Session One
The Light Within
“Deep within us all there is a Divine Center into which we may continuously return.”
Christ is within us all
All the good we do is Christ doing good through us
We are called - urged - to such depth of inner life and relationship with the Divine Center that we look out at the world through the “sheen of the Inward Light” and act FROM this Inward Center.
Inner orientation toward God is the way of Jesus
Our vocation is to take the light within us into the world and bring the world into our hearts where it may be illuminated, comforted, and healed by the Light Within
You can indeed be very active in the world while nurturing a quiet and worshipful inner life.
The secular world values busyness, but the “deep level of prayer and divine attendance is the most important thing.”
“Theologies and symbols and creeds are transient and become obsolete.” The Divine Life continues in “creative newness.”
“Behind the scenes keep up the life of simple prayer and inward worship.” He often refers to Br. Lawrence’s teachings and also puts us in the mind of the Cloud of Unknowing.
There is a total reorientation. We are torn loosed from worldly attachments and then the world is thrust into our hearts that might love the world with God.
Detachment - God asks all, but God gives all.
Holy Obedience
There is a call to complete obedience; to “follow God’s faintest whisper.”
The first half of detachment is to let go of worldly things and the second half is to let go of self.
“It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living god, to be invaded to the depths of one’s being by His presence, to be, without warning, wholly uprooted from all earth-born securities and assurances, and to be blown by a tempest of unbelievable power which leaves one’s old proud self utterly, utterly defenseless, until one cries, “All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me” (Ps. 42:7).
The first step to Holy Obedience, that is consenting to the second half of detachment is envisioning what such a life fully surrendered looks like.
The second step is this: “Begin where you are. Obey now.”
The third step is this: If you slip, don't spend time in “anguished regrets just begin again.”
A fourth consideration is don’t try too hard. “Take hands off. Submit yourself to God.”
Two chief fruits of holy obedience are passion and humility
“Humility rests upon a holy blindness.” Wherever one looks one sees not the work of self, but the work of God. Jesus saw God in all that he saw.
Another fruit is solidarity with all suffering. We don’t escape the suffering of the world, we join it.
“The last fruit of Holy Obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child…”
“This amazing simplification comes when we “center down,” when life is lived with singleness of eye, from a holy Center where the breath and stillness of Eternity are heavy upon us and we are wholly yielded to Him.”