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I sit alone in this Prayer Room. Candles are aglow. Tired, I sit. Wearied, I prepared for others to share this Communion and Celebration, after pouring my heart out this morning in the Message, and my having been awake long before dawn.
From behind my seat arises the beautiful chant of Tibetan monks, a special treat for others to share with me. I rest in peace, alone, with eyes closed and breathing with ease. I enjoy the chant and feel myself becoming one with it. I hear no arrival and, therefore, after a time I open my eyes, I see no one, and I stand.
I turn toward the bread and juice, representing the One Life, I AM, meant to be shared, tonight, with others. I, with an odd feeling, am determined that I, even though alone, will offer myself the Communion Meal and recall that even alone I am not alone. I lift the elements in self-oblation, pure ecstasy, entering the self-giving of Mystery, the ecstasy of the Divine. I dip and partake.
"I AM Communion; I AM Life. I coinhere with and in All, through Everything, I AM That, I AM Wonderful Presence, Ground of Being, Light, Love. Oneed with Christ I AM Christ, for I, as I, am in Christ, where no differentiation of being is in fullness of all Being, for God, the Ground of Being, is Being of all being. I AM both; I AM You."
I leave and go to the grocery store. I purchase some dipped ice cream: big dips of peanut butter, dark chocolate, white chocolate. I enjoy some TV. I sleep, snuggled up in an old recliner, alone, not alone.
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Being being alone, I never am alone. I can enjoy all and need none. So, I am grateful, this day, for those moments alone in that Prayer Room, and well into the night, at home. I know that my feelings of being lonely are nothing more than part of the fullness of aloneness, a blessed and spacious solitariness, and one I embrace, gladly, to know God as God more completely, as well as to know myself in relationship with God and as God, being in Being, Being manifesting as being. In knowing this, I befriend even the pain that can arise in feeling forsaken and see how some are called to enter forsakenness, or denial, or betrayal, to embody a Life of true Communion, rather than the facile togetherness that is itself an avoidance of the intimacy I share with this, My Love.
“Even as a man enters his beloved, during intercourse, and they are that much one in body and, so, One, so I AM with You, My Love.” So, I honor the mystical participation that knows no boundaries and needs no other to boundary itself.
"She who is able to befriend aloneness needs pity from no one for that aloneness. Rather, sad is she who cannot find the Communion within her aloneness and, thus, is very lonely. This aloneness I enter, is the emptiness that needs no one and nothing; that emptiness, then, and only that emptiness, is the place where one can receive All. She who is not prepared to celebrate Communion by herself is not ready to celebrate it with everyone. I AM; I am That, too."
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