One Place

June 21

There is only one place where everything begins, and that is from within the presence of God.

The longer I live, the more I notice that we all believe things begin somewhere else. Especially in the natural world; mechanistic rationalism is convinced that only the material exists, and that everything that takes place is embedded in the flat landscape of physical law.

Yet this is a place of nothingness that does not take Being into account, and all being Begins in God. We can’t discuss any of the core values that make a difference to human beings— love, goodness, ethics — from a place that begins in nothingness, because nothing exists there except the mindless interactions of materials. The universe is a place that begins in God and within the presence of God, and each one of us expresses that within our own mindfulness.

I offer this moment to you from within my own stillness and my own mindfulness to remind you of what is true, and how Being forms everything from within God. This simple phrase reflects the exact truth which cannot be transcended by any material philosophy. Being forms everything from within God.

You have a right as a creature who has been gifted with Being within this creation to experience the great presence which has created us; to take it into your heart and your soul through the flowing in of God into being which is a natural event, more natural than any nature which science can bestow upon mankind. There is, in fact, no other nature; and its perfection is a truth so durable that no matter what happens, if you receive it within you, you will know truth better and know truth deeper than any set of intellectual facts that can be gathered together to prove one thing or another. There is no proof in truth; it is of itself, and not of an objective that justifies.

To know this truth is to know sadness, and how it can fill us with the love of creation and Being in the same way that God is filled with that same exact love. The world begins in sorrow and discovers joy. Did you know this? If it were created any other way, there could be no joy. It is bound to sorrow in the same way that the sinew is bound to bone. This is a good thing, because it is what builds the bones of the universe and helps them move. God’s love puts flesh on these bones and thus Being arrives within us as a whole thing, which can breathe and live and feel and think.

There are mysteries here too deep and extraordinary to write of. 

You can only know them within the bones of being, inside their marrow, where truth is a thing of the blood in the spirit, not the mind and its turning nature.

I will just say this for this morning. It is enough.

Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.