I’ve been in search of a spiritual life as long as I can remember, it led me to leave the ordinary world behind and set out on my journey, which led me here, to Maria, to the animals. There has always been a mystical element to my life, and I have never been entirely clear about how to express it.

The two most consistent sources of my spiritual search in recent years have been the late Trappist, Thomas Merton, one of the great spiritual writers of all time, and the writings of the Kabbalah, the mystical and beautiful texts of unknown Hebrew writers and prophets. I return to both, again and again, when I am hurting, confused, in need of grounding and inspiration. They always work for me in one way or another.

Merton was a devout Christian, which I am not, but I am curiously drawn to the writings of the Christian writers who are tied to the spirit and good will of Jesus Christ, unlike so many people in our time who use his name to promote war, hatred, and disregard for the poor. His message, as I understand it, has always resonated with me and inspired me to be a better human being.

The Kabbalah is a joyous trip, a different and very creative kind. I love the writing of the mystics, full of love, sex, demons, quarrelsome angels, wise donkeys, mystical poems and songs, a troubled God trying to make sense out of his difficult and unpredictable creations, us humans.

This week, I have been reading two things, Merton’s writings about our Bodiy of Broken Bones, and the Kabbalah texts about the Canopy Of Peace, the beautiful and very timely idea for a time of real rest and inspiration, the first Sabbath. I love both ideas, even though I am even less connected to Judaism than I am to much of Christianity.

Sometimes, when I watch the news and feel fear and sorrow at the words and images I see, I turn to Merton and/or the Kabbalah. I can hardly believe how relevant they are. I guess that is how spirituality works, it is always relevant, it is not about today only. The idea of the resetting of broken bones has helped me come to terms with our world, with our news. With my life.

Merton – and other Christian scholars – wrote about the body of Christ, broken by Pontius Pilate and the Pharisees. His broken body is reflected in the bodies of human beings, “by the devils in the agony of that disunion which is bred and vegetates in our souls prone to  selfishness and sin.”

Merton struggled, as I do and  you do, to understand the dark nature of some human beings,  the ugliness in the world.

Our idea of faith, he writes, is massacred in Christ’s broken bones, God is murdered in men.  In violence and war and conflict. The sometimes cruel history of the world, he writes, is expressed in the division that tyrannizes our souls. We seek to reset our own broken bones.

We all have our broken bones, and this is where I connect very much with his writing. I am conscious of my life as a series of broken bones, my pain and suffering, my fear and confusion. Love is the “resetting of a body of broken bones.” Even saints cannot live with saints on the earth without anguish, wrote Merton, without some pain over their differences. This is the drama of being human, of accepting our world.

“There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men,” Merton writes.”They can love or they can hate.”

Hatred refuses the pain of reunion, of healing. Hatred tries to cure disunion by annihilating those who are different from us. Love, by its acceptance of the pain and struggle of reunion, begins to heal all wounds.

And so that becomes the choice, do I want to stay broken, or do I want to move on?

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The Kabbalah gave me a different sense of healing and spiritual grounding.

I found a passage today that described a plague of spirits unleashed on the world, defective spirits, all deriving from the left side, thus invisible to human beings, whom they menacingly confront.

“The world must defend itself against them,” write the mystics, “for then the entire left side is aroused, fire of Hell flashes, and all denizens of the left roam the world, craving to clothe themselves in a body but they cannot..a song of maleficent spirits has been prescribed  for whenever their dread prevails in the world.”

I understand. I have always had a song of maleficent spirits, from the time I was five,  I sing to myself to keep to fend off the evil spirits, I can’t reveal it or it will lose it’s power I’m told.

So God responds to this stress and travail. He creates a day of rest, he calls it the Canopy Of Peace.
“Come and see,” write the mystics. “When the day is hallowed at the entrance of Sabbath, a canopy of peace hovers, spreading all over the world, when all spirits, whirlwinds, demons and the entire dimension of impurity are hidden away within the eye of the millstone of the chasm of the immense abyss. For as soon as holiness arouses over the world, the spirit of impunity cannot arouse; one flees the other. Then the world enjoys supernal shelter, and we need not pray for protection.”

This canopy, say the writers, is prescribed for weekdays as well.

I love both of these ideas, the resetting of the Body Of Broken Bones, the Canopy Of Peace. Both acknowledge the suffering and pain that sometimes erupts in the world, both offer hope and solutions. I have spent much of my life resetting my broken bones, I am only beginning to see how spiritual an experience that is.

And the Canopy Of Peace is one of my central ideas about spirituality, I didn’t have the right words for it. My life is too complex for a formal Sabbath, an entire day away from my busy and distracting world, I don’t think I can manage it now, but am still eager to try one day.

But I find the Canopy of Peace at many different times. When I sit out with the donkeys, when I take a beautiful photogoraph, when I close my eyes and meditate, when I write something from the heart, when I walk in the woods, when I hold Maria’s hand and am still, when I lie next to her in bed and feel her love and warmth for me.

Sometimes, when I herd the sheep with the dogs.

I think the Canopy of Peace is always available to me – perhaps to you too – to fend off the invisible spirits who menacingly confront us, isn’t that the nature of life.

I thank you for letting me share my spiritual searching with you, I’d like to do it regularly, I am, in my sixth decade, just learning to give voice to it.