Dear Friends,
We hope that you are safe and well.
Today's Meditation lifts up Caryll Houselander. She saw the spark of the Divine in everyone.
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
MEDITATION 803: Caryll Houselander: Blessed Among Us
Caryll Houselander
Mystic (1901–1954)
Caryll Houselander, an English laywoman, had a definite sense of her vocation: to awaken others to the presence of Christ in the world. This conviction was implanted from her childhood by a series of mystical experiences that continued throughout her life. The most striking of these experiences occurred one day in her adulthood, while she stood on a crowded train in London. As she looked at the people around her, “quite suddenly I saw with my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture, Christ in them all . . . living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them.” When she left the train “it was the same . . . in every passerby, everywhere—Christ.” This vision lasted for several days and altered her life completely.
Houselander supported herself by woodcarving and decorating churches. Later she wrote poetry and children’s books. Her true mission, however, consisted in her relationships with others—not just friends, but strangers, neurotics, friendless people whom others avoided. Simply through attention and friendship, she sought to awaken them to a sense of their own divine spark. Eventually her writing mission took over. During the Second World War she offered a message of consolation to those struggling with their faith, sharing the good news that Christ was truly present in the sufferings of the world. “We have to stretch Christ in us to fit the size of this war, the cross overshadowing the whole world.”
Houselander died of breast cancer on October 12, 1954.
“It is amazing to think that in heaven when everything is understood we shall keep on saying to one another ‘How astonishing that we should ever have doubted the mercy in it all.’”
—Caryll Houselander