Ramblings

True spirituality can only be unassuming and ordinary for the spiritual life is about the holiness of the ordinary. Jesus was fully God and fully Human. It is tempting to think that the saints are somehow not human, that they are superhuman or super divine. No, they are human and filled with the Divine. They are perhaps a little more transparent than the rest of us. This transparency doesn’t make them otherworldly; the opposite is true. They become more human and more mundane. They are no longer caught up with the grand illusion of bigger, better, faster. They are grounded in the gift of the now, the present. Saints live their lives in the moment by moment awareness of Presence. It is to see life as it really is.

To the uninitiated they may appear too ordinary, too bland. This is because the uninitiated is looking with the wrong set of eyes. To say it better they are looking with good eyes through a distorted lens. The holiest man is the humblest man (Phil 2). I use the word man because I am describing the Son of Man who chose not to accentuate his divinity by calling himself the Son of God. Rather he emphasizes his humanity.

The problem with this spirituality for some is that is does nothing. It doesn’t solve cancer or cure my neurological problems. There is no heroism or dynamism. There simply is a still point where all makes sense and all is fused. This point fades and the memory of it dies more slowly. What lingers is a sense of the divine in all, even in the pain, failures, ego trips and anger. Being a human is not a barrier to the Divine, it is a sacred vessel to the Mystery that we glimpse from time to time. Saints simply glimpse longer, deeper and it pervades more of their sight. Therefore, they of all people are more human, no more and no less.