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Last week I sat down to start my reading for our Depth & Mysticism study group and right away, two paragraphs into Chapter 10: Love, Gnosis, the vision, Union, in Rabi’a the Mystic and her Fellow Saints in Islam – new words unlocked a flight of healing thoughts. These were the words: Satisfaction has two sides to it; it is both subjective and objective; there is human satisfaction with God and Divine satisfaction with man. ~ Margaret Smith, Rabi’a the Mystic
And these on the next page: If my heart is satisfied with God most high, I will know He is satisfied with me. ~ Al-Qushayri, quoted in Margaret Smith’s Rabi’a the Mystic
I sat quietly and closed my eyes I tried to imagine a Satisfied Face of God. Not merciful, not loving, not wrathful, not jealous, not nothingness or Holy Creativity. Not pitying or forgiving or patient or impatient or punishing. Satisfied. To live as a micro-particle of a cosmic eternity that satisfied me, and that found me satisfactory. This felt surprising and unsettling. Satisfied? Satisfaction evokes such a specific cluster of sensations. What about all the striving? All the starving and flagellation? All the effort? All the warnings against self-righteousness, vain-glory, temptation and illusion? What about the suffering? The extraction, oppression, corruption, and cruelty? What about the ruthless individualism and relentless injustice? Was I ever introduced in all my spiritual and theological explorations to encounter a satisfied god? Satisfaction, (is) in its highest form, Love.
A god who knows that an earth assignment is heavy and full of pain, trickery and treachery, and who loves in a satisfied way. Who sees, recognizes and values our progress, our process, who sees our limitations and our capacities, our cruelties and our creativity. Who knows how hard we have worked, even when it has been in vain. Who has appropriate expectations for creation. Who knows how lost and destructive we can be. How all the birds might fly off in the absolute worst direction. The satisfaction a Good Enough Mother feels for all of her troublesome children, who is always satisfied with their essential being, even in their shittiest moments. A god who learns something about vulnerability and compassion from our individual and collective attempts at going-on-being. Perhaps a god who sits within the world as if it is an enormous library, who finds every single story, character and creature they find on the shelves, all of the entangled storylines to be the most satisfying stories imaginable. All efforts and longings seen and appreciated. All struggles and sufferings grieved whole-heartedly. All failures and lashing-outs wholly contextualized and considered with compassion for all. A Source that knows there are truths that we can only comprehend after getting terribly lost. What would heal in my own heart if I could imagine a cosmos that just waits for me to learn every single thing about love that I can, in all its complexity and permutations, and is satisfied with whatever I am able to muster. Aatisfied with every moment of the unfolding life-project without erasing any ugliness or horror. Or protecting us from it: And a voice from heaven said, “This is my son, the Beloved, with who I am well-pleased” ~ Matthew 3:17 The New Oxford Annotated Bible
Father’s satisfaction didn’t result in an earthly reward. He may be well-pleased, but Golgotha still awaits. When I was sick and in cancer treatment and wondered if a life-time of striving and failing and striving to be good, to do good, had come to a close - I gave up all striving cold-turkey for a handful of years. I didn’t strive to live or die or be or do better. I’d love what I loved, make what I could, give what I could, rest when I was tired. Whether I had “fulfilled my purpose” or failed utterly, wandering and tangled in veils of illusion - I’d done what I could and was not counting on being granted an extension. If there was any kind of judgement that would follow my death, from gods or humans, there was no more I could do to change the outcome. No more striving. I just was. Then slowly, the surprise of not dying or deteriorating, and a slow recovery emerged and somewhere I started thinking ahead again, started working toward some future, better version of myself. I had to pull my financial weight again, and support my family, and I found myself engaged in generally good, inherently meaningful work, but hard, and tiring, and requiring constant reinvention and self-expansion. My heart started yearning for something gentler, easier and more from and for myself. A familiar dissatisfaction has snuck back in. And I know that the Well-Pleased God is a vision I have not spent enough time with. I know this because when I imagine hearing “Good work!” from the heavenly-sidelines I want to weep and then sleep for days. “This has been a long hard slog, and you’ve faced some impressive traumas and learned whatever you could about the world and yourself from them. You are playing your part well-enough. Doing what you can. Caring for yourself and others as you are capable. That is all I can ask or expect. You are doing just fine.” Progress: ___ Excellent __X_ Satisfactory ___Unsatisfactory I know I need to sit image, because when I do, I feel something inside by body: my heart unfurls, the nerve bundles in my solar plexus release, and a warm sensation travels toward my shoulders along my collar bones. But this satisfaction is two sided and requires mutuality. To receive it, I must be satisfied. How? On this burning, bleeding earth? That is beyond me. But perhaps, if I start paying attention, I become more satisfied with what I has been assigned to me: the ever-shifting part that is mine to play, the work that belongs to me, the failures and traumas that lie ahead that I must negotiate, and the lessons that are still mine to learn and share as I am able.
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