March 14, 2011

How to See


creepy leafies


I went for a walk this morning. The sky was overcast, and I saw inky grey-blue clouds rolling in as the wind began to howl and moan. A lone dove overhead cooed a mournful, gentle song. The landscape looked dimmer than usual, but there was the silvery sun, peeking through clouds and casting a glow that caught in the tangles of new bright green leafy buds on skinny little white branches, silhouetted against the deep evergreens. It was beautiful. I stood in front of the pond behind my neighborhood, rooted to the spot. I didn't ever want to leave.


I've been thinking about Love, and all it's supposed forms. There is supposedly pure and impure versions of it; some bright and clean, some adulturated. But I'm trying to see just one Love.


Cynthia Bourgeault is an evil genius and/or a saint. I enjoy reading her books and Rami Shapiro's for the same reason: a unitive view of the world. Seeing with a "single" eye; seeing the interconnectedness of all things. Seeing only One.

I'm quite fixated on a concept of hers I read recently: that there is not "Eros" and "Agape" Love; rather, the two are the raw and refined versions of the same force. Eros, the driving, romantic desire for another, can be refined in the fires of kenosis - that state of continuous pouring-out, or letting-be, that accepts all things and clings to nothing - and when it has been filtered, and loses the particular drive to possess or dominate the object of it's Love, and instead desires only that the object become Who he/she truly is, then it has become Agape. It becomes wind; it uplifts. It becomes light; it illuminates.

I want this for you. I lost myself and saw only your soul.


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