Meditations on Intimacy Joseph Lisowski Originally published in issue XX of Vulgata, October, 2008.

NOTHING

Chuang Tzu is a beautiful man. Sitting on the banks of the Pu River, looking over his bamboo pole fishing, he knows no discord. The ministers who came to him with the offer of high position, surely, must have felt his beauty, along with their own regret. They said:

BRIDGES

John sat in a dark closet, a prison cell in a Carmelite priory, head infested with lice, and maggots growing from his wounds. Each week he was brought to communal prayer, set in the center, in the light, on his knees. And the following was said: "So you had to be the first to dishonor the Order of the Virgin with the folly of renouncing your shoes and inventing a new habit, sowing discord among friars and scandalizing laymen. This was your way of putting your name in their mouths and making yourself out to be more reformed than the others. If you wished to be good, what hindered you from remaining in an order that has produced so many friars who have been good and holy? Who forbade you to mortify yourself? To rise to the heights of contemplation or be a pattern of virtue? But you, hypocrite, were not aiming at being a saint, but only at being thought one: not at the edification of the people but at the satisfaction of your own self-esteem. Look at him, brothers, this miserable, wretched little friar, scarcely good enough to be a convent porter! He seeks to reform others when what he needs is to reform himself. Now bare his shoulders: it is on them that we will write the rules of the new reform." Then he was beat with canes by the assembled friars. How this man was able to return to the darkness of his cell, carrying with him the maggots and lice of the priory, thoroughly shaken by doubt, is one way. He did not solicit the fasts, the public censure, the penance, but accepted in good faith what was given him. He wanted nothing. He wanted for nothing. "Oh night, you were the guide/O night more desirable than dawn!" he sings. The light of emptiness illuminated the way. What moved within him was the night. And the night, nothing at all.

A NARROW ROAD

The heart runs after ten thousand things. Never filled nor emptied, running here and there for this and that. When it stops, ideas cease. No more hide and seek. But who can bear it? If indeed we dare. Whitman said that death is far different than what we expected, and luckier. Is it death to stop the race? What would we do? Nothing. So be done with it! Only then may we be ready to love another. And find unity. Who can say? Certainly, not I. The heart runs after ten thousand things, and so does the I.

Francis, son of Piero Bernardone, walked the wintry streets of Assisi with a song, a prank, a bolt of cloth under his arm, hoping to be a knight. Living his father's dreams of nobility, this little Francis of many dreams.

What happened to him was gradual, a wobbling toward, nothing in a flash, nothing new. The guests reviled his hospitality at a beggar's banquet. He gave away his armor to a poor knight. He stole his father's goods, sold them, and gave the money away. At his trial, he disrobed, giving his father everything he owned. A stumbling way that never ceased.

And visions too. Later, when Francis walked it was all light-Brother Sun and Brother Fire. Sir Francis courted his Lady Poverty as the world whirled. Few listened to his soul's delight, though many followed him part of the way. Then poor Clare, claire de june, Sister Moon. And Leo, lucky in pace. Companions each step of the way.

In Francis' heart was the happiness of birds. Freeing doves from a boy's snare, he built them nests so they would stay. "True joy is keeping patience," he would say. The nightingale with whom he sang vespers and lauds got the better of him, he freely admitted. Then the bird landed on his hand. Another time when he preached to the birds, they flew away. He turned bitterly to himself: "What effrontery you have, you impudent son of Piero Bernardone." Patience and joy. His song is clear as day. Such intimacy. Like a single blade of grass parting the wind, bending in its breath, like the fish swimming beneath Chuang Tzu's bamboo pole, as much as John's sun, that night of fire. In the stillness of the heart, there is plenty of room.