After all this way, I only want your questions. The things you and I conclude don’t matter much. I don’t know why. It just is so.
For all our talk of truth and God won’t ensure that you and I are true or holy.
Just feed me your questions. I need them to keep this fire going.
*Reduced to Joy.
* * *
In every relationship, that in us is reaching out to that in the other. The nature of the heart is to flow out into communion. This is the way the Self recreates itself, eternally - for this is not constrained by time.
God comes out of God to give and receive. Yet, the Sun and sunshine are one. The sunshine is the Sun coming out of itself, yet it is not separate from itself. So, God comes alive when two hearts meet. This is intuited in the Christian Scriptures, most articulate in the Gospel of John.
* * *
Hence, Meister Eckhart, the late German, Christian mystic, said -
The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.
So, I say -
The eye with which you see the other is the same eye with which the other sees you.
* * *
Every relationship includes you. To fall in love - maybe better, in Love - with yourself is a fruit of the Way. Loving anything includes loving yourself. The loving is one loving.
If you love a tree, this is the same love by which you love yourself, another, or God. There is one fire, one love.
* * *
The meeting of hearts is so, for communion flows out of that. Becoming is borne into our sharings by that unbecoming.
To love anything is to enter a stream stretching across what we call time. You say you choose this love; you discover it chose you.
* * *
For the poet, his relationship with another has reached the point where he calls for questions. No conclusions. Conclusions - well, it is in the word. The English "conclude" derives from the Latin concludere, "to shut up, enclose." Something is ended, rather than left open to unfold, to remain fresh, to show itself, to surprise, even stun into awe or laughter or silence. With a conclusion, a period is placed where a question mark, a comma, or any grammatical notation inviting more to come, to be seen, to be known, to be unknown.
The nature of dogma, religious or otherwise, is that of sentence-ending, closing the door on the joy of open-minded, open-hearted exploration together. People can rail against religious dogma while, at the same time, being dogmatic themselves in a non-religious way or dogmatically against religion.
When we reach a determination, we have arrived at a destination. Even our talk of "God" or "truth" easily becomes a dead end. This is what I believe - dead end. I believe in God - dead end. I know who I am - dead end. I know you - dead end. I am sure of what you need - dead end. Dead... dead... dead ... end... end... end....
* * *
Nepo wants the relationship reflected in what is shared verbally. He is ready for the sharing together of words mirroring an open road leading nowhere. Then, the sharing and relationship remain alive, ever-fresh, even adventurous. You can say, "I never knew you until today," and again, the next day, "I never knew you until today."
As this can be our experience with anything, human or otherwise, we need to keep the questions alive in our relationship with Spirit. We need to protect and cherish the comma. We need to beware of being dogmatic, even in a reaction to dogmatism. And, as in our relationships with others, this helps keep the fire alive. Yes, arid times may come, but the fire can still burn. We can feed the fire, even when we feel devoid of its warmth.
* * *
We can reach forth, yielding into a deeper communion with another by not-knowing them. Not-knowing them is always now, a present tense that has no past to enclose it.
* * *
Love undoes our certainty that "I know you." This may seem like a loss, but of what? There are blissful losses, even if at first, we grieve. Even our God can undergo many deaths and rebirths, while God remains God.
* * *
To lose someone we knew can be to receive them afresh, free of the past, arising now. Loss after loss... but - discovery. Not that you discover, but discovery arises out of the ground of the loss; a gift, it being another face of what is known. Hence, paradoxically, you know the other more by their becoming unknown to you. Then, in the unknowing - what Christian mystics have coined "divine ignorance" and "bright darkness" - you love them more, for your love is free of the enclosure of the past. And, thereby, you cherish their particulars not less, but more. What you cannot name of another, cannot even see, leads you to love more the whole self, seen and unseen, not less, in this incognizance.
* * *
A Christian Scripture applies here, where the writer is looking to a beyond-death experience. I see it as possible now: "Now, we see through a glass-mirror dimly, but then, face-to-face, we shall know as we are now known."
To know "face-to-face" is to know that only the heart knows is beyond identity, yet can be known intimately, only intimately. I am not speaking of knowing about someone, which is often mistaken for knowing. Knowing is intuitive, direct, alive. So, that is not appearance, not personality - more real than either. To know the other as that in this way is to know God for the first time, and in this knowing that, God knows God for the first time.
(C) brian k. wilcox, 2025
Sources: Matthew Fox. Meditations with Meister Eckhart.
