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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. I hope persons of varied faith paths will find inspiration here. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries – An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
SCRIPTURE
Come, bask in the Light of Love,
all you who would serve
the Divine plan!
Lift up your hands to the Holy One,
singing songs of praise!
Bow down and receive blessing from
the Giver of Life!
All praises be to You,
whose Love created heaven
and earth!
*Nan C. Merrill. Psalms for Praying. "Psalm 134."
And the WORD became flesh and lived among us. And we looked at his Beauty, Beauty as of the only born Offspring of the One. This WORD was filled with and emanated the energies of Grace and Truth.
*John 1.14
REFLECTIONS
This sense of being suspended over nothingness and yet in life, of being a fragile thing, a flame that may blow out and yet burns brightly, adds an inexpressible sweetness to the gift of life, for one sees it entirely and purely as a gift. A gift that one must treasure in great fidelity with a pure heart.
*Thomas Merton. A Year with Thomas Merton. Ed. Jonathan Montaldo. From Journals: Dec 15, 1962.
* * *
Mystically, to say the Word, or Logos, became flesh, speaks of the one-ing of opposites. We enter the Word and the Word us by awareness that we are, yet our being is for we are being in the being of everything, in God. Nothing, not even what we call evil, is outside the One in essence. For the Psalmist to hymn that the Divine formed heaven and earth is the same as saying, "Everything comes into time-space out of the oneness in the Divine before time-space." So, all belongs, each thing mirrors in some manner the Eternal Wisdom. And Merton echoes for us the feeling of these opposites in our earthy frame within us. We hold these tensions in loyalty to the One in whom we find the peace of Union. This mystical marriage imaged by Jesus Christ is lived inside us, as well.
* * *
Much of our felt alienation and loneliness can be traced to our sense of duality: a separation consciousness. Likewise, much of our enmity, jealousy, envy, unforgiveness, war, injustice, …
This does not mean we do not live in dualities. In time-space we live within apparent opposites. We can be healthy spiritual beings by embracing and befriending these apparent contradictions. The call to follow the Spirit is, indeed, the summons to embrace all within you.
Take for example calm and anxiety. You may have both of these in you. These are of the same life force. Certainly, calm is more healthy. Yet, we each have these apparent opposites. The way to live with the tensions of opposites in us is to enter into them and live into the nondual Union they participate in.
The center is within the apparent opposites. There is the fullness of the Divine, the Nondual. Much of our suffering would cease simply by accepting and growing into a greater experience of this Nondual Awareness, and we would find it much easier to be peace makers rather than war makers.
This implies that one can experience the Sacred through any aspect of Nature. And we do not have to limit Nature to the visible. Rumi experienced Allah, or God, in Shams. In Hindu Tantra two lovers experience the Divine through their union physically. I am blessed to have a spiritual companion whom I find Spirit is manifesting through and teaching me of the beauties and mysteries of Grace. Really, since we can experience the oneness of the Divine in the multiplicity of Nature, why do persons lament of distance from God? Look deeply enough into the flower and you will see the Face of Love.
As is the case often, poetry speaks more clearly, even if vaguely, of such mystical processes. So, I share a poem, which I think will provide more experience of this than this prose. So, please read it, experience it, reflect on it, and ask, “What are the practical, ordinary implications for my life and world conveyed in this poem?”
A million candles,
a single light
they share.
Every creature,
distinct, manifests
the same life.
With distinction,
no separation,
all is One.
God wears
many faces,
so are you.
Shed illusion,
look deeply,
meet Simplicity.
Simplicity arises
as multiplicity,
thus this world.
So, not one,
not two,
is true.
Crossing the river?
Nowhere to go.
"I AM Here."
God is not shy.
Why are you still
looking?
Any aspect
is the way to
the Whole.
* * *
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.
*Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature. oregonstate.edu .
© OneLife Ministries. Jan 24, 2010.
* * *
*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. While within the Christian path, he is an ecumenical-interspiritual teacher, author, and chaplain. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Jail, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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