MEISTER ECKHART

 


      “If you would start on a new life or work you should betake yourself to God, and beg Him with all your might and with total devotion to dispose things for the best, as shall best please and honour God, seeking in it nothing of your own but merely God's dearest will and nothing else. Whatever God then sends you, take it direct from God, regard it as best for yourself, and be fully content.
    Though later on some other way may please you better, you should think: 'This is the way God has sent me,’ and accept it as the best. You should trust God in this and bring all good ways into line with this, taking all things in and according to this, whatever their nature. For whatever good God has done and given in one way, can be found in all good ways. For in one way one should take all good ways and not cling to the peculiarities of the way. For one must always do one thing, one cannot do everything. It must always be one thing, and in that one one should take everything. For if you wanted to do everything, this and that, dropping your way for another's way, which you liked better, truly that would make for great instability…. Choose a good way and keep to it, introducing all good ways into it and bearing in mind that it comes from God, instead of starting one thing today and something else tomorrow; you need not worry that you are missing anything. For with God one can miss nothing. With God one can no more miss anything than God can miss anything. So, take one way from God, and embody in it all good things.”  

In their many different idioms the classical spiritual writers have attempted to throw light on the eternal question of union with God. 
Every month we give you a brief passage from a spiritual classic.