Creation is the Body of Christ,the Body of the Divine.

“When Love takes hold of us, 

we begin to yield and let Love direct our lives. . . .

As Love took hold of [Francis of Assisi’s] heart, 

it opened his eyes to see the world with new vision.”

--Ilia Delio, OSF

Ilia Delio goes on to describe Francis’ world as an embrace of the Divine.  He began to see the Divine Presence of Christ in all of creation.  In the birds, the worms, the sun, other humans, the lilies of the field.  “The very life of God is communion in love,” she states.  The Sankhya Yoga philosophy says the same thing in a different language.  The Source of Life, Brahman, creates life constantly and prosperity and joy fill that creation with a loving presence, called Vishnu, the “I am” of life who is Love.When we are open to that present life, all we need is provided for us.  When we desire more than the present and lose sight of that divinity within all of life, we begin to catapult ourselves toward fear, toward demanding more than we presently have and need.  We sense limitation and we see others as though they are better off than ourselves.  We no longer begin to embrace, as Francis would say, the presence of Christ in our world.How then do we let Love—the true Spirit of Love, Divinity itself—take hold of us?   As my wife Mary says, “We open ourselves to what is happening.  We open ourselves up to the current events in our lives by listening, quieting ourselves because it is our nature to love.”Without saying it out loud, Mary, Francis, and Ilia are talking about meditation.  They are talking about setting aside the mental distractions of our “monkey mind.”  They are talking about focusing on the life that is flowing from within each of us…that life that is our Source of Life, our own Christ within, our own True Self.When we begin our meditation by focusing on our breath, we become aware that we are not doing the breathing, but “Something Else” is breathing us.  We breathe even when we are not conscious of our breath.  It is the divine Life Force within us (called “ruha” in Aramaic, “ruah” in Hebrew, “rah” in Arabic, “pneuma” in Greek, “spiritus” in Latin, “prana” in Sanskrit, “chi” in Chinese, “ki” in Korean, “the Holy Spirit” in Christian English, “consciousness” or “energy” in the language of science) that does the breathing, that fills us with life.  This Divine Power fills all that moves and all that exists because all existence has it birth in Creation, in that spoken-breathed Divine Word.Maybe when we begin to open ourselves with morning meditation to our true nature of love and peace, we may begin to “see the world with new vision.”  We may even see that the pains of the world and all its divisions might rise to a new unity of Earthly existence and not just the pain that God experiences. I bow to the divinity within you!