Mercy

 Maybe time to get back to my roots, i.e. a sequence of quotes strung together by a loose assembly of stray thought perhaps totally irrelevant. 

How to sum up how I see/understand/live things....

 "Love is why there is something rather than nothing" (Source unknown, but then, who cares?)

Those aghast at our world's suffering will find that difficult to square with the reality they inhabit, but there you go. 

 "Love had no why" (Meister Eckhart)

Maybe "conclusions" and ardent beliefs can mess us up? Hang loose. 

As far as Reality, in our relationships, then the key word is "mercy". 

"When I speak well of myself and ill of others, the autumn wind chills my lips" (Buson)

When the autumn wind blows then, as Krishnamurti would say, "it is over". When seen, it is over. As Merton once wrote:-

The spiritual life is something that people worry about when they are so busy with something else they think they ought to be spiritual. Spiritual life is guilt. Up here in the woods is seen the New Testament: that is to say, the wind comes through the trees and you breathe it.

(from "Day of a Stranger")

 

So, love is why there is "something" rather than nothing; love has no why; and the key to life with others is Mercy. 

Merton again:-

The Cross is the sign of contradiction - destroying the seriousness of the Law, of the Empire, of the armies, of blood sacrifice, and of obsession.

But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.

 

A final word from Rumi:-

"Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation"

So be merciful towards my own translation.