Dear Friends,
We hope that you are safe and well.
In today's Meditation, Thomas Merton is in awe to be a "Member of the Human Race." It was sent to us by Irene Desharnais.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
A MEMBER OF HUMAN RACE - Thomas Merton
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut,
in the center of the shopping district,
I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that
I loved all those people, that
they were mine and I theirs, that
we could not be alien to one another
even though we were total strangers.
It was like waking from a dream of separateness,
of spurious self-isolation in a special world,
the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.
The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.
........... This sense of liberation from an illusory difference
was such a relief and such a joy to me that
I almost laughed out loud, and I suppose
my happiness could have taken form in the words:
"Thank God, thank God that I am like other men,
that I am only a man among others."
........ It is a glorious destiny to be a member
the human race, though it is a race dedicated to
many absurdities and one which makes many terrible
mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried
in becoming a member of the human race.
A member of human race !
To think that such a commonplace realization
should suddenly seem like news that
one holds a winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.
I have the immense joy of being man,
a member of a race in which God Himself
became incarnate.
As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition
could overwhelm me,
now I realize what we all are.
And if only everybody could realize this !
But it cannot be explained.
There is no way of telling people that
they are all walking around shining like the sun.
........ Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty
of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where
neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach,
the core of their reality,
the person that each one is in God's eyes.
If only they could all see themselves as they really are.
If only we could see each other that way all the time.
There would be no more war, no more hatred,
no more cruelty, no more greed ....
I suppose the big problem would be that
we would fall down and worship each other.
But this cannot be seen, only believed and
understood by a peculiar gift.
...... At the center of our being is a point of
nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion,
a point of pure truth, a point or spark which
belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal,
from which God disposes of our lives,
which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind
or the brutalities of our own will.
This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty
is the pure glory of God in us.
It is so to speak His name written in us,
as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence,
as our sonship (and daughtership).
It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible
light of heaven.
It is in everybody, and if we could see it
we would see these billions of points of light
coming together in the face and
blaze of sun that would make all the darkness and
cruelty of life vanish completely ....
I have no program for this seeing.
It is only given.
But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
---- from "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander" by Thomas Merton