nothing except God

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

Out here in the woods I can think of nothing except God, and it is not so much that I think of Him either. I am as aware of Him as of the sun and the clouds and the blue sky and the thin cedar trees.

Engulfed in the simple lucid actuality which is the afternoon: I mean God’s afternoon, this sacramental moment of time when the shadows will get longer and longer, and one small bird sings quietly in the cedars, and one car goes by in the remote distance and the oak leaves move in the wind.

High up in the summer sky I watch the silent flight of a vulture, and the day goes by in prayer. This solitude confirms my call to solitude. The more I am in it, the more I love it. One day it will possess me entirely and no man will ever see me again.

Thomas Merton, journal entry, September 15, 1952

forgive every bit of your life

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

R. Rohr – When you finally come to maturity, you can look back at your life and forgive every bit of it. You can let go of everyone who hurt you, even your first wife or husband. You don’t even need to hate the church that hurt you. Wisdom is where you see it all and you eliminate none of it and include all of it as important training. Finally, “everything belongs.” You are able to say, from some larger place that even surprises you, “It is what it is” and even the “bad” was good.

These are the people who will change the world. These are the people who will transform history. We call them “larger than life” because they are living more than their own life. As Paul says, “I live no longer, not I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Non-dualistic people are able to be fully present to the now and trust God with the future and the past. God can use them because their small and petty self is finally out of the way

total animal soup of all time

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

“…and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time.”
From Howl, Allen Ginsburg