The Light in the Woods

12/9/09 Insights from Study         I think my favorite image in the Bible comes from Psalm 137. Picture the miserable Jews, exiled in Babylon and longing in melancholy for home. Around them are the natives of Babylon, their conquerors, sneering and telling the Jews to sing songs of their homeland.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remember Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

How graphically this sorrow and longing for home under extreme adversity reminds us of our dissatisfaction with the way we seem to be here in this life, longing for the life we once had. Our world is Babylon, our exile this life on Earth. We can no longer sing in joy of remembrance, because we long too sadly for Zion – Reality, the perfection of life with God. We have the advantage, though — we have been promised our sure return. And maybe, if we take down those harps of prayer again and sing well enough, the sneering may stop and our captors will see the light of our joy and want it for their own.

11/28/09 Reflections          What’s missing in the world isn’t love, for each and every one of us is loved so immeasurably that we cannot even absorb the concept. But that’s what’s missing – our ability to recognize the immensity of God’s love for us, and our ability to expand the scope of our intellect enough to desire to experience God more than we have.

Today is a special day for me – the anniversary of the moment when God took hold of my mind, my imagination, and my ego and showed me how little I’ve been settling for. He chose me and I accepted. He chooses many, and many accept. If they’re like me, they enjoy a flurry of supernatural favors, causing them to experience extreme joy and contentment. Then just when they grow to expect joy, they’re handed complete letdown.

We are fortunate that there have been those who have gone before us and left accounts, as accurately as they might be in explaining the unexplainable, of how it feels. And I’ve been particularly fortunate in that I’ve had the means to teach myself the theology behind God’s personal involvement in my life. Because of this, I have an understanding of why we must suffer after having a taste of deep spiritual knowledge and grace. And I know that the suffering of perceived estrangement from God is followed by, not the initial ecstasy, but something more stable and more sustainable. It’s the continual awareness of the awesome presence of God and the certitude that this is but a small taste of a banquet yet to come.

12/24/08 Insights from Prayer               Dear Lord, when I tune out what I know and gaze upon You alone, I see at first only darkness – I’ve put my salvation on You and You’re too wonderful for me to know. There’s darkness in my world, but the darkness of You in which I hide is more of a clean slate than darkness. Because I see nothing on it, I don’t see what’s troubling me on Earth. I see instead the pure promise of reality.

When I get used to the dark, I begin to make out the life that You meant for me. It’s all the more clear in the backdrop of darkness – little pinpoints of insight through which a beautiful beam of light can emerge, making me know that beyond the darkness all is bright and familiar. The more pinpoints to appear in the blackness, the more I will know and the closer I will be to what I long to reclaim.

How many times I’ve gazed at the night sky – the darker it got the more stars I could see. With the whole sky eventually scattered with stars, I could feel clearly Your presence and Your promise of full light. How wonderful the Christmas tree lights are when darkness descends to show them off the way they’re meant to be seen. Without darkness, I would never truly experience the light.

You have arranged all this, and now that I understand it better, Lord I can thank You for knowing exactly what’s right for me. I still need Your help, but the first thing You do has already been done – You have made Yourself available to me. Your love, hope, understanding and grace, extended to all mankind despite what we do to one another, is the promise of experiencing Your presence which defines the Christmas celebration as well as anything can.

2/12/08 Insights from Study      One book I’m reading explores the idea that just as a mystic has to go through a “dark night” in order to reach the state by which she can see God clearly, the world itself is going through the same dark night. The book suggests that this dark night will pass and will be more perfect in light of it’s purification powers. The book postulates that as this process mirrors that of mystical purification, it may well be mysticism that pulls the world back onto the path to God. I not only sense the wisdom in this, I’ll take it one step further. I’m almost certain that the dam of group-think religion is poised to give way to the flood of change toward individual spirituality as people look back on what’s wrong with the world and desire to fix it. It makes sense that the more human failings ruin what seems right to us in our hearts, the more people will look to God for relief — not religion. That is the function of sin and suffering in individual life. It stands to reason that it would work the same way on a global scale.