Life beyond the weeds

 As for [the seed]that fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. (Luke 8:14)

More than ever I come to learn that one must live from within, daily reclaiming who you know yourself to be as a creature of Love’s presence,  discovering anew the hunger to know and become the Love the heart desires beyond all else.

Even the hunger for that Love is the Mystery, who is Love, present within, drawing us to know and become the fullness which is the proper destiny of every human soul.

The seed is the word of God, Jesus said, and it falls into various soils, every one of which is found within us. Word should be capitalized, of course, Word, Logos, Love incarnate.

The Word is the energy of the divine Spirit active in all that is, moving everything toward wholeness, to greater unity with others, with creation and with the mystery of Love who unceasingly draws us beyond ourselves to touch and know more love, beauty, joy and wonder.

The seed is sown, but the wounds of living, our anxieties and angers choke its growth, sometimes to the point we wonder if it has died within us. But the seed remains, still bearing the life of the One who is Love.

There is a strange horticulture that governs the growth of this seed. You can exhaust your time and energy hacking away at the weeds that get in its way, but this doesn’t help much because the damn things keep growing back. Meanwhile, you are frustrated and exhausted.

Time is better spent in places and with people among whom love and laugher naturally spring up to fill your heart with gratitude for the world around you and the simple pleasure of being alive for just that one moment.

The love that surges within is, of course, the Love from whom we come and to whom we go, and that Love is more effective with the weeds than our herbicides.

David L. Miller

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Through him

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17)

Salvation through Christ is a participation game, not something we watch as innocent bystanders.

We pass through him, which means living through the experience of dying and rising, losing and discovering what we lost was a pale shadow of the life we receive, if we are willing truly to let go of what was.

Christ’s way must become ours, a way of trusting the unconquerable Love who awakens life in us exactly at the point we thought we had lost it, when what we imagined was most real and alive in us is stripped away.

Dead to what we thought we were and could yet be, we wait, even as he laid lifeless in the tomb, waiting for the great awakening to the truth that there is more.

And that more is life, deeper connection, greater awareness, more intimate communion, heart-to-heart, with the One who is Life and Love.

Every one of life’s defeats and losses is a dress rehearsal for the death we ultimately all die. But if we give ourselves to the process of dying and rising along life’s way, we begin to understand that ... just maybe ... there is nothing to fear at all.

There is life on the other side of every cross.

David L. Miller

Full of days

A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

Birthdays come and go for as long as we have them, and today is mine, age 69.

Prayers of late reach not to the past but toward what shall be, to whom I shall be, and this verse provides a focus as good as any other.

I want a heart as big and embracing as the hearts who have embraced me along the way, magnanimous hearts whose sharp edges had been worn smooth by life so that judgment falls away, allowing a gentle welcome for all sorts and conditions of our wounded humanity.

I am surprised to remember this is an old desire in me. As a boy I read Old Testament stories of Abraham, Isaac and David and would come upon a phrase that stopped me, “he died old and full of days.”

Even as boy I knew this is what I wanted. I prayed it aloud on my bed, and I knew it meant more than living a long time.

It meant savoring the days, holding everything close in the heart, joys and sorrows, success and bitter pains, rejecting nothing, trusting the Holy One is in each moment, in each experience offering beauty and grace, hope and love if you dare hold it close, not fearing the pain or loss.

I could not have written this at nine or 10, but in some hidden, inarticulate way I already understood because a Spirit beyond my own was breathing life into my heart.

How I wish I had always lived this wisdom instead of losing myself a million times and forgetting the grace my young heart already knew. I regret my lack of faith along the way, the times I substituted my plans for fulfillment for what God had in mind for me.

But it seems that God will not be cheated. The Spirit already present in childhood refuses to be refused, ever drawing us back to embrace what is, expanding our hearts into what we will yet be.  

So today, I remember souls who blessed me from the fullness of their hearts, praying that I, like them, may grow old and full of days, full of grace.

David L. Miller