The WONDER OF INCARNATION

THREE STRIKES AND  I AM OUT

I promised myself that I would make three attempts at describing on this  blog the  experience and lessons  I gained from my near death  experience in the ICU. Here is my third and last attempt.

A WONDERFUL THEOLOGIAN HAS TRIED TO EXPLORE THE MYSTERY--

In On the Incarnation, he writes, "The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his great love took to himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, halfway. He became himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which he, the Word of God, did in the body. Human and human minded as people were, therefore, to whichever side they looked in the sensible world, they found themselves taught the truth."

I ponder that last clause for a long time --" whichever side they looked in the sensible world, they found themselves taught the truth."  This is a great way to express what I have  come to know in my own learning experiences--there can  be no antagonism  between true science and true spiritual teachings.
That gorgeous  phrase  from Keats also sums it  up perfectly:

"BEAUTY IS TRUTH AND TRUTH  IS BEAUTY; THAT IS ALL YOU  KNOW AND ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW."

Now  for the third and last time I will try to express some of what I experienced in my brush with death.
Death is not always easy.  That is why we pray for the grace of a happy death.  If death were easy, there would be no need for that special Grace.
But as I came close to death in Septic Shock, I  saw that there was a struggle going on in my mind- I could no longer trust it.
All my life I have  been able to rely on the steadiness and sanity of my minds perceptions.  But as  the body nears death, so does the brain and that changes the mind.  Those changes are scary and unpredictable.  And they feel like EVIL.

"A fish cannot drown in water,

A bird does not fall in air.

In the fire of creation,

God doesn't vanish:

The fire brightens.

Each creature God made

must live in its own true nature;

How could I resist my nature,

That lives for oneness with God?"

The Collect for Mechthild

I am left with the image of the Happy Death of Saint Joseph. He died in the arms of Mary  and Jesus. We can hope for nothing better. 

NEW PRAYER-- Jesus, Mary and Joseph pray for  me now and at the hour of death. Amen

Not the Memorare -- but I  hope I can recall it in my last moments. 

A HEAD ON CRASH WITH MY IMPERFECTION!

A

Love the Contradictions
Wednesday, June 19, 2019

A recent insight from Richard Rohr that I found both inspiring but also difficult. 

"Struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejection and abandonment, all daily humiliations, experiencing any kind of abuse or form of limitation, can be gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul—if we allow them to be. These experiences give us a window into our naked nowness, because very real contradictions are always staring us in the face."
 This is always true but my recent  experience of Septic Shock  brought the reality of my human limitations up close and personal. 

 "Except for God, nothing is perfectly anything. Even as we set necessary and healthy boundaries, we are also invited to forgive what is, to weep over and accept our own interior poverty."  This is a sort of spiritual description of how it felt for me to wake up after surgery in the INTENSIVE CARE UNIT of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"In facing the contradictions that we ourselves are, we become living icons of both/and. Once you can accept mercy, it is almost natural to hand it on to others (see the story of the unforgiving debtor in Matthew 18:23-35). You become a conduit of what you yourself have received. If you have never needed mercy and do not face your own inherent contradictions, you can go from youth to old age dualistically locked inside a mechanistic universe." 

That, in my opinion, is the “sin against the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 23:31-32). It cannot be forgiven because there is a refusal to recognize that you even need mercy or forgiveness. You have blocked the conduit that you are.

"John of the Cross (1542–1591) consistently wrote of divine love as the template and model for all human love, and human love as the necessary school and preparation for any transcendent encounter. If you have never experienced human love, it will be very hard for you to access God as Love. If you have never let God love you, you will not know how to love humanly in the deepest way. Of course, grace can overcome both of these limitations."

 Grace can overcome all  limitations.  I felt my limitations so severely when I was  in Septic Shock.  I could not think straight. I was so grateful when my old college friend Terry  appeared in my room.  She was attending the celebration of 100 years of Emmanuel College. She was so funny and so sane.Then my son Joe appeared and brought my husband Yash up from Pawtucket daily. Later Mary Ellen came from New York and her sister Clare--such rocks of   friendship and stability.

"To put it another way, what I let God see and accept in me also becomes what I can see and accept in myself. And, even more, it becomes that whereby I see everything else. This is “radical grace.” This is why it is crucial to allow God and at least one other person to see us in our imperfection and even in our nakedness, as we are—rather than as we ideally wish to be. It is also why we must give others this same experience of being looked upon tenderly in their imperfection; otherwise people on either side will never know divine love. I pray there is at least one person before whom you can be imperfect. I have several in my life, and they are such a relief and joy to be around.

Such utterly free and gratuitous love is the only love that validates, transforms, and changes us at the deepest levels of consciousness. It is what we all desire and what we were created for. Once you allow it for yourself, you will almost naturally become a conduit of the same for others.

Can you let God “look upon you in your lowliness,” as Mary put it (Luke 1:48), without waiting for some future moment when you believe you are worthy? Consider these words inspired by John of the Cross: “Love what God sees in you.” [1]

What does God see in me?  I guess his own IMAGE the bit of divinity that he created and gave to us--my immortal soul.  I tried hard to dwell on that while I was in the ICU and in Septic  Shock but it did elude me. Only the visits of the Chaplain and the Reikei  volunteers conveyed a sense of peace and also a sense that there was a place beyond this. One of the Reikei people said-- you kept on talking about the bright light.  But you were sent back.  Now you must discover--WHAT WERE YOU SENT BACK TO DO?
WHAT WAS I SENT BACK TO DO?

Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886

          Because I could not stop for Death – 

He kindly stopped for me – 
The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring – 
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 
We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed us – 
The Dews drew quivering and chill – 
For only Gossamer, my Gown – 
My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground – 
The Roof was scarcely visible – 
The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were  towards eternity.

My Encounter with Septic Shock

A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH

My down-slide that brought me so rapidly face to face with death began with a high fever and then crashed into  teeth chattering shivers and chills. I could not get warm .  I went to my bed and kept piling blankets on myself longing for sleep and an end to the   sense of freezing shivers that shook my body convulsively.  I called my Primary and she said to  come up to urgent visit.

 How would I get there?  I am the only driver and I could not drive in the condition I was in.  Finally, my friend Elizabeth  came by and saw my condition. She immediately called 911 and when they appeared --several Pawtucket fire fighters. She asked them to evaluate me. They said I was very sick with a fever of 102.6 and must go to a hospital immediately.  She asked if they would take me  to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.   They said No--only  in state not in Massachusetts.
  All my doctors are at Brigham including my Primary.
She began to ask about Ambulance Service and called a couple who did not have an ambulance available to up to Boston
Finally one of the firemen suggested a service that he  sometimes drove for-- BREWSTER AMBULANCE.  We called and they did have an ambulance and a few minutes later witnessed by my good neighbors, Doris and Joe,  I was loaded  in and we were headed North to Boston.

Once I arrived at Brigham, I felt a sense of relief--I was in good hands.
I was in one of those small curtained alcoves in the  Emergency room.  They told me that a kidney stone had blocked my kidney and created an infection.I had been rushed into the operating room for emergency surgery  that placed a stent in my kidney to open the blockage.

When I woke up again, I was in a  lighted and  very active Intensive Care Unit. No rest there-- just test after test.  They took me for an MRI and then a CAT scan and then an ultra sound and finally a chest x-ray.  I could not stay awake--I was  going in and out of consciousness.

 Nobody was  with me, I tried to pray and I could remember the Hail Mary and the Our Father.  But I tried and could not remember how to say the MEMORARE.
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, 
that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, 
implored your help, or sought your intercession, 
was left unaided. 
Inspired by this confidence, 
I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. 
To you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. 
O Mother of the Word Incarnate, 
despise not my petitions, 
but in your mercy, hear and answer me.
Amen.

 There is also one antiphon that I say often during the day :
We adore thee oh Christ, and we bless thee because by thy Holy Cross thou has redeemed the world.--I can write it now but I could not bring it to mind.  I was so frustrated.
I was so annoyed with myself--He said he would go and prepare a place for us,  Has He done that?  Is my place ready?  So passed my first night in the ICU.

CAN WE HEAR THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE BUCKET?

 HOW DOES GOD SPEAK TO US?

To follow their own paths to wholeness, both Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875–1961) and Jewish Auschwitz victim Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) trusted in and hearkened to the voice of God in their deepest Selves.

Many educated and sophisticated people are not willing to submit to indirect, subversive, and intuitive knowing, which is probably why they rely far too much on external law and behavior to achieve their spiritual purposes. 

They know nothing else that feels objective and solid. Intuitive truth, that inner whole-making instinct, just feels too much like our own thoughts and feelings, and most of us are not willing to call this “God,” even when that voice prompts us toward compassion instead of hatred, forgiveness instead of resentment, generosity instead of stinginess, bigness instead of pettiness.

But think about it:
If the incarnation is true, then of course God speaks to us through our own thoughts!

When accusers called Joan of Arc (1412–1431) the victim of her own imagination, she is frequently credited with this brilliant reply: “How else would God speak to me?”

GREAT LOVE AND GREAT SUFFERING PUNCTURE THE HARD SHELL OF EGO

THE NECESSITY FOR SUFFERING

"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." Aeschylus

This quotation summarized the extraordinary insight of Greek tragedy into the mystery of  human suffering.

We must suffer to learn and we must learn to grow and we must grow or die.  If you read that complex quote slowly, you will see that is unfolding step by step the  central mystery of human suffering.  And it answers the  big question WHY DO GOOD PEOPLE SUFFER?

Even in our sleep--- the dramatic poet insists that it is then  as we sleep that the  soul rehearses the pains of the day. And we all know that this is a truth. DROP BY DROP 


Richard Rohr writes about the encounter between  Jesus Christ and  Thomas who doubts.

I’ve often said that great love and great suffering (both healing and woundedness) are the universal, always available paths of transformation because they are the only things strong enough to take away the ego’s protections and pretensions. Great love and great suffering bring us back to God, and I believe this is how Jesus himself walked humanity back to God. It is not just a path of resurrection rewards but a path that now includes death and woundedness.

Christ showed his wounds to Thomas and that became part of the INCARNAtION.
All of us are wounded. The great poets show us their wounds and  allow us to touch them and in so doing come to  understand  our own suffering flesh.

My Favorite Poets
by Adam Zagajewski
Issue no. 226 (Fall 2018)

My favorite poets
never met
They lived in different countries
and different ages
surrounded by ordinariness
by good people and bad
they lived modestly
like an apple in an orchard
They loved clouds
they lifted their heads
a great armada
of light and shade
sailed above them
a film was playing
that still hasn’t ended
Moments of bitterness
passed swiftly
likewise moments of joy
Sometimes they knew
what the world was
and wrote hard words
on soft paper
Sometimes they knew nothing
and were like children
on a school playground
when the first drop
of warm rain
descends

—Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh

Writers at Work around the World, Interviews from The Paris Review $20.00 View The Paris Review No. 229, Summer 2019 $20.00 View Copyright © 2019 The Paris Review. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Paris Review 544 West 27th Street 3rd Floor New York, New York 10001 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe, if you must. ReplyForward