Who IS it? Come INNNNNNNNNNNNN!

Some quotes from the Speaking of Faith interview I linked yesterday:

That's what I call spirituality, the art of homecoming. So it's St. Augustine's phrase, "Deus intimior intimo meo" — "God is more intimate to me than I am to myself”.  And I think when you begin to get a sense of the depth that is there then your whole heart wakens up.

 I love Irenaeus' thing from the second century, which said, "The glory of God is the human being fully alive." And I think in our culture that one of the things that we are missing is that these thresholds where we can encounter this, and where we move into new change in our lives, there are no rituals to help us to recognize them or to cross them worthily.   I think that the threshold, if you go back to the etymology of the word "threshold," it comes from "threshing," which is to separate the grain from the husk. So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness.

This sense of threshold really stuck with me.  In the Petri dish of my reflection
these days since listening to the O’Donohue interview, as I mull the idea of intimacy, the words of Revelation 3:20 came to mind: “I’m standing at your door and knocking; if you let me in I will enter, and we shall share a meal together.”

When our daughters were toddlers, I built a playroom for them, a place where their imaginations could be set free.  Everything in there was their own size.  It was their world.  And one of their favorite pastimes was to invite us in.  They’d close the door and prepare for our visit, and we’d hear their little voices working out the details; what went where, where we would sit, and so on.  Then they would call to us “O.K., you can knock now!”  We’d tap on the door, and they’d say in unison, “Who isssssssssssss it?  Come innnnnnn!” and we’d come in and, sure enough, we’d almost always be invited to tea, sitting with dolly-size cups carefully pinched between thumb and forefinger, balanced on toddler-sized chairs around their tiny table.  “What kind of tea would you like?” their little voices would ask.

I watch Kathy with these adult daughters now in their social situations, and see her in them, in the way they respond to people, the way they look them in the eyes and smile, drawing a smile from them in turn.  I watch them together enter that warm, bright place of intimacy, drawn across the threshold of individuality, of exteriority and aloneness.  This past week as autumn has arrived in force, I’ve taken consolation in weatherizing our entry doors.  The sides and top are sealed by weather-stripping that pushes a soft rubber membrane against the closed door, and the bottoms have “door sweeps” that hold tight against the…threshold.  I think now of those little voices coming through the closed door of our daughters’ playroom, preparing for us.  I find myself wondering if they’d penetrate this insulation.

I’m stunned by O’Donohue’s eloquence in this interview.  Spirituality is being invited in, and feeling at home.  It is being called to be, in that relationship, more fully alive.  It is being called into “more critical and challenging and worthy fullness.”  And I think spirituality is also answering the door, welcoming and sharing with the other - Creator or Creature - who had been on the other side of the weather-stripping and the door sweep, on the outside of our warm and safe isolation. 

Intimacy is lived spirituality; spirituality is lived intimacy. 

Oh.  What kind of tea would you like?