The “spiritual life” is then the perfectly balanced life in which the body with its passions and instincts, the mind with its reasoning and its obedience to principle and the spirit with its passive illumination by the Light and Love of God form one complete man who is in God and with God and from God and for God. One man in whom God is all in all. One man in whom God carries out His own will without obstacle. (Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation)
Who is Trudy? As we travel this road of spiritual enlightenment, we will be traveling as three in one. In the last post I introduced Lena, Judy and Trudy. In this post I want to take a deeper look into our Trudy.
Trudy is our innermost being. She is the place where the infinite meets the finite or the unseen meets the seen. She is the horizon between the known and the unknowable. She is the doorway to the cloud of unknowing. Trudy is the point of transcendence between spirit and flesh or divine and man. Trudy is our connection to God and is the same substance as God. Jesus had a Trudy. Jesus lived from the wisdom of His Trudy. Jesus saw what the Father was doing and only did what He saw the Father doing in His Trudy. Jesus meet the Father in prayer in His Trudy. Jesus knew the Father and saw the Father and communed with the Father in His Trudy.
All of that is very contemplative and “deep.” Thinking of Trudy can seem a bit abstract but in truth Trudy is a greater reality. When we “see” the “world” all around us a shadows of a greater reality, we know that Trudy knows that greater reality. Like I alluded to in the last post, Trudy is a wave in an infinite ocean. She is the substance of the ocean and nature of the ocean and character of the ocean. She is salt water. The ocean is salt water. Still, Trudy is not all the ocean. She is a manifestation of the ocean. She is the observable part of an infinite reality. Trudy is the same as the deep water but only knows the deep water as it is made apparent to her. She has a sense of the waves crashing on the white sandy beaches but she only knows the white sandy beaches in the depths of what she can’t know.
OK, maybe I have fried your brain with seemingly abstract thinking but lets look at Trudy from another angle. Trudy is our childlike innocence. Trudy believes in Santa and fantasy and the stuff of imagination. For Trudy the imagination is not different from what we observe as “real” because she knows what God knows. She knows that imagination creates and God creates by first imagining.
Trudy is Love. She is the substance of Love. Trudy works only from Love. Trudy loves unconditionally. Trudy has no judgment at all. She doesn’t observe and assess and decide. Trudy loves first. Trudy sees a man in an orange jump suit with shackles and chains and says “what a cool outfit.” But don’t be confused. Trudy isn’t stupid. Trudy is wise beyond our comprehension. Trudy just operates from a greater reality. She understands the perspective of things and the importance of things and the value of things. She may have the simple faith of a child and the innocence of a child but she is not oblivious to the things of the world. Trudy just isn’t controlled by the things of the world. Trudy sees all things but is not bound by all things. Trudy is in but not of the world.
Trudy is Adam and Eve in the garden before the forbidden fruit. She lives in peace and assurance. She knows she is loved by God. When she is loved by God, it is God loving Himself. Trudy is so sure of her place in God that any thought of a place outside of God is nonexistent. There is no reality outside God. There is no life outside the garden. There is no food other that God. There is no sustenance apart from God. He is the bread and the water. He is the truth and the life. Trudy is not confused at all about her union with God. She doesn’t exist apart from Him because God cannot be apart from Himself. Trudy is our Jesus. Trudy is our way. Trudy is our innermost being.
In our journey of “life” we are trying to root and ground ourselves in our Trudy. We feel a pull towards Trudy. We sense something greater than our Lena calling to us from the depths of us. We are drawn to the simple faith of Trudy and the carefree innocence of Trudy and the childlike joy of Trudy. We see what she sees in our dreams of fantasy. We are pulled by the “too good to be true” feelings that bubble up from our Trudy reality. Trudy is the essence of the excitement of Christmas morning, the feeling of coming home, the transcendent love of holding a newborn baby, the intensity of a first kiss, the butterflies of a first love. Trudy is what we ache for so often but just don’t know what it is we are aching for. She is the warm embrace of a loving father and the sweet bliss of a hot drink next to a warm fire on a snowy morning. You know Trudy because she is a part of you.
But…and there are way too many buts…. We deny our Trudy. We kill our Trudy with our Judy. We reject Trudy because of circumstance or experience. We ignore Trudy because we have suffered or been rejected or felt so terribly alone. We don’t believe in Trudy because we haven’t known assurance or acceptance or inclusion or love. The “world” creeps in and Judy and Lena take over. Often our “religion” steps in and actually denies Trudy. Religion, when it implies a separation from God who is a judge and subject to cosmic justice (the human kind) and will bring retribution on all who are not on His team…and so on…kills Trudy. When religion puts that image of God in our brains, those images kill our Trudy. The only hope is resurrection. Resurrection power is Love. Love looks like God becoming a man and letting man kill Him and Him loving us and forgiving us while we killed Him. That image of a loving God brings Trudy back to life.
More to come. Stay tuned.
Yay God!
Lance
alancetotheheart 