You see the burning bush, hear the still small voice
following the storm, feel the burning coals touch your lips or get swept up
into the heavens. Your mind enlarges beyond comprehension, your heart is thrown
open wide and your spirit soars through the cosmos. Everything in you is
different than the moment before; you feel changed down to the cellular level.
In a burst of comprehension you realize that this is what you have lived your whole life for, this moment, right here. It is sum and total, prayer and answer, life and joy
and everything.
And then the right
here moment passes.
Umm….okay....now what?
At first the vision burns bright in your mind, continuing to
change the way you look at the world and relate to the people around you. It
changes - not your memories, but how you interpret them. And ideas of your
future shift like sand beneath water as the sense of something
greater takes hold.
But the minutes pass, and the days, the months. The vision
which sounded a clarion call in your life dims just a bit; the bells ringing in
your ears grow fainter. Until one day you realize that this extraordinary experience, this
life-changing vision – it's only a memory now. Treasured, to
be sure, a lamp unto your feet, but one that shines only when you turn back to
look at it.
You're still different, though, right? Maybe not as different as you first thought, but different nonetheless. Maybe the shifts are more subtle, but they're still there, you still feel them, but they don't fill your consciousness the way they did. So what do you do now?
Well, you can’t go back from being changed to not being
changed. If the coal really touched your lips, then you have to speak, even
when the speaking no longer comes from a raging fire within. Maybe especially
when it no longer comes from a raging fire within. Because if we live only for
those peak experiences, we’re going to miss the life going on all around us. We
will be ever seeking, ever craving. Rather than doing the deeper work of
unfolding the vision into the minutiae of washing the dishes or mowing the lawn
or changing the world, we’ll always have our eyes to the mountain peaks; what
was received as grace and gift we will start trying to find or earn.
A Christian mystic from the 12th century named
Hadewijch knew all about this. Her life was filled with mystical visions and
ecstatic moments, but after she had savored their sweetness for a time, she
made an amazing discovery: that getting to that peak experience was not the
point. Going back out into the world and living a life of compassion and
service was the point. She explained this by saying that if you want to be God
with God – if you want the mystical vision of cosmic unity – then you have to
go be Christ with humans – you have to go out and actually live for others.
That “looking to the mountain peaks” mentality she called immaturity; being
“full grown” meant realizing that the mountain peaks are just another step
along the journey.
You removed your shoes before the burning bush, putting all
that is less than the highest aside so that you could stand in the presence of
the holy. So what do you do when the vision fades and the bush no longer burns?
You put your shoes back on and get to work.
