Re-emergence

Yesterday our Centering Prayer class had an all day retreat. It was a beautiful encounter with my own contemplative practice, sitting in the beautiful silence, and with contemplative Christianity which I have never really known before now.

I am reading "The Grace in Dying" by Kathleen Dowlings Singh. It is another thing that has come into my life by synchronicity. I was told about this book by two or three people including David Frenette (teaches the Centering Prayer class) in the last week. I found a copy on my bookshelf. Two friends sent it to me awhile ago, and I filed it with my hospice book collection.
It is an awesome book about the qualities that take place as we near death and the notion that we come out of the Ground of Being (God, Source, etc.) at birth, differeniate ourselves (develop ego) and then return to the Ground of Being just before we die unless we figure out sooner that that which we are longing for is the return to God.

If we figure it out sooner we start a contemplative practice. If not, it happens anyway as we approach death. It doesn't matter which contemplative tradition we "dig our deep well in." According to Ken Wilbur all mystics of every tradition ultimately discover this unity. It is inevitable as the night follows the day that you will re-emerge into God. But how wonderful to do it in life as we live at this very moment. Then to have time to share this blessing with others and help them to this consciousness. That seems to me the deep work of our call to chaplaincy.