FACING OUR IMPERMANENCE

Thomas Merton once said: “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.” (Seven Storey Mountain).

Nothing in our lives helps us face the one truth we know, that we and all we know as friends and family are only here temporarily. It is one of the most difficult things to consider in all the complexity of our lives.

Key to facing this, is the sense of finding peace in ourselves and not panic. The problem is that through the scientific method of modernity, we have thought as individuals we can increasingly control aspects of our lives. Unfortunately getting older and dying are all outside our control, and many people deal with this by just avoiding it by life and making yourself busy.

The contemplatives and mystics remind us that we do not need to liven fear, that there is a benevolent love behind the universe that finds its source in God. As Julian of Norwich famously said in her own times of illness and struggle, of her encounter of a God who reaffirmed ‘All will be well’. The truth is that we have to work to find peace. Many of us have had wounding experiences so that we find it difficult to integrate the child and adult us, and manage emotions. We live in a deeply unhealthy market society that damages and infantilises us. Contemplation is all about giving space for encounter of God and for our inner and outer healing. It is a time where we can learn to meditation and be silent and practice stillness and emptying before God.

These times can. profoundly help us to find a healthy rhythm of life and centredness. But, we need to let go of the ego self-will to be able to do this, we cannot fight our way into inner peace, rather we need to let go and discover a much deeper sense of ourselves.

This means we have to let go of success, being special, being wanted, highly esteemed, holding power and money as definitions of the self, and instead experience of love of God to free us to be the people we were created to be. This ultimately means we have to shift from the self-will as a focus to the divine will, or as the 12 step movement states, to move from our own sense of power to our higher power who is beyond us.

You cannot do this alone, we need spiritual communities, we need to be disciplined in our prayer and spiritual practices, living a healthy daily rhythm of life. And in this way, we can make peace with the truth of our impermanence, and instead begin to see that every day of our existence is a gift of God.