Bonus: Deathless Beauty in the Fleetingness of Time

James Finley (0:01)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:04)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:05)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:15)

Welcome everyone to this podcast episode of Turning to the Mystics with Jim Finley.

This is another bonus episode, trying to be responsive to the situation we all find ourselves in.

We are returning to run the regular episodes on Thomas Merton on a Monday, and then we'll have these more responsive podcasts playing on a Wednesday for a period of time while they remain helpful. So Jim and I are adapting to the situation with the podcast. I think we're adapting to the situation all round, but we look forward to meeting you where you all are on a Wednesday with this more responsive podcast, but really encourage you to stick with your practice and return to listening to the weekly lexio, Turning to the Mystics podcasts, Turning to the Mystic Thomas Merton. So Jim, thanks again for taking time today to be with us for this special podcast. I'm here with Jim and his study in California. I'm in my study in California and Corey's on with us again in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Corey, in this last week, has now joined us in the shelter-in regime. And so we're all adapting to this new way of life. So thank you, Jim. And you're going to lead us now in some teaching and practice. And then I'll be back at the end and we'll look at some questions that have come in this last week.

James Finley (2:01)

Good, thank you, Kirsten. Yes, greetings, everyone. And so please, we can have these sessions together. I wanna continue with our same basic format as I'm going to share kind of a poetic reflection bearing witness to this spiritual worldview of the contemplative traditions and end with a way to meditate, to ground us in that awareness.

And then we'll do a little sit. And hopefully then during the week as you're so inclined, you can return to this and find it helpful and continue on in your practice. Hopefully you'll find this a resource for you. Also, I wanna be for the remainder of these, being briefer, that is limiting myself to one core metaphor and staying with that. So with that, then I'll share this reflection with you.

You know, in this reflection, I wanna turn towards the healing stories of Jesus and the gospels. And particularly, I'd like to share what all these stories share in common and what this common domain of all these stories shares in common with us in our situation here with the pandemic that we're going through and with every other suffering we may be going through in our life. How are we drawn into these healing stories?

And the reflection on the healing stories in the gospel is that we see that Jesus spent whole nights in prayer, in which he surrendered himself over to his eternal oneness with the Father that was his very identity as God's presence in our midst on this earth. And he came out from that dark sweet communion of that union, roaming the earth, looking for people to set free from suffering. And when the word got out, the suffering came looking for him. I can't walk, I can't see, my daughter died, I'm a prostitute, I have leprosy.

And so on. The litany of human sorrow.

And Jesus, and we can then put ourselves there. That we come to Jesus, you know, this pandemic, and I'm scared about myself or loved ones, the images on the TV, I'm just afraid for all of us as a society on this earth.

And what Jesus does is that he always, in each of these stories, he first responds to the suffering.

And so, and does so in a miraculous way. This beyond our powers, so that the lame walk the blind see and so on. But then he says, I do this for you as a sign that you might believe.

And so, the true miracle then is, what is it that these outward miracles are signs of? And how do we participate in that interior miracle? And I'd like to get at this then in a kind of a poetic way. I'm going to speak of a poet kind of, in a distilled essence of our faith. Is that Jesus stands with the person who's come to them in their suffering, or say, we're standing there with Jesus in suffering. And Jesus, as they stand there together, this is like between the two of them. This is in the interiority of the person who's suffering in the presence of Jesus. Jesus says to the person, I know you, because God the Father has eternally contemplated you and me hidden with Christ and God forever, before the origins of the universe. I see you, this is the unborn you, for God has never, never, never, never not known you eternally are in me from before the origins of the universe.