We see that at Christ’s death the whole world entered upon a cosmic spring the harvest of which will be the remaking of our universes in newness and splendor. At the moment of Christ’s death the veil in the temple was rent in two from top to bottom, the veil that hung before the Holy of Holies. The veil of the temple represented the whole universe as it stands between God and man. At the moment when Christ’s act of redemption is consummated, the whole cosmos opens itself to the Godhead, bursts open for God like a flowerbud. The universe is no longer what it was before.
The Son of God tore open the whole world and made it transparent to God’s light. The transformation of the world is even now a reality.
Christ Is,
Christ Is
The Heart of the Heart of the world,
the Heart of the Heart of the world
Draw us deeper,
draw us deeper.
Jesus was just sitting there—surrounded by the deepest, most alienated, most constricted state of pained consciousness: sitting, if we can imagine it, among all those faces of the collective false self, sitting there in the midst of all this, not judging, not fixing; just letting it be in love. And in so doing, he was allowing love to go deeper, pressing all the way to the innermost ground out of which the opposites arise and holding that to the light. A quiet, harmonizing love was infiltrating even the deepest shadows, in a way that didn’t override them or cancel them, but gently reconnected them to the whole, holding all things in love’s embrace and in such a way that released them from the grip of duality. In that ultimate letting be, he transformed them into sacred vessels of divine love. This is the mystical meaning of the great Pauline statement:
In him all things hold together (Col. 1:17).
For you yourself created my inmost parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
My body was not hidden from you,
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth…
Search me, Lord; test me
to the depths of my inmost heart.
Root out all selfishness from me
and lead me in eternal life.
In the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope…the hidden spring of mercy deep within us is released in that touch and flows out from the center…In plumbing deeply the hidden rootedness of the whole where all things are held together in the mercy, we are released from the grip of personal fear and set free to minister with skillful means and true compassion to a world desperately in need of reconnection.
Because once someone dared
to want you,
I know that we, too, may want you.
When gold is in the mountain
and we’ve ravaged the depths
till we’ve given up digging,
it will be brought forth into day
by the river that mines
the silences of stone.
Even when we don’t desire it,
God is ripening.
I will not leave you orphaned;
I am coming to you.
John 14:18
Words and Images from the top:
The Dove, No. 1, Hilma af Klint, 1915, courtesy of Rhododendrites, public domain via Wikimedia Commons;
We see that at Christ’s death…quote compiled from The Mystery of Death by Ladislaus Boros (pg. 150);
Christ Is…chant by Susan Latimer who says about it: This chant came to me on May 1, Teilhard’s birthday, as I prepared to go to a wisdom school on Teilhard at Valle Crucis. I had been struck by words that he wrote on the back of a prayer card with the Sacred Heart of Jesus: “(Christ is the) Heart of the worlds Heart”. This card was found on his bedside table after his death on an Easter morning. Cynthia offers that the drone, “Christ Is” represents the Geosphere; the Biosphere is represented by “the Heart of the Heart of the world”; the noosphere by “draw us deeper;”
The Heart of the Earth: Descent, Tether, Ascent charcoal pencil on gray paper, courtesy of Laura Ruth;
Jesus was just sitting there…ending with Col. 1:17 “In him all things hold together.” Compiled from The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—A New Perspective on Christ and His Message by Cynthia Bourgeault (pg. 113);
While I was Being Made in Secret, Woven in the Depths of Earth, watercolor on gray paper, courtesy of Laura Ruth;
For you yourself created my inmost parts; from Psalm 139 (second stanza Stephen Mitchell translation);
In the contemplative journey…from Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God by Cynthia Bourgeault (pg. 98);
Because once someone dared to want you, poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, translation by Mark Burrows;
Celtic Roots, mandala by Barbara Miller;
I will not leave you orphaned…Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), John 14:18.