is-ness

Yesterday I joined Facebook.  This online social networking is still somewhat of a mystery to me and yet I feel the pull to participate, to join, to not be left out.  It is yet one more activity and by that I do not judge it “bad” but busyness is not what I seek.  I seek quiet; calm; centering; communion with the holy … being not doing.  

I am reminded of Madeleine L’Engle’s thoughts in Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journal #1) where she talks about ontology … is-ness!  “The burning bush: somehow I visulize it as much like one of these blueberry bushes.  The bush burned, was alive with flame and was not consumed.  Why?  … It is.  It is a pure example of ontology.  …  Ontology:  the word about the essence of things, the word about being. … I go to the brook because I get out of being, out of the essential.  … I put all my prickliness, selfishness, in-turnedness, onto my isness; we all tend to … I go to the brook and my tensions and frustrations are lost as I spend a happy hour sitting right in the water and trying to clear it of the clogging debris left by a fallen log. … I suppose the perfect isness of anything would be frightening without the hope of God.  … Man is; it matters to him; this is terrifying unless it matters to God, too, because this is the only possible reason we can matter to ourselves:  not because we are sufficient unto ourselves — I am not: my husband, my family, my friends give me my meaning and, in a sense, my being, so that I know that I, like the burning bush, am ontological: essential: real.” ~ M. L’Engle