Inexhaustible Wells

The return of an old thought of mine, reading Etty Hillesum tonight on the metro: the only thing you can really do with evil and suffering is to absorb them and turn them into kindness. Not to fight it or to wave it away, but to actively transform all forms of evil you encounter into warm and all-embracing love. And I think that maturity of a human being means the ability to do so without being destroyed by the evil absorbed, a kind and degree of inner stability, freedom and sturdiness that makes the worlds spin around your love. (This, I understand, is the meaning of the turning of the cheek business). But if that is to be, then I have to learn to contain, that is, to forgive and accept and be kind with my own pain and aggression and evil first of all, so that they are not spilled and projected all around. And I actually have no idea of the way to do it; for the wells of grief are deep, inexhaustible and mysterious, and I have not found a way yet to touch the bottom and return back unharmed. 

Does meditation help?

To the question « how does meditation help you? » I can only answer by a shrug – it doesn’t, and I did not ask for help when I started to meditate. I asked for freedom and for conversion, I wanted enlightenment and experience of God. These things now are all coming about, but saying that they “help” sounds to me grotesquely, comically absurd. They don’t, honestly. They make my life more complicated than ever, they confront me to the questions I really do not want to face, they lead me to the places no one in their right mind would choose to be. Meditation set in motion forces and processes that I cannot control and only partially understand. Whatever wisdom I acquired thereby, it is the wisdom of insecurity. No, clearly, meditation does not “help”; God is no-thing, and cannot be summoned to fix my life…  What emerges instead is a sense of happiness which does not depend on events and circumstances of my chaotic life, a touch of the fundamental joy of being that lies deep within and can be shared with others in a simple act of presence. That's what it is about, really.

On fulfilment, or "Babette's feast"

It seems absolutely incredible to me that there are people who do not understand what it means, "to be fulfilled in and by doing" something; who cannot believe that some things are done for the mere joy of doing them. Not to be approved, not to be thanked or appreciated, not to be praised and accepted, but simply because just doing it fulfills us and makes our craving for approval redundant… 

I am reminded of Babette, in the awesome film "Babette's feast", sitting in the kitchen after having cooked a gastronomic meal for a bunch of strangers. Nobody thanked her, and she did not expect or need thanks: because she represents the lavishness, the ever-abounding bounty of God who does not care about approval. 

I agree with a sigh: these things that are done with no desire for approval are rare, and it is debatable how much of this inglorious motivation we conceal from ourselves when we think we have none. But they do exist; in them we participate in the abundant, luxuriant divine life, where being and doing are absolutely unconditional, therefore absolutely free. 

Hidden Things (from St Beuno)

From St Beuno, with love. The chant and prayer above spell out one of the messages I received during this retreat; a chant that seems to pervade subtly my days since I am back. On the other (thinking) hand, the data is being processed :)), and a more detailed post about what happened there is being written somewhere in the left hemisphere of my brain. Meanwhile, let's share the chant.  

Memory as constant revolution

"Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of 'memories'. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not 'remember' the here and now, does not 'remember' its true identity, is not memory at all. Those who remember nothing but facts and past events and are never brought back into the present, are victims of amnesia."

Thomas Merton

I take this to mean that we need to constantly re-invent or experience. Life is then not a hostage to past events or constantly reoccurring thoughts, and the mind is cleared out to have the opportunity to experience the present properly. Like much of FUC logic, this seems paradoxical, and yet I think it is the only proper attitude to hold in order to feel the possibility of each moment as fully sacred - even the crap moments too for that matter. Life's not all beer and skittles, but it does need to be experienced without hindrance from past programming.