Life from birth to death is in constant
process of change. The process of adjustment to continuous minor
changes is automatic. We are hardly aware of them, until we quieten
ourselves and re-focus our attention, as in meditation, or when
checking how to achieve something, like shouldering a burden we're
unused to, balancing, attempting to read small print with weakening
eyes.
We observe more consciously, reflect on
and celebrate major change: childhood development stages,
adolescence, leaving home for work or college, marriage,
childbearing, vocation, major illness, bereavement. The meaning of
existence is made partly from experiences great and small. It also
comes from connections we make with others during this journey, above
all, in relation to One with us always from start to finish. One who
dwells in us, with us and beyond us; One in whom we live, move and
have our being.
It's not that we're fully conscious of
God and who God is for us at any time. We can sometimes be aware of
God without understanding, unable to interpret this to ourselves or
others. We can learn from religious practice or spiritual discipline,
ways and means of interpreting this awareness, but ignore what we are
taught, resisting or taking ages to be persuaded of the truth. "Late
have I loved you Lord." said St Augustine after his libertine
years rejecting his Christian mother's appeal to live by the Gospel.
Some people feel their lives are invaded by God, and experience being
changed by grace from beyond. They interpret this as conversion to
life of faith in God, as St Paul and many others have.
Does God force Himself on anyone?
Doesn't this violate the freedom God confers as part of human nature?
Sometimes experiences and events in life give the impression of God
breaking in unexpectedly, perhaps unwanted. This has more to do with
hidden aspects of our nature of which we know little. Jung invited
observation that conscious experience is like the visible tip of an
iceberg, mostly hidden beneath the waves. The background processing
of sensations, memories and understanding as thoughts which may or
may not percolate up to consciousness from below suggests how the
mind/brain works.
If human existence is immersed in
divine Being, the unconscious may be understood as a dimension where
God dwells hidden, closer to us than we know, until we learn to delve
within ourselves. When God seems to break into conscious experience,
is it the outcome of a dialogue in the unconscious between self and
God, resolved by emerging into consciousness, changing what we
believe about everything? It doesn't matter whether we interpret this
as God intervening from within, or above and beyond. We cannot fathom
how grace works to make change and bring all things to fulfillment
under God's reign. Grace manifests itself in all the affairs of the
world as in the affairs of the heart, if only we learn how to
perceive it, and awaken to welcome its Advent.
No comments:
Post a Comment