Finding the Secret Garden

Too often we only look for external beauty...when we have beauty right within ourselves.

When you desire some soul stirring spiritual experience, where do you look? Do you search for it in books? Or perhaps you find a service with a liturgy that inspires. Or you may seek it through the wonders of nature. In all of this, you've missed the most important place to seek out a true mystical experience...within your own heart.

The Jerusalem Community Rule of life states that "One single word expresses the place where the whole quest for holiness converges: your heart..."  It is within our hearts that we meet the Divine presence, walking as it were with God, sharing all we know, and realizing just  how much God cares. 


The mystics knew well the truth of these words, and drew heavily from this fountain. But we too are called to be mystics. It isn't something for the few; it is there for every serious seeker of truth. As Jean-Claude Baneau writes: "mysticism is as necessary to humanity as science, if not more so…For mysticism is an existential attitude, a way of living at a greater depth.” (Preface to Clément’s book, The Roots of Christian Mysticism). The call to mysticism is there.

Why, then, the scarcity of mystics? Because we look at mysticism as something esoteric, something “synonymous with spiritual illusions in fevered souls of sentimental spirituality, emotional, subject to ecstasies, visions, revelations…”(Ildegarde Sutto “Contemplative Experience in Cassian and in the Rule of Benedict from the American Benedictine Review, 54:2). True mysticism is attainable. It only requires our steadfast attention to the truth of Jesus words, The Kingdom of God is within you (Lk 17:24).

To return to the Jerusalem Community Rule: “let the word of God penetrate you as deep as the division of soul and spirit…Then all secrets will lie open before you in a way you could never have dreamed.” And so we are called to walk in this Garden with the Divine, to learn the secrets of life, to experience the beauty of the Divine.

Has Your "I" Seen?

Advent is a time of preparation, of celebration, of recognition. The whole world is caught up in the Christmas mystery, knowingly or unknowlingly. But do we know what constitutes the Christmas mystery? Is it just about the birth of the redeemer? Or is there more to this mystery than a baby in Bethlehem?

In Genesis28:16 we read God, you were here all along, and I did not know it. I believe this is the true Christmas mystery and message Jesus brought. It is as though he says, Hey you! Wake up. God has been here all along, but you have not known it, not recognized it. You look to the heavens for God, and he is already here, right in your midst, right in your soul.  Jesus came along and showed us these things, God is close to us, closer than we could have ever guessed or dreamed.

In Job 42:5 we read I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you. Has your I seen?