At the Gate of Heaven

Dearest Friend,

I hope that you might know that I do not, cannot abuse our friendship. When I go silent, it is not that I am not thinking of you. Nor am I presuming our friendship, but trusting it. Trusting you. Trusting us. I sit in wonder at how wide the gap between presumption and trust. Can you imagine?

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Kathryn and Carley and I arrived at the farmhouse on Friday night, amid the relentless rain. About an hour after we had unloaded the steaks and salmon and eggs and produce from our cooler into the refrigerator, the water washed away the electricity somewhere upstream of us, and we waited an hour or two before the darkness nudged Kathryn and me to one of the many, many nearby brewery-distillery-restaurants for dinner. We passed a number of such places along the way - blackened and nearly invisible until we finally came upon brewery-distillery-beacon-restaurant that apparently had generator out back. Beyond our hearing, or simply softer than the rainfall, and we ate our dinner in quiet conversation.

When we returned a few hours later, even the headlamps had a hard time penetrating the thick-wet-dark blanketing our narrow gravel drive. But we made it home and we took our medicine and we brushed our teeth and decided leave our screens downstairs and to turn in.

It was barely 9:00, but there was nobody, except for us and God to judge, and I think God was likely resting, too. I resist the idea that God is always on the clock…always working. No. I want to believe God observes the rhythms of creation. That sometimes God laughs. That sometimes God weeps. That sometimes God scatters stones and, at other times, gathers them up. That God sometimes plants and at other times sows. That God dances, probably in thundershowers, and that it’s okay for us to follow God’s lead. And maybe when the power is out and when the rain is falling on the roof like a lullaby, God turns in early, and it’s okay for us to do the same.

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One of the things I hope to do out here is to spend less time doing breath-work, and more time breathing. To forget about finding my life’s work, and remembering to live. To pay more attention to the birds and deer and butterflies and clouds on our morning walks, and to pay less attention to my own heart rate and the number of steps I have taken, how high I have climbed or how far I have hiked.

How long have those been the metrics of my living? How long, indeed? 😋 And what would it mean to let go of those metrics, and resist replacing them with others?

I recently came across the idea of experiential fusion. In his book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord, Daniel Levitin describes it in terms of music this way:

"During experiential fusion you temporarily lose awareness of yourself as an individual separate from the music: you and the music have become one.”

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Maybe you’re already familiar with this idea. Maybe this is Merton’s Le Point Vierge, about which he wrote:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely….

I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

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So maybe a different way of saying all of this is that I hope to spend the month letting things fall away, and maybe, and especially so, the burden of my own self-awareness, so that the music that is all around us and I might become one. No distinction.

When I talked to a friend about this, he said:

“It sounds to me like the summary of how you are describing your time is that you are going in order to place yourself in God’s presence and be in a place of availability and receivership for whatever he may want to do.”

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Haven’t I always told you I have brilliant friends? Like you.

And here is main thing. I recognize, like Merton and like my friend, that there is no program for this. Only grace and a willingness to surrender to the everywhere-ness of the gate of heaven.

Or maybe we can say it this way: The secret is, there is no secret.

Oremus,

C