In his book A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis proposes that, “You must have a capacity to receive, or even Omnipotence can’t give.” True mercy, grace, and love are big gifts, so much so that we can struggle with our ability to receive and hold them. Some people even get turned off of faith by the notion of such great love, reckoning it too good to be true, or else just too much to handle. Contemplative wisdom recognizes the immensity of these Divine gifts, and also recognizes that the preoccupied, self-centered, small ego lacks the capacity for these gifts. Contemplative practice increases our capacity for experience of and participation in Divine Life and Love. In does this, in part, by helping us detach from anything unessential to our identity in Christ, helping us to slowly and carefully clear away distraction, worries, hurts, addictions, and “false gods” from interior space meant for God alone. Contemplative practices also function as something of a “storage upgrade.” In the very engagement with the love, grace, and mercy of God, we find our spirits stretched and our interior life expanded to welcome in more and more of God. Provided that we continue to open ourselves to receive God, this expansion of the spirit can only end when the spirit is boundless, with capacity for the infinite God. At that point, we will know ourselves as all sharing the one Spirit, and God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
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