Black holes…What in the heck do these have to do with spiritual practice and growth?

A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. how do we know they exist if we cannot see them? Our human eyes are programmed to see what light makes available, but we guess at how they operate because of what happens as matter edges toward the event horizon. It gets simultaneously stretched and compressed.

There is the physicality of a black hole, but it is also a fabulous metaphor. We get stretched, expanded, into something else when we face the unknown. I love this idea that is both literal and metaphorical: when we are stretched and torn apart, we are eventually squeezed into the singularity, what Catherine Keller calls the “fathomless germinating abyss.” We become part of the something that in fact is everything. Man it is hard to put words to these nondual ideas.

All this about black holes…what can we boil it down to here? Where there is tension there is also growth. When we face what is something in us dies, but something else arises. I hope that the fecund ground of the universe is Love. I really hope so. And I hope we are stretched toward doing our very best in service of Love.

Two books mentioned today by Judy Cannato: Field of Compassion & Radical Amazement