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24555 |
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Date: October 27, 2023 at 09:01:09
From: Nevada, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Unraveled by Love |
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Unraveled by Love
Mechthild of Magdeburg lived independently as a beguine
until she could no longer care for herself. James
Finley highlights what we can learn from Mechthild as
she approached her death:
She continued on in this way, writing and living with
the beguines, into old age. She reached a point of
fragility when she became blind and wasn’t able to
dress or feed herself. She moved to a monastery of
Cistercian nuns who took care of her. Not only did she
go blind, and not only could she not do anything for
herself, but God took away all traces of the felt sense
of God’s love. She comes to the end of her life in a
state of powerlessness. She says that if God wishes her
to live this way, then she wishes it too. She begins to
express deep gratitude for the nuns and the way they
care for her as a way she experiences God’s love for
her in her powerlessness.
Here is Mechthild’s prayer expressing her gratitude to
God for her powerlessness:
Thus speaks a beggar woman in her prayer to God:
Lord, I thank You that since in Your love You have
taken from me all earthly riches, You now clothe and
feed me through the goodness of others, so that I no
longer know those things that might clothe my heart in
pride of possession.
Lord, I thank You that since You have taken my sight
from me, You serve me through the eyes of others.
Lord, I thank You that since You have taken from me the
strength of my hands and the strength of my heart, You
now serve me with the hands and hearts of others. [1]
Finley continues:
Her life comes full circle, where the places of the
ecstasy in her heart, and the places of utter poverty
and brokenness form a circle, and the brokenness and
the ecstasy touch each other and she becomes utterly
ordinary. She becomes utterly ordinary, falling away
from the ability to gain footing by her own power to do
anything at all. The last two books of The Flowing
Light of the Godhead are dictated because she couldn’t
write anymore; she dictated it and she died writing it.
She ends her book with a dialogue between her soul and
her body in death:
Then we shall no longer complain.
Then everything that God has done with us
Will suit us just fine,
If you will now only stand fast
And keep hold of sweet hope. [2]
How can we learn then to be unraveled by love, as
Mechthild was? I’ll put it another way: the very fact
that we are being touched by the beauty of these
mystics means that we are being unraveled by this love.
It’s already unfolding. It’s already being laid bare in
the unresolved matters of our heart. Mechthild then
mentors us in this love and is unexplainably
trustworthy throughout our days.
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Responses:
[24594] [24559] |
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24594 |
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Date: November 02, 2023 at 20:06:21
From: Kat, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Unraveled by Love |
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This is very informative, thanks Lee.
Gotta get a biopsy done on Monday, left breast. A tiny prayer please, left
breast comes back clear! Nothing showed up in the lymph nodes, thank
God.
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24559 |
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Date: October 27, 2023 at 17:21:12
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Unraveled by Love |
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thank you. good thoughts for me now.
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