Christ is the Lamp: A Mystic’s Journal: Entries April 10-20

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Christ is the Lamp: A Mystic’s Journal: Entries April 10-April 20, 2005 by author Laurie Conrad.

Sunday, April 10

1 a.m.

A message from one of the meditators. A few nights ago the whole family sat down for a short meditation, and they all had a whiff of roses. None of the other family members come to class, I didn’t even know they meditated....

After typing these words - later, the scent of roses & myrrh in the hallway.

Friday, April 15

Finished editing the interviews with JF, time to begin the final work on the three new volumes. The more mundane side of the mystic’s life. Because we divided the manuscript into three volumes, now I must write epilogues & prefaces for them all. And decide which chapters go in which volume. JF will help, but most of the decisions are mine, and all of the writing.

I was thinking today that thirty years ago I put together my first little volume of poems. Some of the poems were about music, some about life & some about meditation. I went to my studio, it’s a separate building a bit behind this house, & located a Xeroxed copy lying on top of one of the bookshelves. The binding was of string, tied in two places, & I found this:

a thousand years
inside

a thousand years
beyond

empty
these eyes
are full.

I wrote that after my first meditation. Maybe I should return to writing poetry ... Often, the fewer words said, the better.

Tuesday, April 19
Windgarth

Drove out with JF, to work on the books. Instead she ensconced herself on the dock and painted a small wooden box with various colors from small bottles - & I raked the gardens. Stacks of leaves, like castles on the lawns, here & there, like the haystacks I saw in France. Went to the Amish and bought some bread & cheese, pansies. One of the Amish young women took us to their greenhouse on a small hill. Rows and rows of hanging baskets & various young seedlings in their peat pots. I could see that she was happy to see us again, after a long, hard winter surrounded by fields & snow, hardly a house within eyesight. Although, in the usual reticence & inward-looking way of the Amish, she did not outwardly express it. I looked into her pure, thin face - and saw Cindy there. In previous years of visits, I had not seen Cindy in this young woman’s patient face. But today, I did, & I was transfixed.

Tomorrow it might rain, & the temperature will drop. Perhaps we will work on the books later in the week, when the weather is less pleasing.

Wednesday, April 20
11:30 p.m.

Flashbacks today, from my automobile accident so many years ago. First in my head and then in my Heart. I called on Our Lady & St. Joseph for healing, and the flashbacks stopped. Then I was shown my own soul as Light within - intact, unharmed. It was somewhat similar to what I experience during spiritual Communion - when I see Christ fill me with Himself, made entirely of Light. But not as complete.

Tonight in class we ended with another poem written by a Desert Father, this one written by Symeon the New Theologian. It begins “My Christ” & then ends “You are the lamp/ that never goes out for all your saints,/ the new garment, the diadem,/ the one who distributes diadems” ... “Your grace, the grace of the all-holy Spirit,/ shines in the saints like a blazing sun.” (The Book of Mystical Chapters, trans. John McGuckin, Shambhala, 2003). This week no fragrances really, perhaps some very very faint whiffs. But after reading this quote, when I looked around the room - the meditators were all glowing with clear, radiant Light - and I was burning with Divine Heat.