Reflections from The Hours of the Universe, by Ilia Delio

Matins
Awaken!
Our universe is grand and wide
It stretches like gum ready
To blow a bubble.

A universe indifferent to life
Yet the mother of all life.
It doesn’t know that it knows
Until we arrive.

The We Universe
Is the
Me Universe and You Universe
We are the conscious voice
Of the universe
But we are not all conscious
Of the universe voice
Within us.

So we continue to stretch
And fold
And fight
And forgive
Because the universe
Is not yet
A Uni-verse.
The Many Still Search for the One.

One day it shall be so,
however,
Sometime, ahead,
in the future.
And then we will know

The Source from
which we began.
For the End is
in
The Beginning.
(p. 1-2)

Lauds
Who are You, O God?
Better yet, what are you?

You have a name but
I cannot see your face,
Or am I looking at it?

The philosophers say,
You are Being itself,
Necessary Being,
Being without contradiction
Not like the rest of us.

So you are not Us,
And we are not You.
But You are not You,
Without Us, and
We are not Us
Without You.

Strange is this mystery
O God.
A mystery that arises
within me.
For You are something
Of me,
And I am something Of You.

You are the Eternal One
Growing in time,
And I am in time,
Growing into Eternity.

Perhaps this
Separation of terms
is an illusion,
like the Buddha said.

For if I did question who you are,
I would remain a mystery to myself
Forever.
(p. 19-20)

Prime
Creation flows from the fountain fullness
of creative energy,
Springing from a creative and dynamic Source of Love.
Relational, personal, generative, communicative
Love
Spilling over on the canvass of space-time;
Creation is like a song
That flows in the most beautiful of harmonies.

What could possibly account for such
Creative beautify bubbling up
Into life?
Could it be
The Beauty of Life itself,
A Divine community of Love?

Creation is a work of Art
And the Artist is a shole
Community painting
As I write.
Not one person but
Interlocking creative energies of
Divine Persons.
How could I possibly know this,
Unless I am somehow – mysteriously–
Related to the
Creating Persons?

Which makes me a personal
Created co-creator
Of an ongoing vision I can
barely detect.
But the vision grows within me
When my ego gets out of the way,
And I can see
For a brief moment,
A Radiant Wholeness
in Love.
(p. 51-52)

Terce
Was Jesus of Nazareth God?

Can we really ask this question, as if we might ask,
What is the inside of matter?

The patristic giants put on their heavy
Philosophical armory to tackle
This question.

Some said, “Yes,” Jesus was truly God.
Others said, “Maybe” but he was also
Human.
Still others said, the logic of natures
Demands a distinction of terms.
So the question become
Illogical,
A battleground of intellectual wits
And power.

A poor woman in a small village
Awoke every morning with the
words, “I believe.”
She believed without logical arguments,
She trusted without formal distinctions,
She surrendered in faith,
Throwing herself wholeheartedly
into
The arms of God.

She did not ask the question,
She was the question and
And God was the answer received
in a heart full of love.
For the logic of God,
Is the logic of love,
And one who lives in love
Lives in God
And God lives in her.
This is the Christ.
(p. 101-102)

Sext
The Spirit blows where it wills.
Does the Spirit actually “blow” like wind?
Could something that “blows” like wind
Have a will?
Just think or imagine for a second,
The Spirit is not
Something
But Someone-in-Between,
The Metaxological person,
The Personal center of Betweenness.
Neither “this” nor “that”
But “this” and “that”
After all, how could any “thing” relate
If it was not first relatable?
The Spirit is the relatable person.
Which means, of course, that we are first
Spirit, since it is first “we” then “me.”
Which means we are first “this and that,” depth and
breadth,
somewhere in-between, and then
I exist.
Which means of course that this blowing Spirit
Is no willy-nilly
There is a mysterious center of attraction
To this unfathomable depth
Turning this relatable in-between
Energy of life into
My life.
The Spirit is Love-
Breathing life, and my life is
Life-breathing Love.
Which is why matter can never be lonely,
Gravity is matter’s response
to loneliness;
the Spirit dances in quarks.
And Love pulls the whole
into God.
(p. 125-126)

None
Though frightened for a moment by evolution,
the Christian now perceives that what it offers him is
nothing
but a magnificent means of feeling more at one with God
and of giving himself more to him.
In a pluralistic and static Nature,
the universal domination of Christ could,
strictly speaking,
still be regarded as an extrinsic
and super-imposed power.
In a spiritually converging world
this “Christic” energy
acquires an urgency and
intensity of another order altogether…
Christ invests himself organically
with the very majesty of his creation.
And it is in no way metaphorical
to say
that man finds himself
capable of experiencing
and discovering his God
in the whole length,
breadth and depth of the world
in movement.
To be able to say literally
to God
that one loves him,
not only with all one’s body,
all one’s heart and
all one’s soul,
but with every fibre
of the unifying universe__
that is a prayer
that can only be made
in space-time.
(p. 147-148)

Vespers
Forgiveness arises
Out of creative love;
A conscious intention
To be part of
The act of new creation,
Ex nihilo
Living on the edge of
The next moment of life.

Suffering—yes
But the suffering of returning
The good that the unforgiving heart
Wants to steal and covet
And punish.
If we relate onto to the
Past deeds of others, we live
With dead remains;
We breathe
But we are not really alive,
Not really living.

For to live is to love,
And to love is to create.
Forgiveness is the act of
Making a new future.

“Let the dead bury their own dead,”
Jesus said.
How can the dead bury the dead?
That is how far down the unforgiving heart goes,
into the absurd dark hole of deadness,
where nothing breathes.

Jesus’s last breath was a word of forgiveness,
He broke through the barrier
of the heartened heart and loved
to the end that never ends.

Forgiveness is resurrected life,
The power of hope joins the power of love
And gives birth to the power
Of the future.
(p. 197-198)

Compline
It is hard to say what death is like
While still in breathing skin.
Daylight fades or suddenly
Disappears
And the unknown mystery
Of life
Springs up from the abyss of the soul and
Becomes Final, Fullness, Eternal.

The whole universe carried within
Is now brought to completion in
The Act of Death.
The Last breadth is now the First Act
of real freedom.
The source of life is now
The goal of life;
All relationships are gathered up
in a moment of profound reverie.

The Me forming through
Life’s loves and struggles
Is now revealed and permanently
Sealed on the heart of You–
For better or worse
Richer or poorer,
My “life” is now permanently entangled
With Your Life,
And the life of the Whole.

In death, my heart ceases but
My life continues in a glorious way
The way of Divine Love;
The process of my becoming spirals on.

I now join in the Great Work of Love
Living beyond the bounds of space-time
Permanently sealed on the heart of God
Whose only work is “loving the world”;
And in this work
I shall endure
Forever.
(p. 217-218).

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