A MOSAIC PIECE OF MY LIFE: Awareness that my life contains crosscutting themes.

As my life experiences are at the end of their usefulness to my humanity, I have noticed several cross-cutting themes that are always present but not always acted upon. My Lay Cistercian Way has allowed me to possess a profound focus on three of them, which I use to vet all my concepts and ideas. I share three of the more popular themes as they pertain to my notion of a key to understanding the three longings of my human heart.

1. ALL IDEAS AND THOUGHTS-– There is such a thing as horizontal spirituality, which is time encumbered and lasts from here to there, e.g., Liturgy of the Hours. I have discovered another dimension to spirituality that I call vertical spirituality, and it applies to every idea, thought, belief, and paradigm. It means to go as deep as possible during Lectio Divine or Eucharist. I wrote a book about it called Mining for Spiritual Gold. As I grow deeper into my prayer life (capacitas dei), I am also opening up to the limitless expanse of the Mystery of Faith. God does not have a bottom to anything, a top, or even sidewalls. I am limited in my human reasoning by the preconceptions I have that God is like me. This mindset mitigates against the notion that all Eucharist is so boring and the same. Of course it is! You have reason and free will to go deeper, but, as I found in my own case, I was so used to doing the same thing over and over that it never occurred to me to look deeper within myself (the place no one wants to go) Digging means work, sweat, time taken away from feeling that make us happy in the worldly sense, and the realization that I don’t grow in Faith without the tools of good works. Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict details some of the tools I use each day to convert myself from my false self (lazy, seeking what is easy rather than right) to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. This theme permeates everything I do now. If I don’t dig, I won’t find the hidden treasure under my feet. Always grow deeper.
2. THE CONTEMPLATIVE DUALITY: Growing deeper requires an act of free will, a habitual state of seeking to move beyond just being human to the state destined by our human nature but sidetracked by our not being able to choose what is good for us without God’s help. This duality is highlighted in Cistercian Spirituality as I am learning it, being a. Capacitas Dei, or God Increasing and my humanity decreasing. Paradoxically, only when I deny myself and take up my cross for each day does my humanity blossom into what it was intended to be. b.Conversio Morae, or my passion to move deeper into each encounter I have with Christ. After some time of doing this, I find that what seemed like isolated periods of prayer and reparation for my lack of both elements actually morph into one large prayer of praise and thanksgiving from the beginning of the day to what happens at the day’s end. “That in all things, God be glorified.” –St. Benedict.
3. THE WEB OF REALITY —I choose to place myself in the presence of Christ, the one I love, each day through my Morning Offering prayer and Lectio Divina. I am struck by the interconnectivity of all beings in the physical universe of matter, our base for humans alone to be in the universe of the mind. I am aware that I am aware. I know that I know; what I know depends upon my interaction with situations and choices for good or evil I must make each moment. The effects of those choices comprise who I am, given that I can change behaviors and restart all over (making all things new again). I find that using human fragments (mosaic pieces of reality) to create a picture throughout my lifetime comes from the deeper realization that all matter, all life, all life as an adopted son (daughter) of the Father, and the completion of the cycle nature intended for all humans, is like a spider’s web, an existential linking of all things with just one center, The Christ Principle. Through Him, with Him, and in Him, my humanity has the energy to be lifted up to that elevated state of humanity, that of an adopted son (daughter) of the Father, and, if faithful to the search for what it means to be human, what it means to love as Christ loved us, and what is true, absolutely, This is a web of energy that I find is most understandable when I apply the Teilhard Map (unattributed) to this web of energy that links all matter together through time. Energy from the source of this web, which I will term divinity, is not a concept, nor an idea, nor even a symbol, but rather the Real Presence of Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity in the transubstantiated bread of the Eucharist, truly present for thanksgiving and adoration in the Blessed Sacrament. My Lay Cistercian Way, unique to me alone, is one where I don’t have to read more to be more (capacitas dei), but rather, to be more through contemplation and sitting on that couch next to Christ and just waiting (with a big smile on my face). Connecting to Christ links me to each atom and molecule, all energy, all knowledge, all love, and all truth, the web of all that was, all that is, and all that will be. http://www.organism.earth.

The end is just the beginning, having Christ as my center.

To be continued…

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