Here we are on Halloween or All Saints’ Eve. The thin time of the Fall Triduum has begun and we can enter the interior of our hearts these three days opening to that in ourselves which already lies beyond death. Cynthia Bourgeault says,
“Both spring and fall Triduums deal with that passage from death to life which is at the heart of the Christian mystical path, and in fact, all mystical paths. But they do so in very different modes, with a very different emotional and spiritual coloration. At Easter the days are lengthening, the earth is springing forth with new life, and resurrection energy is already coursing through everything in the physical universe, like Dylan Thomas’s celebrated “force that drives the green fuse through the flower.” Resurrection is sort of a no-brainer, if you want to think of it that way; all the currents of our being are already set in that direction.
In the Fall Triduum the movement is more inward, against the grain. The days are shortening, the leaves are fallen, and the earth draws once again into itself. Everything in the natural world confronts us with reminders of our own mortality. The scriptural readings as the time just before Advent approaches are more and more preoccupied with the end, not only personally but cosmically: the last coming, the end of time. In this dark and inward season, there is little that encourages us to somersault over death right into resurrection; we must linger in the dark, allow the dawning recognition of how fragile we are.
And yet in the midst of this broody season of dark and inwardness, the days do offer themselves as a journey, a progression we can take.”
Even as we accept our fragility, we must also accept and live into that within in us which lives beyond death and as Cynthia says begin to live from that place now. Together let us more intentionally hold this paradox these next three days and allow it to align us with our deepest priorities in the coming months of fall and winter.
With love,
Heather
Here are a couple of the Readings from this week's pauses: “In the sweet territory of silence we touch the mystery. It’s the place of reflection and contemplation, and its the place where we can connect with the deep knowing, to the deep wisdom way.” — Angeles Arrien
‘Thou Shalt Love’
Thou shalt love thy God. There must be for me a deep sense of relatedness to God. This relatedness is the way by which there shall open for me more and more springs of energy and power, which will enable me to thread life’s mysteries with life’s clue. It is this, and this alone, that will make it possible for me to stand anything that life can or may do to me. I shall not waste any effort in trying to reduce God to my particular logic. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to God.
Thou shalt love they neighbor. How I must seek ever the maintenance of the kind of relatedness to others that will feed the springs of kindness and sympathy in me! I shall study how I may be tender without being soft; gracious without being ingratiating; kind without being sentimental; and understanding without being judgmental. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to my neighbors.
Thou shalt love Thyself. I must learn to love myself with detachment. I must have no attitude toward myself that contributes to my own delinquency. I shall study how so to love myself that, in my attitude toward myself, I shall be pleasing to God and face with confidence what [She] requires of me. Here in the quietness, I give myself over to the kind of self-regard that would make me whole and clean in my own sight and in the sight of God.
Thou shalt love
Thy God
Thy neighbor
Thyself
— Howard Thurman, "Meditations on the Heart"