Mercy, there have been revelations.
Grace, there has been realisation. Still, you must
travel the path of time and circumstance.
The further you go, the more it comes back to paying attention.
The rough skin of the tallowwood, the trade routes of the lorikeets, a sky lifting
behind afternoon clouds. Staying close to the texture of things.
People can go before you and talk all they want,
but only one thing makes sense: the way the world enters
and finds its voice in you: the place you are free.
‘The further you go’
Andrew Colliver
The sixth morning after an encounter that might change my life, if I let it.
What if I let an encounter with the Holy change me, affect my marrow so deeply that I understand in my mind and feel a conviction in my heart that there is a new path emerging, one made especially for me to follow?
Do I have a clear enough head today to recollect all those past experiences of Grace which, even when I didn’t realise it at the time, reminded me I am not alone, that God is with me in my present delight and in my present struggle?
How closely am I prepared to scrutinise my life, past as well as current, to find and protect the places where trusting God bore unexpected fruit out of my meagre, stale offerings?
How might I see these things, anew or again, physically and metaphorically, emotionally and spiritually? The poet Kathleen Raine found her imagination opened by studying biochemistry: ’In the little lighted circle of the microscope I was in the great universe, not the small suburbs. The stars in the great sky and the smallest particles bear a resemblance often observed; as the sky extends into infinite spaces without, so the microscope is the way by which we may enter spaces within, no less vast. Both are ways to freedom…’ (‘Farewell Happy Fields’, Autobiographies p74)
I am free to envision that God is, and has always been, in my details, in every colour of every pathway I followed.
I stay to hear that God will be in every cell, vein and branch of my life to come.
This is Advent’s whispered trumpeted promise: Emmanuel. I AM is the God who is with us.
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way… What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.
Pedro Arrupe, SJ
blotched beauty. iPhone image.
image into ikon 
Such a powerful reflection. Thank you.
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