The Desert Fathers: A Mystic’s Journal: Entries March 31- April 1, 2005
Thursday, March 31
More fragrances last night during meditation & class. All but one of us was aware of them. As usual, the meditators brought the scents of incense & roses in with them as they entered - although they themselves are not aware of them until class. The fruitlike fragrance, flowers, incense, the sweet fragrance & the strong scent of roses & myrrh were all present, here & there throughout class.
I had a terrible head cold, sneezing & constantly using tissues - until a few hours before meditation, when my sinuses completely cleared. They have remained clear since, & the cold magically disappeared.
After class, M. suggested that I write to the translator, John Anthony McGuckin, to ask permission to quote directly from his volume instead of paraphrasing the words of these early monks. I e-mailed him last night & today he responded: “Please feel free to cite various passages from “The Book of Mystical Chapters”(Shambhala, 2003). Of course, I am delighted.
Even so, I do not wish to abuse his kind offer, I will not quote entire poems. Last night we studied quotes by Maximus the Confessor.
#79 was more philosophic than the other poems we have so far read in class, & the most difficult to understand. #79 begins: “The different forms of virtues/ and the inner systems of existent things/ are all patterns of divine blessings,/ and by means of them/ God is continually incarnated.”
That portion of his poem almost threw me into a meditation that I could not easily come out of. It was not easy for us to understand, so we read on a bit and he says: “He is embodied in the form of virtues/ and ensouled in the inner systems/ of mystical knowledge.” In deference to the publisher, I will not give the end of the poem. In regard to the lines given above, we had a long discussion that lasted almost the entire class. We began by discussing the seven virtues & looking them up in the Catholic Dictionary. The first few words of Maximus’ poem, “The different forms of virtues” - I mentioned that in my thinking, in my experience - to fully develop any one of the virtues one must possess all of them. I speak about this more in the interviews JF & I are now correcting, so I will not elaborate on this now.
The entire passage: “The different forms of virtues/ and the inner systems of existent things/ are all patterns of divine blessings,/ and by means of them/ God is continually incarnated” we took to mean that all matter, the material world, at root: is Divine, is Divinity, is God. The substratum of our material universe is this Divinity. All matter, therefore, is a Gift, a Blessing - God incarnating, becoming material. Often true Mystics will see this, the Divine Light behind the forms. I myself have seen the forms of this world - the objects we call our material reality - floating, superimposed on this brilliant, unearthly, Divine Light.
“The inner systems of existent things” was difficult to understand & verbalize. After some interesting discussion, T. then said that the words “the inner systems of existent things”, physically-speaking, could include the atomic structure of the material world. We had a discussion on the word “patterns” that was too lengthy to go into here. LG then mentioned that some physicists indicate that there is no “matter” as we generally think of it. The quantum physicists, for instance. Another branch of physics says that if we break down the smallest material particles, we are left with light waves. In other words, the substratum of our material universe is made up of light waves. The mystics would say Light, but at least we are all starting to agree a bit, the scientists and the mystics ...
If any readers of this Journal would like to discuss these passages with me & each other, or spirituality in general, my website http://www.figarobooks.com now has a community forum & message boards.
An hour or so after class, I went next door to visit my neighbor. My neighbor is a wonderful Latino woman who is deeply devoted to Our Lord and Our Lady. She has a framed picture of the Madonna in her downstairs hall, just to the right as you enter the front door. A magnet with the Sacred Heart of Jesus is on her refrigerator door, a cross hangs over her bed - she has pictures of Our Lady & Her Divine Son & angels everywhere. In any case, I opened the front door & stepped into the downstairs hall, & was immediately overwhelmed by the strong scent of roses mixed with myrrh. My thought was: “Good Heavens, someone here is wearing a very strong perfume, I wonder who?” I went up the staircase, knocked & entered her room. She was in bed, in her pajamas, watching the news on television. No one else was up. No perfume anywhere but in the downstairs hallway. We talked for about an hour & she came downstairs with me, to lock the door behind me. I mentioned the perfume, but the scent was completely gone. Nothing. Then I realized that for whatever reason, Our Lady had been there, near Her picture in the hallway, waiting for me to arrive. Perhaps to show me that She lingers where She is loved, and - in this case at least - near the representations of Her that we humans so lovingly put on our earthly shelves and walls.
Friday, April 1
1:04 a.m.
Last night I wrote an e-mail message to one of my meditators & was aware of the scent of incense. (The fragrance of incense just arose again, as I wrote those words.) She e-mailed me back tonight & said that she had just experienced the fragrances of flowers in her kitchen. This is all very mysterious & magical. I still do not truly understand it.
The Desert Fathers: A Mystic's Journal: Entries March 31-
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