Returning to the Source, Part II

In our DM yesterday we talked about the need to return to our source in difficult times like ours—not to escape but to recharge and renew our spirits for the struggles ahead. 

Daily news, journalism, has its place of course.  We need to be continually kept abreast of the signs of our times, the signs of shadow and the signs of grace. 

But we cannot dwell twenty-four hours a day within the day-by-day. 

We also need to return to the source to the bigger context, to the larger story that is greater than the daily news.  The stories of wisdom and awe, reverence and gratitude, that nurture us and that brought us forward into this vast and graced universe. 

We need to return to the Source whom most mystics name as Love.

Let us, in the next segment of our DM journey, drink from this source insofar as it is named by our species’ many religious and spiritual traditions. 

This we share in common, an invitation to not take nature or creation for granted.  I often define the mystic as “one who has learned not to take for granted.” 

Not to take for granted our bodies and their wondrous capacities; nor the air; nor the sun; nor the moon; nor the darkness; nor the silence; nor the plants; nor the soil, nor the animals; nor the winged ones; nor the fishes; nor the waters; nor the forests; nor the soil. 

Not our time on earth.  Nor our Earth.

Here is how Russian Orthodox writer Dostoyevsky puts it in Brothers Karamazov:

Love all Creation.
The whole and every grain of sand in it.
Love every leaf,
and every ray of light.
Love the plants.
Love the animals.
Love everything.

If you love everything
you will perceive the Divine Mystery
in all things.
Once you perceive it
you will comprehend it better every day.
And you will come, at last,
to love the whole world
with an all embracing love.

Say what you will, whether religion or spirituality acknowledge it or not, all human experiences—including spiritual experiences—are set in the matrix of Creation itself.

Our existence is totally interdependent with the existence of stars, planets, the sun, rocks, water, plants and trees, flowers, birds, supernovas, galaxies, atoms, the fireball that was the origin of the universe.

All time and space comes together in our deep selves not only at the physical level and the level of DNA but also at the level of our psychic and spiritual and emotional selves.

See Matthew Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faith Traditions, pp. 26-28.

Banner Image: Meadow meditation. Photo by Spencer Selover on Pexels.

Queries for Contemplation

Is Dostoyevsky offering you a useful spiritual practice in his poem?  Be with his words.  Be silent with his words.  Let the wisdom wash over you in silence.  Let gratitude and reverence arise.  Bathe in it.

Recommended Reading

One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths

Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.