thankful

reports of You from outward things

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment
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(photo: Abiquiu, NM – September 2018)

The things of Time are in connivance with eternity. The shadows serve You. The beasts sing to You before they pass away. The solid hills shall vanish like a worn-out garment. All things change and die and disappear. Questions arrive, assume their actuality, and also disappear. In this hour I shall cease to ask them and silence shall be my answer. The world that Your love created and that the heat has distorted and that my mind is always misinterpreting shall cease to interfere with our voices.

Minds which are separated pretend to blend in one another’s language. The marriage of souls in concepts is mostly an illusion. Thoughts which travel outward bring back reports of You from outward things – but a dialogue with You, uttered through the world, always ends by being a dialogue with my own reflection in the stream of time. With You there is no dialogue unless You choose a mountain and circle it with cloud and print Your words in fire upon the mind of Moses. What was delivered to Moses on tablets of stone, as fruit of lightning and thunder, is now more thoroughly born in our souls, as quietly as the breath of our own being.

You, who sleep in my breast, are not met with words, but in the emergence of life within life and of wisdom within wisdom. With You there is no longer any dialogue, any contest, any opposition. You are found in communion! Thou in me and I in Thee and Thou in them and they in me: dispossession within dispossession, dispassion within dispassion, emptiness within emptiness, freedom within freedom. I am alone. Thou art alone. [God] and I are one.

– Thomas Merton, Journal entry, July 4, 1952

As Moses came down from Mount Sinai
with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands,
he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant
while he conversed with the LORD.
When Aaron, then, and the other children of Israel saw Moses
and noticed how radiant the skin of his face had become,
they were afraid to come near him.
Only after Moses called to them did Aaron
and all the rulers of the community come back to him.
Moses then spoke to them.
Later on, all the children of Israel came up to him,
and he enjoined on them all that the LORD
had told him on Mount Sinai.
When he finished speaking with them,
he put a veil over his face.
Whenever Moses entered the presence of the LORD to converse with him,
he removed the veil until he came out again.
On coming out, he would tell the children of Israel
all that had been commanded.
Then the children of Israel would see
that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant;
so he would again put the veil over his face
until he went in to converse with the LORD.
Ex 34:29-35

a book open to the sky

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

I don’t think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a ‘hypaethral book,’ such as Thoreau talked about – a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.
– Wendell Berry, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation” in Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community

watch your thoughts transform reality

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

When you feel anger or resentment, ask God to help you feel it, learn from it, and then release it. Ask Him to bless those who you feel anger toward. Ask Him to bless you too.

When you feel fear, ask Him to take it from you. When you feel misery, force gratitude. When you feel deprived, know that there is enough.

When you feel ashamed, reassure yourself that who you are is okay. You are good enough.

When you doubt your timing or your present position in life, assure yourself that all is well; you are right where you’re meant to be. Reassure yourself that others are too.

When you ponder the future, tell yourself that it will be good. When you look back at the past, relinquish regrets.

When you notice problems, affirm there will be a timely solution and a gift from the problem.

When you resist feelings or thoughts, practice acceptance. When you feel discomfort, know it will pass. When you identify a want or a need, tell yourself it will be met.

When you worry about those you love, ask God to protect and care for them. When you worry about yourself, ask Him to do the same.

When you think about others, think love. When you think about yourself, think love.

Then watch your thoughts transform reality.

– Melody Beattie – The Language of Letting Go

These Exhaling Sounds

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

     Is the sweetness of the cane sweeter
than the one who made the canefield?

Behind the beauty of the moon is the moonmaker.
There is intelligence inside the ocean’s intelligence
feeding our love like an invisible waterwheel.

There is a skill to making cooking oil from animal fat.
Consider now the knack that makes eyesight
from the shining jelly of your eyes.

Dawn comes up like a beautiful meal being served.
We are hungry and distracted, so in love with the cook.

Don’t just be proud of your mustache
as you drive three donkeys down the road.

Instead of gemstones, love the jeweler.
Enough of these exhaling sounds.

Let the darling finish this
who turns listening into seeing.

– Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

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Photo: Runaround Pond, Maine – June 2019

Should God expect any less of us…

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

The desire we must possess, according to Bonaventure, is essentially the desire of the heart for the good. What would Bonaventure say to a contemporary world that upholds money, wealth, power, and prestige as the principal desires? His answer would probably be that given to the Poor Clare Nun: desire God alone. Pure desire is what Bonaventure teaches and his advice on how to strive for this is simple: one must turn one’s entire heart, mind, and soul to God. Since that which brings happiness and peace rests in God, only the desire for God can lead to happiness and peace. In the incarnation, God has turned his entire being, all that he has and all that he is, to us. Should God expect any less of us than what God has given and continues to give to us?
– —from the book Crucified Love: Bonaventure’s Mysticism of the Crucified Christ by Ilia Delio, OSF

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