Love: Week 1
Begin Again in Each Moment
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
One of Jesus’ favorite visual aids is a child. Every time the disciples get into head games, he puts a child in front of them. He says the only people who can recognize and be ready for what he’s talking about are the ones who come with the mind and heart of a child. This is what we call “beginner’s mind.” The older we grow, the more we’ve been betrayed and hurt and disappointed, the more barriers we put up to the primal delight and curiosity of small children. We must never presume that we see. We must always be ready to see anew. But it’s so hard to go back and be able to say, “I don’t know anything.”
Say to yourself: “I don’t know anything.” Imagine you are an erased blackboard, ready to be written on, a tabula rasa. For by and large, what blocks spiritual learning is the assumption that we already know, or that we don’t need to know. We have to pray for the immense guidance that is offered us in the beginner’s mind. We need to say with the blind man, “Lord, I want to see.”
Spirituality is about seeing. It’s about intimate relationship with things rather than achieving results or meeting requirements. Once you see fully, the rest follows. You don’t need to push the river, because you are already in the river. God’s life of love is being lived within you, and you must simply learn how to say yes to that life. If you exist on a level where you can see how “everything belongs,” you can trust the flow and trust the life. This Life is so large and deep and spacious that it even includes its opposite, death. This is the only true life available to us. As Paul wrote to the Colossians, “You have died [the small ego self], and the life you now have is hidden with Christ in God [the Godself]. When Christ is revealed—and he is your life—you too will be revealed in all your glory with him” (Colossians 3:3-4).
Gateway to Silence:
God’s life is living itself in me.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2003), 33-34.
