14. There is something behind our thinking mind.
Grief, mysticism, and faithfulness to a calling.
The contemplative teacher James Finley once said, "The danger in having a spiritual awakening early in life is that you spend the rest of your life trying to remain faithful to that early awakening.”
I have spent my adult life trying to make sense of the profound spiritual awakening(s) that I have been given.
Starting young, I have been reminded of the truth of how precious and precarious this life can be. I have found myself in thin places where the veil between Heaven and Earth is mighty thin indeed. I have been given eyes to see the Divine sparkling through my everyday existence over and over again.
This was the beginning of my calling to ministry. Early on in my discernment process, I could not articulate a calling to the church institution or hierarchy. I could not with integrity give the answer I was supposed to give:
“I feel called to sacramental ministry in the church.”
Instead, I could only say that I felt called to have conversations about life and death.
Luckily for me, the committees I was brought before saw this nascent calling for what it truly is: sacramental ministry.
This calling has remained constant as I have taken jobs in a Diocesan office and an Episcopal boarding school and now in a parish church.
Despite having the gem of this calling within, I am often caught in the tidal wave of the status quo. For an Episcopal priest of my generation, this often feels like institution building (or saving?). It is so easy to default to reading leadership books and planning the next revitalizing program. It is so tempting to buy the newest theological tome or reflection on the state of the world. It can feel like a desperate search for something or someone that will arrest the decline of the institution.
The path to becoming a nonprofit manager or community center director is everpresent in this vocation. To be clear, these are worthwhile callings for many people. For me, these can quickly become scaffolding to hold up my false self and my ego.
By the grace of God, my days and weeks are filled with moments that call me back to myself, back to that first love and first call.
A parishioner died on Wednesday. I had been sitting with him every other week or so for the last year to share the Eucharist and hold conversations.
He was a Buddhist for three decades until he was diagnosed with a cancer that would ultimately cause his death. After the diagnosis, he joined our parish. He only worshipped in our sanctuary once before he was homebound.
We shared a love of the contemplative and poetry. He had so many questions about Christianity and the story of our faith. He encouraged me to write this newsletter and to write more poems. When I missed a week, he would gently mention it at our next session.
“I missed your poem last week. That’s all I’ll say about that.”
His story was so incredible in so many ways, but his conviction that after all his Buddhist practice there was something missing is what stays with me. He did not reject Buddhism outright, he held onto much of its beautiful wisdom, but he became convinced that the Buddhist claims were missing one key fact: there is indeed a self, there is something here beyond our isolated minds.
I will miss his comments on these poems. I will miss our conversations. I will miss his gentle nudge to keep writing. I am grateful for his presence as a reminder calling me back to my heart - not to institution building but to conversation and contemplation of Life and Death.
He was a signpost that helped me remain faithful to my early awakening.
This poem is dedicated to him.
14. There is something behind our thinking mind. There is something behind our thinking mind. When all is emptied and you follow the breath as far down as it will go, there is something there. The blank space between words on the page. The charged silence between spoken noise. The rest between notes, canvas between strokes. There is something there. We are not nothing. We are held like birds on a line by something - no, Someone, divine who breathes with us and through us. We need some silence to hear the heartbeat of God echo in the cathedral of our chest. A home or a hearth where we can rest in peace. We must pause to recall the magic of it all that sits right behind our thinking mind, outside of time. The air between two pilgrims sharing their soul can be eternal as the breath of the One who hovered over precreation chaos, who swirls still in the chaos of our small self, tiny mind, calling us out and ringing the bell to beckon us home again.
Connor, this is beyond beautiful! My eyes are leaking. Thank you for the poem and for sharing a part of what makes you you. Keep dwelling in those thin places!