Deep Calls to Deep By Juniper Ellis

Deep Calls to Deep

By Juniper Ellis

We all know truth when we see it and feel it. Truth carries an actual, palpable energy. This is a large topic, so I'll just share three quick examples for your further meditations.

A friend of mine was at a Quaker meeting, where people sit in stillness until someone is inspired to speak. After a time, a woman stood and said that in our spiritual lives we need permeable fences, fences like coral reefs or mangrove trees.

A sudden wave swept over my friend: a powerful feeling that she needed to stand and say, "There are no fences!" The feeling was so strong, it was if she had been caught by a tidal force, and tumbled in it.

But my friend was a visitor, and not a Quaker, and did not want to seem disagreeable or unfriendly, so to speak, and so she talked herself out of saying anything at all. And for the rest of that day and night, she felt physically ill. A wave of truth had risen up to express itself through her, and had been blocked, and she was left feeling uneasy and sick and wrong.

Truth doesn't always require words. A Japanese monk came to this country to teach Zen. He knew only a few words of English, and his students knew no Japanese. Yet he stood in turn in front of each student, and his very presence moved many of them to tears. What was communicated was truth; what was communicated was love. You can't ask for a more eloquent teaching than that.

So sometimes truth asks us to speak, even when it is not easy or comfortable to do so. Sometimes truth asks us to share ourselves beyond words. Always truth asks us to express kindness. I'm sure you've seen and felt the effects of truth spoken roughly. Speaking without care is like pummeling someone on the head or the heart. You cannot help but distance yourself from the very truth you mean to honor.

Rejoice that we belong to truth; truth doesn't belong to us. We might just as soon claim to own the sunrise or sunset, but we all recognize the rising call of truth. As the Psalmist sings, "Deep calls to deep at the sound of thy waterfalls; all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." Deep calls to deep within all of us, the living waters we are, and we are all caught and tumbled in a wave of love that sweeps us far beyond fences. http://www.juniperellis.com/blog