Dialogue 2: All for All

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season 12 of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to the book, Practice of the Presence and the Wisdom of Brother Lawrence. And I'm here with Jim to discuss his second session. Welcome, Jim.

James Finley (0:38)

Yes, yes. I so love this letter 12 that we explored together. So beautiful.

Kirsten Oates (0:44)

Yes, me too, Jim. I love letter 12, and your session was just beautiful. And I wanted to just give a little bit of context about the letters. So in Carmen's book, Practice of the Presence, the second section includes 16 letters by Brother Lawrence. And in the translator's introduction, Carmen writes, these 16 letters are what survive of likely many more written by Brother Lawrence. And we know that Joseph of Beaufort, Brother Lawrence's friend, collected these letters after he died to share with people. And now we have them in this beautiful book. I also wanted to just give a little bit of context for letter 12 that you read, Jim. And I'm turning to the translator's note again. And Carmen says, in the final months of his life, when he was unable to walk and was aware he was dying, Brother Lawrence addressed letter 12 to Reverend Mother. And so I think you commented, Jim, that the context for this letter was the end of Brother Lawrence's life and that we'd seen, with many of the mystics we've studied, that they can become more translucent towards the end of their life.

James Finley (1:57)

Yes, as over the years, as they come to the end of their life, we get a sense of where it has ripened in their life. But there's something else, too, that just occurred to me was so interesting. What's interesting with these mystics is when you look back at the very beginning of the very first things they wrote as a mystic teacher, it had that same depth to it. I think it's because they're writing out of the depth of their spiritual awakening. So when he's writing out of what experience of God beholding the tree, so in the sermons of John of the Cross, you see that place where it kind of starts right out, sharing this luminous awakening of God. But there is a certain way that the wording of that becomes more and more refined at another level. And you certainly see it in this letter. It's so succinct and clear.

Kirsten Oates (2:50)

It made me curious about you, Jim, at 82 years old, if you're feeling this oneness has become more illuminated in your life and your teaching.

James Finley (3:00)

Yes, I would apply to myself what I just said. When I look back to when I wrote Merton's Palace of Nowhere and over the years, I do feel that it has kind of become more transparent or more kind of deeper simplicity to it out of my life. At the same time, when I look back at the experiences I had in the monastery at 18 years old, there was this kind of divine luminosity that was right there for me at the beginning. And I also think people who fall in love with each other and spend years together, there is a certain way over the years one would hope it ripens. But there is something that remains wondrous about their first moments this way, like that initial light that comes. So anyway, yeah, that's how I see it.

Kirsten Oates (3:49)

There's also, would you say, Jim, a certain kind of wisdom that comes from living a whole life, you know, kind of experiencing the different phases of life and seeing that, witnessing that in others?

James Finley (4:01)

I think so too, very much so. So for him, Brother Lawrence is so dramatic, like the divinity of the pots and pans in the kitchen. So I think when we're spiritually awakened, the way we are when we're sitting in deep meditation is not necessarily the way we are when we're driving in our shower traffic or at a business meeting. And so I think there's a lot of integrating the divinity and weaving every part of our life into that divinity. Likewise, weaving the ordinariness of our life into the divinity, like incarnate infinity, that integrative, inclusive process deepens over time.

Kirsten Oates (4:39)

And that's what you really feel from Brother Lawrence, that deep integration.

James Finley (4:43)

Yeah. Like literally, the experience of seeing God in the tree and being in the pots and the pans in the kitchen, and also in the ordinariness of the pots and the pans, they were distinct but none distinguished from each other. There was this all-encompassing oneness to like the divinity of the ordinariness of everything.