Jim Finley:                    Greetings. I’m Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates:               I’m Kirsten Oates.

Jim Finley:                    Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates:               Welcome everyone to season 12 of Turning to the Mystics where we’ve been turning to Brother Lawrence and practice of the presence. I’m here with Jim to respond to the questions that have come in this season. Welcome, Jim.

Jim Finley:                    Thank you. This is the 12th season and there were 12 disciples. We’re on a roll.

Kirsten Oates:               We’re on a roll. Wonderful. I want to start by just saying thank you to everyone who made the effort to send in a question. The questions really help the season really make sure we are tracking with people and that we’re being responsive to what’s not clear and what insights people are getting. Jim, this season, the questions yet again, were just wonderful.

Jim Finley:                    Yeah, they were.

Kirsten Oates:               Unfortunately we don’t have time to answer them all, but we do read them all, and we’re very grateful for them. Thank you again. With that, we ready to get started, Jim?

Jim Finley:                    Yes.

Kirsten Oates:               Wonderful. The first question is from Andrea and she says, “I’ve heard elsewhere that Brother Lawrence was too bothered by his sins to be able to maintain himself as a hermit. In your telling, he was too troubled by PTSD. I can see that sin and trauma are both forms of separation from connectedness. I see the connection between sin and PTSD, but the tone feels so different in the two renderings. Can you speak to this?

Jim Finley:                    Let’s say that in a broad sense, PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder as a psychological symptom that separates us from the ability to rest quietly in the goodness of our own life, it exiles us because we’re still caught up in the trauma either because it’s still going on where it’s become internalized and it gets triggered in all kinds of ways.

The whole healing process is how to be healed from its hold on us so we can step back in to the truth of ourself and the goodness of ourself as a healing process so there’s that. Sin insofar as sin means deliberate acts of doing things that are harmful or causes suffering to ourself or others. We do them on a certain hardness of heart, we do them anyway.

It separates us from the truth of who we are as God’s beloved through an act of repentance and through an act of conversion and through an act of discipleship, we’re healed of that, and that’s the good news. I mean that’s the thing.

There’s also another sense of sin which is relevant. That is in a broad sense, the fallen state is that we’re separated from the ability to experientially abide in God’s self-donating presence in our life day by day in that exiled state, we act out the things that we do and we get caught up in the fears. Both sin and trauma and the issue is where do those two touch each other?

I used to give a series of retreats every year to people trained to be spiritual directors and see where does clinical depression and the dark night of the soul touch each other? It’s a complex thing as a clinical psychologist who works with trauma, with people who want spirituality to be resource in their trauma, I’ve thought a lot about the interface with that. I think that’s what you’re touching on. It’s a significant thing, really.

Kirsten Oates:               That’s so helpful, Jim, those definitions are really, really helpful. I think part of this question is that in older versions of Brother Lawrence’s work, they used the word sin to describe the trauma that he faced. Then Carmen defined the sin more in modern day terms as PTSD just wondering what you’d say about that in terms of his desire to be a hermit.

Jim Finley:                    When he could have meant sin is sense of his own sinfulness. He could have meant that an ongoing conversion process, but also PTSD because of that he was at war the things that he saw, and also he was grievously wounded with a wound in his leg he had it all of his life. That combination of the things that he saw that he got internalized and the wound that he suffered, I think both were there.

I used to work in a hospital with Vietnam vets who were an alcohol treatment center. The dual diagnosis, they had alcoholism and PTSD, but they were in a 12-step program of how to hand their life over to their higher power. You see all kinds of ways these dimensions of ourself touch each other.

Kirsten Oates:               As a follow on question for that, Jim, there’s a question from Seth who says that they’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, ADHD, and CPTSD among other things. Sitting, cooking, or doing anything seems to have my mind racing from one thing to the next without fail. How do I practice God’s presence with any consistency when my monkey mind has such feral primates?

Jim Finley:                    This is another example where the psychological and the spiritual touch each other. By the way, CPTSD complex post-traumatic stress disorder. There’s a lovely book by Judith Herman called Trauma and Recovery. She speaks of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and either it goes in the direction of somaticizing as in eating disorders, it goes in the direction of personality disorders such as borderline in these patterns or goes in the direction of dissociating.

Also, related to it is it triggers the mood disorders of either anxiety or depression. I have to say, not just as a psychologist who work with it, but I myself was diagnosed with CPTSD. I know it well, very familiar with it. The racing mind is more in the category of a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder and also anxiety like the racing mind. I have some thoughts on it. One is sometimes to just sit and contemplate a prayer. It’s too boundaryless and the mind races.

One approach is to stay with more focus forms of prayer, Lectio Divina, meditation on the scriptures or just listening to the podcast as a stream of words and series of insights. That can help the mind stay more focused because there’s something to hold onto. The other approach with the racing mind that’s helped me to try to follow your racing mind. You could say to your racing mind just where do you think you’re going?

In other words, are you chasing something? Are you running from something? Are you both? And this idea of watching your racing mind means that there’s a dimension of you that transcends the racing mind where you wouldn’t be able to watch it. The very fact you can watch it must mean there’s a place of observation that relevantizes the racing mind.

There’s another part of all of this. If the racing mind can see that it’s seen and it’s very good to do this because God’s following your racing mind and God’s infinitely in love with you in the midst of your racing mind. Sometimes we can take things like this that are a significant challenge and turn them into a state of transformation like a grace over time.

Kirsten Oates:               Well, Seth, I really appreciate you being willing to share those things that you’re struggling with. Jim also that you’re willing to share your own personal experience with those. We hope that’s helpful, Seth, let us know.

Jim Finley:                    I’d like to add one more thing. It isn’t as if we could say that, “I hope it helps.” Seth is going, “Wow, that really helps.” I think it took care of it. It helps. If you just stay with it patiently three years later, we’re in the midst of a process and it’s a graced process. The longer we stay with it, we learn things along the way. I think it’s important to keep that perspective in mind.

Kirsten Oates:               Okay, next question. “I’m a longtime meditator and practicer of centering prayer. I am also a longtime sufferer of Parkinson’s disease. I’m finding as the illness progresses, involuntary movements associated with the condition are making the initial directive of meditation to be still increasingly difficult and at times impossible.

I persevere but feel the rug has been pulled out from under me. I find consolation in the pots and pans of daily existence and the prayers of my childhood. For this reason, Brother Lawrence has been an especially profound inspiration to me. I feel there must be others like me amongst your listeners so would sincerely welcome your comments.”

Jim Finley:                    This is my sense with Parkinson’s. See, be still to know that I am God. Another paraphrase in the Psalm also is, “Ponder on your bed and be still.” It is true that typically speaking, the stillness is literally stillness like we sit still, like we’re sitting still. To realize the physical act of sitting still all by itself is not union with God. The fact you’re sitting real, real still doesn’t mean you’re deepening your experience of God’s oneness with you.

Therefore, I would suggest this that you would consider this, that you deep acceptance of your inability to sit still is the stillness of God’s oneness with you. I think that’s a mysterious, intimate path to take. Also like you suggested your question, you’re not alone with this. There are other people with Parkinson’s all over the world and you’re woven into each other that you’re suffering from Parkinson’s doesn’t belong to you.

We’re all woven into each other in our suffering because we’re all woven together into God who’s infinitely in love with us in our suffering. You can reflect on that and see if that approach is helpful.

Kirsten Oates:               The next question is from Saskia. She writes, “With God all things are possible. I love that Bible verse even though I don’t know what it means. In any case, it doesn’t mean that everything is possible the way I want it to be. It’s deeper and more mysterious. It breaks something open within me and I increasingly realize how limited my perspective is on my own life and on the world.

I love the first maxim of Brother Lawrence. Of course I was curious what you would say about all things are possible. I found out that you expand on belief and hope and love, but leave the first words for what they are. It makes me wonder because this open space seems so fitting to me. On the other hand, I’m longing to hear something from you about all things are possible.”

Jim Finley:                    Yes, that’s very good. It’s an example where something might not be true psychologically, but it’s true spiritually. For example, I’m 82 years old and I love God. The people who are practicing for the marathon here, they’ve run past the house. I could say, “Because I love God, I think I’ll go off for the marathon, I might win. Is it possible? I love God. He says all things are possible, I could win.” Is that going to happen? It doesn’t mean that.

It means something deeper and it means this, since we’re called by the infinite love to an infinite union with infinite love and we sense that we’re drawn to that, but we, by our own finite powers are not empowered in our finite abilities to attain an infinite union with infinite love. By us, with us, it’s not possible. With God, all things are possible and our finite inability to attain the infinite, the infinite attains itself and overtakes us and takes us to itself in our inabilities, it means that. All things are possible at the level of salvation.

There’s another level of this about salvation, St. Paul, the thorn in the flesh and our wobbling waves. Is it ever possible that I’m going to get strong enough spiritually to be past my half-heartedness? Whatever your litany of feralties are, I have mine, you have yours. That I’ll finally be holy enough to be one with God. It goes deeper than that, that all things are possible and that experiential salvation you can intimately realize by the grace of God, God is already infinitely in love with you in the very midst of your inabilities, which is the gift of tears and which is salvation. I think that’s an understanding of all things are possible.

Kirsten Oates:               Lovely, I love hearing that. I’m just going to quickly read that opening sentence from the first maxim and the name of that maxim is everything is possible. Everything is possible for those who believe even more for those who hope, still more for those who love and most of all for those who practice and persevere in these three powerful paths.

Jim Finley:                    That’s right. What’s the very first one? Let’s just take the first one. He said, “All things are possible for those who?”

Kirsten Oates:               Believe.

Jim Finley:                    See, what’s that mean? All things are possible. It’s a great idea. By gosh, I want to go believe, how do I go believe there are kind of aspects of a willingness to let ourselves be receptively, open to God, being infinitely in love with us. I believe it, not in the sense that I comprehend it, but in my heart, even though I can’t comprehend it in my heart, I know that it’s true and I live by that. I think that’s the tonal quality of it.

Kirsten Oates:               Great question. Thank you, Saskia. Okay, next question is from Tom. “I’m confused about the use of the word presence and the phrase, the presence. I often practice being present in the moment and I appreciate that while in the state of being fully present, the quality of the mind and heart is one of presence. It often sounds to me like Brother Lawrence is talking about something distinct from this, what he calls the presence.

This makes it sound like there is my body, mind, heart, soul. Then there is a presence with a capital P, which I desire to know and to be in union with. If I am in the state of being fully present and the quality of my mind and heart is one of total presence and openness, then the presence seems to be a concept and a bit dualistic. Is it sufficient to make my practice very simply, to be fully present in the moment? Then would I actually be the presence Brother Lawrence is talking about? Thank you for the wonderful teachings and guidance.”

Jim Finley:                    Another question of the distinction between the psychological and the spiritual and how they touch each other. See, first of all, presence can refer to myself in my own capacity to be present. If I’m engaged, if I’m attentive, I’m there, I’m present. We vary a lot to the extent that we’re present to anybody. We also vary the extent to which we’re present to ourselves, these kind of layerings of heightened degree of presence.

When we sit with God, we’re trying to be as present as possible to the presence of God this way through prayer and mindfulness to practice the practice. What we’re really doing like when he saw the tree and he was in the presence of God, we’re trying to assume a stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by what graced our heart in our awakening moments.

It’s like a receptive stance of presence, but it goes even deeper about presence. He’s referring to it here, “The infinite presence of God in an ongoing self-donating act is presencing itself as it’s pouring itself out and totally giving itself away in and as the intimate miracle of the gift of our very presence and our nothingness without God.

We’re subsisting in a trans-subjective relationship like light subsists in flame, and that’s the presence. Thomas Merton says, “When Jesus says I, and I say I, it’s the same in the order of grace and love.” That’s what we’re moving towards, a communal presence in which we and God mutually disappear as dualistically other than each other and an intimate realization in the sincerity of our heart.

There was a moment we were awakened by it in different ways, but the path that we’re on to practice the presence is to be as faithfully or receptive as possible to being ever more habitually stabilized in that presence that alone is ultimately real.

Kirsten Oates:               I think we discussed this maybe just in a slight way somewhere in the podcast about the differences between mindfulness and this practice, that it’s not just being mindful, it’s that opening to God like you were just expressing.

Jim Finley:                    It applies also by the way in Buddhism in mindfulness and also in yoga. It has the same, it implies mindfulness in being as mindful as possible, but the mindfulness is opening oneself up to a communal mindfulness of a communal oneness. I would say something too, I should say it. I think we’re moving together in the communal sincerity that the mystics are, this is what they do for us. They help us to be concerned about such things.

We have to realize we’re not honoring the depth, like we’re skimming over a depth. The next question, please tick that one-off. Anything else you want me to answer? But we’re just respecting that. If I say something that saves a little bit more light on the journey, you’re obviously on or you wouldn’t be able to ask questions like this then we’re on the path together.

Kirsten Oates:               You can hear the depth of the beauty of every question that we’ve received.

Jim Finley:                    They’re so sincere. This is the path.

Kirsten Oates:               Then for all of us. It’s hard to put it into words. And so the fact that they’ve even been able to write these amazing questions is,

Jim Finley:                    And there’s another thing I think we’re saying too. We’re putting words in which we’re speaking in such a way that what we’re speaking of is beyond what words can adequately say. So it is a logos, it is a word, but it’s like words of love, the words of poets or the healing word. It’s not a word that defines or explains, but it’s a word that carries the energy of what is beyond what words can say. We recognize it in each other when we hear it.

Kirsten Oates:               Yes, exactly. You can certainly recognize it in these questions. Adele asks, can you talk about the role of seeing and remembering as part of our practice of the presence? I’m thinking particularly about in how to practice where Brother Lawrence writes that is why the heart is where we must take care to produce the little inner look to God.

I’m wondering about Brother Lawrence’s experience of the tree and the intersection of memory and the inner look. I had a sort of quickening as a youngster and find remembering. It’s more like being there and it sort of instantly situates me in the joyful awareness and experience of God’s radiant and extravagant love for me,

Jim Finley:                    Let’s say first of all, in this sense by seeing we meant realizing that we meant that we realize it. So there are certain moments where we unexpectedly realize this oneness that we can’t explain like the taste. Also, we can then look back and remember the moments. There are also moments that we can’t remember in all the years of talking with people in spiritual direction, we can’t remember a certain moment which the door opened.

Rather there was a certain point that we could tell some qualitative shift has happened inside of us, but we can’t mark it back to a certain moment. The seeing then is a interior realizing there is remembering or not remembering these moments where we momentarily experience it. We would also hope that listening to the podcast, it self-evokes such moments that the moments of sitting with the podcast and devotional sincerity, the deathless presence of Brother Lawrence touches us with more moments of this and we can remember it and then they remember it then evokes within us.

I wonder about this, I wonder about that, and that’s what these questions are. We’re seeing and remembering, but we’re seeing it and remembering it right now in the present. That’s why if we’re reading the mystics or we’re reading the gospels or you’re listening to the podcast and as you’re listening, the words that you’re listening to is evoking the very experience the words are about. That’s what makes that moment of listening memorable like it’s happening now.

It’s always carrying into the present, the memorable nature, the present moment of ongoing wakefulness. Also, even when we don’t remember because the cell phone just went off, that memorable death is always there like ribbon through the ordinariness of things. There’s a certain way of just knowing in our heart that it’s true.

Kirsten Oates:               Do you think, Jim, when Brother Lawrence reflected on the tree like this listener was talking about that the memory went beyond just picturing something in time but went into the depth of the experience itself?

Jim Finley:                    I think what happens with some people is there’s the accumulative effect of hundreds of little glimpses and it puts us on the path. What happens with some people, there are awakening events in the aftermath of which we’re never quite the same. Sometimes they can come when we’re quite young, we’ll never forget them. The light that shines out in those moments illumines the path that we’re seeking to follow.

I think when Brother Lawrence and he says that the priest says that he was going to him for spiritual direction, brother Lawrence says through all the years he’s been practicing, there has never been a moment where it has been as profoundly divine as that moment. Sometimes we’re quickened with this moment and Brother Lawrence had one of those experiences. Sometimes people have those experiences, a number of people have those I think.

Kirsten Oates:               It’s certainly not necessary to be on the path is what you’re saying too.

Jim Finley:                    Nothing’s necessary that is and hasn’t been given and it’s not necessary. By the way, Thomas Burton once said, we mentioned this in an earlier talk to, he said, “Sometimes we think we’re waiting to get zapped by God. He said that happened, you can get zapped by God. There is ecstasy and rapture that does happen. It is if they have to prop you up in a corner and fan you because you’re a mystic, he said, “But really it’s the opposite. We’re trying to calibrate our heart to have ever finer scale to pick up in something as subtle as a breath.

See, because every time you take a breath from whence does it arise, it’s God. So there’s a moment where there’s this subtle, intimate unfolding of something so delicate, and that’s why the moment when you try to explain it, you fall away from it. That’s when you try to turn it so you can have it recedes further, but when you can just yield to it and let it have its way with you unexplainably in the simplicity, it carries you along. That’s the path Brother Lawrence is inviting us to follow, I think all the mystics.

Kirsten Oates:               Andy sent us a cartoon. Andy does little drawings and doodling while he’s listening to the podcast and send us a really fun cartoon picture of Brother Lawrence and being present, present, present. Then it notes, I’m so bored. And he’s noticed how you talked about boredom being part of the process. I wonder if you touched on that a little bit again, Jim.

Jim Finley:                    We’re bored when we’re not engaged in what’s happening, we’re bored. We’re deeply engaged here on what’s happening. We’re not bored. So what happens then if we’ve been quickened by the divine, the finite consciousness of the finite dimensions of ourself seem to be so profoundly inadequate to what we seek, anything less than that fullness we find boring. It isn’t good, better, best. It’s infinitely better than the best.

Therefore, even if it’s the best, it’s infinitely less than what I’m looking for. Boring can have that thing. There’s another mystical dimension to this too. As he sings on the cross, he talks about it, we find a way to God in a passage through a dark night, which is a sense of interior powerlessness in the loss of consolation and so on and so on.

Then he says, “What we realize if we don’t panic, the dark night where actually our finite eyes are being blinded by an infinite light. “In a way, strangely enough, the more intimately the infinity is giving itself to us as infinity, we’re bored because our finite heads can’t see it. I mean, our finite feelings can’t endure it.

It’s almost like a self-metamorphosizing, mysterious thing of crossing over. Letting it take us to itself inexplicably and draw us into the depth of itself in our heart, which is the experience that the mystics are trying to help us be in touch with the ways that we have experienced that, but they’re trying to help us put words to it and what is the path to be more visually stabilized in that.

Kirsten Oates:               Thank you too, Andy for the cartoon. We all enjoyed it, Dorothy, and you and I all enjoyed.

Jim Finley:                    It was funny. It was very good.

Kirsten Oates:               Thank you, Jim. That’s reminding me the boredom of so many listeners when they write in so many say that if they’re having trouble sleeping or it’s just part of their regular practice that they put the podcast on and listen to it as they go to sleep. I’m wondering if the podcast is so boring, it puts them to sleep-

Jim Finley:                    When you’re drifting off to sleep, there’s that hypnagogic state between the two worlds. That hypnagogic state between the two worlds is very subtle and we stay there for a while and then we disappear. Really it’s the realm where the interior realm of dreams which open out upon the interiority of God and the realm of the exterior, it’s a quietness where it’s a kind of a quiet reflective state that goes beyond trying to figure anything out.

We rest in it unexplainably as a kind of a homecoming. I think that’s a nice metaphor for deep meditative states when we’re sitting this, we’re paradoxically even more vividly awake, but more vividly awake and be more profoundly somatically grounded in a kind of luminous bodily trance,, quietness. We’re resting at it unexplainably. So yeah, that’s a subtle point that he’s read. I think it’s true.

Kirsten Oates:               Well, and of course I was teasing you. I don’t think you’re boring.

Jim Finley:                    No, some people find me quite boring. People who are already on the cusp of being drawn into this, when they hear of it speaks to them, those who haven’t been brought to the cusp of it, they walk right past it and they walk right past it because it’s not given to them to see it. Everyone’s given something. It is a gift to be touched by this. By the way, insofar as we’re in the stream of this sensitivity, just like Brother Lawrence when he’s writing to us his deathless presence.

There’s also this kind of hypnagogic quality to the awareness of these talks. It’s a poetic kind of flow that doesn’t explain or define anything but the rhythm and cadence that the voice carries us along, so we can tell we’re in the presence of it this way and we rest, but there’s no to it. It’s not an, it is kind of an effulgence or a fullness that we learn to rest in and live by. It’s a gift.”

Kirsten Oates:               I love what you’re saying too, I’d never thought about it that way, because I also listen to your voice on things like a long airplane flight when I’m on a 15-hour flight to Australia or if I’m having trouble sleeping, it puts you perhaps in a deep meditative state, which is so soothing and like you say, like a homecoming even before it puts you to sleep so there’s that way it lulls you into that.

Jim Finley:                    I think it’s true. I think there’s something about my voice that’s conducive to it, you know what I mean, because it’s not sharp or edgy or defining it. There’s something about the tonal quality of the voice. It reminds me of being at the monastery where the monks chanting by deepening the capacity to listen. There’s something about the quality of the rhythmic tonality of it that it invites or evokes this contemplative state.

Kirsten Oates:               Well, anyone who’s listening and about to fall asleep, good night, sweet dreams.

Jim Finley:                    Yes. I used to give recorded talks somewhere. We used to have them say, “We don’t recommend that you listen to these talks while you’re driving your car. You should pull over to the side to have your ecstasy.” You know what I mean? Go anyway.

Kirsten Oates:               Be lulled into your-

Jim Finley:                    Anyway-

Kirsten Oates:               Take meditative mind-

Jim Finley:                    By the way, but also notice at a subtle level that subtly what we’re talking about is at a more interior level, a heightened state of awareness at another dimension that’s true.

Kirsten Oates:               Great point.

Jim Finley:                    That’s why I love that statement by Royce Brooke, Nicholas of Cusa. He said, it must be incomprehensibly. Understood. See, we understand incomprehensibly and it must be ineffably expressed. You express it ineffably, which is music, the voice of poets this way. Otherwise, you’re dropping off into definitions and conclusions, which has its own place.

Kirsten Oates:               Here’s a question from Mark. My question on Brother Lawrence and practicing the presence relates to awe. For over a decade, I’ve been engaging in walking pilgrimage as a spiritual practice. Reading the academic literature and talking to others who’ve returned from pilgrimage. I noticed that awe, A-W-E, was a common experience diving further into awe, both in the Bible and modern scientific work, particularly the work by Dacher Keltner and colleagues, I hope I pronounced that correctly reveals a diverse set of awe drivers.

Examples extend beyond one’s exposure to natural beauty or religious experience, but also to exposure to moral beauty, birth and death, experiences of collective effervescence and superb creative works by musicians, artists, and poets. Scientists have noted that awe experiences are correlated with benefits both to the individual and to others. Would it be reasonable to assume that such experiences of awe are quickenings prompted by presence?

Jim Finley:                    Yes, it would be reasonable to assume that because I think it’s true. I’d like to comment on this too about pilgrimage. Let’s say a pilgrimage is a long journey to a sacred place. You can go to pilgrimage to Assisi or we were to Rome or to Canterbury. I mean wherever go to pilgrimage. The labyrinth is the pilgrimage. The thing about the pilgrimage, and we might look on our own life as a pilgrimage, we’re on a journey toward the infinite.

As we journey toward the infinite, awe is a state of being quietly overwhelmed with the kind of unexpected immensity of what we’re finding our way into. I’ll give an example. I’m looking at the ocean right now and I love it in the wintertime when thick fog rolls in and it’s so thick you can’t see the ocean. Several times on purpose, I’ve walked down to the sand, which is right there, and I can watch the fog bank rolling in and I disappear In the fog bank. We can also have a state of awe in a quiet afternoon in an art museum.

We can also have a state of awe in giving ourselves over to the smell of a blood-red rose. That awe is a state of wonderment, of being unexplainably, one with the divinity of the immediacy of what we’re with. I think what happens as we go on and we look at our own life, how has it come to pass? You become the man or woman who’s even capable of being sensitive to such things. Is it not true? It evokes a certain sense of awe when you see the quiet unfoldings of your awakening, how unforeseeable and god’s not finished with this yet we’re more awe ahead.

These are previews of coming attractions because when we die, it’s eternal awe. You got this figured out. It’s almost like awe is our homeland because awe is a state of experientially realizing incarnate infinity, intimately realized. I think we can internalize awe so we live in kind of a quiet inner awe state of the incomprehensible stature standing up and sitting down like a quiet, it doesn’t necessarily spill over into emotional awe, but it’s almost like an internalized state of the constancy of the awe dimensions of the divinity of life itself. I think that’s what Brother Lawrence is leading us towards. All these mystics, everything that Jesus says was leading us to this.

Kirsten Oates:               That’s lovely. It’s another lens or way of describing that inner stance, Jim, that you often refer to about.

Jim Finley:                    Yes, it is. There’s this nun might have mentioned this in a previous talk, but she was a Benedictine nun and she was asked to submit an essay of a book on what are you convinced of? This person has politicians and billionaires and they thought, we might as well ask a cloistered nun. What are you convinced of? We were talking about it. She said, “Well, the things I used to be convinced in, I’m no longer convinced in. The things I used to be convinced in that I’m still convinced in, I’m not convinced in the way that I used to be convinced. I’m fairly certain this will continue.

Then she said, “This is the key, she said, but there’s a light that burns in my heart and I live by it.” John of the Cross says, “Have no light to guide you except the one that burns in your heart.” This is kind of quietness that illumines, everything unexplainably. That’s why when we read the mystics, it isn’t just, we can tell they’re talking about that, but the very fact we’re touched by it bears witness. We already know it. They help us stabilize it.

Kirsten Oates:               That was a great question from Mark who is an Australian and said a special g’day to me.

Jim Finley:                    Yes.

Kirsten Oates:               Nice to hear from an Aussie.

Jim Finley:                    Turning to the Mystics will continue in a moment.

Kirsten Oates:               This is a question from Gary and he writes, “My question relates to the metaphor of the thimble, which has been so helpful to me as I catch myself striving to make mystical union happen by my own willpower. In describing the mystical invitation to surrender rather than strive, Jim often says, you cannot put the ocean into a thimble, but you can put a thimble in the ocean and you are that thimble. I have called upon this image often as a way to help me let go and trust.

However, in listening to this latest series on Brother Lawrence in session two, Jim said, “Each one of us is an utterly unique little bit of the infinity of the beloved, but the infinity of the beloved is infinitely given to you whole and complete boundless in all directions. It’s not divvied out, it’s boundless and utterly complete in the mystery of who you are and in your nothingness without God.

While we cannot put an ocean into the thimble that is us, in a sense, it would seem that this is exactly what God has done by infusing infinity within us. My question is, how can I reconcile Jim’s original metaphor with the sense that God has done exactly that placing an infinite ocean within all of us? Is it simply recognizing the dualism in my thinking or accepting yet another paradox?

Jim Finley:                    Let’s say first is that we can’t get the ocean into a thimble and the ocean is the infinite of God. The thimble is our finite abilities to comprehend the infinite means of God. We can’t get the immensity of God into the thimble of our finite understanding, it means that, but we can drop the symbol into the ocean, meaning the symbol is descending into the ocean, is engulfed in and utterly immersed by what it cannot comprehend.

And I say we are that thimble, but then it says, but if God gives to each of us not just a little peace of God, but God gives to each of us the infinity of God as who we are, doesn’t that mean then that thimble, that is who we are? Is it self-oceanic? It does. See, if we look at it from the standpoint of the finite self trying to comprehend the infinite, that’s true.

What if there is like when Brother Lawrence saw the tree in that moment and it gets habitually stabilize. What if actually the oceanic immensity of God is given to who we unexplainably are in the thimble, but not in the thimble but beyond it? Martin Heidegger puts it this way. He’s talking about transcendence. He said, “what if there’s a moment of awakening whatever it’s, and what if you were to try to draw a circle around the immensity of your awakening,

No matter how big you’d make the circumference of that circle, even if you’d make it infinitely big, if there’s such a thing as an infinitely big circle. What you’re experiencing would breach the circumference of that circle and would do so playfully and delightfully of what it delights to do. What it does? It’s the dissolving a way of distinctions in a kind of unexplainable, all pervasive in distinction. I like to read this quote to, I just found it again, I might’ve mentioned it, “Carl Rauner’s book, Prayer for a Lifetime. There’s a little opening sentence on the first page. One, the great theologians, the Second Vatican Council Prayers for a lifetime. It is both terrible and comforting to dwell on the nearness of God and to be so loved by God himself that the first and the last gift is infinity in inconceivability itself, but we have no choice. God is with us. Pardon me, I don’t speak English. Praise the Lord. I always put it back in the good old days when we were holy, everything seemed so clear, but now everything’s become unexplainably wonderful.

Kirsten Oates:               Now I’m experiencing that state of awe that me.

Jim Finley:                    Me too.

Kirsten Oates:               We were speaking about you two.

Jim Finley:                    Yeah.

Kirsten Oates:               Amazing. This one comes from Bev. “When I hear and read that brother Lawrence struggled with distractions, I’m reassured that my own constant and seemingly endless struggle with distractions while meditating are not an issue. Is it possible that the holy one loves my distractions? Letting go of judging and scolding myself for distraction has been a gradual grace and I still fret that I’m not trying hard enough to stay present to the presence of the love that surrounds me.

Jim Finley:                    This is a delicate thing. Let’s say there is distractions. Let’s say we do our sincere best not to be carried away by the distractions. Then we might say, especially if we’ve been meditating for quite a while, I wonder if I’m ever going to get to a place where I get beyond this is the fruitfulness of my practice to be measured by the extent to which I’m able to get beyond it.

Is it that I am to realize that God’s infinitely in love with me in my deep acceptance of my inability to get beyond it, even as I keep sincerely trying to get beyond it? That’s closer. That’s experiential self-knowledge, that there is the limit and there’s a tendency to identify myself with the limit. I keep trying to get beyond the limit and we should do our best to get beyond things that hinder and limit.

At another deeper level, how can I realize that the limitless love of God is limitlessly giving the infinity of itself to me in the midst of the acceptance of my limitations, which is humility.

Kirsten Oates:               It’s almost like being a thimble dropped into the ocean.

Jim Finley:                    It’s almost like that because the ego always does that. It keeps thinking, “Am I holy enough yet I’m holy enough yet?” See, you think I’ll finally reach the goal before the buzzer goes off? What if there’s no goal? What if that very idea, just a salvation that you’re overtaken by what’s unexplainably there in the very midst of your wayward ways, which is the gift of tears and salvation?

Kirsten Oates:               Lovely. I really appreciate that question. I think so many of us have that struggle.

Jim Finley:

Kirsten Oates:               Really appreciate it. This one comes from Bonnie and she writes, in dialogue three of brother Lawrence, Jim talked about the fragility of aging. Jim, would you spend time elaborating on what that means and how we are to incorporate fragility into our spiritual journey as we cope with illness and or aging?

Jim Finley:                    Yes. Now that I’m 82 years old, I’ll share my experience.

Kirsten Oates:               Yes.

Jim Finley:                    If we think of our physical powers, our emotional powers, our capabilities, if we look on life like the first half and the second half of life, there is a kind of an ascending increase of powers and resources and capabilities and goals. Well, we should in our career, our relationship, I mean we should do that. Then it hovers for a while at the crest of the wave. It’s very nice because you still have efficacy.

You’re still in your powers, but you’ve been around enough to have internalized skills to help people. It’s a nice fruitful time. Fruitfulness continues, but you head down the other side of the slope, one person said, “You realize your wagon isn’t hitched to the stars. It’s hitched to a hole in the ground.”

When I was in the monastery, they remodeled the place In the 1800s. Supposed to practice modesty of the eyes, like looking down. “Right where the wall touches the ceiling, they’d put these little sayings. When you look up, you get zapped by one of these sayings. One saying was today glistening eyes tomorrow empty sockets and praise the Lord. The thing is, this would be funny if it wasn’t true.

Here’s the thing, I’m fragile, like I can’t drive anymore. I’m kind of housebound. My daughters call me every day. I write eight hours a day. My interior mind is as transparent as ever, but the fragility of myself. I use a cane. I fall over, my neuropathy this way and blood pressure, and I’m unraveling. I’m literally watching myself unravel. Very, very soon I won’t be here anymore. You got to understand from the day you’re born, your death was already in the mail.

It isn’t like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe it. Oh, really?” Because everyone that’s born dies. Everything that begins in time, ends in time. Here’s the key, just as the fragility increases this wisdom of the elders. One would hope that yours would bring a kind of heightened luminosity that in the midst of your dying, the ever more luminous awareness of the eternality of yourself that never dies, that we’re all eternal.

How can I discover it within myself the eternality of God is utterly, it never passes away. It’s unexplainably ribbon to everything that’s endlessly passing away [foreign language 00:44:28] That’s kind of a mystical sensitivity, I think. And another example that I use is death itself, the stages of dying. Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross says, “Denial, anger, bargaining, and so on.”That’s the ego where that it’s coming to the end of itself.

Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross says, some people come to acceptance. She said, “Acceptance is you look into the face of a dying loved one. This is my phrasing of it. You look into the face of the dying loved one, and it’s the gate of heaven. You realize you’re looking at the eternality of the beloved in the passing away, the beloved and for whom the bell tolls the tolls for thee.

How can I find the eternality of myself that transcends time in the midst of time? That’s the spiritual life to me. To me I put it that way.

Kirsten Oates:               It reminds me of what you said to an answer of another question about everything is possible. It doesn’t mean that you won’t age and you won’t get frail, and you might break bones. You might have a rough time of it. It means something deeper that there’s something trustworthy.

Jim Finley:                    That’s right. A hundred years from now, you and I and everyone listening to this will all be dead. 10,000 years from now, we’ll have been dead for 10,000 years. I hope this is clear. You got to write it. You might want to write this down about the mystics. So what is it? It’s fleeting, but the fleetingness is in the manifestation. That would just manifested as eternal. The fleetingness is in time. It begins in time. It ends in time, but it is the fleetingness of a light that’s eternal. And the key is how can I discover that and live by it?

Kirsten Oates:               Yes. Thank you for that question, Bonnie. That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard you say about the wagon being hitched. You thought it was hitched to a star and you realize it’s hitched to a hole.

Jim Finley:                    Oh my gosh, breath by breath we’re living our one less breath to breathe life. There’s only so many breaths left. We just used up another one that we’re all melting like candles disappearing as we talk. What’s amazing, it’s been going on that way, it’s always that way, but we’re always dismayed by it when it applies to us. It’s strange in a way. The mystics are trying to deliver us from that to be at home in the eternality. The word became flesh and dwelt among us and to live by that and abide in it and share it with others.

Kirsten Oates:               We can for 10,000 years, have live Turning to the Mystics with Teresa and John and have them all speak for themselves.

Jim Finley:                    That’s right. When you say this too, I believe this, that when we read Brother Lawrence in a prayerful way, the deathless presence of Lawrence is talking to us of the saints and mystics down through the ages, the wisdom of the ancestors, the mystical body, the eternal, and the time are interwoven with each other.

Kirsten Oates:               Now, we have a voicemail from one of our listeners.

John:                            Hello Jim and Kirsten. My name is John. I’m from just outside of Philly, and I’ve been listening to this podcast since the very start. I’ve been a fan of Jim Finley for a long time, and also now for you as well. Kirsten, I hope to meet both of you someday. This current season on Brother Lawrence is just fantastic. I would like to ask the question, do you believe that there are actually many mystics out there like Brother Lawrence today?

I tend to think that the most mature and wonderful people of faith will go unnoticed because they don’t care about having good PR. They will just work in the kitchen and work in the shoe shop just like Brother Lawrence. I guess what I want to hear is a hopeful answer that yes, there’s actually many mystics just like Brother Lawrence today. It’s a joy to even into brush into them.

I guess I’m not sure if I know what I’m asking, but please just tell me, the world’s got a lot of people like Brother Lawrence. Yes? All right, thank you so much. Have a great day. I look forward to hearing your answer.

Jim Finley:                    I think, yes, I think there are many mystics, Brother Lawrence. For a long time, I traveled over 30 years leading silent retreats and people would talk to me and several times in Europe over the years, you can always tell when you’re in the presence of someone who’s been interiorlay, quickened by this. There’s a kind of undefinable quality of presence, transparency about them.

I think definitely yes, because the path doesn’t draw attention to itself. It just doesn’t. Also, it touches the world in ways that we don’t understand. There’s a kind of an efficacy of this hidden fidelity to this way. Here’s the thing, some people are called to be mystic teachers, I show this earlier that Thomas Merton once said that the monastic life is carefully crafted to cultivate this mystical oneness as destiny. He said, but there are people in the world who are being led into this state, and they have no one to help them understand what’s happening to them.

That’s when I started giving retreats. I would say that anyone, to the extent that sincerely moved by these talks would be among all these mystics among the, it’s like divine ordinariness and transparent simplicity is the misty. The Misty teacher then I think Brother Lawrence was, I think what they sensed in them is, we’ve been so moved by your teachings, but you’re not going to live forever.

Would you write this out? In other words, if you would write this out so that when you’re no longer physically with us, you can still be with us. Who we tend to know are the teachers, but what the teachers know is what you see in them. The very fact you see it in them is completely true of you, that’s why you can see it in them. And also the mystic, however they’re seen to be whatever, they also, it’s just manifestation of their own fragile ordinariness. It’s just the path that they’ve been asked to follow, so they do their best to follow it. It’s a good question. I think it’s really true about the mystics in us. Yeah, it’s good.

Kirsten Oates:               It’s wonderful to hear from you, John. We meet you one day too. Thanks for the voicemail. Now we have another voicemail.

Rose:                            God bless you, James and Kirsten, All the way from Melbourne, Australia. You’re the best, Anna.

Kirsten Oates:               That’s it? We’ll take it. Well, thank you.

Jim Finley:                    We’d like to thank you so much and we agree. We think it’s true. We’re amazed too, but we’re amazed. It is a gift to share this with you. Here’s the point, the sincerity in which you said that, that’s amazing. That’s the amazing dimension of you and we’re all sharing this dimension of ourselves with each other. That was sweet, anyway.

Kirsten Oates:               So sweet. I was born in Melbourne, Australia, someone in my home state. That’s so lovely. Now, we have a voicemail from Rose.

Rose:                            I’m an 88-year-old woman religious, and I’ve experienced the unraveling Jim speaks of at several times during my life. It does not seem to get easier, even though I’m less likely to panic. Does Jim have any suggestions about how to deal with this constructively? I am still responsible for ministry, of some ministries that are significant.

Jim Finley:                    The details vary with each person as they age and move towards death. There’s always a very real sense that it doesn’t get easier. It gets harder. Not always. Some people move toward death harder, but for some people, it’s what we do. We take it as it comes. If it’s difficult, we do our best to get the help that we need. Inner physical, emotional, medical prayer to help us to cope with it.

I think there’s always this other side of it too. Is it as difficult as it is, one is that it’s not just difficult and it’s not just difficult in the very sincerity, which moves you to ask this question. The two of those two get more and more mysteriously intertwined with each other. It is like the mystery of life and death, which is also the alchemy of the path itself. Often when I watched Maureen die here in the house, and I watched her take her last breath, I’m so glad I saw it, watched it.

When I thought that the death itself is not an event, it’s a cessation that as you exhale and you don’t inhale, it’s not an event. Therefore, it’s painless and boundaryless, the person’s gone. The illness, aging process along, which one comes to that liberation can be quite arduous. We can each hope that we’ll be spared this way. I hope I’m spared, but I’m consoled that however hard it might be, it unites me with those for whom it is also very difficult.

I’m also consumed by the fact that even if it’s extremely difficult, it’s temporary because eternity’s forever, but compared to eternity but I relate. I relate. It’s exactly, it can be different. My aunt used to say she was a nun. I was very close to her. She used to say, “Getting old isn’t for sissies.” That’s really true. It really isn’t.

Kirsten Oates:               Many of the mystics talk about their suffering as the aging and coming towards death.

Jim Finley:                    That’s really true. That’s why one of the talks was written by brother when he was dying, that last talk that we did a very powerful talk, but also notice its where he’s the most luminous at the same time, even though the pain is… it’s very mysterious.

Kirsten Oates:               Very mysterious.

Jim Finley:                    Interesting thing. St. Teresa of Avila, who had a difficult death, struggling life and so on. She takes solace in the crucifixion and the suffering of Christ on the cross. Somehow we’re participating in that. Christ’s suffering on the cross is God’s participation in our suffering. She finds solace and meaning, which close with the light of resurrection.

Kirsten Oates:               Now a voicemail from Barbara.

Barbara:                       Kristin and James, I just want to thank you and for what you’re doing and for your conversation. Oh my gosh, what you said today when I was listening to the Brother Lawrence segment, just touches me so deeply that I’m not alone. I’m not alone in my experience of what I sense as holy and without it being holier than thou, it’s like holy. It’s just what is.

I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your conversations and this journey that you invite us into by looking at these mystics and these writers. Thank you. Thank you very, very, very much.

Jim Finley:                    I think one of the most startling things this book Michael sells the mystical language of unsaying. He says, “The mystic just doesn’t say that everything is one, but the mystic says everything is one in a way in which the way they say it awakens within us, the oneness of which they speak.” Unexpectedly comes home as our own holiness. That’s the unexpected part of it, it rolls. That’s the fruit of the teaching is that, that it’s us.

Kirsten Oates:               Our last question for today comes from Megan, and thank you for writing in Megan. She asks, could you share your thoughts on how the dimensions of the mind, heart, and body might work together in harmony within the practice of presence?

Jim Finley:                    Let’s say that when we speak of the head and the heart of the body, we’re speaking of our experience of aspects of ourself, and especially aspects of ourself as it relates to our oneness with God or awareness of God’s oneness with us. One level, the head could be referred to the insights that come to us so that when we hear God loves us by the power of the Spirit who dwells in our hearts, it’s given us to experientially know in a way we can’t explain that God does love us.

We could say that’s the head, the heart one can be seen as a seat of the emotions, which is the love center. Help me with this like the longing and the body is the embodiment of ourselves. The word became flesh or incarnate spirits. I think from the standpoint of the mystics, what they’re saying is that, I’ll put it in Buddhist terms and I’ll say in the way of a pilgrim, the head to know the heart, to love the horror, H-A-R-A, to understand, and the horror is the ground of the belly.

We understand and in the groundness of ourselves, notice also in the way of a pilgrim, the prayer of the heart. The heart is not the, how can I find my way to the heart. It’s not the place where I find my way to the center of affect. The heart is that place in me who God and myself become undistinguishable from each other so that the mind and the heart are modalities. They gravitate toward that unit of state or aspects of that unit of state, which transcends and includes each one of them.

Kirsten Oates:               What you’re saying, Jim, it’s almost like they can be, you can have senses of being enlightened in them separately, but the oneness with God transcends them is separate.

Jim Finley:                    Well, let’s put it this way. When we talk like this where people are listening, the head center would be insights that rings true to me. The heart center could be, I’m moved by that. I find it very moving, and my body, body embodies the love that’s uttering it into being. See is a somaticized incarnate sense of the presence of myself non-distinct from the presence of God embodied in the gift of my body.

Kirsten Oates:               Beautiful. Wow. Well, we’ve come to the end of the deep and profound questions that impossible to answer, but I thought you did a wonderful job of responding, Jim. Thank you so much for all the effort that goes into these sessions of reading and preparing to respond to the questions.

Jim Finley:                    Thank you for kind of guiding this in that direction. Sometimes we’ve talked about this before you and I, We can’t answer them. There’s no answer, but there’s a response. The responses places respectfully mirrors itself. Back to the question, we’re all in this together, which is contemplative community now.

Kirsten Oates:               This is the end of the season on Brother Lawrence. It’s just been absolutely wonderful. What a treat, and thank you, Jim.

Jim Finley:                    Welcome.

Kirsten Oates:               It was lovely to have Carmen as a guest.

Jim Finley:                    It was wonderful.

Kirsten Oates:               We wish everyone well in the break. Look forward to being back for season 13.

Jim Finley:                    Yes.

Kirsten Oates:               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 podcasts at cac.org or send us a voicemail. All this information can be found in the show notes. We’ll see you again soon.