I read this the other day and thought of our little sub-group here and that maybe some of you would appreciate these words. This is from a lovely book, "Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom" by John O'Donohue. Jemila, it goes with what you posted in the larger discussion. (I love those synchronicities)
"The Senses as Thresholds of Soul
For too long, we have believed that the divine is outside us. This belief has strained our longing disastrously. This makes us lonely, since it is human longing that makes us holy. The most beautiful thing about us is our longing; this longing is spiritual and has great depth and wisdom. If you focus your longing on a far away divinity, you put an unfair strain on your longing. Thus it often happens that the longing reaches out toward the distant divine, but because it overstrains itself, it bends back to become cynicism, emptiness, or negativity. This can destroy your sensibility. Yet we do not need to put any strain whatever on our longing. If we believe that the body is in the soul and the soul is divine ground, then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us.
Being in the soul, the body makes the senses thresholds of soul. When your senses open out to the world, the first presence they encounter is the presence of your soul. To be sensual or sensuous is to be in the presence of your own soul. Wordsworth, careful of the dignity of the senses, wrote that 'pleasure is the tribute we owe to our dignity as human beings'. This is a profoundly spiritual perspective. Your senses link you intimately with the divine within you and around you. Attunement to the senses can limber up the stiffened belief and gentle the hardened outlook. It can warm and heal the atrophied feelings that are the barriers exiling us from ourselves and separating us from eachother. Then we are no longer in exile from the wonderful harvest of divinity that is always secretly gathering within us. Though we will consider each of the senses specifically, it is important to acknowledge that the senses always work compositely. The senses overlap. We can see this in the different responses people have to color, which indicates that colors are not perceived merely visually. "
And he does go on to address the various senses specifically.... and beautifully, I might add.
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2 comments:
This is all true IF one has opened himself up to the one who wants to inhabit the soul, Jesus Christ. He then becomes the lover of our souls, bringing His nourishing, healing, and compassionate love to it. Upon entry in to us, our soul is enlarged and grows, shining light into our darkness and dispelling it. His light begins to shine as time goes on like this, and then we begin to reflect His image. Our soul is restored or renewed progressively, until the union that Jesus prayed for before going to the Father takes place; He is us, and we in Him, becoming a beautiful symbiotic relationship where He is glorified through our being. It is most wonderfuly mysterious.
My first visit here - and let me begin by saying I love the idea behind this blog.
This post was both a joy and a trial to read(!)... let me seek to explain:
1."The most beautiful thing about us is our longing; this longing is spiritual and has great depth and wisdom".
There is a truth amidst this thought - when our souls 'long and thirst' for the presence of God in what we are and do, then longing is indeed beautiful, and can allow any and every aspect of life to become the point for life that is meaningful (spiritual).
2."If we believe that the body is in the soul and the soul is divine ground, then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us".
Why not just accept that all of creation is actually 'holy ground', that the body is (can be) just as sanctified as the 'soul' - after all, God communed with Adam by walking in the garden with him in the cool of the day, and one of the most 'spiritual' things that Jesus enjoyed (desired to do) was to sit and eat a meal with friends, or delight in the joys of a wedding...that is spirituality.
3."Your senses link you intimately with the divine within you and around you".
Our senses can certainly be 'trained' (attuned) to see that the one who 'speaks' through creation, and the living word (His Son), and the 'preaching' these bring, can use our 'eyes' our 'ears' etc to speak to us - in ways that may begin externally but then go much deeper.
Using our senses well is certainly vital in growing in the life that comes down from on high.
In His grace,
Howard.
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