Just
now I started toward bed, but my mind prompts me to write. Thought provokes
thought. Having written the previous blog in which I realize my neglect of
prayer, now I must ask: How do I pray? How shall I pray now? How will I seek
God? Why not now.
Now. “Not tomorrow, not today, but now.” That which one seeks, in seeking God, is
the ever-present One. On the one hand, because always present and available,
one can turn and seek God at any moment. On the other hand, because the Divine
is ever-present, ever that which is most real in one’s life and experience, it
is all too easy to procrastinate the search, to say, in effect, “Not now, Honey,
I have a headache,” or some other dimly lit excuse.
If
God is here, why seek? By “seeking” is not some faring forward into
nothingness, a kind of wandering or meandering about more or less aimlessly. On
the contrary: To seek God is to respond to the One moving one to seek. That
much is crystal clear to me, and has been for nearly all of my adult life—no
doubt aided by Plato, the Apostle Paul, Eric Voegelin, and others. Aided, too,
by concrete human experience. When I seek God, all I am doing is letting go of
distractions, and attending to the Light that breaks in, unseen. It is at once
the most simple, most basic, most joyful mental activity in the world. What
breathing is to the body, responding to the One seeking is to the human spirit.
Seeking God is the life of the spirit; and failure to seek God, to respond to
the Seeking One, is spiritual sleep, if not spiritual death.
Hence,
I have been nudged interiorly to acknowledge that I am being sought, here and
now. This is Christ calling his disciples: not two thousand years ago, not to
fishermen, but here and now to me. To you, to anyone who will but attend. One
can say, “I do not hear Christ calling, or in any event, I am bored, find the
question uninteresting, and must fix dinner.” That is the kind of response I
keep hearing from one close to me all of my life, and whose neglect of God is
puzzling and painful to me. How can a human being think or pretend that there
is no God? For God not to be, nothing exists. God is the name given to the
Cause of all that is, and to that which moves all towards its completion and
happiness. That may sound too much like Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas, but it
is still true. I do not understand how any human being can deceive themselves
in to thinking that God is nothing at all, or that the entire “God-question” is
just a bore.
Why
are you alive? What is the meaning of your life? What are you seeking? “What’s it all about, Alfie?” The “agnostic” seems to say: “Frankly my dear, I
don’t give a damn.” Can anyone really be so superficial as not to wonder, “Why
am I alive? Why is the world here? Why is there something, why not nothing?” To wonder and to question is human, and the human task; not to question, not to
wonder, not to seek, is to refuse to perform our human task. And for what? “Fun.” Movies, video games, TV shows, sports, cards, sex, shopping, browsing
the net… Endless escapes by one who refuses to seek the Seeker, to respond to
the Mover that moves all things through all.
What
is it that I call “God”? I draw a deep breath, and left up chest up and back.
Yes, that is a good question. “Who are you, LORD?” However I ask, and wonder,
I also acknowledge that I would not ask or wonder, if I had not already heard,
and sensed the answer: “I AM HE WHO IS,” for one very good answer. I ask
nothing in a vacuum. My mind has been formed by accounts about God, and to
these I respond, and through them. God, Christ, LORD, the One, the Good, the
Beginning and the End, the First Cause, ultimate bliss… I AM WHO AM. Yes, the
God of the philosophers, but all the more, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
And ever for me, above all: the God of Moses, the God of Jesus Christ, the God
of the Apostle Paul, the God of the Greek philosophers, the God of the mystics
of the Church, the God of saintly men and women throughout the ages. The God of
the stars, and sun, and moon, and earth. That which is present here, there,
everywhere, always moving, yet not moved; always alive, giving life to all that
lives. I smile: I virtually drown in God! If I did not love You, surely I
would feel myself drowning, for You are everywhere, around, within, above,
below…. “Where can I go from your Spirit?” Nowhere. To be is nothing else than
to be in You.
***
So
far, easy. What am I really saying? This: That when I think, when I am aware,
I am also at the same time aware that You are with me. You are the Mind by
which my mind works. You are the Breath in every breath I take. It makes no
sense to say, “God is not,” for the very word “is” is but a basic name for God:
HE WHO IS, or in the even simpler response of Parmenides to divine Presence
everywhere: IS!
An
atheist such as Nietzsche or Marx is easier for me to understand than a
self-proclaimed agnostic. It seems more honest, too. Marx played his little
games with his childish atheism, but Nietzsche lives what he asserted, and it
killed his spirit utterly. He entered that sheer void in which he said the
whole universe is whirling and hurling because “God is dead.” No, Nietzsche
asserted that “God is dead.” By the Divine in him, Nietzsche cursed God. By
the brilliant power of divine Reason in him, Nietzsche sought to persuade others
that God, a human projection into emptiness, is nothing. By his own words he
stood condemned. The light of Reason, the Power of Nietzsche’s own atheistic
stance, is itself a testimony to God! How ironic. No one can say, “God is
nothing,” except by the divine One living in that person. There is no
consciousness apart from divine consciousness, although human consciousness is
not in itself wholly divine. God is present; the present is the unfolding of
God in space-time. Now is formed by the will of the Almighty.
I
assert, I do not reason. Okay, let me ask you this: Who are you, LORD? I
know, and do not know; I love You, and do not love You as I ought. Show
yourself to me, and I will be satisfied. And yet, You show yourself, not by
being seen, nor by being felt, but by being unknown, unfelt, unmoved. You show
yourself in our wondering minds, in the act of wondering, questioning, seeking,
loving. You draw us to yourself by bands of love indeed—and by questions of the
heart. Who are You, my LORD, and how can I love you more truly? “I’m in love
but I’m lazy….”
***
It
is 2145, and my eyes grow weary. Human beings need rest: a sure reminder of
our limited nature, and of our mortality. Soon the day will come when I will
need to rest, and not awake here. I am not there yet. I need rest to arise to
do my duties. My foremost duty is not to celebrate Mass, or to attend to
stocks, but to seek You. Show me what to read as I crawl into bed, and fill my
mind with delighting in your wisdom. Amen.
