The Gentle Name

I have a confession. I cherish and honor the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus is a flame of love that trembles in my heart with the fiery warmth of a divine presence, radiant evidence that God is a Person, not merely an abstraction. 

Why do I call this "a confession?" Because we live in an age that rejects traditions of faith, and disdains the very name of the Friend who came to heal us.

It's not complicated. The Prayer of the Heart is as gentle yet powerful today as it was centuries ago when Desert Father Hesychius whispered the instruction, “Let Jesus be your breath.” 

The name of Jesus, softly carried on an exhalation of surrender, is the soul of simplicity, the glow of awareness itself. So, for a few minutes I let go of the nihilism, the cynicism and intellectual pride of the present age, and allow myself to rest the mind in the heart. To rest the mind in the heart is the beginning and end of spiritual practice. I feel the name of the Friend softly pulsing beneath my breastbone. 

No need to "believe,” just feel the warmth. Intellect dissolves into what it has been searching for so long through tangled labyrinths of discursive reasoning. Be lost in the wilderness of the heart, where love can find you.

The name of Jesus is a lantern in the forest. I don't know where the path might lead, but I can step into the next small pool of light, and that is enough. Then I can sing, "Darkness is not dark to Thee, but the night is as bright as the day!" (Psalm 139)

The name is so subtle yet substantial its essence outshines earth, air, fire and water. For in the realm of essences, what is most gentle is most powerful, and the softest fills all things. 

What is my creed? I have none. No theology "about" the Friend, only his friendship. When I breathe the name, not as a concept, a label or a sign but as pure energetic sensation, the Holy Spirit undulates through the axis of my body, lighting the tree of my spine with Christic fire. 

The name overflows from silence into Being, spills out of un-created darkness into the glow of creation, permeates each cell of flesh, flows over streets and office buildings into woods and meadows, valleys and hills, into the stars. Now the radiance of my heart pervades the galaxies.

In the depths of meditation, the most beautiful and mysterious name is barely a tremor of silence. How can it fill the entire universe so tenderly, so intimately? Because the breath of the Friend anoints us not from above, but from within, pouring from the center of each creature, to transform everything.

This prayer has been called the Prayer of the Heart. When I speak of the “heart,” I speak not of some metaphysical concept, but the organ in the center of the body. Yet this earthen grail of beaten blood is a portal to realms no anatomy may define. What key opens the door? Silence. Through silence I descend into the source, into pure Being, which is not found above the flesh, but in the starry vastness of my chest.

Falling into the space of the heart, I enter an infinitesimal Ayin Soph, a black dot smaller than a mustard seed. As my mind gives up its doubting, questioning, struggling to "know," this un-created Bindhu expands into a realm where I find all creatures in the luminosity of their original substance. 

I meet you there. You are made of my flames, and I am made of yours. I meet others in the fire of my Self, and my Self in others, so that we taste divine Friendship in the unity of the Godhead. This unity may be likened to a single jewel with many sparkling facets. All who choose the way of love may gather in this bejeweled kingdom, to celebrate the perpetual feast of the birth of Christ. 

I speak not merely of the infant born at a moment of history in ancient Palestine. I speak of the brilliant Christall, where the multitude is reflected in each facet. And you may give this mystical diamond any name you please, but the name I cherish and honor is Jesus.

Painting: Angel Gabriel from Simone Martini's Annunciation