Mother Teresa of Calcutta

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin."

She had left the convent she had spent years praying and teaching in. Suffering from Tuberculosis, she was on a train to Darjeeling with the intent of recuperating and resting. It was on this train that she heard His voice, the voice of God. He ordered her to leave the convent for good, and live among the poor and work with them. And so in just several years time she had started with a school in the slums to teach the children of the poor. And in a couple more the "Home of the Dying" was started under her direction. This woman denied herself all luxuries and comforts in favor of tirelessly helping those in need.

"I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: ‘I forgive my son.’ Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand."

She lived by grace. This woman saw suffering every day. She saw injustices the world could never imagine. She held it in her hands. Forgiveness was the only way. "If we really want to love we must learn to forgive." Hers was a religion of love.

"There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs—all different religions. But they all come to our prayers."

"There are so many religions and each one has its different ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my Everything."

She never loved to convert. Her service to those in need was for no reason but to love them. There was no ulterior motive. Her work was in honor of God, she did not place that on anyone else, or claimed that their way of honoring God was wrong. Every being that she helped held the face of God, every soul she touched was the very soul of Jesus. She understood the need for love, the hunger to be reached out to. God commanded us to go forth and love others as He loves us. And she did just that, simply and honestly and without expectation.

Mother Teresa was an inspiration to the world and an example of how we are to love.

And during all of this, during her love of those who needed love, care for those who needed care, help for the sick and dying, her life as an example of the love of Jesus, Mother Teresa struggled. For shortly after she came to Calcutta to live among the poor, Mother Teresa suffered a feeling of abandonment from the Lord. When once she heard Him speaking to her clear as day, she now heard nothing.

Mother Teresa described this time as "the darkness". She had known Jesus as her light and her salvation. Yet, she now lived in the darkness. And she struggled with her faith. She feared she might be a hypocrite by telling the world about the love of Jesus, her love for Jesus, when she wasn't even sure if she still had faith in Jesus. She even asked God for forgiveness for her stumbling faith in her letters, adding as a byline "if there is a God".

This news came through letters that had been hidden from the world and that were recently made public. And it sent a shockwave through the world. Mother Teresa, the woman who gave such love in the name of Jesus Christ, was not exactly 100% sure of her faith. This made her....

Human.

What a relief! I'm human too. And so are countless other Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews....... I'm willing to bet that everyone of faith has lacked faith at least once in their walk, especially those who are active in their faith. How can we not? There are so many unanswered questions in faith, so much that we with our human minds could not possibly comprehend no matter how much we prayed, studied the bible, researched history..... It's only natural that our faith might take a tumble from time to time, and for some of us, never return.

And yet this crisis in faith is rarely talked about. And if it is, it is never talked about in first person but rather about an "outsider". No, a real Christian would never question God's existence. A real Christian would never wonder if Jesus really was the son of God, if he was merely a man that people believed was the son of God? A real Christian would never wonder if Mary had merely gotten herself into a bad situation and created a lie to save herself from a stoning. A real Christian would not have confusion over whose words she was actually reading in the bible: God's or man's?

Friends, if this is true, then I am not a real Christian.

You know what I find most admirable about Mother Teresa's crisis in faith? Even though Mother Teresa felt an absence from God, even though she was not entirely sure He was there, even though she wasn't sure who it was that ordered her to leave the convent and live among the poor, her life path never changed. She felt like a hypocrite, yet her love for mankind never faltered. She still gave of herself unconditionally, bringing light to those who were in their own darkness. And I can even believe that Mother Teresa, in her darkness, could better understand these lost souls that the world had given up on. I believe that God's distance from her served his purpose through her.

And I believe that when Mother Teresa moved onto the next world, God revealed Himself to her after all those years of absence, and welcomed his obedient daughter home.

Yeshua

Breathe in.
I feel the breath.
I hear it.
Breathe out.
Relief.
Every sound, it is one in my ears.
But it is many different things
making each sound.
The chirping of the crickets.
The frogs in the distance.
The roar of the cars on the highway.
Many different sounds,
one in my ear.
The things I see,
they are all combined in my eye.
The stars overhead.
The perfect lines of the clouds
drifting on an invisible wind.
The way the hills seem to be outlined
by an unreal glow that dips with each dip,
and rises with each rise.
The plane that flies overhead,
narrowly missing another plane on a different course
several miles away from each other,
but in the same spot in my sight.
All seperate things,
all unaware of the other,
but all one sight in my eyes.
The two become one.
The many become few.
All is seperate,
yet all is the same.
And when I breathe in,
I feel you.
For you are in it all.
When I breathe out,
you are there in my breath.
I don't need to see you,
not like I see the things of this world.
For you are in the world,
you are of the world,
you are the world.
And you are more.
To expect to see you
standing before me
would be to deny that you already are,
just not as my human mind perceives.
You are in it all.
And I am just one that make up many
that makes up one.
I am a part of you.

The Anchor

For the last several weeks, my son has been extra clingy. It's been kind of nice, actually, as he has been content in just being at my side, or in my lap, or holding my hand, or interrupting whatever he is doing to come up and give me a really big hug. And I've been happy to comply. But I also wonder about what's going on inside of him that is making him so needy for me.

I've been working a lot lately. For the past three months I have been working full time at my job in a temporary position. Thankfully I move back to part time this next week, and I get Mondays off of work, giving me a three day weekend (yay!). But all Lucas has known is that I am gone almost the whole week, and it has been that way since September. His interaction with me is in the morning getting ready for school, and for three hours before bedtime. It has finally reached a head for him, and now when I am home, it is like he is soaking up lost time as furiously as he can. It also seems like he's afraid of losing me. It seems that the poor little guy has gone through so many changes in his young life, that he is afraid that if he doesn't hold onto me for dear life, I might leave too.

I have been taking this time just listening to him, and he has been opening up to me. He's gotten out some pretty hard feelings that he cried about having. But I could sense the relief in him for getting these difficult feelings out, ones I know he has been conflicted in having, and I can see his healing process take place. He is finally opening up to me about things he thought I'd hate him for. I have just held him, rocked his little body, and told him I could never hate my favorite little boy in the whole world, and that I was so proud of him for understanding his feelings and being honest about them.

He's been really emotional lately, crying at the drop of a hat over lots of things that would normally not even touch him. My role has been to be strong for him, to be the anchor he can hold onto while he misses certain parts of his life that are no longer, that he has had to become older than his 6 years to overcome.



In essence, isn't this the role God has with us? As I have been going through my own life changes, and as I have been strong for my son, I have my own questions and feelings that would have been hard to go through on my own without an anchor. I have prayed plenty, and have felt times when God held my own body in the folds of his warmth, slowly rocking it as I cried into the robes of his breath. And in sadness, I realize he's been there all the time, through all the changes I have gone through, and through the changes I am still going through.

Aren't we fortunate to have a God who knows us, who cares about us, who will never abandon us in our time of need, even when we push him aside? Aren't we fortunate to be able to be held and rocked in those times of turmoil, when we feel like the world is pushing us away, wanting nothing more to do with us?

In Buddhism they call this feeling enlightenment and Nirvana. In Christianity, they call it mysticism.

It is the feeling of God overcoming us, passing through us, proving his existance with the very presence of Him. It's the benefit of having a personal relationship with God, and one he does not fail in giving to us. It's what Jacob experienced when he saw God open up the Heavens. It's what Frances of Assissi experienced when he embraced a leper and felt God's undeniable presence,and understood his role in life serving God. It's what Mother Theresa embraced in sharing God's word without words to convince, but clear as day through her life of catering to the poor and forgotten. It's what caused Moses to lead his people from slavery and oppression, and what changed Moses' hair from dark to white upon seeing the face of God on the mountain. It's what Abraham felt as he heard God, despite living in a land where strange Gods were worshipped, and what caused Abraham to become the father of the nations. Mysticism is what Jesus experienced in His life, and what he gave back through teaching in love, and by fulfilling the ultimate act of sacrifice so that one day we would be able to experience God face to face.

It's what I have gone through in those times I have tuned out the distractions of this world and focused on God. It's the feeling He washes over me, the warm feeling that radiates through my whole being as I feel Him take over my whole body, leaving no part untouched. It's when the whole world just disappears and all I know is Him, for in that moment He is all I feel and all I hear. It is when he reassures me that He will always be my anchor, should I accept that.



This is the example I wish to give to my son in his time of need, that even though life is moving in a tornado of hurt and abandonment, confusion and disappointment, I am here, his anchor, never changing and always loving. And it is my hope that one day, when he grows too old to climb in my lap and seek comfort, he can take this relationship I have had with him and transfer it to God. It is my hope that my example will be understood by him as the love God has for us as His children, and that this love will never, ever disappear, just as my love for him will never disappear.

Mysticism in Christianity

I came across this "new" term, Christian Mysticism. And I wondered what it meant. Upon first glance of just the word, I figured it was some new agey thing. Maybe it focused on the miracles that took place. Maybe it was a group of people who thought they could perform miracles themselves. At any rate, just the word alone sounded a little NON-Christian. But as I knew nothing about it, I thought I'd research it. And the more I researched, the more I knew I was already familiar with this term, because it is what I strive to be practicing....

Christian Mysticism, in simplistic terms, is the spirituality of the direct experience of God. The definition in Wikipedia defines Mysticism as "the philosophy and practice of a direct experience of God. Although it needs to be born in mind that 'experience' is a hotly debated term in the discussion on mysticism, and experience understood simply as a psychological state or event may be contested. In the Christian context it is traditionally practiced through pursuit of the three disciplines of prayer (including Christian meditation and contemplation), fasting (including other forms of abstinence and self-denial), and alms-giving, all discussed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew Chapters 5-7). Other forms of mysticism include participation in ecstatic worship and the use of entheogens. Christians believe that God dwells in Christians through the Holy Spirit, and therefore all Christians can experience God directly."

Christian Mysticism is not about belief. Yes, scripture is believed, but it is not worshipped over God. The greatest example we have of a denomination predicated on Christian Mysticism is The Society of Friends (Quakers), a religion I very much can relate with, in the unprogrammed tradition. One statement they make is "we can never hold the Bible up as authority over the Holy Spirit who created it". Christian Mysticism is marked with love and joy. It is about the direct oneness with God, nothing in the way. Jesus was one with God. He proclaimed it to be so. Christian Mysticism is about nothing else but this transforming union. This kind of union is the ultimate for the Christian Mystic, to be so permeated with God that we are one with Him. "Whereas all Christians have Christ, call on Christ, and can (or should) know Christ, the goal for the Christian mystic is to become Christ—to become as fully permeated with God as Christ is, thus becoming like him, fully human, and by the grace of God, also fully divine. In Christian teaching this doctrine is known by various names—theosis, divinization, deification, and transforming union." (From here)


This deepened Christianity can be explained like this:

That while we honor the Scripture, we want to know God directly, not just through Scripture.
While we respect our heritage of teachings about God, we want to know God directly, not through doctrines and teachings.
While we gather in communal worship, we want to know God directly, not just through the Church.

If you follow Christ, and strive to be like Christ, you are a Christian Mystic. If you love unconditionally, you are a mystic. "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us." 1 John 4:7-12 This is Christian Mysticism. God is love. We love. God is in us and of us because of that love.

But where did this come from? Is this just some made up hokey new form of Christianity? To the contrary, it is instead the truest form. It's founder was Jesus Christ himself. "I and the Father are one" John 10:30 Jesus proclaimed it, and offers it to anyone who follows Him. Paul lived it, proclaiming "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20 "Becoming God doesn't mean we become all-knowing, all-powerful, or that we remember saying "let there be light." It really means becoming Christ, or becoming divine—that God's God-ness is experienced and known not as something outside and separate, but as a part of our own being. It means knowing God as Jesus knew the Father, so like Jesus, we are with him, fully human, and fully divine." (From here) "I said, 'You are "gods"" Psalm 82:6 Jesus refers to this scripture "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?" John 10:34 when he is explaining His claim to BE God. God is in Him, and He is in God.

So who are Christian Mystics? Well to name a few, Paul and John the Baptist were mystics. St. Teresa of Avila was a mystic. St. Francis of Assisi was a mystic. Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II were both mystics. Mother Teresa was a mystic. And of course, Jesus Christ was a mystic. And me, I am striving to be a Christian Mystic. I'm not even close, but it's my ultimate destination.