When we say Yes or No to calls, on the basis of inner guidance and whispered promptings of encouragement from the Center of our life, or on the basis of a lack of any inward 'rising' of that Life to encourage us in the call...then we have begun to live in guidance.... The Cosmic Patience becomes, in part, our patience, for after all God is at work in the world. It is not we alone who are at work in the world, frantically finishing a work to be offered to God.
A Testament of Devotion
Much of our acceptance of multitudes of obligations is due to our inability to say No. We calculated that the task had to be done, and we saw no one ready to undertake it. We calculated the need, and then calculated our time, and decided maybe we could squeeze it in somewhere. But the decision was a heady decision, not made within the sanctuary of the soul.
There is a divine Abyss within us all, a holy Infinite Center, a Heart, a Life who speaks in us and through us to the world. We have all heard this holy Whisper at times. At times we have followed the Whisper, and amazing equilibrium of living set in. But too many of us have heeded the Voice only at times. We have not counted this Holy Thing within us to be the most precious thing in the world. We have not surrendered all else, to attend to it alone.
Let me repeat, most of us, I fear, have not surrendered all else, in order to attend to the Holy Within.
Do you really want to live your lives, every moment of your lives in God's Presence? Do you long for God, crave God? Do you sing and dance within yourselves, as you glory in God's love? Have you set yourselves to be God's, and only God's, walking every moment in holy obedience?
I know I am talking like an old-time evangelist. But I can't help that, nor dare I restrain myself and get prim and conventional. We have too long been prim and restrained.
The fires of the love of God, of our love toward God and God's love toward us, are very hot.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength."
Do we really do it? Is love steadfastly directed toward God, in our minds, all day long? Do we live in the steady peace of God, a peace down at the very depths of our souls, where all strain is gone and God is already victor over the world, already victor over our weaknesses?
This life, this abiding, enduring peace that never fails, this serene power and unhurried conquest--inward conquest over ourselves, outward conquest over the world--is meant to be ours. It is life that is freed from strain and anxiety and hurry, for something of the Cosmic Patience of God becomes ours.
Under the silent, watchful eye of the Holy One we all are standing, whether we know it or not. And in that Center, in that holy Abyss where the Eternal dwells at the base of our being, our programs, our gifts, our offerings of duties performed are again and again revised in their values.
Many of the things we are doing seem so important to us. We haven't been able to say no to them because they seem so important. But if we center down, as the old phrase goes, and live in that holy Silence which is dearer than life and take our life program into the silent places of the heart, with complete openness, ready to do, ready to renounce according to God's leading, then many of the things we are doing lose their vitality for us. There is a re-evaluation of much that we do or try to do, which is done for us, and we know what to do and what to let alone.
The necessary obligations which we feel we must meet grow overnight, like Jack's beanstalk, and before we know it we are bowed down with burdens, crushed under committees, strained, breathless and hurried, panting through a never-ending program of appointments. We are too busy to be good wives to our husbands, good homemakers, good companions of our children, good friends to our friends, and with no time at all to be friends of the friendless.
But if we withdraw from public engagements and interests, in order to spend quiet hours with the family, the guilty calls of citizenship whisper disquieting claims in our ears. Our children's schools should receive our interest, the civic problems of our community need our attention, the wider issues of the nation and of the world are heavy upon us. Our professional status, our social obligations, our membership in this or that very important organization, puts claims upon us.
We're weary and breathless. And we know and regret that our life is slipping away, with our having tasted so little of the peace and joy and serenity we are persuaded it should yield to a soul of wide caliber. The times for the deeps of the silences of the heart seem so few. And in guilty regret we must postpone till next week that deeper life of unshaken composure in the holy Presence, where we sincerely know our true home is.
Out from a holy Center come the commissions of life. Our fellowship with God issues in world-concern. We cannot keep the love of God to ourselves. It spills over. It quickens us. It makes us see world needs anew. We love people and grieve to see them blind when they might be seeing, asleep with all the world's comforts when they ought to be awake and living sacrificially, accepting the world's goods as their right when they really only hold them in temporary trust. It is because of this holy Center that we relove people, relove our neighbors as ourselves, that we are bestirred to be means of their awakening.
Strained by the mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.
If only we could slip over into that Center! If only we could find the Silence which is the source of sound.
We have seen and known some people who seem to have found this deep Center of living, where the fretful calls of life are integrated, where No as well as Yes can be said with confidence.
We've seen such lives, integrated, unworried by the tangles of close decisions, unhurried, cheery, fresh, positive. These are not people of dallying idleness nor of obviously mooning meditation; they are busy carrying their full load as well as we, but without any chafing of the shoulders with the burden, with quiet joy and springing step.
Surrounding the trifles of their daily life is an aura of infinite peace and power and joy.
We are trying to be several selves at once without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves. There is the civic self, the parental self, the financial self, the society self, the professional self, the literary self. And each of our selves in turn a rank individualist, not coooperative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes.
I am talking about a revolutionary way of living. Religion isn't something to be added to our other duties, and thus make our lives more complex. The life with God is the center of life, and all else is remodeled and integrated by it. It gives singleness of eye. The most important thing is not to be perpetually passing out cups of cold water to a thirsty world. We can get so fearlessly busy trying to carry out the second commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," that we are undeveloped in our devoted life to God as well as neighbor.