St Mary's

Again, the readings this weekend provide us with much wisdom for ourselves as we find ourselves in times of transition and uncertainty. The simple yet profound reminders for us to be connected to the source of our life like grape vine branches are to their main vine.

Most of us have seen a grape vine at one time or another, looking closely, we see the many intertwined branches, winding their way around one another in intricate patterns of tight curls that make it impossible to tell where one branch starts or another one ends. This is not just intricate; it’s intimate, and the vine shares with its branches the nutrients that sustain it, the life force of the whole plant. The vine is truly one with the branches.

This is how Jesus says we are to be with the source of our life, the ground of our Being. However, at times we allow this untapped life source to lie dormant, and it needs to be awakened.

That is why I love the story from Matthew’s Gospel where the disciples are out on the lake in a boat and a huge storm breaks over the lake. So violent is the storm that waves are breaking over the boat. The disciples are afraid that the boat will sink so they go down into the boat and awaken Jesus, and Jesus says to them, “Why are you so frightened, you of little faith.” Jesus stands up and speaks to the wind and the sea and all is calm again.

This is not a story that is meant to be taken literally. It’s a story like so many of the Gospel stories and is powerful when applied as the writer intended. If you consider the boat being symbolic of our individual or collective lives, surrounded by storms and high waves of life, events and circumstances threatening to overwhelm us, it can speak powerfully to our lives. When we allow these events to overwhelm we can become like the disciples, paralyzed by fear and anxiety. The disciples remember to go down into the boat to awaken Jesus, the Christ.

The invitation to all of us to go within ourselves, to go down into the depths of who we are, to awaken the divine within each of us. It is here we find the calm, where the storms of life are stilled. Where we hear the words of Jesus to the disciples in the upper room, “Peace be with you”. A deep peace that comes from this connection to the Source of our Being, where all is one.

The writer speaks of waking the Christ, the Christ is not absent, just asleep, all we have to do is remember that that presence is always available, just needing a little effort to awaken. People who follow Buddhist teachings speak of living the awakened life, and living mindfully.

Many of you who have experienced the benefits of meditation speak of the experience of falling deeper and deeper into stillness. Like going down into the boat to awaken the Christ, going down into our inner depths to encounter the ground of our Being, our true Self.

An article I was reading recently in the free Living Now magazine by Petrea King who has helped thousands of people in Australia and beyond to live with cancer. She writes, we don’t meditate to become fabulous meditators. We meditate so that we are more easily able to liberate ourselves from the judgments, attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and patterns that are second nature to us. Meditation becomes a way of life, not just a formal practice once of more a day. We can leave each moment of our lives, consciously aware of that surrounds us and is within us.

In meditation we quiet the mind so as to hear the voice of our intuition. Then we know effortlessly what to do, how to be, where to go, when to speak, when to reach out and touch, when not to, when to stay silent, when to use humor, when to stay with the anguish and say nothing and so on. Intuition is our greatest guide for living skillfully on the planet. It is the voice of our creative spirit.

Call it intuition or the Christ within, or our true essence, it matters not. What matters is that it is ever present in the quiet recesses of our spirit. It longs to be awakened to provide wisdom and guidance in our lives.

Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr, an Aboriginal woman from Daly River in the Northern Territory, refers to this deep inner voice as Dadirri. She describes it as an inner deep listening and quite, still awareness. Dadirri recognizes the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. It is something like what you call contemplation. When I experience Dadirri I am made whole again. I can sit on the river bank or walk through the trees, even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find peace in this silent awareness. The contemplative way of Dadirri spreads over our whole life.

It renews us and brings us peace.
It makes us feel whole again.

It provides a place from which we can stand firm against the storms of life which threaten to overwhelm.

Anchored here, we need not fear the threats and uncertainties which life inevitably will dish out. In the news we hear of Recession, Unemployment, Swine Flue, more in our context, loss of church, threats of ex-communication. Whatever the external forms of life present they can seemingly go through us, like light through glass, almost unnoticed as we stand tapping into the vine; the place of the divine indwelling; the deep place within, where true life is administered.

Life as Jesus promised.

Life in all its fullness.