God is All and All is Love - James Finley, Ph.D.

https://portraitsinfaith.org/james-fi... GOD IS ALL AND ALL IS LOVE I had permission to spend several hours a day in the loft of an abandoned sheep barn that was on the grounds of the monastery. I remember…once, I was in the loft of this barn; the loft doors were always left wide open. There was a woods right there that went up a hill to where Thomas Merton’s Hermitage was. Off to the side was a meadow. I would put a bale of straw at an angle there, and I would sit there and look out at that meadow. It was very hot; Kentucky in the summer. I was walking back and forth, reading the Psalms, and all of a sudden there was this vivid realization that what we tend to think of as the air is God. I was literally walking back and forth in God, breathing God. I also had this sense that if I would try to flee from God, I’d be running from God, in God. And wherever I ended up, God would be waiting for me when I got there. Also with it was this deep feeling there was no need to run at all because the intimacy was that God knew me; like through, and through, and through, and through his mercy. Like an oceanic mercy—this way; compassion—this way. I sat on that bale of straw just taken up by that. When I heard the bell ring, I walked over for vespers. I chanted vespers breathing God. I ate my supper that night, breathing God. I went to bed and fell asleep, breathing God. I walked around like that for three days. On Sundays, I used to go into the woods. In Kentucky they have a lot of farmland, but I was walking in the woods. It was a little wooded path going up a hill toward a little lake where I’d go to sit. There were trees along either side, overarching, overhead; like a canopy. I was walking up this little path, breathing God, and I reached out and touched one leaf of a tree. It suddenly dawned on me that the infinite presence of God was presenting itself as the presence of the tree; presenting itself due to my touching the presence of the tree. And it was so radicalized for me. I walked off to the side of the road, into a big meadow in the tall grass. It was very windy. I sat there all afternoon. It changed my life. I went to Merton. I would see him every other week for one-on-one spiritual direction. I told him about these experiences, and he said, “Once in a while, you’ll find somebody with whom you can speak about such things, but they’re hard to find. A lot of people don’t even know they are real. Some people, they know they’re real.That’s your solitude. Once in a while you’ll find somebody.” He had to know that he was the one that I could find. He had to know that. He said, “But you’ll spend most of your life without such a person. But you always have your prayer, and you always have the scriptures, and you always have life, and you always have God, and you always have this way…and you walk your walk.”