To Live an Undivided Life

Sound refreshing? That’s because an undivided life is what you were born with, and the spiritual journey you are on is meant to bring you back to that wholeness and union with God.

“Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what you are.” 
― Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

This week’s beatitude is “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Being pure in heart is primarily about having a singular focus, a clarity about who one is and to Whom one belongs—-not the relatively minor details of one’s life related to purity codes of conduct that some of us have been familiar with in religious life.

And when a person develops a regular practice of living in focused meaning and purpose within the Presence of God’s Love, they do indeed “see” God; for one’s True Self is synonymous with that spark of God which Christians call the Christ Within.

The reason we celebrate Christmas each year is because it is the remembering of how the awakened Christ in Jesus of Nazareth became the door through which all of humanity could walk to discover their own place of belonging in the heart of God.

And the amazing thing about Jesus Christ is that he was not only the messenger/teacher about how to discover Christ in your own life. HE BECAME THE MESSAGE ITSELF.

Keeping our hearts focused on him draws us, over time, into an undivided life, since Christ is the fullest revelation of a whole, fully human life that we have. Here’s another quote from Quaker Parker Palmer, from his book, A Hidden Wholeness:

“The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.”

Discovering our hidden wholeness in the heart of God isn’t as hard as it sounds. One of the first things we can do to find our True Selves is to just slow down. Turn off the phone (and make it difficult to access!), unplug the relentless news stories, put the tablet on a high shelf, and turn off the radio. Refuse Distraction’s “siren song” toward living a life which will crash on the cliffs of Superficiality and Pointlessness. Embrace the pure-hearted message of God, as understood through Jesus, our Emmanuel: You are my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased… I am with you always till the end of the age.