Reflection from our Co-Pastors, Thursday, August 25, 2022
“The soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish.”
― St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena
Just asking -- Sometimes it is so easy to ‘find’ God, and sometimes so hard to ‘find’ God when we are not even separated! Meditating on this thought from Catherine of Siena, it goes from my mind (dualistic) to my heart (non-dualistic). There is a womb here in this ocean, a warm, enveloping, safe place, a place of being completely held. A friend of mine had a serious stroke and this place of being completely held is how she described her feeling when she was between life and death.
On the DeMello Spirituality Center website is this story: “Excuse me,” said an ocean fish to another fish.
“You are older than l so can you tell me where to find this thing
they call/he ouan?”
”The ocean,” said the older fish, “is the thing you are in now.”
“Oh, this? But this is water. What [I]’m seeking is the ocean,” said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.”
And again —-
“A man came to the master in sannyasi robes. He said: “For years I have been seeking God. I have sought him everywhere that he is said to be: on mountain peaks, the vastness of the desert, the silence of the cloister,
and the dwellings of the poor.”
“Have you found him?” the master asked. “No. I have not. Have you?”
What could the master say? The evening sun was sending shafts of golden light into the room. Hundreds of sparrows were twittering on a nearby banyan tree. In the distance one could hear the sound of the highway traffic. A mosquito droned a warning that it was going to strike . . . . And yet this man could sit there and say he had not found God. After a while he left, disappointed, to search elsewhere .
Stop searching, little fish. There isn’t anything to look for.
All you have to do is look.”
It seems to me that our religious concept of the Incarnation is ‘Look’ and ‘Be’ and ‘Breathe’ and ‘Touch’ and ‘Love.’ Here’s what Joan Chittister says:
“Once we have come to the point that we can allow God to be for us always, always beckoning – beyond any single way of worship, any one set of devotions, any need to be less than alive and full of joy of it, any desire to close off people and life, any idea that the daily is dull and empty of real spiritual experience, we have begun to grow into the spiritual life. Then we are finally ready to find God in the very lives we are leading right now…anything that divides life into opposing parts – into the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘material’ – as if one is not the essence of the other, may be religion, but how can it possibly be a healthy spirituality.”
Consider how Mary, Mother of the World, can be a pivotal example of deep spirituality – she united the Divine and the Material inextricably in the Word Made Flesh. Maybe the Assumption is another example that there is no separation anyway…so may we fish help each other enjoy the day living in the Ocean!
Image by GLady from Pixabay
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