Mari’s Blog
The new contentment
There is no reason for you not to exist in continual contentment. Continual contentment will not stunt your growth or prevent you from sharing or from expressing yourself anew.T4:12.12
My eldest brother is in town for the first time in four years to help celebrate our mom’s ninetieth birthday. Saturday night my husband Donny and I took Mom and John out to dinner where I enjoyed myself tremendously, which was . . . a bit unusual. As I walked out to the cabin for my morning time, I was wondering what was “unusual” about it. It really wasn’t “enjoyment” that was unfamiliar, but something else, which I eventually identified as a feeling of contentment. From there I pondered further and saw that I felt “equal.” Does that sound strange? Well, in family dynamics, I don’t know if it is really all that strange. You can remain the “little sister” for life in a family. You can remain stuck in the family pattern.
As I considered my feelings I realized, perhaps for the first time, that I had transcended the family pattern. Did this happen last night, or months or years ago without my realization of it; without me putting my finger on, or “naming” the nature of the difference? My guess is, it happened in stages . . . slowly, slowly, as such things go. But as I came upon the realization of the meaning of what I felt, and the contentment I was still feeling, I remembered a discussion of contentment in the fourth Treatise of A Course of Love: A Treatise on the New. It is one of the only, perhaps the only place within the text of ACOL where Jesus refers to me in the third person. As I recall it, the reception of this chapter followed shortly upon a conversation I’d had with my Course group, about a statement made by Henri Nouwen (in The Genesse Diary). Here, Jesus is speaking of “learned wisdom.”
This example [of learned wisdom] arose from one of those already gathered who was questioning the state of contentment. She quoted a learned priest and scholar who spoke of how he knew, as soon as he was content within the life of the monastery, that it was time to once again move out into the world. What he was really saying was that he saw the dawning of his contentment as the sign that one period of learning was over and that it was time to move on to the next. During the time of learning, this statement was consistent with learned wisdom. During the new time of sharing, there is no “next phase” of learning for you to move on to. There is no reason for you not to exist in continual contentment. Continual contentment will not stunt your growth or prevent you from sharing or from expressing yourself anew. T4:12.12
Jesus then gives a few examples of “learned wisdom”—such as needing to work hard, and the ideas that the strong survive, the weak perish—before he finishes up with this:
What could be more invigorating, more challenging, more stimulating to your enrichment, than throwing out the old and beginning again? And doing so without effort, without struggle. What could be more looked forward to than the chance to create the new through sharing in unity and relationship with your brothers and sisters in Christ? T4:12.18
Before this reference in The Prelude to the Dialogues, the word contentment was last used in the Course Chapter on The Prodigal Son. There, Jesus says that we’ve been looking for what we think we’ve lost—looking in other people, places, and things. We don’t know what it is we’ve lost, but we know that when we’ve found it, we’ll know that it has been found, and we know that if, on our death bed, we haven’t found it, we will not leave in peace. C:9.39
These sections of ACOL seem far too substantial to apply to a dinner out. And yet, in the lives 
many of us live, this is where our realizations of the meaning of our experiences occur. My morning time gives me a chance to see “things that happen,” and the feelings associated with them, in a larger context. And as I sat this morning, I could see that there is a contentment that is spreading. I am so happy in my work! I have loved the re-publishing process—proofing every page of the book again—and now the work of “receiving” and recording the audio. I didn’t know I would love it, but I have and do. And I’m happy that in that same Treatise chapter, Jesus says not to grown impatient (with contentment) “before you begin to experience the joy of sharing and the new challenges of creating the new!” It is a rather sweet feeling to be ready for joyous challenges, to leave behind the “learning” challenges (a challenge in itself) and to begin anew. And, for me, at least, it is rather a flip to see and feel that contentment . . . is not going to be uninteresting or dull!
Emergent Heart Wisdom
Then you will remember that this is but a Course in remembering and that memory is the language of the heart. C:10.31
The heart wisdom that A Course of Love draws forth is emergent heart wisdom. It is “emergent” heart wisdom because it is ours. It is yours and it is mine. It emerges from within each of us. This Course is a catalyst, an activator. It is a relationship we are invited into. It is the way in which that invitation is extended, and what happens inside of each of us when that invitation is accepted, that constitutes its method. There is interaction, one to another. In this Course’s language there is something happening, and it is happening “One Heart to One Heart,” (I:12). With A Course of Love, the teaching or philosophy is not the Holy Grail. The relationship is. You are. When this gets mixed up, the situation itself is untrue. The emphasis is in the wrong place.
Each of us being true to who we are is the reason A Course of Love came to us! This is Jesus advocating for us. Advocating for each of us to accept our true selves and our power, and to live our lives with that acceptance. Jesus defines the heart as our center, the center of ourselves, of our being. And I think of how this Course became central to me and my life. It moved in. It began to share space with me. Its teachings faded in importance . . . still there and retrievable . . . but secondary to living, to loving.
As I’m working on the audio books and “receiving” the Course again as I do, this is clearer to me than ever before. Sometimes, when I get done with the day’s recording, I feel as if I read something absolutely profound that I must go back to read again—something that was clearer than ever before and in its clarity sent out a dozen other points of light. Yet when I go back to see what it was, I cannot return to the words that I believe were there, the ones that moved me. Then I know once again, that there is more conveyed than what is there. When Jesus speaks to my heart, or to yours, he lifts us from the pages of the book. He says “This is a course in remembering” and I believe this may be what accounts for the experience. He says, “[Y]ou are not called to evangelize or convince anyone of the merits of this course of study. This is just a course of study. Those whom you would seek to evangelize or convince are as holy as your Self.” T4:2.19 Yes, something is activated in each of us, and what is activated is specific to each of us. Memory is returned to us. Holiness is declared. We are not found wanting. We are found in relationship, a relationship that is infinite in its variety.
The symbol chosen for this publication, the Angel’s Trumpet, is shown in its various stages at the top of the website; shown in its unfolding. This, too, is what this new way of knowing feels like. Each bit of heart wisdom unfolds in this way so that it is never over, never done. A constant unfolding. Ever emergent. Ever new.
Look at how bound up the Angel’s Trumpet is at the start! The magnificent beauty at the top of the page started out like a twisted up grasshopper. In Chapter Nine, Jesus says, “You travel lightly now where before you walked in chains. You travel now with a companion who knows you as you are and would show your Self to you.” C:9.9 Jesus says this in Chapter Nine! I marvel! Already, so early in the Course, releasing us from the chains that have had us twisted up in knots. Already asking: Can I just show you who you are? So early , , , beginning that great kindness, so that we. . . each of us tender hearts, can be the emergent of this new time.
The First Thing
Think not that your mind as you conceive of it learns without comparison. Everything is true or false, 
right or wrong, black or white, hot or cold, based solely on contrast. One chemical reacts one way and one reacts another, and it is only in the study of the two that you believe learning takes place.
You have not given up the idea that you are in control of what you learn, nor have you accepted that you can learn in a way that you have not learned before. Thus we move from head to heart to take advantage of your concepts of the heart, concepts much more in line with learning that is not of this world. C:3.12-3.13
From inside the house, letting Simmy (the cat) out, the sky looked like one dusty cloud. But walking out under it . . . so lovely. Clouds, some that dusty pink of morning, others startling white. Stars. The rarity of clouds and stars. The beauty of contrast. It got me going on thoughts of contrast: The seasonal change going on; the life changes taking place.
At Mass last night, Mom took Communion in her chair for the first time. She stood for the Gospel, but that was it. No more. She’d finally decided: no more of the ups and downs for her. She’s two weeks shy of ninety. Eighty years or more of the standing, sitting, kneeling—and now—enough. I felt the change, and I’m sure she did too. Each small thing in her life feels like one more step toward the helplessness she came into the world with. Henry (my grandson) is at the other end, one more and one more step toward independence, standing on his own. The contrast of life, the minuet, the ballet, the crescendos, the dips and dives.
As school started this year we bought Henry one of those “tablets” kids like with the idea of using it as a motivator for his school work. He’s in second grade. Last night he asked if there would ever be a time he’d have unlimited use of his gadget, with no “asking.” I said, “Probably not. It’s my job,” I told him, “to be sure you get enough sleep and I think if you could, you’d be on it all night.” He wondered when he’d be old enough to do that, and I said probably never because he’d always have school or a job or something. He then wondered how he could go about getting rich enough to have that freedom. I thought to myself, This is his “first thing.” The first thing making him begin to wonder in that direction. Do each of us encounter a “first thing” sometime in our lives? The thing that makes you wonder how you can find, earn, finagle the freedom to do what you love to do?
When I was with my friend Christie the other day, I was talking of how it is good writing that makes me drool—and has from way back. The falling in love feeling. Reading books over and over, even Gone with the Wind, which I read eleven times when I was about eleven years old. There are different reasons I’ve fallen in love with books over the years. My first love affair was with The Catcher in the Rye, and that one was for the glimpse I got inside the head of Holden Caulfield. In my early teens I was not above faking being sick after staying up all night reading or so that I could continue reading. Reading was my “first thing.”
My love affair continues to this day, even when, since A Course of Love, I read fewer books and with much less variety than I did before A Course of Love. Still, a few years ago I fell in love with the sound of The Secret Life of Bees. Ten years ago I fell in love with Thomas Merton. I truly do feel that particular way of falling in love as my greatest joy. I have one friend, Ross, who lives in Vietnam, who writes me so beautifully that I swear I just about swoon. But he is not the only one. Continually, I am touched by the way people use words. There’s something that feels like “everything” – words that seem to come into my ears as truth and beauty. I don’t know how reviewers manage to review the best of books. How do you describe what is there? Volumes as thick as A Course of Love can and do become one thing expressed truly . . . every day. In the world of books 40,000 words become like one word, one story, one philosophy, one . . . whole.
Now I am finding a new layer of words. I have never listened to an audio book, but I have set about recording the words of A Course of Love. Christie was telling me how she could hardly wait, and talking of the importance of just letting the words enter you. She’s been a companion of mine since the very first Course of Love group that met to read from spiral bound copies. She has read this Course many times. She has the new edition and has read a bit in it, but she’s longing to just lay back and listen, to not even put in the effort of reading. And she feels strongly that “it’s time,” and not just for her; time to have the words enter in a new way.
I did not know I was longing for this. The project wasn’t one I was eager to begin. But that changed this week when I had it come to me that I would “Receive the words of the Course again” in this way. What an inspiration to begin newly!
Another friend, Mary, said, “The ear is feminine. It is receptive.” Here I am, “speaking” the words. It seems dichotomous with the idea of “hearing” the words, of receiving them. As if I am “putting them out” rather than “taking them in.” Which circles around to the idea of contrast and the way, basically, that we think about things. What is “taking in” and what is “putting out?” What is giving and what is receiving?
See what I mean?
These words of love do not enter your body through your eyes and take up residence in your brain, there to be distilled into a language that you can understand. As you read, be aware your heart, for this is where this learning enters and will stay. Your heart is now your eyes and ears. Your mind can remain within your concept of the brain, for we bypass it now and send it no information to process, no data for it to compute. The only change in thinking you are asked to make is to realize that you do not need it. C:3.14
Ease and difficulty, Joy and happiness
[I]t is only difficult until it becomes easy. D.Day3.57
A Course of Love says we need a new language, one that speaks to both the heart and the mind. I find myself looking for this language. Awaiting it. Feeling it. Sometimes listening to it. Having it come softly in a friend’s voice, in a poem; at other times a conspiracy of silence, joyous and quiet; in songs rich and lush. There have been areas where just the right words have come at just the right time, some where I stumble across them, some when I cannot find my own words and need an assist. There are subtle nuances to A Course of Love. There are a few things I trust but have a hard time reconciling with my experience. For instance, A Course of Love suggests that the path of the heart will be easy. I would have told you many times in the last decade that I did not find this to be so. And yet . . .
And yet the words come and I know them when they do, as if they are old friends.
In his memoir of this father, “Early Morning,” Kim Stafford wrote, “The first step in the direction of the soul’s inclination can be clear, and the rest is “easy,” though there may be hardship. Stern hardship, opposition, and even tragedy, but also a clear direction.” Kim said this in reference to the philosophy of his father, the great poet and pacifist William Stafford.
I love this quote because it helped me explain this issue to myself. Maybe it wouldn’t have felt so appropriate if it weren’t for ACOL’s underlying theme of being who you are. It says to me that if you’re true to yourself, your direction will be clear and the rest will be easy, regardless of whatever hardship or pitfalls await you. There’s an “ease” that comes with being who you are that gives you the fortitude to do what your heart calls you to do—an ease that makes it, let’s say—easier than the effort not to do it would be. I think of William Stafford being a conscientious objector in WWII, and how challenging it would have been to be a dissenter of that “great war” when many COs were thought of as traitors. I think of Martin Luther King, Jr., and if he ever could have been peaceful or happy without leading the fight for civil rights. And I think of all the rest of us and our acts of conscience and of change. Of the uneasy. The uneasy days, the nights when troubles keep us awake.
What is difficult and what is easy? Is there anything more difficult than not being who we are? Not being true to ourselves? I don’t think so. I’ve been wanting to talk about this, because if we take “easy” at face value, it can lead to doubt and disappointment. I can’t remember where I read it, but sometime in the last six months or so I read that the decline in popularity of spiritual books has been linked to the disillusionment of those who thought (through the promotion of it) that they could “intend” their way to the good and easy life.
Another author, Rollo May, (“Freedom and Destiny”) wrote in a way that spoke to me just as powerfully as Kim Stafford, about the difference between joy and happiness, saying: “Happiness is associated with contentment; joy with freedom and an abundance of human spirit . . . Joy is new possibilities; it points toward the future. Joy is living on the razor’s edge; happiness promises satisfaction of one’s present state, a fulfillment of old longings. Joy is the thrill of new continents to explore; it is an unfolding of life. Happiness is related to security, to being reassured, to doing things as one is used to and as our fathers did them. Joy is a revelation of what was unknown before. Happiness is the absence of discord; joy is the welcoming of discord as the basis of higher harmonies.”
My road has not been one I’ve always called easy. I haven’t always been “at ease” either. There is an “undoing” that comes of returning to the heart that can be experienced as terribly difficult. And it seems to me that there’s always an underlying challenge in getting to know yourself –and then another challenge in following where your newly identified self wants to go—maybe leaving a job, or risking a move, or giving up previously held beliefs or even stories about yourself. Easy … really? What I’m finding is that when I look back, the answer is Yes. Easy. Well worth it. Had to be done. Couldn’t be helped. The hard stuff almost always washes out as the right path after all. You go along for a while and then you begin to see that it is true. If you want revelation, real change, truth . . . easy is going to look different than you thought it would.
Here’s the rest of the quote I started out with, the answer given within this Course and that I know is true even if I needed the Staffords and Rollo May, (in that quite lovely way in which we need each other) to offer me their words , and in turn needed to offer them to you, to lead us back to where we started . . .
Acceptance is an active function. It is something given you to do. You think it is difficult, but it is only difficult until it becomes easy. D.Day3.57
Companionship and A Course of Love circa 9.1.2014
You are here to make one another known and in so doing to know oneness. D:Day15.15
It is said that when you awaken to find the ground covered in dew, it means that a fair day is ahead. This has certainly been true today. I’m sitting in the cabin with the windows thrown open, the temperature moderate, the sun bright, and the breeze invigorating. I’ve thought several times, as the wind moves near branches about, that someone is approaching. Yet I’m not sure if it is actually because of the wind that I keep glancing up. I get few visitors, and seldom look out with the feeling that, at any minute, a friend might come walking down the path. I think it’s because of the thought of companionship that’s entered my mind today.
I copied a snippet from a friend’s email onto the top of my writing page this morning because it inspired me. It was from a Course of Love reader with whom I’ve been sharing emails for many years. The snip was about feeling connected. We’ve never met yet we both feel that we know each other deeply.
In the new edition of A Course of Love, there is a Foreword written by Glenn Hovemann as editor of this combined volume. In it he mentions my “abundant private correspondence.” I was so delighted by that. I hadn’t asked him to speak of it, highlighted it in any of our conversations, or expected to see it there. That he noticed my attention to correspondence and thought to include it gave value to this generally under-appreciated way of communicating. The private way. The one-to-one way. A way that, even if it seldom includes a stamp and an envelope these days, is still a personal exchange between two people. I believe I was as thrilled as I was because this correspondence has been invaluable to me. What I was glorying in this morning, relishing to the max, was not the feeling of being a companion but of being companioned. And then tears came to my eyes over the sweet recognition of how mutual companionship is. How positively and perfectly mutual. How true to what this Course is.
For some reason it got me considering what I only half-jokingly call the “job description” that Jesus gave me after A Course of Love was complete. I’d basically asked him, “Now what?” and he said, “Be a companion to those willing to leave hell behind.” Before, when I’d considered this “job description” I was always getting hung up on the word hell. I’d trade it in most often for the word ego. Sometimes for the word illusion. Be a companion to those willing to let go the ego and the illusion and to live as a true self in a true reality. Heaven right there.
As it happened, after tears, I had to wonder. Could it be that when we are ready to be companions to one another: to neither lead nor follow; to neither teach nor learn; to be together in the openhearted and intimate way that the word “companion” suggests . . . that this is when hell is left behind?—when everything is mutual and we get tears in our eyes over it?
In its original meaning, the word “companion” has to do with “one who eats of the same bread.” It is an accompanying. It is about fellowship. The lovely Quaker Thomas Kelly, writing about fellowship, spoke of “men and women whom we now know to the depths . . . now we know them, as it were, from within. For we discern that their lives are already down within that Center which has found us.” The word companionship is not used one single time in A Course of Love, and yet I find the idea of it in many places, one of my favorites being, [I]n order to be your Self, you have to share your Self, C:31.14 and another is in dialogue:
When you fully realize that sharing is necessary you will have entered the dialogue. When you have fully surrendered to the fact that you can’t come to know on your own you will have entered the dialogue. When you fully accept that the voice of the one can be heard in the voice of the many you will have entered the dialogue. When you fully realize that you are in-formed by everything and everyone in creation, you will have entered the dialogue. D:Day15.1
And so, tomorrow morning, as the official publication date for A Course of Love: Combined Volume comes and goes, it is companionship and dialogue that I will be grateful for, and wish for you.
