As I reminisced the movie, suddenly a few passages from Practical Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill began to drift in and out of my consciousness:
We know a thing only by uniting with it; by assimilating it; by an interpenetration of it and ourselves. It gives itself to us, just in so far as we give ourselves to it.....
Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those who keep themselves to themselves, and stand apart, judging, analyzing the things which they have never truly known.....
The question is really this: What, out of the mass of material offered to it, shall consciousness seize upon -- with what aspects of the universe shall it unite?
When I first read these words, I was thinking of my experience in Disneyland, in the kaleidoscope room. There, the crowd stands in the center of a huge room while around the many walls (think of the inside of an octagon, multiplied by 4 or 5) are projected multiple images or scenes of wilderness, nature, animals, etc. There is no time to relish, "love," or appreciate any one of the images, as they are constantly replaced by others. One cannot "unite" himself with any one of the images, no matter how beautiful they are or how much we desire to stop the projector for even a moment.
Life is somewhat like that experience -- except that we repeatedly DO stop the projector and select images and experiences we want to savor, appreciate, re-live, and rehearse. Fortunately, as human beings, we have the capacity to choose, select, and hold on to a few of the many experiences life offers us. Those with which we choose to unite become our Reality -- they form the world in which we live.
If we choose to re-live, review, and unite ourselves with the negative, or evil, experiences, that becomes our Reality, our world. We can re-live, review, and rehearse those experiences daily until they crowd out and overshadow every other experience. Or we can choose to re-live, review, and rehearse the lovely, the desirable, the wonderful experiences we have had. We can enter into communion with the true, the beautiful, the wondrous, the awesome things around us --- including the spiritual world where God has revealed Himself to us.
As I mentally reviewed the movie this morning, I was re-enjoying the experience of watching it all over again. And certainly that is one of the gifts of memory -- the ability to re-live our enjoyable experiences. However, I also realized during those moments that I had the capacity to enter into and enjoy all the gifts of the Spirit that have been given to me, and that however innocent my moments of re-enjoyment of the movie, I was choosing to unite myself with that experience during my time of prayer.
Our daily Reality depends upon those aspects of life we choose to remember, upon those with which we choose to unite ourselves with love and "communion." When we come to pray, we can unite ourselves with the Holy Spirit, and rehearse the things that God had done for us, Who He has become for us -- or we can spend the time rehearsing what has "happened" to us -- what other people have done to us. The choice we make will dictate the rest of our day, even our lives.
Mary said to Elizabeth: My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior -- because she was remembering, re-living, and rejoicing in all that she had heard and felt during her time of prayer. She was remembering and rejoicing in what God was doing for her and for Israel, rather than the "reality" of the Roman world in which they lived. So many of us spend our time in remembering, reliving, and rehearsing what our neighbors have done or said, what our families have done or said, what our co-workers have done or said, that our Reality becomes focused on this small world rather than the inexpressibly expansive world of the Holy Spirit -- what God is doing in this world for us.
If we lift our minds and hearts to God on a daily, even hourly, basis, what He is doing will certainly overshadow what the world is doing. And the result in our spirits will be what Mary experienced: joy and peace in the midst of all circumstances. Paul's Letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, is great advice:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things....and the God of peace will be with you.
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