Our Lady Help of Christians Abbey

 We are also taught, by article of faith, that being at mass is the same as being at the foot of the cross. We believe that the mass is the same as the sacrifice on the cross. How can this be? How is going to Sunday mass the same as being there at the Lord’s crucifixion? The answer is a matter of time. We live in a sequential, linear time, referred to as Chronos. God, and indeed all things spiritual, reside in a non-linear and not spatially limited time called Kairos. In an effort not to over simplify, let us consider it like this. Imagine a piece of string. A point in the middle of the string is this moment and place in time. A little further along on the string is a few moments from now and further still is tomorrow and further still is next year. The same principle applies in reverse for the past. Now consider each string as being one place in all of space, but connected to billions of other strings for all those other places so that we can move smoothly for one time and one place to another. Now, ball up that string-web so that every place and every time touch every other place and time so much that there is no real way to point out any individual place or time. This is kairos, and God and the spiritual exist outside this, and envelope it. Kairos, is often times, referred t as the eternal now. It and God and our spirits too, exist in a place outside of time and space from where all time and all space are equally present, simultaneously present to us. The mass, is the smaller intersection of our lives with this kairos and the crucifixion is the ultimate intersection, but in those intersections they be come the same time and place.

      My own spirituality is a deeply contemplative and mystical experience. This work is an attempt to spell out my own relationship with the divine, and as an expounding of my relationship with God perhaps it is important to describe the holy ground of the coming together of my human nature and the divine. This meeting place, this personal Xanadu, is my mystical journey into Kairos. I have been asked, once or twice, what my mysticism is like. Well, the heart of mysticism, many mystics would say, is the inability to describe it. That being said, we all try, my attempt comes in the form of a metaphor. It is like this; imagine a large pond or small lake with all the flora, fauna and wildlife these bodies of water typically contain. Consider us human beings as the flora, fauna and life of the pond. Now, think of the point where the surface of the water and the sky meet as being the present moment. The further up into the air, the further into the future and the deeper into the depths of the pond the deeper into the past that one travels. Like most wild life we can only perceive on the plane of our own existence, but he water is crystal clear, any one standing on the shore can see clearly to the bottom. The depth or altitude is our places in time and our location in the pond are our little red dots that read “You are here”. Think of the whole of time and space as being the boundaries of the pond. Now consider the shore. The shore is where God and all things spiritual live, encompassing and enfolding the pond. This is how it is with God and the spiritual world, outside, but encompassing and enfolding. The banks of the pond are Kairos and the pond is Chronos. Sometimes, God likes to go fly fishing, but God is the ultimate catch and release fisher. The mystic is the fish. Just like the fish that is pulled from the real pond, the mystic suffers a severe shock to their system. The mystic is given a fleeting glimpse at the world outside the pond, the “whole picture” if you will, but the mystic, being only a small part of the whole can not comprehend the whole or even clearly remember all that he has seen. Yet the mystic has seen, the mystic does know and understands more then the other creatures of the pond, not by any special merit in him alone, but only by merit of her chance at being caught.

     Mystics, tend I think, to be people of strong self will. When God throws us back we cause ripples in the water. We, and most other extraordinarily strongly willed persons do cause ripples in the image of the pond, change it from what the original image was and can alter the planned ecology of the original system. In short, we cause paradox, we do this by excersing our free will. Any person can, but most don’t, most just go along with the greater mob mentality of the universe. It is only the person of obstinate will that can cause paradox. This paradox, these ripples in the water of reality can be good or bad, depending on how they fit into the divine plan, but often, the plan is ordered and the use of free will doesn’t harm the web of living harmony that God has made.

     A mystic always creates paradox when having a mystical experience but a mystic has three weapons against paradox. The first weapon a mystic has against paradox is secrecy. The fewer who know the bits and pieces the fewer that can act in a way that is contrary to the divine plan. The second weapon a mystic has is free will, or rather a sheer force of will. Here I depart a little from popular Christian mysticism and religious thinking.

Lets talk for a minute about quantum mechanics, specifically “strange behavior at a distance” which was first theorized by Einstein in the 1920′s and later proven, that two subatomic particles of the same substance that are on opposite sides of the galaxy act in concert with each other. If one particle is in a state of quantum uncertainty and is measured, which is to say stopped to see what direction it is spinning the other particle one the other side of the galaxy or the room or the cosmos will stop and spin in the opposite direction, seemingly free of outside influence, but it always happens. So we know, beyond any doubt that there is a very real and direct connectedness between all things in the cosmos. There is a connection. Some quantum mechanics say that on the quantum level all things exist in a state of sometimes matter and sometimes energy, the only deciding factor is measurement of the particle. Einstein believed that the energy that makes up the nature of all things is love. John, in his Gospel tales us in no unequivocal terms, that God is love. Scripture also tells us that God created the heavens and the earth by speaking them into existence; I would say by willing them into existence. If all things are made of love and God is love, then we are all part of what the divine is. We believe that God created us with a spark of his own being in us, and gave us free will and free reign over his creation. Most of the things that we do are the manual impact of putting our will in to action, but Christ said that if you had faith the size of a mustard seed and said to the mountain to uproot and be planted in the sea, it would. What is faith, but focused will? The philosopher William James, in his paper “The Will to Believe” said; “The belief in certain things are enough to bring about those things existence.” So, I believe that sheer force of will can cause real and discernable changes in the world around us. So I would have to say the second weapon a mystic has against paradox is sheer force of will. I believe that if one can will something, or believe in something, or have faith enough in something hard enough, they can make that change in the divine plan. After all, we are taught that God did give us free will, and now we have to consider the ramifications of that statement and what it truly means to use our freewill.

      I believe the third and final weapon against paradox is to become the water, to stop fighting or trying to exert one’s own will and influence and trust in God’s ability to ensure the rightness of her plan. The final weapon of the mystic is to realize that oneness with the divine and to become aware of the greatness of the other’s infinite will and sight as opposed to our finite will and sight. The final weapon a mystic has against paradox is to become the water and the air and the bank, to relax into the web of life and allow the divine to flow through them as God chooses and to trust God’s own good judgment.

     There is another metaphor, less perfect, but perhaps more comprehensable.  Think of the general mystic experience as flipping throught the channels on the TV at a moderately fast rate.  One only catches glimpses, and must from those glimpses deduce logically and intuit spiritually their meaning.  Ergo, this can be a very confusing and oftentime very frustrating proposition.  Hence the mystical double talk and incomprehensable responses and the mystics own frustration at their “gift”.