Dear Friends ~ One of my college class assignments decades ago was to read a book called COME LET US PLAY GOD. Citing a myriad of scientific, technological, and medical breakthroughs of the time, it essentially raised the ethical questions and implications posed by our ever-advancing human capabilities. I remember at the time thinking that the human species has made breathtaking strides in intellectual development without the commensurate emotional or moral development. We make decisions and choose actions all the time because we can without thought for asking whether we should. In the midst of this skewed and ethically underdeveloped brew, our culture seems to have set aside values like honesty, integrity, generosity, kindness and civility. We don't hold public institutions and corporations and leaders to a higher moral standard. When I was growing up, my mother used to say all the time— in the context of answering requests or making decisions, "it will build your character." Nowadays it seems that character as a benchmark has been replaced by power, hubris, and "productivity." In a recent conversation with families raising young children, one mom was struggling with how to help kids understand what's going on without letting all the ugliness, greed, corruption, and violence permeating the world overwhelm them. She said, "I think I will start with models of kindness." I think that's about right— we have to build character and give children the tools they need for resilience in the face of an increasingly complex and degenerating world. We have to find our own moral compass and awaken the strength and empowerment to use it.
When you reach the state of contemplation, live contemplation, you are finally at peace, like a child on its mother's breast: "My soul is tranquil and quiet like a child in its mother's arms." (Psalm 131:2)
Magnetized by God's love, the rocket of your soul, like an astronaut's space-craft, has broken the sound-barrier (no longer needs a lot of words to explain itself), snapped the thread of gravity which held it down to itself (No longer needs meditation) and gone into orbit like a tiny planet around God's sun.
The first proof that you have gone into orbit round God is that you no longer feel that you are the centre of the universe -- which is the real nature of sin -- but feel and vividly understand that God is the centre of everything. This might seem easy, but ... how much effort goes into reaching this understanding!
Now at last God bears you, leads you by "ways which are not our ways", draws you into the whirlpool of charity, prepares you for an ever deeper union with the Beloved, for that eternal possession of love which is the goal of our human-divine destiny.
The soul in orbit round God begins to realize that there is another stability than the kind known and experienced on earth, another fullness, another dimension. Above all, another "peace”.