The Forgotten Threshold written by Arthur Middleton
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Arthur Middleton >> The Forgotten Threshold
I loved those Chaldean seers to whom God talked directly and wrote His
message upon the stars. I lay prone on the deck looking upwards and
fell into the Divine Ocean slowly. The moon rode serenely to the
southwest, and humanity was with me in the boat. Navigators are now
the only men left wise enough to follow the stars. The sunpath was
Jacob's ladder, and the Aran islanders know its secret when they see
Tir-n'an-Og in the west on calm sunset evenings. The sea had my trust,
eternal through yesterday's experience, and I believe that if faith
and good works required it of me, I could walk softly over it. If the
soul is to control the body, surely spiritual gravity should be able
to overcome material gravity. Certainly it would take more than the
sea to quench my flame, if God made me worthy.
August 22.
I looked down from great heights today on all the little smiling
intimacies. They are like happy babies to me, and my speech should
play with them, if I can ever become worthy of their simplicity. The
rhythm of all music is the systole and diastole of the Sacred Heart,
which is the ebb and flow of an infinite ocean. This is the meaning, I
think, of the old Gaelic rune, _Ri tragadh s'ri lionadh, mar a bha,
mar a tha, mar a bhitheas gu bragh ri traghadh s'ri lionadh_. (The ebb
and the flow, as it was, as it is, as it ever shall be, the ebb and
the flow.) The resolute gaze of the soul toward this in love
constitutes prayer in its only form. It shows blood to be the most
rich and beautiful of human things, and its salt waves purify the
flesh, as the salt waves of Gethsemane and Calvary redeemed the soul
and its singing stars.
August 23.
My life so far has been a word, and not a deed. But the world was not
redeemed until the Word BECAME FLESH--AND DWELT AMONGST US. Mary S----
met us on the roads today and said, "I hope that we'll be meeting in
Heaven, we seem to meet so often now." I sleep at night in a cruciform
position adoring beauty with every faculty save my will, the most
necessary of all.
August 24.
In the open today amid a hurricane of wind ... I walked with a
childish old man with a pleasant soul. The wind brought meteor showers
of beauty to the body. It rained grace in the sky of noon.
I could carry overflowing happiness now even to New York. Today
reminded me of the sunlight on the roar of Broadway. God is on the
wind tonight, and is beating down my will with his wings.
August 25.
I lay through a night of tempestuous wind with the open window at my
head. I awoke and saw myself face to face in my weakness. It rained
all day. ... I can hardly bear my love today. It is a terrific dynamo
of silence. But it will be very long before I shall fulfill my
worthiness. If one could always remember that he is a saviour, and
carry humanity with him, his will would be inflexible and every act an
exulting humility. All nature is but a mantle which the wind of my
spirit disposes in folds about me, and humanity is the chalice in
which I may communicate with God,--a chalice woven of our singing
flesh and heart and brain and will, wherein the will is its depth, the
Atlas which bears the Sacred Body and Blood when it is given to us.
August 26.
Sorrow has come at last. Full moon, and life is at the flood. The
precept of all adversity is of course that the ebb tide of fortune is
our flood toward God. Even the lamp tonight is singing in the room.
August 27.
The experience still turns inward to the heart of life. I now see the
core of it. It burns, of course, but think of the wheel it carries. A
few days ago I was on the circumference. Now I have found the center.
A day of rain and wind and exterior disturbances. But I have found my
cenacle.
August 28.
A victory for the will. ... It is strange that every vital lesson that
experience teaches can never be expressed in words. The past few days
have taught me more than the rest of the summer. There will always be
a secrecy of the soul, and what this contains constitutes God's image
and likeness. Life sings tonight in every atom its marvelous chemistry
of change and prophecy. Nature knows no elegies, since it may never
triumph over aught but dust. But the highest dream is less worthy than
the simplest deed, and we must forget the knowledge of good and evil.
I would exchange all the knowledge I have gained for the grace to
perform the slightest act of St. Francis. God has made our opportunity
infinite by giving us an eternal standard of values,--that is all.
August 29.
I am afraid to write further for fear that I shall soon become
self-conscious. ... It is strange that the will did not come home to
me as a complete experience before. I simply had the foreboding of it.
This summer on the 9th of August I heard the Fourth Syllable in its
awfulness for the first time, and understood the mystery of the
Redemption. The time has now come to close this book, for the record
is complete, and may not be reopened until I redeem my will.
_They departed into their own country another way_.