Move Through Cycles
Our journey of spiritual growth and transformation is intimately woven into the rhythms and cycles of the natural world around us. Like the contemplatives of old, we feel a deep longing to participate fully in this sacred conversation, to truly listen with wonder and reverence to the profound messages nature whispers to us. Yet so often, we find ourselves disconnected, failing to see the divine radiance shimmering in each raindrop, each spider's web glistening with dew.
We are part of this vast cosmic dance, this ongoing cycle of being born and dying, of planting seeds and reaping harvests, of killing off old ways and birthing new life. The poetic verses of Ecclesiastes speak to the core of our experience, reminding us that there is indeed "a time for everything under heaven." We have known seasons of mourning when grief overwhelmed us, and seasons of joy when our hearts felt light enough to dance. We have scattered stones and built them into new foundations. We have embraced loved ones tightly, only to then keep our distance as the tides shifted.
Just as spring inevitably gives way to summer's lush fullness, our inner landscape is continually shaped by these natural seasons of growth, death, and rebirth. The mystics and sages across centuries have sought to map and give language to this undulating journey we all undertake as human beings.
We find resonance in the three-trimester framework that seems to arise again and again - the path of Ethike, Physike and Enoptike as coined by Origen, or the stages of light, cloud and darkness described by Gregory of Nyssa. We can glimpse ourselves in Evagrius' praktike, physike and theologia, or in the purgation, illumination and union outlined by Pseudo-Dionysius. While the specific names and models differ across traditions, the underlying cadence feels universal - we all must walk through an initial season of learning, of grappling with ethical and moral questions. We all inevitably encounter the mysteries of the natural world and our own embodied existence in a profound way during the "middle" season. And if we are willing to stay the course, a final trimester of union and non-dual awakening beckons.
Or as our contemporary sages like Walter Brueggemann and Richard Rohr have reframed it - our lives move through orienting periods where we start to construct a coherent worldview and identity, only to then encounter inevitable times of disorientation and deconstruction where our old maps and self-images no longer suffice. But those who can surrender into the chaos and unraveling are eventually re-oriented, integrating their experiences into a more expansive and harmonious way of being.
While these three-part models can provide metaphoric handrails as we navigate our path, we recognize that the journey is rarely as clean or linear as the maps suggest. Like the author Belden Lane reminds us, "Life stages are more fluid than fixed." There is no permanence to any single season - the rhythms keep undulating, inviting us to revisit earlier terrains with new eyes and more seasoned hearts. We may feel arrested in adolescent stuckness for long stretches, unable to fully show up for the deep inner work that beckons.
And yet, for all of its nonlinearity and complexity, this core truth of life's seasonality, of perpetual death and rebirth, remains a profound touchstone for us. It is a reminder that growth and transformation are innate to the marrow of our existence. We are not static beings, but rivers through ever-unfolding cycles, with each new spring inviting us to participate in sacred renewal and re-creation.
To honor the wisdom of the contemplative stream is to surrender yourself fully to this great dynamism. It is to shed cynicism and jadedness and recover a sense of childlike wonder. To feel the moral fierce urgency of living with integrity. To be unafraid of deconstructing old identities and beliefs when they atrophy. To embrace the disorienting "cloud of unknowing" when it descends. To trust that just as the tulips emerge vibrant from the cold earth, our souls too will be perpetually resurrected into new stems of union and non-dual love.
This is the courageous work we are called to - not to cling to any one fixed map or season, but to stay perpetually attuned to the sacred rhythms pulsing all around. To listen deeply to the holy conversation creation is forever whispering through ceaselessly unfolding cycles of dying and becoming. When we surrender to this great dance, we discover that transformation is not a linear trajectory but a way of life - continually shedding old skins, opening to new expanses of being. And in so doing, we awaken to the mature spiritual adulthood the mystics beckon us towards - a dynamic state of wonder, reverence and radical aliveness.
