Meister Eckhart | Finding Our Way Home

We have much farther to travel on this journey to renew our connection with the earth, with each other, and with the Mystery at the heart of life. There will be troubles to endure and beauty to behold. What we are becoming together is still to be revealed. This is a journey of our time, of our planet, of all the people and beings who live here together. Most importantly, we must remember that we are not facing these challenges alone. That is what I learn from the mushrooms. We are not alone. We are already connected to the earth, to Mystery, to each other.

Because we are all connected, any small action that we take has the capacity to affect the wider network. When we begin to honor and celebrate our connection with even one other being on this planet, something reverberates through the whole web. When we express our gratitude for the water we drink, and do our part to preserve its cleanliness, we are nurturing the web of life. When we share our resources with those who have less, we are nurturing the web of life. When we listen, really listen to each other’s differences, we are nurturing the web of life. When we listen, really listen to the water, the wood, and the stone, we are nurturing the web of life.

We are trying to wake up to what already exists. We are learning to know the deep truth that we are already at home.

So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged—I begged to wed every object
and creature,
and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart quote is from “When I Was the Forest,” Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West.

The German mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote,

The seed of God exists in us…
Pear seed grows up into pear tree.
Nut seed grows up into nut tree—
God seed into God.

What might we do together if we remembered that each of us has the seed of God inside? Antoine de St. Exupery, in The Little Prince, tells us “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Each one of us is like Jack and the Beanstalk. Each one of us has within us this spark of divinity, like a Mystery Seed, a seed of what we might become, fully alive. And we also have some husk that tries to keep it contained and hidden. We have to plant those seeds, let them break apart, tend them, and help them to grow. If we let those Mystery Seeds grow, like Jack with his beanstalk, we will become much more than we ever imagined.

I can’t help but think of one of the elders I knew in the congregation in which I served on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Her name was Ellie. Ellie died at the age of ninety-four. She had always suffered from a stutter. As a child, she was sent to all the specialists that her prominent father could afford, and nothing cured the stutter. But in the midst of this, Ellie was able to find her voice.

She became a writer, both in her career, and in her passion for politics and social justice. She was a speechwriter for several political campaigns and an active member of the League of Women Voters. She was also active in the nuclear freeze movement. Somehow, she didn’t need to get rid of her stutter to bring forth her voice. It was almost as if her stutter helped her to find her voice. It was like an old husk, long ago cracked open, lying almost unnoticed around the bright flower of a plant that had grown from her heart. She had brought forth her latent divinity.