Christified

At St. Augustine's House monastery I sat in the chapel yesterday, engaging in my own version of "centering prayer", meditation, whatever.. using as a repetitive phrase the words from Psalm 75, "The world is tottering, with all its inhabitants." As often occurs, my thoughts began to verge o

n the dream-like, and I imagined a young man, unknown to me, standing with another more familiar person and welcoming me to the monastery. Habitually, I let go of the image and while awareness of the second person remained, the young man vanished, leaving behind an emptiness that I have come, over the years, to identify as Christic.

 
The world totters and dissolves, and I along with it. I am part of the nothingness, except that nothingness has no parts. On the tottering edge, the absent youth welcomes me into being, but the "I" who witnesses all this goes unnoticed and unseen, of all things to nothingness the most akin.

All this occurs on a "stage" not of my crafting, a place beyond conscious choice or design, a place where gifts are bestowed and dangers threaten and what transpires is always true.