27 Comments
Jun 17, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy

What a wonderful, heartfelt and exploring essay! Continue on, dear one.

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Beatiful Jack, thanks for sharing. The initial intimate details are actually quite relevant to me also, so I appreciate your openness and courage.

I believe what you and Saint John are pointing at is that God may not be seen by us unless He chooses to reveal Himself. We cannot see God, but may pray that He will shed His loving glance upon us. It's a descending process. If we strive to ascend on our own strength, we'll just deceive ourselves and end up chasing fantasies and projections, as many do - those who are not patient or brave enough to just sit in darkness and let it sink in completely.

Stillness (nishta in Sanskrit) is an early stage of progress, but already advanced enough to give us our first glimpses - abhas, shadows or reflections - of divinity. Then, we can remember the perspective that this vision will one day be full and complete:

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."

So may that stillness come into our hearts, Haribol!

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Jul 20, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy

When you wrote "suspension of rationality" I thought of Catherine Doherty's phrase "folding the wings of the intellect".

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Well done!

It is we who are hiding (Genesis 3:9) behind the lies we believe - and from which He has once and for all set us free.

Hebrews 2:14-15

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B487M8KEkpHZcU9ibzhZMDV4SXc/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-9RjjjQTYcnAs9ZRD1mFmRw

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Jun 21, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy

I love St. John of the Cross so much. Lorena McKennitt set his poem to music, have your heard it? https://youtu.be/_EaIdzfcbKs

The darkness, the pit, pain, aloneness... they can teach us so much more than light and happiness can. Our God is a broken-hearted God and we share in His broken-heartedness. It won’t kill us. It will set us free.

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Thanks. This reminds me of Weil: ' ‘The absence of God is the most marvellous testimony of perfect love, and that is why pure necessity, necessity which is manifestly different from the good, is so beautiful.’

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Thanks, Jack. This one spoke to me in a timely way. There is so much to cling to, and to cling to so easily. There is a gravitational pull whether in dreams or whatever is circling round us or in us. God is the counter-pull, though hidden as you say. Yet I would even go a bit further (or in a slightly different direction) and say that God has not been altogether hidden in my own life, and has made his presence powerfully, even miraculously felt, though even with that, my faith and prayerfulness can falter and dwindle or grow petulantly demanding.

Psalm 88 seems to give no answer to this problem, other than the fact the psalmist keeps praying to the God who is hidden and seems to do nothing. Which says something.

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Jun 17, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy

Thanks for the essay Jack. I had a few stabs at contemplative prayer and failed to even get out of the starting blocks. I look forward to hearing of your experiences. I hope that in a monastery you will be in the right kind of environment.

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