Always Beginners

MYSTERY

Great South Bay – spreading – vast

before my eyes – gentle blue – grey.

Afternoon sunshine – painting a

silver path across the water – glistening – jewels.

Fire Island Lighthouse – tall in the distance –

flashing light winking at me.

Robert Moses tower – strong against the sky –

wind will not blow it down.

Fire Island – just laying there –

not making a sound.

Endless quiet – endless blue – endless mystery!

I breath in and out – vibrations deep within me –

pulsing – blood rushing –

my eyes – blinded – flashes of mystery –

I cannot see – but feel.

I reach out – hands - arms –

but cannot grasp.

Heart beats faster – sensing

mystery – ecstatic nothingness –

tasting the Beloved!

Strange Beloved – so close – so far away!

My Beloved grasps me – I feel it deep within me.

For a moment, I am lifted high – into the clouds –

vast blue sky –

no words come to me.

 Let me not forget –God speaks in silence –

let me be silent too –silence meets silence.

Today at the seashore – knock

at the door – I opened –

no one was there. That is the way it is –

life’s journey on earth – gentle touches –

another day – face to face.

Robert Trabold

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                                                      ALWAYS A BEGINNER

                                                               Robert Trabold

                                                         I sleep but my heart wakes.

                                            I hear my beloved who knocks at the door.

                                                           Song of Songs, 5.3

           

In our journey in contemplative prayer and way, we will always be beginners.  In this path, God who is a mystery touches us and reveals himself/herself to us. We sense this presence within our life being quite distinct and different because the divine is present at our center and still point  We also realize that it is a mystery and totally transcendent to us.  Because God is present at the core of our person, we feel that he/she is closer to us than we are to ourselves. This intimacy and closeness goes beyond the kind of relationships we have in human friendship or in a good marriage where the other person is always external to us.  For this reason, it takes a while to realize the deep intimacy we have with the transcendent.  On the other hand, this presence within us is a mystery because with time, we realize that we cannot grasp God with our mind or intellect. We touch the divine rather by our desire to love and to grow in friendship. Because this relationship is such an intimate but a mysterious one, many of the mystics, prominently John of the Cross, have used the image of the dark night to capture its uniqueness.  In the contemplative path, we are on a journey of great intimacy but since God is ineffable, we journey in mystery and in darkness. The opening lines of the poem ‘The Dark Night’ by John of the Cross state this well:

                                                                       In a dark night,

                                                            inflamed with passions of love

           If we look at our contemplative path carefully, we will see that we are always beginners for a variety of reasons. First, in contemplative prayer, it is the divine who takes the initiative and touches us to reveal its presence. It is something that we cannot automatically bring into our life, but have to wait until someday our Beloved touches us and makes himself/herself known.  John of the Cross in giving advice for growth in contemplative prayer mentions that we have to be silent and listen so that we can see where the divine is leading us and revealing itself to us.

            Secondly, we are always beginners in the contemplative path because we are journeying into mystery and trying to have a relationship with God who is transcendent to us. In this journey, we come to realize that the divine reveals itself in silence and darkness. Mystical writers mention that we are touched when we are silent and quiet.  In this, we know that he/she is there and we are at peace with this presence. Our desire to love grows with this encounter and that is how we touch God deeply in our life. But this touch is always mysterious because our Beloved is transcendent and ineffable and meets us fittingly in silence and darkness. A saying in German states that the works of God are ones of stillness and the night. In this encounter, words can get in the way.  Meister Eckhardt tells us that more we think that we know about the divine, the less we know.

            In sum, in our contemplative path and prayer, we are always beginners.  We are waiting for the divine to touch us and reveal itself; this is not our initiative.  It is a mysterious encounter because we know that we can never grasp God with our minds but can touch him/her by our desire to love. So as John of Cross mentions, we have to be silent and listen.  We are always beginning and growing in this friendship and are on a journey without end.

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