In thinking about Paulโs experience on the road to Damascus, I am brought to words he himself would later write: โ๐ผ๐ฌ๐๐ ๐, ๐ ๐จ๐ก๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ง, ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐๐ง๐๐จ๐ ๐๐ง๐ค๐ข ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐, ๐๐ฃ๐ ๐พ๐๐ง๐๐จ๐ฉ ๐ฌ๐๐ก๐ก ๐จ๐๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ค๐ฃ ๐ฎ๐ค๐ช.โ
This awakening is typically not something that happens in a sudden flash, after which one can simply bring forth what has been given spiritually in a manner that helps others who are suffering. Nor, for most of us, is it easy to trace such things back to some overwhelming push from the spiritual world. Our spiritual awakenings are often much more subtle. It takes time to develop that special memory which allows us to become more conscious participants in the evolution of humanity and the cosmos – –ย to discover our calling and place ourselves in a position of effective collaboration with others.
Paul, in a certain sense, was allotted a grace that allowed him to partake of a new mysteryโone brought through the sacrifice of the One who came before him. This mystery had to be born within him so that what he received could be carried to others, especially to his own people, for whom he felt such an immense responsibility that he could say: โI could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.โ Paul would suffer and endure immensely in carrying what had been given to him, but the moment of its birth could be gathered around a profound and recognizable event. For many of us, the same kind of birth may be spread across suffering and time, without any single experience through which it can be so clearly encapsulated. Certain moments must be lived through, and certain experiences must be taken fully into consciousness before the opening toward others can finally be walked into.
This happens through the development of self-knowledge- when we take an active interestย in how we are woven together and where the material for its fashioning stems from. This also means coming to understand the evolution of the human spirit and soul. Without this knowledge, we cannot understand either the limitations of human consciousness or the possible advancements that lie hidden within itโparticularly its capacity to unite consciously with the spirit.
ย There is grace in contemplating the breakthrough moments of those who have gone before us. Their experiences can give us much-needed insight into the ways the spiritual world projects itself into the physicalย ย –ย into the time-stamped events and conditions of an individual life. There are periods in which we can stand almost in silence, as though at the midpoint of the great articulation of human evolution given in the Revelation of St. John, and recognize that the human being now occupies a special position from which he can begin to make his life his own.
We have gradually distanced ourselves from the immediate working of the gods. Yet without this separation, there could be no freedom, โ– no possibility of passing from the old into the new. Something had to be born within the human being that could give inner enthusiasm its own vehicle. What a person now takes into his innermost being and works upon through thinking, feeling, and willing does not end with him. It helps shape the soul, body, and spirit of those who come after. What is won inwardly by one human being passes into the continuing development of the rest. We canย look to the lives of others – not to imitate their experiences, but to understand how our own inner work may enter this greater movement and how we ourselves fit within the signs of the times. The key is to move with attentiveness, to recognize what is lacking, and then, insofar as we are able, to bring forth within ourselves what the future is asking for.
Perhaps few things express this task more simply than the prayer commonly attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
The prayerโs earliest known appearance was anonymous, under the title โA Beautiful Prayer to Say During Mass,โ in the December 1912 issue of the French Catholic magazine La Clochette. Around 1918, it was printed on the reverse of a holy card bearing an image of St. Francis, which likely caused the mistaken attribution. By 1927, it was circulating in the United States as โA Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.โ No version has been found in Francisโs writings or medieval Franciscan sources. Its actual author remains unknown, although La Clochetteโs editor, Father Esther Bouquerel, has been proposed as a possibility.
We must continue learning to experience the accomplishments of others as though they were also our own, so that when another person speaks or creates something, we can truly rejoice with themโeven when some part of us knows or wishes that the original expression had come through us. What a liberating experience this becomes when I at least attempt to make it a reality. ๐
The vision of Handsome Lake is, of course, far less known than Paulโs experience on the road to Damascus, yet it offers another striking picture of the spiritual world breaking into an individual life.
Throughout literature and spiritual tradition, there has been an impulse toward representing the mystery of three plus one: three members or forces brought to completion through the arrival of a fourth. Pythagoras recognized a profound relationship within this fourfold structure; it appears again in the cube of the New Jerusalem described in Revelation, in the four-line quatrains of Nostradamus, and in the four members of the human beingโthe physical body, etheric body, astral body, and the โI.โ The same pattern can also be seen in Job, where the three older friends are followed by the youngest, Elihu, and again in the vision of Handsome Lake, where Three Messengers announce that they belong to a company of Four. When the door to self-knowledge begins to open, these mythic figures, angels, messengersโOur Hermes and Enochs who move between the human and divineโ— may be recognized as beings who truly come to offer salvation, while also being connected with the hidden members of our own constitution. They speak to us almost as though they are not, โfor God took him,โ and afterward one can scarcely recall the force and vividness of what had once carried so much life. Take a moment to consider your own inner dialogue. Perhaps it was not always merely you speaking to yourself. Perhaps something was working within that dialogue, slowly bringing the different parts of your being together so that the fourth,ย the conscious and enduring I –ย โฆโฆcould gradually awaken within them.
What follows is a brief description of these two imaginationsโthe ancient story of Job and the lesser-known vision of Handsome Lakeโso that the connection between them can begin to come into view.
โ—–
The Book of Job begins with a righteous man stripped of nearly everything: his children, his possessions, his health, and finally any clear understanding of why he suffers. Three friendsโEliphaz, Bildad, and Zopharโcome to mourn with him and sit beside him in silence for seven days and seven nights. But when they begin to speak, they repeatedly insist that Jobโs suffering must be the consequence of some hidden wrongdoing. Job refuses their judgment and continues demanding an answer from God. At last, the three cease speaking, โbecause they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.โ Then Elihu, the youngest, rises. He has waited because the others are older, but now declares: โThere is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.โ After Elihu completes his speech, the Lord answers Job from the whirlwind. Job survives the encounter transformed and is finally called upon to pray for the three friends who had misunderstood him.
More than two thousand years later, in 1799, the Seneca leader Handsome Lake lay gravely ill after years of alcoholism. According to the Gaiwiio, or Good Message, as recorded by Seneca scholar Arthur C. Parker, Handsome Lake heard an unseen voice call him three times: โCome out awhile.โ When he rose and went outside, he saw three commanding men dressed alike in clean clothing. Their cheeks were painted red; they carried bows and arrows like staffs, and in their other hands they held huckleberry bushes bearing berries of many colors. They told him that the Creator had sent them to help him recover. Handsome Lake ate the berries, received medicine, and returned to his people during the ๐๐ญ๐ซ๐๐ฐ๐๐๐ซ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐๐ก๐๐ง๐ค๐ฌ๐ ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ง๐ . The Three then revealed that they belonged to a company of Four. The Fourth was absent because he had returned to the Creatorโs realm with news that Handsome Lake had answered the call. They told him that he would meet this Fourth later and that, until then, they would continue revealing the Creatorโs message. They also required Handsome Lake to confront his former actions, repent of what he knew to be wrong, renounce strong drink, and carry the Good Message to his people.
During a later journey upon the Great Sky Road, Handsome Lake was shown the spiritual consequences of human actions and encountered a mysterious wounded man. The figure opened his hands, revealing scars in his palms and feet and a breast pierced by a spear. The marks appeared to have been made by iron nails. In Parkerโs preserved account, the figure identifies himself as the one who had been rejected and killed but had returned to the spiritual world. The imagery unmistakably evokes Christ, although the Gaiwiio retains its own understanding of him as a messenger of the Creator.
Thus, both accounts place a suffering human being before three figures whose capacity has reached its limit. Then comes a Fourth, followed by a direct encounter with the spiritual world. Job hears the voice from the whirlwind and returns to intercede for his companions. Handsome Lake encounters the wounded figure upon the Great Sky Road and returns carrying medicine for his people.