March 28, 2013

Easter weekend looms. Someone has called our current weather “Marchuary.” That sounds like the word “mortuary.” This is when we meditate on our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection. It is a time of inner renewal. We slough off the dead cells of thought and glow with whatever inner being we have managed to bring forth.

I once had a dream in which I was attending my own funeral. A woman testified that I had been crucified and had arisen. That was my own Hallelujah dream. Since then I have returned to the tomb time and time again, for this is an earth school. My sense is that I did arise on a higher plane but that I must continue to serve down here as long as my body lasts.

My life is quite simple and yet I manage to complicate it with regularity. Such is the nature of life among the roses and thorns of this world. I got to hear Leonard Cohen perform recently. Now I sit here with tight sore shoulder and neck muscles, for that is where the tension came home to roost.

His line about “that’s how the light gets in” became the subtitle of my book, Life With A Hole In It. His performance on the world stage is awe-inspiring. He has the knack of reducing everything to a minimum so everything extraneous falls away. He wastes no word or gesture so that the light may pour forth at its maximum. This is grace of the Self and for it Cohen has paid the price.

There is a Work expression that says “Take what you want and pay for it.” This is not complicated. We all do this every single day of our lives. If we want inner peace, the price we pay is to surrender everything in us that is not peaceful. And so it goes. But it goes with ever-increasing grace. And that, too, is how the light gets in.

*Leonard Cohen: “As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort.
 
Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.”

Vicki Woodyard
Life With A Hole In It