“In order to live our spiritual path, we cannot leave out any part of ourselves or our experience: every single bit of who we are and what we do has to be included. It is in recognizing the mystic we always were rather than in mimicking the pious practices of our faith that we discover the meaning beneath the meaning which has always been calling us.”
~Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit
I began my morning reading these words. What grabbed my attention was the phrase “the meaning beneath the meaning”. Many times I find myself in meetings or conversations when I am trying to discern the meaning beneath the meaning. We humans are a complicated lot and often spend much of our time playing roles other than ourselves. I know I certainly find myself in this camp at different times. Do you? I can find myself saying or doing something that is really more of a mask of someone I hope to be, long to be, try not to be. Wading through the layers of true self and constructed self takes a lifetime.
This life lived by those of us who have chosen the church is a multiple layered one. We are always searching for the meaning beneath the meaning. Over hundreds, even thousands, of years, those who have given themselves to its on-going survival have tried to create systems, rules, doctrines, laws, to define meaning. This has mostly been done with the best of intentions. And yet we, those of us living the faith, continue to look for the meaning beneath this created meaning. Questions live in our frontal lobe. Feelings work their way around our hearts. Words confound us and experience informs this lived faith.
On Sunday we will celebrate Epiphany Sunday. We will once again read the story of the wise ones who traveled in search of the Christ Child. Reading this evocative tale once again, I found myself with more, or at least as many, questions as I do each year. Who were these ones from the East? How far did they travel? Why? Why are we told they bring such strange gifts to a tiny baby? And on and on.
But the real gift of this story is the meaning beneath the meaning, isn’t it? How often have I been willing to turn away from all I know and follow the gifts of the Universe to find the Holy? To what lengths am I willing to travel to see the Face of God? What will I follow to get there? And will I have the wisdom to listen well enough to know to return by a different route to the place I call home?
The meaning beneath the meaning of this often told tale speaks of curiosity and courage. It speaks of humility and a heart filled with love. It speaks of sacrifice and confidence and a yearning that goes to our marrow. It speaks of long, circuitous roads that lead through dark, dusty, seemingly endless paths that eventually lead us home. It speaks of looking up to be guided forward.
The work of the wise ones was, is, the mystic’s work: the act of seeking the face of God in the journey itself, in the most magnificent and the most humble places, in the meaning beneath the meaning.May this year find us listening, seeking and witnessing the Sacred movement that calls us forward and leads us home.
