INWARD JOURNEY
Summer day – warm - humid
but not oppressive.
Clear sun brightens up
yellow blooming black eyed suzies in the garden.
I sit in the quiet – notice my heart beat –
my breathing in and out -
pointing to a presence within me –
my Beloved.
Total mystery – otherness –
that my quiet heart beats point to.
My Beloved covers me –
embraces me – my whole body feels the touch.
I sit in mystery – so deep within me.
I say nothing – I let
my breathing highlight the presence.
In the ebb and flow of my life –
in years gone by – in moments now -
in currents - undertows that almost
did me in –
Someone was there – never let me go.
I bath myself in this love –
because of it, I did not get lost
in the crossroads - curves of the years gone by.
There were no dead end streets
but always an exit.
How lucky I am that Someone loves me!
Robert Trabold
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EASTER TIME
Robert Trabold
The Lenten season and Easter time after the feast of the Resurrection are times of assessment – we examine our life and see where it is going. We live in the modern world and in these big industrial cities, we are very busy. We have our work, family, outside community activities, financial concerns, question of our work and job and the tumult of the modern world with its violence and wars. We are occupied and can be torn in many directions – some good and some bad. Hopefully the season of the Resurrection can be a time when we sort out what is trivial in our life and focus on the essential and important things. This can be a difficult because we are torn in many directions and it can be hard to see what is important and thus orientate our life towards it. Sometimes we are so busy that we do not have to think about where we are going. But it is important for us to do it and the Easter season should be a time where we reorient our path.
In our contemplative path, we are called to cultivate and be open to the ultimate truth and love which is God who is transcendent and beyond us. In a real sense, we in our years on earth are on a pilgrimage to the source of life. It is a challenging trip because the Lord is transcendent and beyond us and we are called to reach out to the divine. Since we do not see the divine face to face on earth, we live by faith and to put our hope in someone we do not see but do experience. The God who is beyond us is also the source of life and its greatest depth. The Holy Spirit calls us to a love relationship and showed us this love in the life and teachings of Jesus .This relationship asks us not to live in the shallows of life and be caught in the things that come and go. Many things of our life on earth will pass away. In our pilgrimage to the divine, we are cultivating the essentials of living and go deep to the source of life. It is here that we find our fulfillment and peace in so far it is only God who can give us this on earth. The Lord loves us and calls us to respond to this; around this, we build and orientate our human existence.
In life we are called to be an explorer – we go beyond ourselves and explore someone who is love and beyond us but who calls us to friendship. This friendship is unique because the divine is unconditional love and cares for us in a way that no other human can. This gives us a security and peace which humans cannot give us. In this exploration, we are called to go beyond ourselves. We are not just to be men and women but to be human in a relationship with the source and goal of all life on earth.
In this journey to the divine, our commitment to daily meditation is very important. In our contemplation twice a day and the repetition of the mantra, we are taking time out to focus on the source of life and to turn away from the passing things of the earth. These things press on us and we can feel their pull. But if we are faithful to the discipline of prayer and our contemplation twice a day, we focus on the important one of our life and clear out our daily routine of unimportant things. In silent meditation and repetition of the mantra, we leave behind thoughts, ideas and images and we sit in silence in the presence of God who is the important ‘Someone.’ In this Easter season then, let us renew our commitment to our daily meditation and repetition of the mantra. It is an essential part of our journey to put aside the trivial things of human living and focus on the divine who is the source of life, its depth, etc. The Lord is also love and calls us to a friendship which will give us that peace which the world cannot give.
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