The following excerpt is from a book that I'm reading on the New Monasticism. It is helping me to give words to my spirituality, so I'm sharing it with you. It will be on my heart as I paint today.
"The day before brother Wayne was diagnosed with cancer, he had a powerful dream... one which foretold of an impending crisis followed by a unitive experience with the Divine in which the `Spirit took ahold of my entire being and poured love into me...saturating my being.`
Brother Wayne interpreted these events as a `harbinger meant to prepare him.... to put his mind at ease...and it was part of a special Grace.`
In recounting his suffering during this time, Brother Wayne echoed the Buddha who taught that suffering was fundamentally part of life, in terms of the suffering of birth illness old age and death. The Buddha also taught the in addition to this fundamental suffering there is a self-inflicted suffering that comes out of ignorance and our attachment to desire or aversion to emotions and events. Brother Wayne told how, during his illness, he was forced to give up many of his own ideas about happiness. `Suffering forces us to see beyond where we might be stuck. It helps us to transcend our attachments, our hidden agendas, our elaborate attempts to have it our own way. It throws us into utter simplicity; we understand precisely what we really need.
... Father Keating was convinced that brother Wayne's illness was a `dark night of the soul, an inner purification proceeding a permanent union with the divine. Father Keating told me that my illness was a step forward, a sign of real progress.` It is here that brother Wayne opens up for us a deeper understanding of suffering, not just as an intrinsic part of life or a misguided choice, but is disposing us more readily to Divine union. He understood suffering is something that arrives when we're ready for it, after years of being strengthened and studied through dedication spiritual practice and searching."
No comments:
Post a Comment