Circle of life

Daniel Mitsui's artwork is amazing. Check out his website for more. This is an image used on the cover of my book All Things Made New. (Click here to get a clearer view.) But it doesn't much look like a circle. Or does it? It struck me that the image of Mary and John at the foot of the Cross is a circle of giving and receiving, each to the others. This followed on from reading the Meditation of the day from yesterday's Magnificat, by John Tauler. It included these words, referring to those who follow the Spirit and are lifted above time. "From God they accept instinctively all that happens to them, and in the same spirit they offer up all to him again, and so they abide in sweet tranquility of mind." It is a circle that we need. We receive everything from him, and we give everything that we have to him. That is why our burden is light. Most often, though, there is a blockage along the way, either in the receiving or the giving, and then grace doesn't flow. We are holding on to things.

The other interesting thing that Tauler goes on to say immediately afterwards is this. "And this is true of them even while their outward man is much disturbed and sorely pained." So we may look as if we are in pain, we probably even feel it, but inwardly (and many people have not yet discovered the "inward" he is talking about) we feel joy not suffering, hope not despair. May God help us to reach this state and dwell there.