page eighty-six

For over a year, I've been working on this book. While it came highly recommended, and I really do want to finish it, I honestly don't devote a whole heck of a lot of time to it. I'd like to, but it's the kind of book that takes digesting and pondering. On an average day in the past year, I can't quite devote enough focus to it. Frankly, for me discussion is likely necessary, too. Why else would 140 pages (including the index) take over a year to chew through? It's highlighted and underlined and bracketed, and I'm already looking forward to starting it again once I finish.
When I realized that my usual reading times were not going to work with this book, I began taking it with me to adoration. In that hour of time alone, with no distractions, I manage about 20-30 minutes lost in its pages. Once, I fell asleep reading it (yes, at adoration), and when I awoke with a start a few minutes later, the words had changed. I flipped the page forward and back thinking perhaps I'd lost my place, but I think the explanation is that I needed to hear something different from the words, and was put to sleep. (A story for another time, maybe.)
The title is The Divine Milieu, and the author a priest - a Jesuit - who died in 1955, by the name of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Two-thirds of the way through the book he says that we have finally gotten enough background to get to the point. I like to think Dad and I would have discussed him. And occasionally I think perhaps Dad tried to discuss Teilhard's work with me, but I was not where I needed to be.
At any rate, on Friday afternoon, with impeccable timing to fit my life, as God's timing always is, I read:

However vast the divine milieu may be, it is in reality a centre. It therefore has the properties of a centre...the absolute and final power to unite...all beings within its breast. In the divine milieu all the elements of the universe touch each other by that which is most inward and ultimate in them. There they concentrate...all that is purest and most attractive in them without loss and without danger of subsequent corruption....Let those seek refuge there who are saddened by the separations, the meannesses and the wastefulnesses of the world. In the external spheres of the world, man is always torn by the separations which set distance between bodies, which set the impossibility of mutual understanding between souls, which set death between lives....All that desolation is only on the surface. (p. 86)

Spoken directly to my heart that day. A series of frustrations had me feeling alone and lonely. I was already grateful for the scheduled visit to the chapel, but these words more than doubled that gratitude. Looking up, through tears, I asked what I should do next, how to get through the next few days. Clearly my heart heard, "Trust the Lord with all your heart." I smiled and said that I already do. [I often get to speak aloud, as most days no one else is there with us] Again, the same words, clear and direct. And then, "There are those who love you."
"All that desolation is only on the surface." As such, its not nearly as important as we make it out to be. Not nearly as impactful as we determine to allow it to be. The surface, you see, is nothing but a shell, a skin, maybe even a barrier to the real, the beautiful, the true. If you're looking for me, I'll be seeking refuge in the centre.