We are incapable of good apart from the Spirit, yet the Spirit waits inside of us -- as if silenced, held captive by louder, shriller voices...refusing to produce in us good - or holiness - but while imprisoned waits silently, humbly for us to let it be resurrected in us - for us to die to ourselves so that we might awake to the God Who loves us, Who has waited for us, to live in such dreams...
I have to wonder if in our minds we must let Jesus truly die instead of contesting with our loud, shrill voices. This seems to me a way of portraying our bondage -- the refusal to let the tragedy ensue in our minds -- that it couldn't have happened, that I cannot be so awful as to merit this crucifixion...but the natural theology that I suppose I have left remnants of does not reject the Fall, nor does it accept any worthwhile or useful "good." It is, as always, a matter of poverty - not nothingness (an absurd statement) - in us that must reveal our deepest need for God.
And so the dear Thomas states:
“But when the time comes to enter the darkness in which we are naked and helpless and alone; in which we see the insufficiency of our greatest strength and the hollowness of our strongest virtues; in which we have nothing of our own to rely on, and nothing in our nature to support us, and nothing in the world to guide us or give us light -- then we find out whether or not we live by faith…
It is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when be seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find true liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.”
and
“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us….
It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.
…I have no program for seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”
May the love of God find you and make you alive.
