A photo of James Finley

James Finley

Marina del Rey, California, USA

God is All and All is Love

I had permission to spend several hours a day in the loft of an abandoned sheep barn that was on the grounds of the monastery. I remember…once, I was in the loft of this barn; the loft doors were always left wide open. There was a woods right there that went up a hill to where Thomas Merton’s Hermitage was. Off to the side was a meadow. I would put a bale of straw at an angle there, and I would sit there and look out at that meadow. It was very hot; Kentucky in the summer.

I was walking back and forth, reading the Psalms, and all of a sudden there was this vivid realization that what we tend to think of as the air is God. I was literally walking back and forth in God, breathing God. I also had this sense that if I would try to flee from God, I’d be running from God, in God. And wherever I ended up, God would be waiting for me when I got there. Also with it was this deep feeling there was no need to run at all because the intimacy was that God knew me; like through, and through, and through, and through his mercy. Like an oceanic mercy—this way; compassion—this way. I sat on that bale of straw just taken up by that. When I heard the bell ring, I walked over for vespers. I chanted vespers breathing God. I ate my supper that night, breathing God. I went to bed and fell asleep, breathing God. I walked around like that for three days. 

On Sundays, I used to go into the woods. In Kentucky they have a lot of farmland, but I was walking in the woods. It was a little wooded path going up a hill toward a little lake where I’d go to sit. There were trees along either side, overarching, overhead; like a canopy. I was walking up this little path, breathing God, and I reached out and touched one leaf of a tree. It suddenly dawned on me that the infinite presence of God was presenting itself as the presence of the tree; presenting itself due to my touching the presence of the tree. And it was so radicalized for me. I walked off to the side of the road, into a  big meadow in the tall grass. It was very windy. I sat there all afternoon. It changed my life. 

I went to Merton. I would see him every other week for one-on-one spiritual direction. I told him about these experiences, and he said, “Once in a while, you’ll find somebody with whom you can speak about such things, but they’re hard to find. A lot of people don’t even know they are real. Some people, they know they’re real.That’s your solitude. Once in a while you’ll find somebody.” He had to know that he was the one that I could find. He had to know that. He said, “But you’ll spend most of your life without such a person. But you always have your prayer, and you always have the scriptures, and you always have life, and you always have God, and you always have this way…and you walk your walk.”

Daniel’s Reflection

Time stood still in the moments I spent with James Finley. Through our mutual friend, Mirabai Starr, James invited me to join him on a trip to The Abbey of Gethsemane near Louisville, Kentucky, and then a few weeks later, I flew to Los Angeles to interview him at his seaside home. Finley grew up in trauma but was inspired by the post-war contemplative spirituality of Thomas Merton’s “Seven Story Mountain” and New Seeds of Contemplation.  

Despite his father’s threats, James Finley entered the very same monastery where Merton resided and lived there as a monk for six years. Several of those years, Merton was his novice master and spiritual director. It was during that time that Finley had his awakening that he was inseparable from God and that God’s love for him, and all of creation was inseparable from God himself. 

Finley had been sexually abused by a priest who was acting as his confessor, and he left Gethsemane to begin a long road of lifelong healing. He became a psychologist and a leader of contemplative retreats to help others, and ultimately himself, heal from his many childhood and adult traumas.

To be in the presence of James Finley is to be the presence of love incarnate and love expressed. To be with James Finely reminds me of the opera “Turandot,” when the hero challenges the princess to learn his true name before the sun rises, and then at sunrise he reveals his name is Love. James Finley’s true name is also Love. After spending an afternoon with him, I felt embraced and seen in true agape love. That was the love he’d expressed for his mother when, as a child, he sat at the top of the stairs to make sure his alcoholic father did not kill her. That was the love he’d expressed for the love of his life, Maureen, for whom he cared through Alzheimer’s disease until her final breath. That was the love expressed to thousands of people for whom he provided psychological healing and for the thousands he led in silent, contemplative retreats.  

 I experienced that kind of love as I sat with him, receiving his story, and sharing in the excitement of the contemplative journey. I read the most beautiful quote from James after I had interviewed him:  “The mystic is not somebody who says, ‘Look what I’ve experienced. Look what I’ve achieved.’ The mystic is the one who says, ‘Look what love has done to me.’”1

I don’t quite know how I ended up as a Jew with a long list of Christian contemplative heroes: Thomas Merton, Anthony DeMello, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Keating, Richard Rohr, Matthew Fox, Parker Palmer, Brian McLaren, and now James Finley. But to make James Finley’s portrait in front of Thomas Merton’s Hermitage at The Abbey of Gethsemani was a true highlight of my life, and of this project. Thank you to all of the wisdom masters who share so freely the love they have experienced in their own soul.

References

  1. James Finley, “Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate.” Center for Action & Contemplation, 2010

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