Dear LO,
I picked up at random two books last week for the simple purpose of
meditation. Put most simply, this is something of what I learned last week
and this and I have chosen certain parts to share along with some notes
from a more private source.
"A limpid sound rises amidst the silence; a trail of pure colour drifts
through the glass; a light glows for a moment in the depth of the eyes I
love...
Three things, tiny, fugitive; a song, a sunbeam, a glance...
So, at first, I thought they had entered into me in order to remain there and
be lost in me.
On the contrary; they took possession of me, and bore me away.
For this is the plaint of the air, this tinting of the light, this
communication of the soul were so tenuous and so fleeting it was only that
they might penetrate the more deeply into my being, might pierce through to
that final depth where all the faculties of man are so closely bound together
as to become a single point.
We imagine that in our sense perception external reality humbly presents
itself to us in order to serve us, to help in the building up of our
integrity. But this is merely the surface of the mystery of knowledge; the
deeper truth is that when the world reveals itself to us it draws us into
itself; it causes us to flow outwards into something belonging to it
everywhere present in it and more perfect than it.
The man who is wholly taken up with the demands of everyday living or whose
sole interest is in the outward appearances of things seldom gains more than
a glimpse, at best, of this second phase in our sense perceptions, that in
which the world, having entered into us, then withdraws from us and bears us
away with it; he can only a very dim awareness of the aureole, thrilling and
inundating out being, through which is disclosed to us at every point of
contact the unique essence of the universe."
And dearest Leo, here's a gift for you by return, "Where at first glance we
could see only an incoherent arrangement of different altitudes, of land
masses and of waters, there we later established a solid network of real
relationships; we animated the earth by communicating to it something of its
own unity.
And now through a gushing forth of vitality in the reverse direction, this
life infused by the human mind into the greatest material mass with which we
have contact tends to flow back into us in a new guise. When, through our
vision of it, we have endowed our earth of iron and stone with 'personality',
then we find ourselves in our turn, out of the sum total of all our souls, a
spiritual edifice as vast as the one we contemplate, the one brought forth
out of the travail of the geogenetic processes. Around the sphere of the
earth's rockmass there stretches a layer of animated matter, the layer of the
living creatures and human beings, the biosphere. The great educative value
of geology consists in the fact that by disclosing to us an earth which is
truly one, an earth which is in fact but a single body since it has a face,
it recalls to us the possibilities of establishing higher degreees of organic
unity in the zone of thoughts which envelopes the world. In truth it is
impossible to keep one's gaze constantly fixed on the vast horizons opened
out to us by science without feeling the stirrings of an obscure desire to
see men drawn closer together by an ever increasing knowledge and sympathy
until finally, in obedience to some divine attraction, there remains but one
heart and one soul on the face of the earth." And "The whole universe is
aflame"
Pere de Chardin, Hymn to the Universe.
Notes from an Easter journal ::
'Pere Teilhard, tell me about...'" -- the host is comparable to a blazing
fire whose flames spread out like rays all around it.'
Yesterday I was with a man who must put bread upon his table. He is Toby,
May's uncle. He gives me books. I have 'taught' his wife. I have 'taught' him
and he has 'taught' me. May has 'taught' me. May and I have not met. We
'teach' each other. I was in a hurry. Toby knows when I am in a hurry and he
counsels me well, " Don't get in a fury now Andrew..." I leave with two books
under my arm, the (my) National Debt is neither increased not decreased one
jot;-) There will be a plus and a minus somewhere else but not there, not
here, not just yet, the 'sums' are working differently here, according to a
different influential sphere.
A superliminalconfluencialspher(e)ity.
So be it.
One hand reaches left and t'other writes, sorry right, right?
In the one hand I have Teilhard de Chardin's 'Hymn of the Universe'. We seem
able to affine ourselves. And in the other hand...Paul (previously Saul) 'the
interpreter'. I did not choose them. That is metanoiaical to say, whether
'tis metanoiaical to hear I cannot say beyond the saying, I gainsay. But in
'Paul' by George Appleton there is a handwritten dedication/inscription and
it says in tiny handwriting...
(For) "John Redverse Hall, In friendship and in the fellowship engendered
by the Spirit of God. George Appleton, Easter 1990"
Just below in pencil is a digit "1" (pounds sterling sign) overwritten "2".
Let us welcome George Appleton to our LO. He is currently my 'teacher' and my
good news bringer. "George, please tell us a little about yourself."
"Yes, I will do that. My ministry has been long and varied, starting in 1925
in Stepney, the East End of London, then abroad. First in Burma for nearly
twenty years, then back to London as a priest, then more years as a
missionary, later Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral. Later still Archbishop of
Perth, six years later and at the end I was Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem.
Now I am retired and reflect on what discipleship was and remains at the
heart of my varied experience."
So there we were -- John, George and Andrew all in the One hand.
Miriam calls so we CUT to :: (letter from Miriam with three stones as gift
for Easter) "...And the remaining three stones, which seem to go together I
have sent to you. I have sent them to you because they remind me of your
thought and creativity. Though they are rock and solid they are transparent
(remember!?) and full of light and life. They take the light, they reflect
and refract it, they draw it in to themselves and fill it with their own
substance and form as it passes through them, and then onwards making it
soft, full and mellow and where it might be otherwise unnoticed they make the
light both visible and tangible. But the light is not limited by them or
contained, it is not their light, but the light of the world that they gather
to them." CUT ::
Join ::
In 'Hymn to the Universe' by pere de Chardin :: " Because of the fundamental
unity of the world, every phenomenon, if it is adequately studied even though
under one single aspect, reveals itself as being ubiquitous alike in its
import and in its roots. Where does this proposition lead us if we apply it
to human self-awareness?
We might be tempted to say: 'Consciousness manifests itself indubitably in
man and therefore, glimpsed in this one flash of light, it reveals itself as
having a cosmic extension and consequently as being aureoled by limitless
prolongation in space and time.'
This conclusion is big in its consequences; but I cannot see how it can be
denied if sound analogy with all the rest of science is to be preserved. -
deep within ourselves we can discern as though through a rent, an interior at
the heart of things; and that this glimpse is sufficient to force upon us the
conviction that in one degree or another this 'interior' exists and has
always existed everywhere in nature. Since at one particular point in itself,
the stuff of the universe has an inner face, we are forced to conclude that
in its very structure that is in every region of space and time it has this
double aspect, just as, for instance, in its very structure it is granular.
In all things there is a Within, co-extensive with their Without.
CUT ::
Joining :: With St Paul again: Romans 7:15-24 "I do not understand my own
actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...
For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is in my own lower
nature. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the
good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do... For I delight in
the law of God, in my innermost self, but I see in my members another law
at war with the law of mind." -"Wretched man that I am."
CUT:: from the 'tent maker';-) and back to the mystic. ::
:: "He, (God), is in a sense, at the point of my pen, my pick, my paint
brush, my needle -- and my heart and my thought. It is by carrying to its
natural conclusion the stroke, the line, the stitch I am working on that I
shall lay hold on that ultimate end towards which my will at its deepest
level tends. Like those formidable physical forces which man has so
disciplined that they can be made to carry out operations of amazing
delicacy, so the enormous weight of Gods magnetism is brought to bear on our
frail desires, our tiny objectives, without ever breaking their point. -- And
to ensure the psychic continuity of this vast development in all its phases,
extending the myriads of elements scattered through the immensities of all
ages, there is but one mechanism, education. Thus all the lines converge,
complete one another, interlock. All things are now but one. -- It is not the
rigidity of material things or mathematical determinism that gives the
universe its consistency, but the subtle orderings of spirit." :: CUT
Join ::
"Andrew, love always seeks to expand itself, to share and to create. Between
lover and beloved (is) a third to reach out to. The love of two becomes
three..." Miriam
Note at 3:43 p.m. GMT :: ...opening a page at random,
"-To think we must eat."
Hymn to the Universe, Pensees Teilhard de Chardin. Page 80, 13
-- For the truly hungry of this world --
Love,
Andrew
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