The Hebrew name for God is not Yahweh or Jehovah or Adonai or El or Emmanuel. The Hebrew word for God is not a name. The real God has no name. The real God is not a “The." The Hebrew word for God means, “That which is unnamable.” That which is Holy and universal, ineffable and divine. That which cannot be noun-ed or bounded or controlled or propitiated. You’re damned to graven images if you give God a name. The Upanishads point to a Spirit beyond Brahma, Brahman and Atman; beyond the Vedas and tapas and ritual. The creative spirit seeded in all creation. The creative spirit that breathed its life into all creation. Holy and universal, ineffable and divine.
I am home in a world of unbounded, uncontrolled, uncontained, unpropitiated, ineffable God at play, at recreation; a world in which God says, “I Am that I AM.” A world that sparkles and vibrates. In which God says, “Behold,” and sometimes doesn’t even say what to behold.
I have danced my life to such music as saints make. I have lived in the sun and glinted in its gold. I've lavished feasts of fire on my soul and blessed my skin for every touch of wind or love that came. I have loved. I have created stars— even if they were only little stars; but they were mine. O God, thank you! Is Heaven better?
…physical purchase is more easily found than spiritual purchase. People stumble, drag their feet, leap clumsily from one possibility to the next, never knowing to remove their sandals on sacred ground. It makes for a terrible un-groundedness, an existence without the possibility of light…
Eastern Orthodox congregations stand for services. They don’t sit in the presence of God. Each prayer begins with the command to “Attend” Which means: “Be present; Stand with purchase.”
A part of spiritual purchase is in returning to your heart. St Augustine said, “Monastic prayer begins with a ‘return to the heart’—finding one’s deepest center, awakening the profound depth of our being in the presence of God who is the source of our being and our life.” And presence requires purchase.
In Juan Mascaro’s translation of the Isa Upanishad it says, “only actions done in God bind not the soul of man.” And our prayer is “May that which is timeless fill all our days.” Don’t let the trivial, the mundane, the destructive, the obsessive, the political, the disappointing smear off on you. Be on the lookout for an unexpected voice to take your breath away, and call out in you something that is unexpectedly urgent and unexpectedly true.
“Behold the universe in the glory of God: and all that lives and moves on earth,” says the Isa Upanishad. May we be held in the rapture of being alive; may we behold the rapture of being alive; may we be beholden to the rapture of being alive; may we hold fast to the truth that we are on the holy ground of being alive.
Sts. Thomas More (1487-1535) andCardinal John Fisher (1469-1535): More was a lawyer, judge, Member of Parliament, scholar, writer and humanist, tutor of future King Henry VIII, diplomat, Lord Chancellor of England who was martyred for his refusal to swear an oath that he believed King Henry to be head of the Catholic Church in England. Fisher was a priest who served as chaplain to Lady Margaret Beaufort, grandmother of Henry VIII; chancellor of Cambridge, he was responsible for the great improvement in the education provided there. He became Bishop of Rochester and was famous for his writings against Martin Luther. Fisher was Queen Catherine of Aragon’s counselor and her chief support during her struggle against Henry’s attempts to divorce her. Leader of the opposition to Henry’s claim as Head of the Church, he was executed along with More.
Remain a year, a cycle of time, O Satyakama, In steadiness, purity and faith. And if you would know the depth of your soul live for a year on the pond of your OM. Watch its ripples in summer, spring, fall, winter. Map your coves and hidden bars of inner and outer and middle. And when the time comes with the help of the sacred Word you may sound the depth of the Spirit immanent and attain the height of Brahma transcendent. Stay for a year, a cycle of time, O Satyakama, as shoreline mountains correspond to caverns beneath when one season for you moults to the next you will know both the heights and depths to which you may dive.
Teri Martin
On This Day…
Summer Solistice
Midsummer Litha celebration
American Indian Summer Feast in honor of the seasons
Canadian Native People’s celebration of First Nations Day
Taoist festival honoring Shang-Ti heavenly emperor, father of justice, law and manifestation of the Ti (virguous inner power); celebrates the peak of the Yang half of the year
St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-1591): educated at the court of the Duke of Mantua, became a Jesuit, served in Rome and died of the plague, contracted while caring for plague victims
