COME TO THE ONE WHO IS OPENNESS

As we continue this Lenten season to “come from the One who is Openness,” as Jesus describes himself in the Gospel of Thomas, we attempt with a beginner’s mind to make ourselves an abode of Openness. We choose to make ourselves a home, a holy temple, for God to inhabit. And it is with this inner posture that Lent gifts us – when God beckons us to go inside – that we can start to live from the inside out. This past Saturday, 30 of us made a pilgrimage to The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens to attempt just that. The morning was a Stations of the Cross moment, where we began with a poem in the parking lot, stopped at six sites in the gardens for public readings read by group members, and ended with a poem to seal our lives in the Christic celebration that tells us in the words of David Whyte: “Just beyond yourself is where you want to be.” What a beautiful challenge these words are to us as we approach Holy Week and Easter. The moment when Jesus went beyond himself, beyond anything he knew, to embody the sacred gesture of self-emptying love into the entire cosmos. Here’s the charge of Lent and the mystery of Easter in the words of that great Irish poet that we ended our pilgrimage with:

Just Beyond Yourself

By David Whyte

Just beyond

yourself.

It’s where

you need

to be.

Half a step

into

self-forgetting

and the rest

restored

by what

you’ll meet.

There is a road

always beckoning.

When you see

the two sides

of it

closing together

at that far horizon

and deep in

the foundations

of your own

heart

at exactly

the same

time,

that’s how

you know

it’s the road

you

have

to follow.

That’s how

you know

it’s where

you

have

to go.

That’s how

you know

you have

to go.

That’s

how you know.

Just beyond

yourself,

it’s

where you

need to be.

In Christ,

Ben+

The Rev. Benjamin A. Thomas, Jr.

Associate Rector