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Jesus calls us to become like little children, or as the Zen master puts it, to have a “beginner’s mind.” Jesus says the only people who can recognize and be ready for what he’s talking about are the ones who come with the mind and heart of a child. The older we get, the more we’ve been betrayed and hurt and disappointed, the more barriers we put up to beginner’s mind. We must always be ready to see anew. But it’s so hard to go back, to be vulnerable, to continue to say to your soul, “I don’t know anything.” (A man told me recently that was the mantra that has kept him a happy man.)
Spirituality is always about how we see. It’s not about earning or achieving some kind of merit. Once you see rightly, the rest follows and the road widens. You don’t need to push the river, because you are already in it—and floating along! The Great Life is already living within us and we only gradually learn how to say yes to this always-existent Life. This Life is so large and deep and spacious that it even includes its opposite, death.
Adapted from Everything Belongs:
The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, pp. 32-34
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