New Seeds of Contemplation Part II

I'm finding this passage very helpful as I work through my relationships to people, things, and especially my relationship to meeting and to the institution of Quakerism. There has been a lot of talk recently about the problems in the Society, and the disappointment and disaffectation a lot of people are going through. In many of my relationships that I find painful or troubling or difficult, I am quick to point out the problem with the other party or thing, thinking "if only ________ was not ________ then I wouldn't __________."

It is really, really, really difficult to break out of this pattern, especially when the other party or thing really is profoundly/obviously imperfect (institutional Quakerism, for example) or dysfunctional (friends, family members, etc.) It is also applicable in the light of our simplicity testimony and our explorations of the plain tradition.

I am struck, as I read the passage, with a deep caution, as well. Just because "when we are perfectly in grace" all things are lawful and pure, it doesn't mean that we are not obligated to take precautionary measures until we have enough grace. If, for example, I placed myself in the middle of close relationship with some of my dysfunctional family members, before I was ready, the consequences could be terrible.

There is great hope and also a great weariness in knowing that all the anguish I experience and every single twinge of pain and sadness and betrayal I suffer is due to my own perverted relationship to the thing, person, or insitution, and not in the percieved wrongness of them, no matter how unmistakable the wrongness may seem. (I believe this is also largely true of the spiritual anguish described in the previous message...my pain at my failure to properly love and understand God is due to (suprise!) failure to properly love and understand God.) I imagine this search for right relationship in all things may be a lifelong struggle.

-----------------------------

Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see. There is no evil in anything created by God, nor can anything of His become an obstacle to our union with Him. The obstacle is in our "self," that is to say in the tenacious need to maintain our separate, external, egoistic will. it is when we refer all things to this outward and false "self" that we alienate ourselves from reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. We use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self. In so doing we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them into a corrupt and sinful relationship. We do not thereby make them evil, but we use them to increase our attachment to our illusory self...

...The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls. In His love we possess all things and enjoy fruition of them, finding Him in them all. And thus as we go about the world, everything we meet and everything we see and hear and touch, far from defiling, purifies us and plants in us something more of contemplation and of heaven.
Short of this perfection, created things do not bring us joy but pain. Until we love God perfectly, everything in the world will be able to hurt us. And the greatest misfortune is to be dead to the pain they inflict on us, and not to realize what it is.
For until we love God perfectly His world is full of contradiction. The things He created attract us to Him and yet keep us away from Him. They draw us on and they stop us dead. We find Him in them to some extent and then we don't find Him in them at all.
Just when we think we have discovered some joy in them, the joy turns into sorrow; and just when they are beginning to please us the pleasure turns into pain.
In all created things we, who do not yet perfectly love God, can find something that reflects the fulfillment of heaven and something that reflects the anguish of hell. We find something of the joy of blessedness and something of the pain of loss, which is damnation.
The fulfillment we find in creatures belongs to the reality of the created being, a reality that is from God and belongs to God and reflects God. The anguish we find in them belongs to the disorder of our desire which looks for a greater reality in the object of our desire than is actually there: a greater fulfllment than any created thing is capable of giving. Instead of worshipping God through His creation we are always trying to worship ourselves by means of creatures. But to worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.