Advent Travels: Behind the Barn

Reading Humberto Maturana taught me that love was not a feeling but a state of being, a way of giving attention to life that was creative and nurturing, that was, in and of itself, life-giving.

Through Maturana I discovered that love was inherent and fear alien, and that it was possible to be happy in a deeply serious way (which is different from being happy in a deeply serious way – that’s an effect of a practice).

In love – in this new understanding of love – I was born again, and the world was born again with me. I was instantly intimately related to everyone and everything, without qualification or condition. Human beings, deer ticks, shooting stars and viruses . . . – I gave – not paid, gave – attention to all of it. I was devoted to the gift of attention. I gave and received in perfect measure, and the peace that resulted was not subject to analysis. Judgment was not mine but the Lord’s, and the Lord was radical because He excluded nothing and accepted no less of me.

. . . in the relational domain of love the other is not asked and is not expected to justify his or her existence . . . Love is unidirectional, and occurs as a spontaneous happening of accepting the legitimacy of the other as a matter of course without expecting retribution (Maturana 273).

More colloquially, love is the relationship – itself comprised of relationships – by which we come into being and know ourselves as Love Itself. Knowing ourself is to know the other; no other knowledge is possible.

Love is a process of mutual recognition, in which we come to see each other as unique and valuable beings. It is a process of creating a shared world, in which we can experience intimacy and connection (Maturana & Varela The Tree of Life).

But creating is active. It is enacted. Understanding matters but application does too, perhaps more. Tara Singh knew. And he also knew that application in the fullest sense required a relationship of – or with, perhaps – the highest order we know. On our own it cannot be done.

If you want to bring the Course to application, know that you have His divine presence with you. Knowing that He is with you inspires a quality of love and reverence. How would you then sit in His presence? (Commentaries on A Course in Miracles 38)

I began and for a long time transitioned through projections of God. God the judge, God the father, God in Heaven, God-as-Love. But then I realized that god was everywhere in all things, far upstream of language, concept and even behavior.

Jeremiah heard God say, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you.” God is outside of time and space altogether, so must be his Creation.

We are discovering this; we are remembering it, together.

I began to see the wisdom of making all thing a gift unto God. If you believed you were in the presence of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, of God, what would you do? As Tara Singh wrote, how would sit in the presence of God? It’s not a criticism – it’s an invitation.

For me, I cannot answer that question alone. That is where I am at now – I have the pieces, I’ve made the puzzle – but the finished puzzle is not the answer. I thought it would be but it is not.

In yesterday’s Advent writing I wrote the phrase “eccesial reckoning,” and felt a deep call to go into it. Sawicki is clear that post-resurrection Jesus communities were ecclesial. Church matters. But I hate church, and always have.

This morning I woke up thinking about Maturana, who invites a more radical communion than the formality and dogma of church. Or does he imply an even older way of churching? A simpler way?

What needs to be organized in my life? What needs a new rule to remember what it is?

Outside this morning it was cold and overcast. I shivered with my coffee. You make this harder than it has to be, says Jesus

Not always, I answer, and he nods in agreement. Not always. Often, yes. But not always.

We are quiet then, behind the barn, the world waking up. I wander down to the raspberries and wonder again if I should cut them back. I’ve been here before; I don’t want to be anywhere else. The homestead calls to me and In that call Jesus dissolves. Specialness dissolves.

I come inside then to write. I sit quietly by the Christmas tree and write. Neither sad nor happy, neither asleep nor awake. When it will be enough asks a familiar angel, and for the millionth time since this difficult journey began, I say not yet. Not yet.