“I have had to accept the fact that my life is almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn gradually to get along without apologizing for the fact, even to myself. . . . It is in the paradox itself, the paradox which was and still is a source of insecurity, that I have come to find the greatest security. I have become convinced that the very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God’s mercy to me: if only because someone so complicated and so prone to confusion and self-defeat could hardly survive for long without special mercy.”
Thomas Merton
After all these years, I am still afraid of the dark. Oh, I talk a good game, stating proudly that I love the dark that I am okay with it, with not knowing, with the unknown. But that’s a load of crap.
I hate the dark; specifically, I loathe the reality of “not knowing.” I find no comfort in that sacred place.
I have found that the words of Dorothy Day ring true, reminding us that it is best to travel light through the darkness. I say it is good to do so because I need my hands in the darkness, groping for security, feeling my way through it the way a newly blind person fumbles through Braille.
The darkness of my heart – the anger, the fear, the lack of trust in God, in Love itself – makes my life ‘feel’ messy.
When my life feels messy, there is this thought that rattles around my head with jarring significance: sometimes I feel that God is this pervasive Reality I have yet to actually experience, much less “know.”
But then that noise subsides, and above the din I hear the repetitive whisper, “mercy, mercy, mercy, all is enveloped in Mercy…”
One thing is certain, the messier my life gets the more merciful God seems. I sense the reason that is due to this truth: the messier and more mistake prone I get, the more I am in dire need of the Mercy that is available always and forever. The more I am ‘human’ the more I need and therefore am open to Divine Love. When I am at my lowest, it is ‘easier’ to look up and ask for mercy.
It’s easier to surrender when I run out of bullets.
It’s a shame that it takes my increased messiness and mistakes to be the catalyst provoking my need of God’s divine mercy, but I am human. I am trying daily to put myself in a position living conscious of and present to God’s infinite mercy rather than waiting for fox holes and disasters.
Spiritual crisis prevention is far better than crisis management. In prevention mode, I am more aware of God in all my dealings rather than my usual state of forgetfulness. And as I grow in a deeper daily awareness of God, the self made messiness seems to give way to a mercy filled life; still messy, but steeped in the ever-present reality called the mercy of God.
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