In the Stillness Dancing

"So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."

TS Eliot: Four Quartets

 In memory of Lux Umbra Dei, whose Bio said just:

  Gratitude! Gratitude!

There are people in life who have a profound effect on us - even though we may know them all too briefly.   Their presence in our lives challenges us, hints of depths to which we feel drawn. 

John Main - was another (also known to Lux):

Many years ago we lived near Mt. Savior Monastery in upstate NY and we were privileged to hear John Main give a sermon at Mass and speak about meditation.  Only once before had I heard someone speak so profoundly, from the heart, in simple words, words which led you into the sacred.  He reminded me instantly of hearing Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speak about the holiness of time, when I was in college.  He too had that quality of "knowing" something from the heart - and putting it into the simplest terms, so that each sentence held a universe of meaning.   Later I was able to briefly meet the Dalai Lama.   And that completed the Trinity for me - three leaders, from different faiths, each one in touch with the deepest heart of Reality, each one able to put a lifetime of practice into the simplest words and actions, as if teaching you from heart to heart.

From a review of John Main's biography:

In The Stillness Dancing describes Main’s life as a journalist, soldier, barrister, and Benedictine monk.  His life was a quest for an authentic life of prayer.  While a civil servant in India, he met an Indian Swami who taught him to meditate using a mantra (holy word).  This form of prayer was taken from him when he entered Ealing Abbey, England. As a novice he was directed to adopt a more “traditional” form of prayer.  Much later, after his ordination to the priesthood, John Main discovered that the form of prayer taught by the swami already existed within the mainstream of Western Christianity, but had fallen into disuse.  The biography describes how he spent the rest of his life attempting to restore this form of Christian meditation to the central place it once occupied in the Church.

John Main exercised a profound influence on us as well as upon the monastery itself.  It was his introduction to meditation that led us, decades later and in a round-about way, to another monastery in the mountains of Colorado - in the dead of winter.  It was there, at a meditation retreat, that I came to understand the meaning of "emptiness" ~ when I heard the meditation bell reverberate ~ as if inside myself.   And Lux Umbra Dei rejoiced!  Gratitude!

One thing leads to another....  It is a wonder to write it all down.  Part of this blog's unfolding path ~ a path which is a mystery, even to me.