THE RAW BLADE
Being a semi-enclosed Contemplative in an exploded Active culture has created a quasi-pain in my living. Christ has called me to be apart in Him; to be apart for others; to be apart for my own sake. This reality has been in my being since the cradle years, the tender years of my hay-day. Those languishing days of peering over my tricycle handles into a water-puddle, dizzying me while at the same time showing me the great Blue and whitened skies above, as I bowed down in this watery mirror. It is that upside-down world which is my world now. I bow down deep to see heaven above me. To move toward God, I move into His great Silence, His grand vacuousness, His iconic being and blankness.
In the semi-enclosed Contemplative life which I live, everything makes sense. Everything has a name. All is loved. All is thought and being and blessing and prayer and Sacrament. All is new and born and living and all is dying and moving back to the Source which is love. I joyously celebrate this notion with all my being, each day and every day. Sharing it with all, I live this in my manner of life, my religious Habit, my gestures, my Reconciliation, my Service to God and humanity. I fall and stumble, confess my brokenness while still celebrating this living. However, to some outside my cloister, I am a mistake, a failure and out-of-step with any normal notion of what is real. I am a fool. Yes, I am a fool for Christ’s sake!
Standing amidst an Active culture, I witness seemingly to a purposeless living and to Actives, those burdened and driven by worldly strives, that is a problem. Remaining stilled, by grace, is anti-culture. The culture in that I live exists to move; exists to change and be dynamic. The Enclosed? This Contemplative? What kind of life is this? It is a do-nothing Life! Its life is staid, static and seeming stuck. To what does it witness? My friends, it witnesses to the empty Tomb. To: The question mark. To: The what happened here. To: The depth of wisdom, non-palpable and unknowable through human means.
My life is a monument to this anxiety: That I live a life inside a tension; inside a paradox between one existence and another. I live inside this silence of death into Life, of something else into something other. Standing by in emptiness, in the rawness at the bloodied Cross, I am becalmed into a dancing ballet of new Life to be; believing in the Good God-nature which is ever quickened and brought into being through wordlessness and love.
Sit still.
Peer over the handle bars.
Observe with gratitude.
Listen in utter silence and muteness.
Recall that all has occurred before and after and that this world is a reminder, a remembrance of that which has gone before; been already; and coming ever so soon.
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