“You created my inmost self, knit me together in my mother’s womb.
For so many marvels I thank you; a wonder am I, and all your works are wonders.

You knew me through and through, my being held no secrets from you,
when I was being formed in secret, textured in the depths of the earth.
~ Psalm 139:13-14, NJB

Greetings Friends or should I say Dearly Beloved,

Lee Lawson, Used with the Artist’s Permission.

Today, a poem by Derek Walcott, in the spirit of Jesus’ mandate to “love your neighbor as yourself.” I suggest we speak of love for oneself rather than love of oneself. It is a small change but I think this is what Jesus meant when he said “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Because love for oneself is nothing like a warm fuzzy nor like bending metal through sheer force, it can only be learned in and through grace. That is, it is gift. It is God-given. Sometimes this capacity to truly love oneself, to genuinely know “a wonder am I,” is mediated through a loving other, a partner, a parent, a friend who loves us as we are. And yet, no matter the depth of that love, it is still not total since no one among us loves flawlessly and because no one knows fully the mystery of another person.

This is why contemplation is an important part of our lives. If the word contemplation still gives you pause, consider again this verse: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). As I suggested earlier, this has nothing to do with mental cognition. Rather, in the deepest center of prayerful silence is what mystics and poets call the still point. Merton called it le point vierge, the virgin point. It is here that the divine is “knowing us” and secretly enabling us to know ourselves as known and loved by the One from whom we come and for whom we are intended: G-d. This is why Thomas Keating refers to Centering prayer as “divine therapy”, because in and through this regular commitment to sit in silence in the mystery of the Holy One, “before God,” God removes the obstacles that prevent us from knowing ourselves as the beloved of God. This is the action of grace.

When we know ourselves as the beloved of God, we can authentically and unapologetically feast on our lives. Such feasting is not only not self-absorption but a prayer of praise and thanks since we are unable to identify ourselves as the be-loved without always pointing to a referent, to the one who loved us into being, loves us now, and makes us the beloved.

And now the poem.

Love After Love

The Time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

PRACTICE:

Prayer mantra: (O God), “You are my life. I am your beloved” or simply
“My life. Your beloved.”

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