Practices for The Faithful Incarnate: Part 2

Nobody's halo shines all the time. Well, maybe not nobody's, but it is a rare and precious person's that does, at least this side of heaven. Reaching effortlessness (or 'practicing death' as it is rather ominously put in the last post) takes a LOT of effort, because, yes, it is hard to get out of one's own way and to be where one is. The work is never done, it seems.

The next practice suggested by the scene in the garden in which Mary Magdalene meets Jesus is, as Coakley writes, the ability to 'turn and turn again, as Mary did twice before she saw that it was Jesus right in front of her'. At first she did not recognize Jesus at all; nor was she the only one who failed to see him. There were others too who just could not quite wrap their minds around the possibility that the promises had come true. Things don't get much odder. But, wait: there's more --

    "This is another very strange thought: that the risen Christ, being God's Son, is here all the time but that we have to 'turn' and keep 'turning' toward his gaze, until our sense and mind and soul and heart are so attuned and magnetized to his presence that we too can say Rabbouni! - not to grasp and hold him, not to constrain him within our restricted human categories, but to worship and adore him."

I had an experience last week after a particularly long day when I took myself off for a stroll in the nearby garden. I know that there's not much that a walk can't loosen or cure. Also, there is something magical about the time of long shadows in my town. My feet found their way over to the poets' pavilion, a simple wooden shelter built in the traditional style, which is bisected into two facing floors separated by a flowing stream in which sit a few beautifully expressive rocks. There was a time when poets gathered in the heart of the garden, with cups of floating sake for inspiration and lubrication, where the creation and recitation of poetry was enjoyed.

 It was late afternoon and not many others were in the garden. I removed my shoes and sat on the wooden floor feeling weary and a bit blue. After a short while, I suddenly became aware of the sound of trickling water, of birdsong, warmth, light, the green and red colours of new leaves. What was amazing to me was that nothing around me had changed. The scene was just so, but sitting quietly I was suddenly able to make sense of what was around me. Where had I been before that? Wrapped up in my own concerns, I suppose, not unlike Mary that momentous and emotional morning. Nothing had changed around me except my ability to tune in to the present. Opening to it brought on the sweet surprise of something rising in my spirit as if a crust had cracked; it felt like making way/space, like coming home, like a quenching of thirst. What had happened? How was it that I was able to breathe again? That I felt re-membered, all the fragments gathered and at once, calm. Could it really have been the simple recognition of being present in the moment?

I often wonder 'What keeps us apart from this current in the daily round?' and I wonder in the wake of my 'coming around' whether this resembles the Magdalene's dawning perception, the perception that was only possible once she had made the turn, allowed herself to momentarily be distracted from her full feeling and entranced by the reality before her?

    "… To turn is to keep longing for and loving him, even in despair . . . to keep discerning the wind of Christ's Spirit and leaning into it, until love and knowledge and     sensuality all align and we can know as we are known in him."