Jim Finley:

Greetings. I’m Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates:

And I’m Kirsten Oates.

Jim Finley:

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates:

Welcome, everyone, to season 11 of Turning to the Mystics, where we’ve been turning to the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. And I’m here with Jim for our coaching session where we try and make our teaching applicable to you in daily life. So, welcome, Jim.

Jim Finley:

Yes, yes. I always enjoy these coaching sessions, and we personalize all of this. Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Wonderful. So, Jim, I think where you’re going to get us started is reflecting on Marcel’s vision and how that might apply to us.

Jim Finley:

Yes. Here’s a way that helps me to be present turning to Marcel for trustworthy guidance is to say, first of all, how helpful it is that he’s helping us to be more aware of the quality of our awareness. And you notice that sometimes we’re aware of things that are in the realm of the problematic, like the daily task and details of the day, this way, and the problematic are things that are dualistically and objectively other than ourselves, our problems. Car won’t start, roof is leaking, or a complex math problem. And what we do is we look for a method to solve the problem where we go to someone who’s skilled in solving it, then we move on to the next problem. But Marcel says that, really, there’s another dimension of our life, which is the realm of the mysterious.

And the realm of the problematic, he refers to that as primary consciousness. That’s the objective practical details of the day. It’s real. But he says the mysterious reveals the inadequacy of primary consciousness. It’s not adequate, and it’s not adequate because of the mystery of the nature of myself as non-objective, non-objectifiable realities. So when I ask, “What does it mean to be human?” It’s always I as the human being that I am that’s asking what it is to be human. And what is consciousness? It’s I in my consciousness asking what is love and so on. So this secondary consciousness rests upon the intimate richness of our own interiority, and this extends out that I am included in and extend out into consciousness, humanity, to life, and ultimately, to God, to the infinity of being.

The heart of what he’s saying is that this infinite mystery of God is infinitely presencing the infinity of itself and giving itself away as the mystery of our very presence, that were the beloved, that were subsisting in this unitive state of this oneness. And when he says this to us, we’re struck by the beauty of it and also, noticing that this is just what our faith teaches us, that we’re God’s beloved, and he’s helping us to find God outside of any religious tradition so that it might enrich our own religious understanding. But here, this is just finding God in life itself.

So the question then is this. The question then is, how we tend not to be aware of this mystery of ourselves? We get lost in the problematic. He says that, really, this is our faith as a kind of primitive inner assurance. He says a forefeeling or like it’s a felt sense, but it’s subtle, it’s vague. And so he looks for certain moments where what happens is this unitive mystery of God’s infinite presence, one with us as our presence, shines out into our experience.

That’s the point. At a certain point, it shines out into experience, and he gives examples of this. So in order, I think, to pray with Marcel, we have to personalize this. And what we’re looking for in our life are certain moments. I’m going to give a list here of the realms of existence. Certain moments. There was a moment of quiet awe, or a moment of quiet amazement, or a moment of being receptively open and grateful for presence we can’t explain.

And what we’re really sensing, he calls these thou moments, the thou. And what happens… and I’ll give some examples. For example, that when we love someone very much, and we’re aware of the person’s personality, we’re aware of their givens, and so on, but somehow, in our love for them, we see through the details of the givens, and we see that somehow the infinite presence of God is present in and as the gift of their presence to us, and we’re kind of struck by it.

So the question then would be, for us, when have there been moments of love with someone, the spouse, the lover, the child, the grandmother, the grandfather, the beloved teacher, the beloved students, the dearest friend, where you’ve sensed this sacredness like a heightened sense of enrichment this way? Likewise, where there have been moments in you thinking of your own life where this has come to you in silence, in a moment of silence that came welling up out of the silence, a sensitivity to the sacredness of life, gift of life, or of solitude, or loneliness turns into the intimacy of solitude like the other, aloneness of ourself, the quiet hour, a day’s end?

It’s like going through an art museum, like the artist as a visual mystic, where we see in the work of art, we give reason to pause and ponder it, or sometimes the gift of music, or the voice of a poet. Sometimes too, it can come to us in moments of suffering. And in the moments of suffering, we’re being quietly sustained in the suffering.

So the point is if you would make a list of your thou moments because it’s part of the dowry of our being. Some of them are very intense, but a lot of times, they’re extremely delicate. We have to calibrate our heart to a fine-enough scale, because what happens is the problematic takes it over. The cellphone goes off. We’re already late to the meeting, and we go rushing, but the gate of heaven flies open, we walk right past it. So we’re, first, slowing down and journaling out our own thou moments and writing them out.

And then Marcel is suggesting that each of these thou moments can be understood under the auspices of three modalities. And the first is fidelity, the second is hope, and the third is love. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk through each of these modalities. First, as the experience of God’s oneness with us, and then it asked of us something. It asked of us to respond to this like the reciprocity of this union as a way we live our life and share it with others.

So that’s the approach that I’m suggesting, that we go to meditation, and whatever we do, light our candle, open the scriptures, and you turn on Marcel, and you realize he’s talking to us in secondary reflection. It’s a kind of a poetic… We’re being lured, and the very fact we sense the beauty in what he’s saying is beautiful because we know it’s true, because he’s helping us put words to the intimate interiority of ourselves. So as we stay with Marcel, how can we personalize it and engage it more in our day-by-day life?

I’d like to add something that personally helps me to relate to this. It’s my experience as a psychotherapist and as a spiritual director, and a lot of psychotherapy is being with someone who keeps inviting you to listen at the feeling level to what you just said, that in primary consciousness and the problematic, we’re suffering from death deprivation. We’re skimming right past our own experience. Even when it shines out, we don’t recognize it, and spiritual direction is the same way.

So what thou moments are, however they come, are moments where this unit of mystery that is always the union of God, one with us, us one with God of all reality. It shines through into our experience. And so Marcel, in this sense, then is acting like a mystical teacher or a therapist, a spiritual director. Marcel is slowing us down to help us get more consciously acclimated to the sensitivity to these thou moments of the experiential breakthroughs to the unity that’s always there so that we can live in the light of it. And so I think, really, that’s the gift of Marcel.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. Yeah. That’s definitely one of the key things I’m taking away from this season is the way… because we’ve talked about these quickening moments many times throughout the seasons, but what I’ve realized in the way you present the vision each time, you say that it’s not just this quickening in our own subjectivity, that actually, the quickening opens up onto this unitive oneness. And Marcel makes it so clear that in these moments, it’s really being, this sense of being that’s creating the sense of being that’s always present with us, that we’re awakening to that, and that’s creating the thou moment.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

So it’s this connection to being, and then recognizing that we’re all connected and one with this being.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. I want to say that back because it’s really what makes his teachings mystical, really, is he’s very, very clear… and not to give into the temptation. This is just sentimental that is… It’s like an emotional, sentimental feeling. The opposite is true, that what we’re actually experiencing is the infinite generosity of the infinite presence of God presencing itself as the gift of our own presence. And that presence is always true a thou moment. It comes shining through into an experience of the unit of mystery. And so he’s trying to calibrate our heart to a finer, finer scale to be attentive to these moments.

And so that’s why if the listeners make a list of the realms of their life where there’s been quickenings, where there’s a certain kind of graced awareness, that there’s something of the presence of God shining through the presence of the person, or the setting sun, or a dog or a cat sleeping in the sunlight on the edge of the porch, or watering the houseplants, or the darkness of the night. There’s certain moments we’re graced with this, and so he’s encouraging us to have… be attentive to these and knowing that although the breakthrough is momentary, it’s not something more. It’s a momentary awareness, so it’s always true, including this moment. So to use him as Lectio Divina just by listening to Marcel and sitting with it, he’s habituating us to be habitually sensitive to these subtle, subtle levels of unit of mysteries of our lives.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. I’m also glad to hear the way you brought up psychotherapy, because I think it’s so subtle, the difference between the problematic and the mystical. There’s, obviously, examples, like you’ve given about the car and the mathematical problem. But Jim, is it also true that I could be viewing myself as a problem? For instance, I might have an illness, and so there’s a problem with my body or there’s a problem in my personality that I need to work on. So I can very much get in that problematic mind in the way I’m looking at myself?

Jim Finley:

Oh, that’s very good. I think it’s really true, I want to say, because it’s another example of how to get close to Marcel as our teacher. It’s really true. So let’s say you’re struggling with a psychological symptom that embodies suffering. So if you’re depressed, or you’re anxious, or feelings of self-loathing, internalized trauma, what you’re trying to do is get over it, or get past it, or get rid of it this way, “How can I get rid of it?” And it’s understandable that you would want that, but what a lot of therapy is about, instead of getting rid of it, instead, it’s learning how to listen to it and how to respect it because it matters.

It’s a hurting dimension of the mystery of yourself, and so somehow, befriending the hurting place and listen like, “What’s it made out of? Where’s it coming from? What is it?” It’s somehow, and the befriending, and the acceptance, and the understanding of the hurt. It softens it, and it’s part of the mystery of who you are, because it’s part of the mystery of what life is, really. That’s another big thing about all of this too, really.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

And it might open up on this sense of oneness and unity.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, and it brings us to oneness somehow, whereas I thought this problem was something to be gotten rid of, and discovering that what I’m to do is to be endlessly tender-hearted to the hurting place. And in being endlessly tender-hearted towards it, I discover my oneness with it in tender-heartedness, which is how God relates to us, because God was endlessly tender-hearted towards us. It’s mercy, and this is why Marcel is saying, really, it’s experiential salvation.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

Interiorly realized. It’s true we’re relieved that we’re not as symptomatic as we used to be, we should be, but it’s something much deeper than that. In that whole process, we’ve come to a sense that we matter in some unexplainable way, and we learn deep lessons in the suffering about fragility, and about life, and about mercy. That’s very much at the heart, I think, of Marcel as our teacher.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. And the other thing I’m taking away from Marcel, which is beautiful in that example, is that my awareness of God’s presence doesn’t always come as a glowing sense of, “There’s God, and there’s me.” No. It’s in my presence to my own suffering, I come upon that sense of capacity to be present to my suffering, and I know that I’m joining God in that.

Jim Finley:

Yes. I want to say this back too about the… but it’s also has to do with any intimate conversation with anybody, is that you’re in the process of sitting with whatever it is you’re trying to work through. And in that process, there are silences. And in this silence, you say to yourself, “I don’t know why, but you know what I’m thinking of right now?” And so it comes like a little thread of an awareness like the interiority of interconnectedness. Then, the person says, “Well, that’s fascinating that you would say that. I wonder how that would help to shed light on the stuck place this way.” And so that’s really… It’s like the intimacy of an intimate dialogue with someone, which is the intimacy of prayer, which is, really, the intimacy of praying with Marcel because notice how intimate he is.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

That’s why you can’t skim read Marcel. It’s not a… Otherwise, it makes him problematic, but he’s not problematic. We have to let him lure us into secondary reflection of the intimacy and the boundaryless tenderness of our own presence with the examples in our own life. Where have we experienced it in a walk with it, and where can we be aware of how we tended not to be aware of it and this suffering that it caused? This is Marcel, really, I think.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. Before we move on to fidelity, hope, and love, can we just revisit the winding path? Because this is… Marcel also says that this is a linear learning curve and awareness of God’s spirals through our life on a winding path.

Jim Finley:

Yes. Here’s how I would put it. That would be good to do that in a way. See, in a way, we can look back at the winding path as the unfolding history of our lives. I’ll use therapy again as an example. When a person comes in with a presenting problem, and the person starts first with an intake like, “What year were you born? Do you have any brothers and sisters? Were you raised by both parents? What grade school did you go to? How did you do in school? Did you like school? Where’d you go to high school?” And it’s always like, “What happened next? What happened next?”

The next level is this. In that first factual level of your own path, where were the places in the factual level where there were stumbling places? Which is really the origins of why you’re here. How far back would we have to go to trace back the very first time you felt this way about yourself or believe this about whatever that is? But the other part of it is this also, in looking back at it, what have been the place you see the winding path where out of all of that, a light shined through?

There was like a pause of being quietly present to a dimension or a depth of yourself that you mattered very much to you. And sometimes maybe when you were very young, these started, these moments. And sometimes when very young we’re given these vowed graces, we spend the rest of our life being faithful too. So the winding path is the winding unfolding details in the midst of which the thou moments unexpectedly shine out and illumine the very nature of the path itself, invite us to live our life in the light of that light that shines this way. So that’s the winding path.

Kirsten Oates:

That’s beautiful. And I think too you said, Jim, in this mystical state of consciousness, you can also look back and see how the absences… God was never absent for me, but you can be tender-hearted to the ways you felt the absence of God or the absence of, yeah, love.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. Put it this way too. As we look back, let’s say there are these moments of awareness. But then, we also see that, and we might try to say… Not to let the thread of that awareness break as we go through the day, but looking back, we see that it breaks hundreds and hundreds of times, actually.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

But the point… and this is the power of thou moments. That never breaks from thou God’s end, and all that is always true. The thou moments is where the light shines through, and that’s why it blindsides us. It catches us unaware in the midst of an unresolved thing. But it’s so subtle, if we’re not careful, we even walk past that-

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

… because it never forces itself upon us. It’s always invitational. So Marcel is trying to sensitize us to these moments and be receptively open to accept the invitation that’s there.

Kirsten Oates:

Well, let’s turn to fidelity, hope, and love. And what we really want to emphasize today as we start with each of them is how they are a quality of God shining through into our awareness. So how, Jim, does fidelity start from God’s side and then shine into our awareness?

Jim Finley:

That’s right, and really, we’re suggesting this, I think, that the listeners can take any thou moment in their life where these awakenings happen and to see that each thou moment can be understood as fidelity, understood as hope, understood as love. So they’re like modalities of the thou moment, and it gives another refined sense of turning to Marcel as our trustworthy guidance. So we can start with fidelity.

Kirsten Oates:

Would you start with the thou of God or God’s being shining through as fidelity, how God’s fidelity to us shines through in a thou moment?

Jim Finley:

Yeah. We know the example that Marcel uses. There’s the dying friend. In the moment with the dying friend, really, you have a thou moment, because what happens is unexpectedly, you sense something of the presence of God shining to the presence of your friend, and the experiential shining through of the thou moment of the friend awakens the thou of you. And in that thou of you, you say, “I’ll stay close,” like the oneness of the thou moment. So then, you say to yourself, “I don’t feel that way a few days later. Should I be bound to that feeling? I don’t feel that way.”

So Marcel says the mistake is assuming that you can understand it in terms of a feeling, where actually, you need to understand it in terms of an awakening. And what the awakening is, is experiential taste of God’s endless fidelity to us. And so it could be with a dying friend, but it could be with a spouse, or with a child, or a grandparent, or a friend. It could be with a creative process. It could be patience and long-term suffering. But whatever it is, there were these little shimmering moments where we send something of the thou, like something precious experientially shining through and illuminating our heart maybe in very subtle ways, in very, very subtle ways.

And that’s experiential witness to God’s fidelity to us, experientially letting us know that God is always faithful to us, that in the moment… And then the next step is this, and this is what Marcel says. This moment, this moment of awareness of fidelity that transcends linear time like it’s a certain quickening is only lived out in time. So I have to know that even there isn’t something more was given to me in that flash point, whatever it was, but a curtain opened, and I fleetingly tasted the fidelity of God to me in every moment, including this one. So how then can I follow the path of being faithful to God’s fidelity by living in fidelity what my own heart, awakening heart knows is true even though I don’t feel it? “You are ever with me, and you’ll never leave me to face my perils alone,” Merton says. How can I have a daily rendezvous with God to keep reinstating myself in that confidence, even though as I go through the day, there might be times I don’t feel like it at all?

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

And sometimes I tip over and lose my way, but I get re-stabilized again of this fidelity that’s always there and the unfolding regardless of what happens. That’s why we use the example when Jesus says, “Do not be afraid. I’m with you always.” So I didn’t say, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll personally see to it that nothing hurtful, or unfair, or traumatizing happens to you. But no matter what happens to you, I’m one with you in it on up to them and including the moment of your death and beyond.” So that’s what we’re saying. We’re trying to find our way to this endless fidelity. It’s the depth dimension ribboned through the unfoldings of the day.

Kirsten Oates:

This example has reminded me of an event I went through in my life, and what I love about what you say about the winding path is it’s never too late to look back on our lives and discover the quickening moment, even if at the time, we might not have recognized it as that. And so about 10, 11 years ago, my sister-in-law went into hospital, and a surgery didn’t go well, and she was in ICU for three months. I’d had a very strong reaction going to hospitals. I’d had some surgeries in my teenage years, and after those, I had tremendous anxiety about going to hospital, and so I’d had a couple of times where I’d gone to visit a friend in hospital and fainted.

And so there was a friend who was in the hospital room. I walked in to visit her. I fainted. They carried me out. I got myself together, went back in, fainted. They carried me out. I just realized I wasn’t able to do that. A few years later, I tried again with another friend, and same thing happened. The funniest one of all was I actually was invited to go, as a part of my job, on a tour of the Children’s Hospital in Sydney. And there was a doctor giving a talk about all the amazing work they were doing in the hospital. And as he started to talk about some of the surgical work he was doing, I could feel myself, I was going to faint, and so I was slowly walking towards the door to get out of the room. And as I went to grab for the handle, my hand slipped. I hit my head on the doorknob and woke up with that doctor standing over me. So I had these very visceral reactions to being in a hospital.

When I went to visit my sister-in-law for the first time in the ICU, I could feel myself starting to pass out, and I went and sat on a chair. It was in the room with her, but it was behind her view, so she couldn’t see me, and I had to put my head between my legs. And my husband was talking to my sister-in-law, and I just had my head between my legs, and I said to God, “This isn’t okay. I can’t be like this for my sister-in-law.” And I sat up, and I knew it was all just fine. And I got up, and I put my hand… I remember putting my hand on Meg’s leg and just saying, “I’m here. I love you. I’m sorry for what you’re going through.” And I was able to go to her hospital room all throughout her time in ICU.

And in the end, after her three months in ICU, the night of her death, her family was so traumatized and upset by the fact that she was going to die that they couldn’t stay in her room the night of her death. So it ended up being me with her son being there throughout the night the night Meg died. And so it just brings me into tears to think about it, but just how God quickened me to be able to be that thou presence in that experience.

Jim Finley:

Yes. I want to say something about this too, about fidelity. What’s very so interesting about it is that they shine forth in the midst of a lost place. We’re overcome. We’re lost. We don’t know. That’s what makes the fidelity so startling, and the fidelity is finding an unexpected ground to stand on. It was there all along, but we couldn’t find it. It is almost like… and falling down through the thing we landed in this place, which is experiential truth of the fidelity to us like, “I will not break faith with my awakening heart.”

There was this woman who shared with a whole group of people on a retreat. Their father was very… He lived in another country. He was alcoholic. He was very abusive. He was dying, and he asked her to come see him, and so she did it. She talked to her sponsor. She was in AA. They set up a bed in his… a couch in a room where she could spend the night with him. And she was there in the dark, and she said she was listening to his labored breathing. He was dying. And she thought, really, of the tragedy of their relationship and the tragedy of him that he was so lost, and she started crying.

But the tears weren’t tears of regret. It was like a tremendous release of a salvific sorrow, and she said she’ll never forget that moment. Her father died that night. I think these are the things Marcel is inviting us to, and then also, to calibrate our heart to ever find a more delicate ones, but they’re on the same continuum, and to recognize this fidelity that’s always with us in our wavering ways.

Turning to the Mystics will continue in a moment.

Kirsten Oates:

The other thing that comes to mind for me around fidelity, Jim, is your fidelity to your writing practice and to the mystics, that whether you’re writing a book, or writing a talk, or writing one of these podcasts, there’s a way that you don’t let the pen hit the paper until you feel this state of fidelity.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, it’s true, but for me, it’s because of this life of trauma being in the monastery, and I was quickened. See, God’s fidelity to me, quickening me to this mystical sense. So then, I feel my fidelity to the fidelity is before I write a word, I have to first be in the resonance of that fidelity so that when I write, the words will come out of that instead of out of my ego, which is the thesis or the discipline, I guess. And it’s Marcel’s discipline too. This beauty has not come without a price, and this is his fidelity to us. So we keep handing it on and sharing it with each other.

Kirsten Oates:

Two other things that come to mind, Jim, is I know there’s some people that just love their garden, and they work so hard to water the plants, keep the plants alive and thriving. They really feel a sense of connection, or family, or this idea of oneness, unity with their garden, with the plants. Would that be another example of how this fidelity shines through?

Jim Finley:       

It would be. It would be. Matter of fact, sometimes I put it this way. Find that act, define that person, or use the garden as an example, but it can be anything, a long slow walk to no place in particular, the quiet hour at day’s end, whatever it is. Find that act. Find that person. Find that community. When you give yourself over to it with your whole heart, it unravels your petty preoccupation with your self-absorbed self and brings you strangely home to yourself. And so I don’t think we choose our practices. They find us.

So when we’re in the garden, we can tell we’re in this quiet primordial mystery of these living things that are manifestations of the life of God in their life. And our oneness with them is our oneness with God, that we’re all siblings of this life. So I think to look for these places, this simple moment like rituals or liturgies of encounter place, and then each time we end the rendezvous with that, to ask for the grace not to break the thread of the sensitivity as we go through the day or more and more where that it never breaks from God’s end. See, that’s fidelity then. That’s the constancy of moving and reciprocating God’s fidelity to us. Yeah, yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

And it’s a beautiful reminder, because I think no matter what the act is, we can slip back into the realm of the problematic.

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

So my plants have a bug, and I can be… trying to solve that problem, and I’m back in the realm of the problematic or my inability to stay in a hospital room. “What’s wrong with me? I’ve got a problem.” But I love that what we’re saying is the act that brings us into the thou moment, we also have to open our mind to this mystery to recognize it.

Jim Finley:

But here’s a big thing you’re touching on, is to be present to the problematic in reflective interior way, because the problematic is it’s self-life. If I just think it’s a problem to be solved, I’m skimming across the surface of it.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

But somehow, this too is life. So how can I be present to the problematic in a way that I can see the mysterious depth dimensions of the proble- to be attentive to it like, “Let’s see here.”

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. Exactly.

Jim Finley:

Like, “What’s going on?” Then, that’s the constancy of fidelity, or even the problematic has a certain ora et labora. The labor itself is not some intrusion into holiness. It’s engaging and… the presence of God engaging with us and the details of the day.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Beautiful. And so over time, the hope is that you can be stabilized holding them, the mystical and the problematic, together, and they’re not slipping in and out of each of them. Yeah.

Jim Finley:

And I think we do over time. For example, anyone listening to this, how is it come to pass you… come to be a person who’s capable of being sensitive to such things the way you are? And is it true that a year ago or 10 years ago, it wasn’t this way with you? So you’re clearly already on this path and with unforeseeable unfolding yet to come, and Marcel is trying to help us be sensitive to this, the grace of our journeys through time and to God.

Kirsten Oates:

Lovely. Well, let’s move on to hope and just beginning, Jim, with how does the hope that Marcel is speaking about reflect God’s hope for us.

Jim Finley:

He gives a startling example of a person who’s dying, and the person who’s dying… The diagnosis is clear. It’s terminal. He has only so many days to live, but he says, “But the person is in a state where the person refuses to consider possibilities because possibilities are unfolding in time.” And the reason the person refuses it, they’re not in time, they’re in eternity. This is experiential realization that we’re all eternal. The body dies, but we’re all eternal.

Trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years from now, we’ll all still be here and God in whom we live, and move, and have our being because we’re the beloved. So the person, even though they’re still here in the body in time, they’re already transcending time in the midst of time. And this is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross on the stages of dying. Denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and all these are the ego coming to the end of itself. But Jesus says acceptance… Not everyone comes to acceptance. Acceptance is freedom from the tyranny of death in the midst of death. And when you look into the face of the dying loved one in acceptance, it’s the gate of heaven, and the person dying this way reveals you to yourself.

The whole thing about hope then, really, is the deep realization that there’s nothing to hope for because nothing is missing. That’s the reason like eternity in all directions, flowing out, flowing out unexplainably, intimately realized. Intimately realized is hope, and so this is not, “I hope that,” because usually, when we hope, we’re hoping for a happy outcome to a current project that we’re in or whatever. It’s we’re hoping that it’ll turn out the way we want it to. That’s valid at its own level, but this is much deeper.

As I go through life, I will with God’s grace. I hope that I’ll be ever more aware because there’s nothing to hope for because nothing is missing. Because this present moment, this moment that I’m talking to you right now or the moment the listeners are listening right now is boundedless in all directions. There’s nothing missing in it. What’s missing is our awareness of the divinity, of the immediacy of the moment that we’re in. And so what these little moments are, we fleetingly are graced with moments where we sense that. It’s like a hiatus of a transparent, luminous sensitivity, like resting, like the eternality of the depth that never passes away that’s endlessly ribboned through everything endlessly passing away, and it’s like a pause resting in something that never passes away, that’s always there.

And so that hope then is that we have a… if we get back to fidelity, that we have faith to that hope, that we were not being deceived. It wasn’t just magical thinking. We were being graced with God’s eternal presence shining through the eternality of ourself in a fleeting moment that we pause. And it might be, like you say, the death of a loved one, but it might also be just lying awake in the dark, listening to your breathing, or smelling a flower, or looking out at the sun moving across the sky. There’s a saying that… and American Indians I like, “Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the while, a great force moves me across the sky.” That’s the hope, that there’s nothing to hope for this way. And so I think that’s Marcel’s sense. He’s trying to help us turn down for trustworthy guidance, and listening to that, and being present to that.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Beautiful. So it’s God’s eternality that is the beginning of the hope.

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

And it’s our recognition that God’s very being is in us. There’s something in us that’s eternal, and that gives us the hope.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. And what’s eternal in us, God’s eternal presence is presencing itself and giving itself to us in the eternality of ourself.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

And a nothingness without God is that God gives us God’s own eternity as the eternality of ourself, and there are certain moments we fleetingly sense that.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

But the self in time that was fleetingly transcended when it passes is skeptical. And so what we’re talking about is I will not play the cynic. I will not doubt my awakening heart. I know that although I die, I’m dying, I do not die. I’ve had moments where I’ve tasted that, I’ve experienced that, and this is my faith. My heart knows it’s true, and so this is not just freedom from the tyranny of suffering, the midst of suffering, but it’s freedom from tyranny of death in the midst of death which is approaching even as I speak or like can- We’re all melting like candles. We’ll all be dead soon.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

A thousand years from now, every one of us listening, everyone listening to this will all have been dead for over 900 years, but there’s that in us. It never died, and there are little moments it flashes forth. Marcel is trying to help us live in fidelity to that, like the transcendence of the eternality that shines suit and transcends time in the midst of time.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, because I think in Western society, we’re so good at avoiding thoughts of death or avoiding the idea that death even exists. But I love the idea of the way eternality shines through moments. And what I heard in Marcel, it’s my lack of despair that also points to my hope. I don’t live in a state of despair.

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

There’s a hope that shines through in my faith, in my fidelity. And even though I might not have applied it to my death, I live a life of hope. Yeah. The hope that God is real. Mm-hmm.

Jim Finley:

That God is real. And also, Marcel notes that when he was young, he was very close to his mother, and she died when he was young. And this was an insight into his work, really. He said, “It’s amazing how present a dead person can be.” This is where we sense… “Thou shalt not die,” that we know we’ve loved someone when we’ve seen in them that which is too beautiful to die. And we know we’ve learned to love ourself when we see the… which means that we’re joining God and how God sees us as the one who’s to die, and we’re trying to be evermore stabilized in that sensitivity. And so there is death. It’s like if God is Lord of life, God is Lord of death. We can also say God is the infinity of life. God is the infinity of death, understanding that death is the gate of heaven.

Kirsten Oates:

Mm-hmm.

Jim Finley:

You know? It’s eternity.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. I know you know this about me, Jim, but I had a near-death experience about seven years ago on a flight, an international flight. The plane lost one of its engines, and we went through a lot of turmoil, and I had a near-death experience where I feel like I came to acceptance of my death. And in that experience, I had the sense of life and death being equal. Yeah. Since then, it’s given me a sense of comfort about my death because it’s going to be the same as my life in a certain way.

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

In a way, that helps me to see too about death is that I think what happens… See, right now, we experience God’s one with us veiled through our insights, veiled through our emotions, veiled through our… efficacious unto holding us. But when we die and pass through the veil of death, we’ve crossed through into unveiled infinite union with the infinite. So a near-death experience can be a… It’s like a mystical awakening that way. Yeah, it’s really true.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah, yeah.

Jim Finley:

But it’s interesting, when you’re approaching it, the terror builds to a certain point.

Kirsten Oates:

Oh my gosh.

Jim Finley:

But then, it crosses over, and it flies wide open. And all of a sudden, it’s just serenity. And I think it’s a foretaste of heaven. See, I think it’s celestial. Yeah. You’re tasting the eternality of yourself.

Kirsten Oates:

That was definitely my experience of that.

Jim Finley:

Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

It’s a gift.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Not at the time, but yes. Well, and the interesting thing about it in terms of hope is that although I… At one level in this secondary consciousness, I feel very comfortable about death, and at a certain level, life and death, there’s no difference. God is the eternality of both. But every time I got on a plane for years after that, I was so anxious, I’d have to really, really do work with myself to calm myself down. So that’s an interesting side of… The body still holds the realm of the problematic, of fear, of… Yeah.

Jim Finley:

I’ll share something too about death this way too, and you said… I said that’s a gift. You said not at the time. Sometimes what happens, even while it’s occurring, the gift is given. It’s a startling thing. But very often, it isn’t until later when we reflect upon it. It’s in hindsight. We can see the gift that was present has enriched our life this way.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, freedom from-

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Amazing.

Jim Finley:

Yeah, it is really amazing.

Kirsten Oates:

I wrote an article about that near-death experience. I just wrote out exactly what happened to me, and it was published in Oneing, and I’ll ask if they can put the article in the show notes for people to read.

Jim Finley:

That would be nice. And by the way, we’re going to move into love in a minute.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

And so the way I put it poetically this way at the heart of Marcel is, “How can I learn to die of love at the hands of love until nothing is left of me but love?” And so in a way, that’s where fidelity, the mode of fidelity then hope, like eternity, nothing to hope for. And so it spills over into the effulgence where the fullness of all this is realized in love because God is love.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. So beautiful. So that’s… God is love and that love shines through into our experience as a quickening, so let’s talk about that.

Jim Finley:

I want to start first with marital lover, dear friend. Let’s say, first of all, with the beloved, father, mother, whoever the beloved person who you love dearly and who loves you. You’re clearly aware of their givens, their personality, and their strength and weak- You’re very aware of all of that, but there’s a certain moment that in your love for them, the thou moment, in your love for them, you see something of the presence of God shining through in and as their very presence. And that very presence, which transcends the details, is shining through the details of how they look, the sound of their voice, their personality, and it’s like incarnate preciousness.

That’s where you see then and seeing this love, this shining through of this love. This is where Marcel brings out more than any other modes like eternity, that you’re seeing that which is too… It’s not possible to die. It’s too beautiful to die. And the reason it’s too beautiful, it’s the presence of God being given to us as the presence of ourself. And so love then has this taste of eternity.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. I also think, Jim, with love, what’s interesting to me about it is, where does it come from? So there’s this sense of the love from my husband, the love that exists in my marriage. It’s like I didn’t produce it. I can’t control it, so all I can do is be faithful to it. So I really experience love, that mysterious experience of love as God, a gift from God that’s connected me to my husband, that it’s more an act of staying faithful to the love which is God. So it’s such an act of faith, and I find great comfort in that because there’s something so real and true about the love. And if I see it as something to be faithful to, it can guide me in my life and in my marriage.

Jim Finley:

I think that’s really true about… I want to say it back and expand on it a bit. If anyone listening to this would look at something in their life that they cherish, and they cherish it because there’s sensitivity to it, enriches their very life, and then they say, “Well, then I cherish it in this love. But from whence does the love arise?”

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

See, I didn’t generate it. I didn’t fabricate it.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

And so somehow, we speak of God as love. It’s love that gives the love.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

And it breaks through into our awareness is that which we love. This can be anything, but from the person to the community, to the family, to the garden, to the darkness of the night, to something unexplainably precious and unresolved suffering. When you go through an art museum where the artists are like visual mystics and they help us to see the divinity of things, the voice of the poet expresses the unexplainable. And when we read it, it resonates with us. Where does all this come from? We would say it comes from the infinity of the divine giving itself to us and as that very thing that blesses us personally.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

So, everyone, listen to this. They could ask, “Well, what are the things that I cherish, and from whence do they arise?”

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah.

Jim Finley:

That’s why I say to be at the deathbed of a dying loved one, it’s very clear that your next breath belongs more to God than to you. Lest we be presumptuous. So what is that that is experientially given to me that amazes me and enriches me? And how can I deepen my surrender to that mystery that’s surrendering itself to me is this amazing intimacy? And so I think the thing about Marcel is that he’s not challenging, that he’s theoretical. We’re not accustomed to someone putting words to something so unexplainably intimate. That’s how Marcel strikes me, that way. It’s disarming that likely, we could be more disarmed.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

Walk the walk. That’s always there. Anyways, it’s amazing, really.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes, yes. And the amazing thing about that, the love in Marcelian teaching is that the love I have for my husband that’s present and real, and I live to be faithful to it, exists between me and all things-

Jim Finley:

That’s right.

Kirsten Oates:

… and how can I become more aware of that love?

Jim Finley:

He said something else about love too, I think, that’s important about communion. He said, “I might be tempted in the I-thou relationship of the beloved, to think that the thou is that aspect of the love that’s not me.” He said, “But really, it’s not true. There’s the communion that is the fullness and the oneness of you and me.”

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

The communion is already unexplainably there as an infinite communion.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. Yes.

Jim Finley:

And we’re in it. We’re in the communion together, and so yeah, it’s the one, the oneness. Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes. And I think having that insight about the teaching is… We can open ourselves more and more to the mystery of that oneness and that unity through these portals of fidelity, hope, and love. And yeah, it’s been a wonderful teaching for that.

Jim Finley:

Another insight, I think, from Marcel for us and… when we think about our own life or troubled times and all of it. He invites us to consider this, is what is it that even if everything would be lost, everything that I have that I cherish would be lost, would that be true? What is it, if it was all lost, would not be lost because it’s not for the having? I don’t have it. It has me, and it’s giving itself to me as a miracle of the intimacy of my own life, the intimacy of this very moment saying this or listening to this. We’re living in the reciprocity of that thing, I think. Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Well, Jim, this has been a wonderful coaching session. And before we close, we have one more thing to add. We thought we’d invite everyone listening into a little meditation alongside us, and you’re going to get us started with some thoughts about this meditation.

Jim Finley:

Yeah. The insight is that for me, when I’m reading Gabriel Marcel, I get this sense that he’s speaking to us out of some very deep soulful place within himself where he’s receptively open to the presence of God that God might speak to him to help us on our own path. And I hope too that as you listen to my talks, you sense that I’m speaking to you out of a deep soulful place where I’ve dropped down into that place and I’m speaking out of that place. I hope you sense also in the dialogues with Kirsten, the places where her questions are coming from. The guide, the dialogue are coming out of our own reflective attentiveness, and we do this hoping, of course, that it will drop you down into that same attentiveness. And so that’s what we’d like to end with in a very simple way as a way to pray with Marcel. Kirsten, yes, do you have any insight you’d like to share before we share our passages with the listeners?

Kirsten Oates:

A couple things. One, Jim, one thing I found really helpful in your instruction about Lectio Divina and this silent kind of prayer is that you remind us to take a moment before we begin to open ourselves to God’s presence, to take a certain stance in our being. Would you mind just speaking to that for a second?

Jim Finley:

Yes. I think the interior stance is that when we sit down to begin our rendezvous with God, our time with Marcel, whatever teacher we’re following, is to know that we’re sitting in God’s presence, that God is all about us and within us closer to us than we are to ourself. I love that saying of Thomas Merton, that in relationship with God, to understand is to realize that you’re infinitely understood, and we begin our prayer reminding ourselves that we belong to God. And that’s like the attitudinal stance. And also, I think with God, a little sincerity goes a long, long way. So you’re just sincerely present, renewing your awareness that you’re living in God’s presence, and you’re sitting there to deepen your awareness to that and your fidelity to that presence.

Kirsten Oates:

Beautiful. I just find that so helpful because I think we can get into a stance of like, “I’m here to just do this,” like a task in a way, and it’s helpful, that reminder to pause.

Jim Finley:

There’s a childlike naturalness about it.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. That’s beautiful. If we can pause and take the moment, I agree, that childlike naturalness arise in us.

Jim Finley:

Another reason I think this is so helpful to consciously do this is very often, when we first sit, we’re carrying echoes of the agitation at the moment. There’s things nagging at us.

Kirsten Oates:

Yes.

Jim Finley:

And therefore, it’s very nice to have a way to transition over with God’s grace to let that fall more into the background so we can be more present to God’s presence with us.

Kirsten Oates:

Lovely. I just wanted to add that what’s so wonderful about Marcel is that he invites us as we recognize our own connection to being or God, that we, at the same time, can recognize the way we’re all woven in together, the way we’re all woven into God or to being, and that we’re in a state of communion in actual reality. And so I was excited to invite people listening that as we reflect on these words and go into the silence, that they might open themselves to this sense of communion with everyone listening, and we know that this communion transcends time. So no matter when someone is listening, they can open their hearts and feel that sense of everyone’s open hearts as they listen to this meditation and join together in reflecting on God and our communion with each other. We’ve both chosen passages that really bring us to a deeper place. And mine, I’ve pulled a few lines together from different places to create this one little passage, and I think you’ve done the same. Is that right?

Jim Finley:

Yeah, yeah.

Kirsten Oates:

Yeah. So it’s a nice creative act if people want to do the same for themselves, to pull out a few lines that really speak to them and pull them together. So we’ll just, in a moment, get started. But before we do, I just invite people listening to settle into their environment and to relax into a sincere, open heart. And whether you’re walking, or sitting, or lying down, just to feel your body supported and relaxed. Maybe just to notice how you’re breathing and the mystery of your own breath.

We’re so grateful you’re with us in this meditation.

Love is communion that creates both the I and the thou. To love a being is to say, “Thou at least shall not die.” To really love someone is to love them in God.

Love is communion that creates both the I and the thou. To love a being is to say, “Thou at least shall not die.” To really love someone is to love them in God.

Jim Finley:

This is where Gabriel Marcel would have us begin, not with statements that we make, but rather with a primitive inner assurance of resting in the presence by which we are made and trusting that it’s inexhaustible.

Amen, amen, and blessings to all of you.

Kirsten Oates:

Amen.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Turning to the Mystics, a podcast created by the Center for Action and Contemplation. We’re planning to do episodes that answer your questions. So if you have a question, please email us at [email protected] or send us a voicemail. All of this information can be found in the show notes. We’ll see you again soon.