Dialogue 2: The Ascent of Mount Carmel

James Finley (0:00)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:03)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:05)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:15)

Welcome, everyone, to another dialogue with Jim Finley on St. John of the Cross, our current mystic on Turning to the Mystics. Welcome, Jim.

James Finley (0:27)

Thank you. Good to be back with you.

Kirsten Oates (0:30)

Good to be with you very, very much. Well, I listened to session two, it's beautiful, and there are a lot of wonderful quotes from John of the Cross in the lexio you offered, and people will be able to read those in the show notes. I've copied a few of them myself.

I wanted to start by asking you about what seems to be arising as the meta theme of what St. John of the Cross is trying to teach us. And what I'm hearing is that he's trying to help us understand the infinite love of God as a direct experience.

James Finley (1:10)

Yes, yes, that's a good place to start. So one of the themes in all of this is that love produces likeness and equality, that we become like what we love.

And so he's saying that since our faith teaches us that God is love, and that God is infinite love, when we experience something of God's infinite love for us, and that love enters into our heart, it evokes within us a love for the infinite love. And it's our love for the infinite love that produces the likeness or equality between ourself and God in love, and also produces an awareness of what it is that's hindering that transformation into that equality, which is the mystical state, really, in love. So that's really the meta thing, and he's really, that's his theme underneath it all, is understanding the nature of love and infinite union with infinite love that's infinitely in love with us, because God is love.

Kirsten Oates (2:26)

And that transforms us into love.

James Finley (2:28)

It transforms us into love, because since God is love, who creates us in the image and likeness of love, then love is our origin, love is our nature, and love is our sustaining ground. So really, it's actualizing our God-given love nature, our God-given godly nature, and being healed from all that hinders that actualization from occurring.

So this love is transforming us into itself, or we're being drawn out beyond all that hinders that transformation, which is a foretaste of heaven, which is eternal life.

Kirsten Oates (3:07)

That's really helpful. Thank you for clarifying that.

Then, Jim, John of the Cross uses finite experiences to point us to the infinite love. Is that how he goes about it? That's part of what you were reflecting on in this last session.

James Finley (3:25)

Yes. Yes. There are different ways of approaching it. Let's say, for example, let's say we start with the finite experience. Well, I will use the example that one of the users in Nature, The Myst of Nature.

So he says that in the beginning, the beauty of nature can be seductive through possessiveness of heart, like we try to own it or have it.

He said, but wouldn't say we spend a day alone in the mountains.

He said, the way he puts it, we realize the beloved has passed this way in haste. That is, we start seeing tracings of divinity in the contours of the mountains. So in the beginning of the concreteness of the mountains, or this is anything, the ocean, the smell of a rose, the darkness of the night, a child's laughter, the beloved's face, in the concreteness, we get intimations of the love that's incarnating itself, and that intimately realized experience. And then he says, as the purification deepens through love, we realize, he says, walking in the mountains, my beloved is the mountains, that God's the infinity of the mountains, where the mountains are bodying for the love of God. And so everything is seen as sacred, everything is seen as divine, and it's concreteness, and it's nothing that's without God, it's God's manifested presence. And it was there all along, but I couldn't see it. Because my love was too myopic, it was too closed in to what I can have in my finite ego. But as I learned to pass beyond the frontiers of myself through love, this starts shining through.

Kirsten Oates (5:13)

So, is that, does that mean that that final I am the mountain, is that the experience of infinite love that St. John of the Cross is inviting us to?

James Finley (5:24)

Well, yes, it is. Say this, that God is the mountains, and simultaneously and infinitely more besides, which is the mystery of God. So God's generosity is infinite, so God infinitely gives himself, infinitely gives herself as the night, the mountains, the darkness, whatever. And that infinite generosity of giving, which we receive, God in that infinite giving, remains infinitely more besides, which is what it means to be God.