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Great Thinkers in the History of the Church (no. 15)
Our activity consists in loving God and our fruition in enduring God and being penetrated by his love. There is a distinction between love and fruition, as there is between God and his Grace. When we unite ourselves to God by love, then we are spirit; but when we are caught up and transformed by his Spirit, then we are led into fruition. And the spirit of God himself breathes us out from himself that we may love and may do good works; and again he draws us into himself, that we may rest in fruition. And this is Eternal Life; even as our mortal life subsists in the indrawing and outgoing of our breath.
—John Ruusbroec (1293-1381), Adapted from Trans. by Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism
Prayer
Spirit of Love, may I both rest and work from your impulse, ever mindful of the subtle leadings of your Spirit. Amen.
Comments
The Persian poet Farid Ud-Din Attar penned a Sufi classic The Conference of the Birds (12th Century). Attar tells the fable of the Hoopoe's leadership of a conference with birds who make excuses for not going on to find the King of birds beyond the boundaries of the earth. While speaking with the fourteenth bird, the Hoopoe introduces the theme of the necessity of aspiration in seeking God, symbolized in the narrative poem by the Simurgh: Persian, "the Great Bird." The following tale, Ibrahim Adham, is recited by the Hoopoe to illustrate aspiration, what it demands of us, and where it leads us.
A man was always complaining of the bitterness of poverty, so Ibrahim Adham said to him, "My son, possibly you have not paid for your poverty?" The man retorted, "What you say is nonsense, how can a person buy poverty?" "I, at least," said Adham, "have chosen it voluntarily, and I have bought it at the price of the kingdom of the world. And I would still buy a moment of this poverty for a hundred of those worlds."
Men and women who have a thirst for spiritual wholeness stake both soul and body on the issue. The bird of aspiration soars to God, lifted on the wings of faith above things temporal and spiritual.
The word aspiration is a cognate of the Latin for "Spirit, spirit." We can say, then, that to have aspiration means to be en-spirited, in-spired, in-vigorated, … This positive energy and its motivation is essential for the spiritual journey. Without such spiritfulness one should turn back.
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The spiritual path is not for persons who are lazy. That is, to follow Essence, or Spirit, seeking wholeness in the Divine, demands that one give one's whole self, totally, to the one goal of seeking to realize the True Self. This, also, is not necessarily gained by progressively becoming more religious; it is gained by becoming more human, truly human.
In the above story about Adham, the Hoopoe notes this need of unrelenting aspiration. With vitality and trust in God, one soars to Spirit inspirited; without Spirit inspiriting, one will need to withdraw and cease pretending.
Jesus, likewise, was unrelenting in his stress on the uncompromising call to negation of attachment to temporality (Attar's "the kingdom of the world") and submission to discipleship (compare Attar's seeking "the Simurgh"). However, Attar points to a matter not understood in popular religion; that is, aspiration and faith lead one to transcend both temporalityand spirituality.
Christians mystics have taught that it is in the darkness of unknowing that one finds pure faith. Buddhist teachers have taught that to be attached to form or Formlessness is greed, or clinging, and one will suffer from such emotional neediness. Thus, pure faith, along with commitment soaked with ardency, leads to an object-less trust that demands no destination for its contentment, for it arises from the One and returns to the One in one eternal act of Gracious Fidelity.
This is one reason Christian mystics have taught that the highest form of Prayer is Resting in God beyond thought of God. We come to know God more fully, not as object, but as God.
I drank the wine
so dark, I could not see;
stripped of knowing,
I was free. Beyond other,
One in me, I in He.
—Brian K. Wilcox
Scripture Meditation
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
—Colossians 2.6-7, NRSV
How does contemplation relate to transcending even spirituality? Have you had moments of felt union with God in which you did not sense God as an object of devotion? Have you ever Rested in God beyond all thoughts of self or God? Explain.
*First edition, January 9, 2002; Second and Expanded edition, August 5, 2006
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