless the heads of my little grandsons.

Who wants a life without such feeling? Such stirring within reflects deep connection with the world its needs and joys. Serenity without passion has nothing to do with you, Jesus. It is not an expression of your Spirit.

Still, I want peace, and your offer to give it draws me to you. I want to dwell, to make my home in the peace you knew, and the only way I can conceive of your peace is as unity, harmony, oneness with the Eternal Love to which your soul was transparent.

You lived in felt awareness of the loving delight in which the Father held you. You constantly knew your life was a singular expression of the Being of the One who is Love. Your life was not yours but the substance of the Infinite Source who is Life.

Dwelling in that awareness released joy, mercy and freedom from self-conscious anxiety so that a fountain of love flowed through you.

My lack of peace is comes because I lose awareness of truth you never lost.

I am no more separated from the Loving Mystery than were you, Jesus. My life at every moment is an expression of the Ultimate Source of Being and Love. It is always held, treasured and delighted in by a Love that beggars all description.

That’s what you knew Jesus. Always. That’s what my anxious self forgets.

But it is this awareness that you give to me, so that even now I feel the power of Being in my hands, my heart and my mind, and know again what you always knew.

Today let me not forget.

Pr. David L. Miller