Rise Together and Come Into the Field This Summer!

“At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my dream.

I am like all mankind awakening from all the dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the world.

It is like the One Christ awakening in all the separate selves that ever were separate and isolated and alone in all the lands of the earth…”

-Thomas Merton, Hagia Sophia

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Do you find yourself waking up as dawn appears and are you dreaming? I am. The Mountain is a “field of dreams” and I am in it!

Mottled deep greens lie lingering in the sleepy shadows of large spruce trees waking up as well standing by our pond. Our sister “Mother Earth” appears in many greens this morning. Slowly, these cool colors, allow the summer sun to spill in on them through the branches of these tall ragged trees… spreading, spreading out in stillness… lightening to a lime green… this light of this day moves as sunlight will, as the earth moves and the sun slips in and over and through everything, warming us, awakening us to this new June day. The fresh fields of a new June and the call to dream!

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“We have seen all the days of creation in one day: this is the day of the waking dawn and all over the field the people are moving, they are coming to praise the Lord: and it is now the first day of creation. We were there on that day and we heard Him say: Let there be light. And we heard him say: Let the firmament be; and water, and dry land, herbs, creeping things, cattle and men. We were there in the beginning for we were there in the morning and we saw the rising of the tent and we have known how it was in the beginning. We have known the creation of the firmament: and of the water, and of the dry land, and of the creatures that moved in the deep, and of the creatures that moved on the land, and of the creation of men: the waking of the acrobats. We have known these things from the beginning of the morning, for we woke early. We rose and came to the field.”

-Robert Lax, The Circus of the Sun

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Bob Lax, in his own solitude, and his friend, Tom Merton, wrote in their own way of the delight and desires that come with opening to creation, creation opening to us. To the life and light that is in this summer moment, breaking now upon us. “Like the first morning of the world”, “the first day of creation”.

“We rose and came into the field!” I woke early and took coffee out to look upon this dappled field by the pond and found myself wanting to write you as I sat on the deck of St. Joe’s cabin. The morning filled the field and my heart. A hummingbird dashed by, stood – as we say – in thin air! He found the geranium flowering beside me about a foot away and took nectar from it! This bold bird awakening to its own needs, awaking me to mine, to be here, to be-hold the wonder of this day’s morning, this moment, with Wisdom’s light playing, this bird, the life that is given to me … and to you!

Here held by this Mysterious “Mother Earth”, “invisible fecundity”, the deep green of shadowy Self, the place from which life comes and the lightening bright green of this spring’s grasses, our hearts and souls begin to welcome the lushness of this day. All this comes to us arising and “coming into this field.” Here we come upon hope. Hope finds us here and we smile. Sensing even now the burdens and dangers other’s experience in their arising, trying to arise up today. And we wake to our own work of this day yet to begin. None the less, the day plays here before us, the sun circles and we are in “the circus of the sun!” The field that is before us and within us opening our eye, “the eye of our heart.”

Christ is risen… and rises still… quiet now in the stillness that you and I share we let Christ visit our busy hearts… with all human kind “awakening from all the dreams ever dreamed… in all the nights of the world.”

This light of Christ casts out the shadow of yesterday’s fears while it unsettles our settledness. I sit and notice that both light and shadows move. You and I allow ourselves to drift a bit as we see and hear, experience the invitation to “come and see”. The sun, and the bright green and ruby throated bird hummed through here, the light wind and water and all of this laps us into awareness of where we rest. Prayer, not named yet, for it too creeps in arises in us for all others in this moment that is “all in all”. A-mazed and grateful, we sense the summer days ahead, the needs we might have this summer as well as hopes for relaxation, renewed joy and enjoyment. Smile and “come into the field”, maybe in the city or at a kitchen table now.

Enjoy these days! God, the shy and humble One, all Power and Mystery, lingers and almost “lurks here” like lazy shadows lying, waiting for us in the shade of our own hearts and in this moment. Often noticeably unnoticed… still God stays and smiles!

God’s color seems now to be green or possibly the darkness before awakening, to our light even now as we find fullness, the other side of worry finding our way to quiet, rest and reading. Dreams awaken in our stillness and still want to waken if we listen to each other, to a friend, smile even now as this summer opens, and trees sway with all their limber strength. The whole earth is new! Wants a summertime of becoming new and reawakening this, our hope, making us “living stones” for the new.

Come and enjoy summertime on the Mountain! Let the Mountain be part of your summer! Let this “greening” join you in your home and workplace so that our moments in shade might witness to us that from out of our “tombs” and other times Christ is risen! God goes “before us” into these summer moments and lively times. We will find Christ there, possibly the God of no name, as we listen and allow ourselves to be loved by Mystery, by this moment, by this greening, by this rising light of fields we might look upon, walk in by which we are stirred to dream with all the world. We allow ourselves the lush longings of the shadows for a moment. Trusting their dark green as a promise of tender shoots that rise to bloom soon with a new dawn.

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“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all,… I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine fecundity.”

-Thomas Merton, Hagia Sophia

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Now, you might wish to sit quietly wherever we found each other- Open the Psalms or other texts, or stay with one of these images - find a chair, a blanket, a bench in the garden, a friend in the shade. You may paint, enter a reflection in your journal, take a leaf of grass or clover and chew it…Enjoy and savor the places and times which await you in your own backyard, in a park nearby, beside a pond or river as well as on the Mountain. 

We will be with you in prayer my friend, these coming months as we wake from our own sleepy places and let the summer light spill in upon us here and “on the road” in homes that become “the Mountain” for others and become the greening of all of our hopes. 

For we are to rise together and come into the field!

The Hope of All Things New!

- Dan, ofm