The Finite and the Infinite

 

There are endless couplets which we treat dualistically: good/bad, right/wrong, light/dark, sacred/profane, infinite/finite, to name a few. The world however opens up when instead of treating these as self-defined categories we look at the relationship, the spectrum of possibilities...what happens at the backslash. This is non-dualistic thinking or “both/and” consideration. The ultimate way for this transformative thinking is contemplation which means gathering things together. 

I find myself playing with these couplets in my imagination sometimes, revolving and rotating them until they blur. I am not entirely sure what the inspiration for being called to this exercise might have been. Perhaps it was Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond not free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (KJV!) Or perhaps it was the revelation so many times that the Kingdom is here and yet to come, the tug and push of it all...

Whatever the transformative contemplative moment(s), the focus on St Francis this past week has secured this way of life and drawn me into the relationship between the finite and the infinite, or should I say led me through the doorway.

As it is said “there are no sacred or (and) profane things, places or moments; there are only sacred and desecrated things, etc.” (Richard Rohr, see also Durkheim) That which leads us into the contemplation of such ideas, through the doorway, if you will, is reverence. Reverence may be that which so focuses our whole attention and awareness as to transform categories into holy spectra.