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You're listening to a podcast by

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the Center for Action and Contemplation.

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To learn more, visit cac.org. Greetings.

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I'm Jim Finlay. And

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I'm Kirsten Oates. Welcome

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to Turning to the Mystics. Welcome

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everyone to Season 10 of Turning to

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the Mystics, where we're turning

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to T.S. Eliot and his book,

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The Four Quartets. And

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I'm here with Jim to discuss his session

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on the last poem in The

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Four Quartets, Little Gidding. Yes,

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looking forward to walking through this together.

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It's a beautiful poem. Yes.

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The book comes to a beautiful conclusion in this poem.

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It does. I really enjoyed your session. Thank

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you. Just

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to begin with, just like all the poems, this

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poem is grounded in a real place

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in England. So, Little Gidding

1:01

is an Anglican church.

1:04

Well, it was the home of an Anglican

1:06

community anyway, established in 1626. And

1:10

I looked up the image on the internet,

1:13

and it's a beautiful little chapel. And

1:17

you can still visit that today, I believe. Mm-hmm.

1:20

I believe so, yes. Yeah. But

1:22

the big point for us in the poem is

1:25

that this is a long-standing place

1:28

of prayer. Is that right, Jim? That's

1:30

right. That's true. Because we're

1:33

going to Little Gidding to kneel where prayer

1:35

has been valid. So,

1:38

the poem kind of grounds itself there in

1:40

prayer. And I'm wondering

1:43

how you see this poem overall in relation

1:45

to the other three poems. Yes.

1:48

I see this poem as, I think of

1:50

it as the grand finale of all four.

1:53

In this sense, in

1:56

the three previous poems, he's

1:58

inviting us to reflect on time or

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the ways that we experience our passage through

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time from birth to death, and

2:07

how we tend to live

2:09

in a time that's exiled from

2:11

the primordial time of nature, the

2:13

changing of the seasons, at

2:16

the end of each day the light yielding to

2:18

the darkness of the night, the

2:20

waves of the sea, and so on. So

2:22

there is this kind of timeless primordial time.

2:25

He said, I think the river is a great brown

2:27

god. And he says, this river is within

2:30

us. This primordial rhythm is

2:32

within our bodies, within us, but we

2:34

tend to be exiled from it. And

2:37

even deeper than, we tend to be

2:39

exiled from eternity. And

2:42

so we're trying to find a way to

2:45

redeem the time. We're trying to find a

2:47

way to ground ourselves

2:50

in the eternality of each passing

2:52

moment of our life. And

2:55

the first three poems are like

2:57

the precarious insights into this process.

2:59

And there are certain moments where we

3:01

become conscious, where we're not in time, in

3:04

the great barber when it starts to rain. And

3:07

so there's a little hiatus, like a

3:09

taste of eternity and time, but they're

3:11

fleeting. They're fleeting. We get pulled

3:13

back into time again. And so

3:16

the poems go on and on that way, just looking

3:18

at our life. But what happens

3:20

in little getting, really, is

3:22

he's going to invite us to join him

3:25

in coming to little getting to kneel where

3:27

prayer has been valid. Because

3:29

it's resolved in prayer. And in this

3:31

sense for T.S. Eliot, or

3:34

such as a deeply Christian poem, is

3:37

that we don't need to liberate ourselves

3:39

from time. Because in Christ,

3:41

the eternal presence of God has

3:44

entered into time. That

3:46

Christ is one with us in time. St.

3:49

Paul says, for me to live it is Christ.

3:52

So Christ lives our life. Christ

3:54

suffers our suffering. Christ dies our

3:56

death. And in his resurrection is

3:58

our resurrection. The divine words

4:00

of Jesus on the cross, it is

4:02

consummated. It's finished. But

4:05

what we need to do is we need

4:07

to kneel in prayer and open our heart

4:09

to that. And that's what Little Gidding is

4:11

about. Little Gidding is all

4:14

about this prayer, devotional sincerity of

4:17

opening our heart to this infinite

4:19

eternal mystery that is already permeating

4:21

each passing moment of our

4:23

life. And that's the culminating beauty

4:25

of the poem, how it all ends. Little

4:29

Gidding doesn't specifically say

4:32

the name of Jesus, say the name of Christ,

4:35

but there's hints and references throughout the

4:37

four poems and then specifically in this

4:39

one as well. Can you just

4:41

help us see that a little more clearly, Jim? Yes.

4:45

It reminds me of Tolkien and

4:49

Lord of the Rings, because

4:51

Tolkien was a devout Catholic, but

4:54

there's no mention of Christianity in

4:56

it, but it's deeply spiritual. So

4:59

too is Theosseleus, it's deeply

5:02

spiritual, but it's also Christian,

5:04

one whose own Anglican faith.

5:06

But in East Coker, he

5:08

talks about the whole world as our hospital.

5:11

And he talks about the Eucharist,

5:13

that the flesh is our only

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food, the blood of Jesus is

5:18

our only drink. So there's like

5:20

a little momentary where it's made

5:22

explicit. But otherwise, he's bearing witness

5:25

to the universality of God's presence

5:27

in life itself. It's

5:29

like Richard Rohr's understanding of Christ is a

5:31

new word for everything. Yes.

5:33

It's this universality that's revealed to

5:36

us in Christ,

5:38

in our dispensation, the Christian

5:40

dispensation. So that's my sense of

5:42

it. Jim, I think

5:45

it might be helpful if I just read that

5:47

section from East Coker that you mentioned, where

5:50

it really strongly points to Jesus

5:53

coming into time and Christ

5:55

conquering time. So it's

5:57

actually part four from East Coker.

6:00

and I'll just read it now. The

6:03

dripping blood our only drink, the bloody

6:05

flesh our only food, in

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spite of which we like to think,

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that we are sound, substantial flesh and

6:11

blood. Again, in spite of that,

6:14

we call this Friday good. The

6:17

underlying insight is this, is

6:20

that the root struggle that we go through

6:22

cannot be resolved on our terms. But

6:25

it's already been resolved by God

6:27

on God's terms, revealed to us

6:29

in Christ. Would you

6:31

also say to his references to

6:34

Christian mystics like John of the Cross and

6:36

Julianne of Norwich, who

6:39

had this worldview? So the Christians

6:41

he references, we know were grounded

6:43

in this worldview. Yes. What

6:46

we're going to see in this poem where he

6:48

meets this master, this dead master, is

6:51

this compound ghost are the mystics

6:53

that he's referring to throughout the

6:55

poem. And

6:57

also, but notice, it's universal, because in

6:59

the reference to the middle way, into

7:02

the lotus you see Buddha, and

7:04

then the Lord Krishna, and the Bhagavad Gita.

7:07

So this, like this universality of

7:10

mystical consciousness throughout

7:13

all the world's religions, and for him,

7:15

in the mother tongue of his

7:17

own Christian faith. Lovely. That's so

7:20

helpful. And

7:22

I also just wanted to draw out

7:24

the contrast between the two places, the place

7:26

where we started and the place where we

7:28

ended. So the place

7:30

where we started, Burton Norton, this place

7:32

of suffering, and then little

7:34

getting, a place where prayer has

7:36

been valid. Does little getting

7:39

help us resolve the suffering in Burton

7:41

Norton? Yes. And I think this is

7:43

true of each of the three prior poems. We'll

7:46

use Burton Norton as the example. So

7:49

we're in Burton Norton. So

7:51

we're at a place where in a moment of

7:53

time, in the past, a tragic thing happened, a

7:56

murder suicide, or in the burned

7:58

ruins where that occurred. And

8:00

in this present moment that we're with

8:02

T.S. Eliot at Bert Norton, this

8:05

is the place where in the past that's happened. And

8:08

no matter how many centuries into the

8:10

future people will visit Bert Norton, it'll

8:12

always be the place where in the

8:14

past that happened. And therefore, if all

8:16

time is present, it's fixed. Mm-hmm.

8:20

And therefore, it's unredeemable. And

8:23

then he gives a hint. He said, if

8:25

we take the path we didn't take and

8:28

open the door that we didn't open, and

8:31

the door that we didn't open was faith, and

8:34

as soon as he opens the door of faith,

8:36

the dead are there, and not just the

8:38

man and woman who died there, but all

8:40

the dead are there, the communion

8:43

of saints. Why? Because

8:45

nobody dies. We're all

8:47

eternal. In God we

8:49

live and move and have our being. And

8:52

all the dead are here. The angels

8:54

are here in this way. But

8:56

then when he looks into the dry swimming

8:58

pool filled with sunlight, and he can see

9:01

over his shoulder all the dead looking with

9:03

him, when a cloud

9:05

passes, they're gone. And

9:08

so it's like a passing glimpse of eternity

9:10

and time. But it's

9:12

a passing glimpse. And

9:14

that's what happens in each of the previous

9:16

poems. These little moments,

9:19

these little blessed moments, but

9:21

they all slip away from us, and

9:24

we get drawn back into time. And

9:26

that's what's going to build up to the resolution

9:29

of this, kneeling in prayer at

9:31

little getting. And

9:33

so the lesson here, at the

9:35

heart of little getting, is how

9:38

can I learn to live in an ever

9:40

more habitual awareness of this eternal love of

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God, that is ribbed

9:44

endlessly as a love that never

9:46

passes away, flowing through

9:48

everything that's endlessly passing away. And

9:52

this moment we're sharing right now is passing

9:54

away. But shining out

9:56

from it is this love of God that

9:59

never passes away. And

10:01

how can I learn to be habitually

10:04

stabilized in that, not just from time

10:06

to time, where I rest in it,

10:09

but in an underlying habitual sensitivity

10:11

throughout my whole life, which

10:14

is the teachings of the mystics. And

10:17

I found in following little getting

10:19

with you that it's really, it's almost

10:21

like guidelines. It's the path of

10:23

how to open ourselves, how

10:25

to be participants in this, stabilizing

10:28

ourselves, to be open to God's presence

10:31

in that way. And

10:33

here's another way that he's similar to

10:35

these masters that he quotes. What

10:38

we find in the masters is the

10:40

central place of prayer. And

10:42

so really what all these mystics

10:44

offer us are guidelines in prayer,

10:48

which are guidelines in yielding to

10:50

this transformation that's occurring in our

10:52

heart when we yield to the

10:54

love of God that's transforming us

10:56

into itself. And

10:59

so that's what T.S. Eliot does here

11:01

also. Wonderful. So Jim,

11:03

let's now turn to part one of

11:05

the poem of

11:07

little getting. And he opens this poem the

11:09

way he's opened all of the poems, which

11:11

is to ground us

11:13

in this primordial sense of

11:16

time. And he's doing that

11:18

again in little getting. And it's

11:21

almost like, am I getting this

11:23

right? That it's a pedagogical tool, that

11:25

it's a first step to move

11:28

us away from this myopic, confined

11:30

consciousness focused on sequential time, opening

11:33

us up to a presence greater

11:35

than ourselves when not in

11:37

control of every moment. It's kind of a,

11:40

it's opening our consciousness to

11:43

take us from the limits of being

11:45

focused on sequential time, opening

11:47

us to a sense of larger

11:49

time when we're not in control, where

11:52

it's beyond the expanse of our own lives.

11:54

And this is a pedagogical tool as

11:57

a first step to open our consciousness towards

11:59

God. God's presence. That's right. And

12:01

that's the tool that we find through all the previous poems.

12:03

So he starts this one that way. And

12:06

the image that he uses, it's

12:09

the paradoxical image of a bitter

12:11

cold winter day in

12:13

brilliant sunlight shining on the snow

12:16

of the bare branches of trees.

12:19

And therefore, they light up, but it's

12:22

not the light of generation, like

12:24

leaves and buds and flowers and

12:26

everything. So it's this paradoxical no

12:28

time, time. It's no

12:30

solid footing in the

12:32

midst of time. So he starts there. Yes.

12:36

And so for our own journey

12:38

into little getting, a place where

12:40

prayer was valid, this

12:42

pedagogical tool, this would be how

12:45

nature can support us, how in

12:48

our own prayer life, like as a step towards

12:50

this. And I think

12:52

you've also pointed out how our own breath

12:54

is primordial. So these tools that live

12:57

in our world with us

12:59

that we can ground ourselves in. So

13:02

how he segues then into this little

13:05

getting part. He

13:07

has this thing about the season,

13:10

this paradoxical season. He

13:12

says next, in the same stance, if you came

13:14

this way, taking the route you would be likely

13:16

to take. So it could be what? If

13:19

you took this way along these branches covered with snow

13:21

or in the summer, it doesn't matter whatever it was.

13:23

If you came this way, the route you would normally

13:25

take, where you headed, he doesn't tell us

13:27

yet where it is, but you're headed to little getting. And

13:30

then he gives all these different places, like

13:33

all these different routes. He said maybe you weren't even

13:35

planning to go to little getting. He didn't even know

13:37

what was there. He said, oh, what's this? You step

13:39

inside. He said, no

13:41

matter which way you go, when you kneel

13:44

in the depths of prayer, it's always the

13:46

same. It's always the same. And

13:48

the image that I see in it is

13:50

that what if when we die, we're annihilated?

13:53

What if there's just nothing? So it

13:55

really doesn't matter how you lived your life, because

13:58

in the end, it's still nothing. I mean,

14:00

it doesn't matter if it's existentially. You want to

14:02

have like a fleeting value to your like, kamu,

14:04

and there's an existential sense of that.

14:07

But what if instead, when you die,

14:10

it's infinite union with the infinite? It

14:12

doesn't matter how you get to it.

14:14

It's infinite union with the infinite. And

14:17

when you kneel in prayer, it's realized

14:19

there. It's almost like when

14:22

we look back, we didn't find it

14:24

because we didn't know we were looking

14:26

for it, well, we serendipitously stumbled across

14:28

it, giving itself to us in an

14:30

unlikely moment. You know, that's the feeling

14:32

that it has for me. Yes,

14:34

yes, wonderful. And

14:37

we're going to go further into

14:39

this first part where he

14:42

seems to offer us guidelines for this prayer

14:44

then and how we can engage in this

14:46

kind of a prayer. And so we're starting

14:48

with, if you came this way, taking

14:51

any route, starting from anywhere at

14:53

any time or at any season,

14:55

it would always be the same.

14:57

And so this idea, if we

15:01

relate this to our own life, so

15:05

it's however we come into a place

15:07

of prayer, can be in our own house,

15:10

can be when we wake up in the morning, however

15:13

we came to pray. Is that

15:15

how we think about it? Yes, we come

15:17

in the midst of our day. Yeah.

15:20

But then when we sit in prayer, what

15:22

happens? See how then in the

15:24

midst of whatever is the context in which

15:26

we begin to pray? What

15:29

is it that prayer is offering us? Okay,

15:31

so I'll read through the guidelines and maybe you

15:34

can help us understand them. Yeah. So

15:37

you would have to put off sense and

15:40

notion. Let's start with that. Here's

15:43

my understanding of it. I

15:45

think I have a felt

15:48

sense of myself. I

15:51

have a certain set of assumptions or a

15:53

certain attitudinal stance, right? I

15:55

try to make sense of my own

15:57

day and that's important psychologically. But

16:01

here, when I kneel in prayer,

16:03

I'm in the midst of the

16:05

boundaryless, incomprehensible love that's loving me

16:07

so, unexplainably, from

16:10

all of eternity. And

16:12

therefore, it's the inadequacy of that felt

16:14

sense. It's too claustrophobic.

16:16

It's too one-dimensional. And

16:19

I have to be willing to lean

16:21

in deeper and not limit myself to

16:24

my own internalized set of assumptions about

16:26

anything. Yeah.

16:29

Wow. That's a great description. So, even

16:31

the sense of our own body.

16:33

So, in a way, we even let go

16:35

of the sense, if we're focused on the

16:37

breath, we're focused on the sensations in our

16:39

body where we're trying to allow

16:42

God to expand our experience

16:44

of even that. That's

16:46

exactly right. In other words, we

16:48

can look on our body as an object, let me

16:50

say, like, my body. And we go to

16:52

the doctor and we have a sense of our body. But

16:55

the immediacy of the felt sense

16:57

of the immediacy of our body

17:00

is an immediacy that's given before I

17:02

think about it. And

17:04

the breath grounds me in the immediacy of my

17:07

body. It's pre-conceptual

17:09

and trans-conceptual immediacy

17:11

because it's incarnate.

17:14

And so, I'm grounded there. And in that,

17:16

then, I pass beyond all sense and notion.

17:18

Like what? All my

17:20

notions. I took careful notes. All set

17:23

of notions that I've learned and all

17:25

of it. You don't disrespect any of

17:27

it. It's just that all of it's

17:29

inadequate because it's finite. Yeah.

17:32

Next, it says, you are not here to

17:35

verify. See, what does it mean to

17:37

verify? It means that when I hear something, here's

17:39

how I verify it. Let me check that out

17:41

and see if I agree. I think

17:43

that works for me. Anything else?

17:45

So, I'm not here to have

17:48

things aligned with my

17:50

finite assumptions because that's

17:52

still me. I didn't come

17:55

here for that. I do that all day long. I

17:57

do that all day long. So, it isn't... another

18:00

way too, then it isn't, I'm not who my

18:02

father thought I was, I'm not who my mother

18:04

thought I was, my lover, my spouse.

18:06

I'm not who I think I am. Can

18:09

I join God who God eternally knows

18:11

me to be hidden with Christ and

18:13

God before the origins of the universe?

18:16

And there is no notion that's

18:19

capable of containing that.

18:21

And so I kneel down in prayer

18:23

in this kind of openness to the

18:25

boundarylessness of God. Gorgeous,

18:28

lovely. So

18:30

you would have to put off sense

18:32

and notion, you are not here to

18:34

verify. Instruct yourself is

18:36

the next one. Yes, it's not

18:38

like you're taking a mini course, you know, mystical

18:41

union or bust, like how do I, like

18:44

what's the method? Because again, it's you

18:46

again. You're not

18:48

here to instruct yourself so you can memorize the

18:50

instructions and go out and so

18:53

you're not here for that because it's

18:55

bondage. Yeah, so even though

18:57

we might follow these

18:59

instructions at the end when

19:01

we're in this state, we're letting go of all of

19:04

this as well. That's right. And another

19:06

big insight is this too, it's not

19:08

disrespecting any of this because

19:10

he's using words too. It's

19:13

just that it's not adequate all by

19:15

itself because it's finite. It doesn't have

19:17

the final say in who we are

19:19

because only an infinite union with the

19:21

infinite love of God has the final

19:24

say in who we are. That's

19:26

the sense of it. Yes. The

19:30

next one, you are not here

19:32

to inform curiosity. Yeah, it

19:34

isn't like, gosh, I wonder,

19:36

like, gee, I wonder

19:39

what mystical union is. I think I'll get a book

19:41

on it and read it and I'll

19:43

pass on that one. Or, oh, that's

19:46

a quaint idea. You know, anything else?

19:48

I think I'll watch television. It isn't.

19:50

If you're just curious, you're

19:52

not hanging from the thread for your very life,

19:55

depends on opening yourself to this one

19:58

mystery that alone is real. which

20:00

is who you are as the

20:02

beloved of God and your deathless

20:05

presence. So it's way

20:07

beyond curiosity. Yeah,

20:09

yes. But it might start

20:11

in curiosity. Yeah. You're

20:14

not here to carry report.

20:16

Yes. So you're not here

20:19

to take something that you go back and

20:21

tell somebody about. Oh, yeah. And

20:23

a key image for me here is

20:25

Moses before the burning bush.

20:28

So it's burning, but it doesn't burn

20:30

up. And

20:33

so you can't even scrape up some ashes

20:35

to show somebody. What do you say?

20:38

Really? What do you say? But

20:40

this is what contemplative spiritual direction is, and this

20:42

is what the poem is. You

20:45

can tell when you're in the presence of someone

20:47

who can't explain it either. But

20:49

they can tell what you're trying to say because

20:51

they know it too. And

20:54

I think this is where we meet

20:56

T.S. Eliot as our teacher, because there's

20:58

something here unexplainably

21:01

intimate. And in his

21:03

words, in the cadence and rhythm of his

21:05

voice, we get intimations

21:07

of this unexplainable mystery. Yes,

21:10

yes. And the beauty

21:12

of the past too, even just reading these

21:15

guidelines, there's something, there's

21:17

a beauty that's woven

21:19

through it, like a simplicity. And

21:23

you know what else I'd like to alert and say is, you know, with

21:25

God, a little sincerity goes a long,

21:27

long way. And we

21:29

begin by reminding ourselves we belong to God.

21:32

And we begin by reminding ourselves

21:34

to understand means, to realize we're

21:36

infinitely understood. And here's the thing,

21:38

it isn't some complicated thing

21:40

we're trying to do it right. The

21:43

very sincerity of opening yourself to

21:46

it is this. You

21:48

know, it's infinitely more than enough, because you're

21:50

more than enough in the eyes

21:52

of God and your nothingness without God. So

21:55

is that kind of naturalness that

21:58

we bring? it

22:00

says, you are here to kneel where

22:02

prayer has been valid. And

22:04

I'm curious about this one. One

22:06

is the sense of kneeling, which is kind

22:09

of a humble stance, like there's a humility

22:11

to it, but also where prayer has been

22:13

valid. So if we're doing this in our

22:15

own homes, is it important to

22:17

have a particular place or is the whole world

22:19

a place where prayer has been valid? Yeah.

22:22

See, I would say here, it's been valid because

22:25

this is where a community of people lived

22:28

what they believed. Yes. You

22:30

know, they lived it. For me to live

22:32

is Christ. It's the way we live. It's

22:35

an attitudinal stance that we carry towards ourself,

22:37

others and all things and all

22:39

of that. And because of their fidelity to

22:41

it, it gives the validity to

22:43

the prayer. And now we're kneeling there.

22:46

This is why people go on pilgrimages.

22:48

Yes. They go where

22:50

a saint lived or where a way of looking

22:52

at it, then if that's true, that is true.

22:55

What was also then true is

22:57

our own home is the place when

22:59

the sincerity of our prayer, our own home is

23:01

the place where our prayer has been valid. Why?

23:05

Because God accepts the sincerity of our

23:07

prayer. And

23:09

so it makes our own home to be a little

23:11

getting. Yes. It

23:13

gives a sense too that there's a

23:17

regularity to it. You're here to kneel where prayer

23:19

has been valid. So I've done

23:21

it before. I'm doing it again

23:23

and again and again. It's been valid. That's

23:26

right. The other thing about home this way

23:28

is if there's a place where we go

23:30

each day for our rendezvous with God for

23:32

prayer. And each time we

23:34

get up from our prayer to live our life,

23:37

we wash the dishes and wipe off the counter

23:39

and look out the window,

23:41

there's less and less distinction between

23:43

wiping off the counters in the

23:45

prayer. There's like an

23:48

habitual underlying awareness that

23:50

everything matters beyond

23:52

what we can explain. There's

23:55

a concrete holiness to the concreteness of the

23:57

day by day. That

23:59

sounds... like the perfect

24:01

leading to what he says next. And

24:04

prayer is more than an order of

24:06

words, the conscious occupation of the praying

24:08

mind or the sound of the voice

24:10

praying. And what the

24:12

dead had no speech for when living, they

24:15

can tell you being dead. The

24:17

communication of the dead is tongued with

24:19

fire beyond the language of the living.

24:22

So there is that the dead had

24:25

no speech for when living because they

24:27

were still living in their body. But

24:29

now being dead, speak with tongues of

24:31

fire. And when

24:33

you kneel in prayer, you can hear them. Because

24:36

when you kneel in prayer, you're also

24:39

in a moment of time, transcending time.

24:42

That's why the communion of saints. What

24:45

do you make of this, Jim? Prayer is

24:47

more than an order of words, the

24:49

conscious occupation of the praying mind or

24:51

the sound of the voice praying. Because

24:53

that's a lot of the

24:55

way we enter into prayer, there's an

24:57

order of words, an occupation.

24:59

We're trying to be conscious in our prayer. You

25:02

know, we can listen to our voice praying. Let's

25:06

say anyone learning to be an artist or

25:09

to be a poet or to be a

25:11

healer, there is a certain discipline

25:14

one has to undergo to be trained, like

25:16

a set of methods. But

25:20

as long as one is still working

25:22

out of methods, it's just method. Those

25:25

methods have to be in the service for

25:28

when it catches fire. So we can see

25:30

TSL is discipline as a poet. This is

25:32

a very disciplined poem.

25:35

This did not come without a price. But

25:38

it's in the service where it catches fire.

25:41

And the words take on a kind of

25:43

luminosity. Just like when we see a

25:45

work of art or in dance,

25:47

you see this also. The person is

25:49

so given over to it that

25:51

something shines not from them, but through them

25:54

and their commitment to it. And so prayer has

25:56

to be more than just a rote. The fact

25:59

you're kneeling and saying. your prayers doesn't mean

26:01

you're praying. It means you're checking

26:03

off a to-do list. This

26:05

isn't on the to-do list. This is the

26:07

imperative of your awakened heart, and you give

26:09

yourself over to it. To

26:12

God who's given over to you in every

26:14

breath and heartbeat, it's in the reciprocity of

26:17

this self-donating presence that's beyond a

26:20

task or a chore or a method.

26:24

And that's very much in the way we

26:26

begin the prayer, the way we open ourselves

26:28

with that intention at the beginning of the

26:30

prayer that we're not just here to

26:33

say the words. We're opening ourselves to that

26:35

mystery. That's right. And I think another

26:37

insight here is we might start with the method

26:40

because it is a method. You go,

26:42

you sit and you light a candle, you open

26:44

the Scriptures, whatever it is, you start somewhere. But

26:47

it's your point of entrance where

26:49

in the ongoing sincerity, the prayer,

26:52

you go beyond the method into

26:55

this communal realization. It's always

26:57

there. And

26:59

he describes that as, here the intersection

27:02

of the timeless moment is

27:04

England and nowhere, never

27:06

and always. And so for us it

27:08

could be here the intersection of the

27:10

timeless moment is our home and

27:13

nowhere, never and always.

27:15

That's right. And this phrase has come

27:17

up several times throughout the poems, the

27:19

intersection. So along the horizontal line of

27:22

time, passing through time. In

27:24

the middle is the vertical depth dimension

27:26

of God. So when

27:28

we're in prayer, as the prayer

27:30

deepens, deepens, deepens, there's a point

27:32

of passing through the intersection of

27:35

the zero variance prior to the

27:37

difference. So the distinction

27:39

between God and creature, time and

27:41

eternity, birth and death. And

27:44

this intersection then is our own

27:46

living room every time, our own home, our

27:48

own bed, every time we're given

27:50

over. And by the way, insofar as

27:52

we're attentive to these reflections right now,

27:54

this moment is the intersection. Amazing.

27:58

Well then there's... There's

32:00

that in us that sees this. Otherwise

32:02

it wouldn't make any sense. And

32:04

there's that in us that doesn't see it yet. So

32:07

in some sense, the Master is our

32:09

own awakened self to the

32:11

extent that's been awakened to this. And

32:14

then there's that that's still confused by it. And

32:17

so that which is awakened to it needs to

32:19

be endlessly patient with the part that doesn't see

32:21

it yet, which

32:23

is to be all merciful towards ourself. So

32:26

we play this double role with

32:29

our soul. Turning

32:37

to the mystics will continue in a

32:39

moment. Although

32:48

we were not, I

32:50

was still the same, knowing myself

32:53

yet being someone other. And

32:55

here face still forming, yet

32:58

the words suffice to compel the

33:00

recognition they proceeded. And

33:03

so compliant to the common wind, I

33:05

guess that's the way they've been brought

33:07

together, too

33:09

strange to each other for

33:11

misunderstanding. I love that paradoxical.

33:14

Yeah, it is so

33:16

incomprehensible. You can't even misunderstand

33:18

it. Yeah. In

33:23

Concord at this intersection time

33:25

of meeting nowhere, no

33:27

before and after, we trod

33:30

the pavement in a dead patrol. This

33:33

Master, the coming upon the Master has created

33:35

that intersection for him. That's right.

33:38

And notice also it's

33:40

in no place because it's every place. And

33:42

it's in no time because it's every time. And

33:45

this, we're walking together with the

33:47

Master. And then I said,

33:49

the wonder that I feel is easy, yet

33:52

ease is cause of wonder. Therefore

33:54

speak, I may not comprehend,

33:56

may not remember. Yes.

34:00

like this, I wonder why

34:02

I feel so relaxed in

34:04

the presence of the ineffable. I

34:06

feel so, I'm

34:09

just relaxed here. And

34:11

yet the very fact that I'm relaxed is

34:13

a source of wonder. And

34:16

the reason you're so relaxed is

34:18

that the infinite love of God is

34:21

creating you in the image and likeness

34:23

of God. It's who you

34:25

are, is the beloved. You're worth all

34:28

that God is worth, and you're eternal

34:30

nothingness without God. This is your homeland.

34:33

You belong here. You

34:35

belong here. And that's why you're so

34:37

relaxed. It's a nice insight, yes. It's

34:40

a lovely insight. Thinking back to those

34:42

guidelines that we're not here to

34:45

inform our curiosity or instruct

34:47

ourselves, it's more like we're

34:50

opening to be overtaken by this

34:52

ease and this sense of wonder,

34:54

the newness. Yes. It's

34:57

a good insight. We could say this.

35:00

In this awareness of this being at

35:02

ease in this presence, the

35:05

very notion of trying to

35:07

explain anything is so stupid. In other words,

35:09

give me a break. I mean, you're not

35:11

even there anymore. You know what I mean?

35:14

Like, oh my God,

35:16

please. So this is what

35:18

the Master is going to tell him, too.

35:21

Yes. About to say, you're just

35:23

unexplainably beyond it. Yes.

35:25

By resting in the depths of it,

35:27

giving itself to you unexplainably. Yes. So

35:30

he asks the Master to

35:32

speak, but then the Master says

35:35

he's beyond words, really. Is

35:38

that what the Master kind of shares? He's

35:40

beyond words and points to this idea

35:43

of being between two worlds,

35:46

becoming much like each other. Yes.

35:48

He says, first of all, please

35:50

talk to me, because he hasn't

35:52

said anything yet. Yes. And

35:54

by the way, I think there's something else, too. And

35:57

you see this in Hinduism with the Guru.