The Very Merry Month of May

Welcome to May!  The entire month of May in 2011 is spent in celebration of the Feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, aka Pascha or Easter. After completing a 7 week period of fasting, we now rejoice in 40 days of feasting until we celebrate Christ's Ascension on June 2nd of this year. 

In light of this, I would like to keep this month's posts joyful and refreshing.  I was going to post something about the recent demise of OBL, but that doesn't really work with "joyful and refreshing."  OBL's dead, and this time of year is about rejoicing in life for Christ is Risen!

My first post of the month comes from a book that I quoted from in the very beginnings of this blog called In Thy Presence written by Lev Gillet, a French Orthodox Christian monk.  The book can be purchased at SVS Press (link on the side bar).  From the back cover of the book: "These meditations reveal the nature of God's love in its depth, splendor and tenderness.  By opening our minds to the immense energy of God's presence in the universe, within and through human tribulation, they illuminate the most commonplace actions of daily life and identify our hunger and hope for communion with God, for a spiritual journey with a transcendent purpose and destination."

Today's reflection is entitled "Morning Dew" (p.30)

My child, I want thee to feel thyself in communion with the greatness of my universe, with its unformed aspiration, with its unformed thanksgiving.  But above all, in those moments when thou seekest to become one with limitless Love, I want thee to be very humble.

Thou hast seen the morning dew.  It forms trembling pearls on the blades of grass and on the leaves, before or shortly after the rising of the sun.

Dew is abundant where the earth is humid and exposed, when the weather is fine and perfectly calm.

Each small iridescent drop mirrors the colours of the rainbow.  No matter how minute, it reflects the basic colours of the universe.

My child, be thou this infinitesimal drop of dew coming to life on the humid earth of tenderness, as the sun rises in a loving heart.

Be this drop which for all its smallness, in its whole extent, reflects the beauty of the world.

And then be re-absorbed thyself into the light and heat of the sun.  Because it is the sun that gives dew-drops their being.

Here's a link to the other two posts from this book.

More from your Love

The Essential Bond

My child, widen thy vision to the dimensions of universal Love, to the dimensions of My Heart.

Limitless Love does not end in man. The entire universe is upheld by My Love. It is the essential bond between all beings, between all things, and the One who gives them life.

Be swept away by the immense tide of limitless Love, by that energy, by that hope with which the whole of nature waits, groaning, to be delivered from the consequences of the fall.

Man reaches upward toward Me. But do not lose sight of My reaching down to man, to all things.

Take a flower in thy hand. Take a stone. Think about them, not from a scientific point of view, but from the point of view of Love. They form a summary of the evolution of the world. They symbolize Love aspiring to its heights and also Love coming to us down the centuries, disclosing itself to us, giving itself to us, coming ever closer to us.

See the Beauty of Love in a blade of grass, in a leaf, in a branch. Make an offering of a scent or a colour. Include thy life in the life of the universe, submitting it to the same divine plan. Think of the mountains and of the sea, of the winds and storms, of wild beasts and of very small animals. All of them have a place in My Heart. Make room for them in thy prayer. That through them it may be guided into wider avenues than that of a piety in which the universe has no part.

Learn to recognize Love's purpose in every creature. I have loved each grain of sand, each tree, each animal. Each one of them represents a reaching upward and a stooping down. Enter into all this and yield thyself to it. Give thanks in the name of nature which cannot speak. Let thy response to limitless Love be reverence as vast as the world.

Dost thou love the sun? Dost thou love the stars? Dost thou love the galaxies? Dost thou give thanks to Me for their creation and their presence? Dost thou enter into Divine Love for all that exists?

Perhaps this is difficult for thee. To love snakes...Even if thou wert bitten by a snake, thou shouldst try to love it at the very moment of its biting thee. Animals are not culpable. They only act in accordance with the needs of their nature. They, too, are the victims of man's original fall. But I do not cease from loving them all.

The stone which is thrown into water causes ever-widening circles to be set in motion. This invisible movement affects all of the molecules of the universe. Thus is it with my limitless Love. My Love is an emotion which spreads to infinity, and unites in essence all that exists.

This mediation is also from the book In Thy Presence by Lev Gillet. SVS Press

The photo is from the Hubble Site. I could spend days there.

A meditation from your only true Lover

But I know thee

My child, thou hast not known what thou art. Thou dost not know thyself yet. By this I mean: thou has not really known thyself as the object of My Love. And, as a result, thou hast not known what thou art in Me, nor all that is potentially in thee.

Wake up from out of thy sleep and from thy bad dreams. Thou seest thyself, in certain moments of truth, only the failures and the defeats, the falls, the defilements, perhaps the crimes. But all this is not thee. That is not thy real 'self', thy deepest 'self'.

Under all that, behind all that, under thy skin and behind all thy transgressions and all thy failings, I Myself see thee.

I see thee and I love thee. It is thy own self that I love. It is not the wrong thou doest-that wrong which one must neither ignore, nor deny, nor extenuate (can black be white?) But underneath, at a greater depth, I see something else, something that is still alive.

The masks that thou dost wear, the disguises with which thou dost clothe thyself, may serve to conceal thee from the eyes of others and even from thine own eyes. But they cannot hide thee from Me. I pursue thee to a greater depth than anyone has ever pursued thee before.

That look - thy look - which is no longer clear and open, and thy feverish, breathless greed for what seems important to thee, all those uncertain contortions, and thy hard and miserly heart - all that, I separate from thee. I cut it away from thee. I cast it far away from thee.

Listen. No one really understands thee. But I understand thee. I could say such splendid, such beautiful things about thee! Of thee I could say them: not of that 'thee' that the power of darkness has so often led astray, but of the 'thee' such as I desired it to be, of the 'thee' who lives in Me, concept and purpose of love, of the 'thee' which could still visibly exist.

Become visibly what thou art in My thought. Be the fulfilled reality of thyself. Allow the powers that I have put in thee to become active.

In no man or woman is there the possibility of any interior beauty or goodness that does not also exist in thee. There is no divine gift whatsoever to which thou mayest not aspire. For thou shalt receive them all if thou lovest with Me and in Me.

Whatever thou mayest have done in the past, I sever thy bonds. And if I sever thy bonds, who can prevent thee from getting up and walking?

This mediation is from the book In Thy Presence by Lev Gillet. SVS Press

I wish I could give a copy of this book to every person I know. If you have a beating heart, this book will speak to it.