Spinning into the Invisible

 

I have a Japanese top that will flip over onto its stick when it spins fast enough. I've been carrying it with me in my pocket the last few weeks as a way of praying.

This top reminds me of our own journeys. The path of a spinning top is much like the path of a labyrinth. We are constantly being drawn towards the center, towards God our Creator. Sometimes, as in the first turns of the top, we feel wobbly and directionless. But as God continues to draw us closer to him, we become more stable, more centered. Yet we are also beginning to spin faster and faster. We are changed and grow in ways we had never imagined. We see, feel, and hear God's presence in new ways. We are present to ourselves and to the world in new ways. We are excited and scared at the same time.

There is a moment as the top turns that its speed and its focus on center reach such a point that it flips upside down. In that moment, everything changes. There is both a wildness and a stillness in this moment. In these moments it is hard to tell if we are spinning, or if we are standing at our center. It is in these moments that we glimpse the heart of God, and we are truly transformed. We see the miraculous, we live in it and breathe it. In these moments of wild stillness, the veil between the visible and the invisible becomes very thin. We take off our shoes. And we are rendered speechless.

 Within us and around us there is an invisible world; this is where each of us comes from.... When you cross over from the invisible into this physical world, you bring with you a sense of belonging to the invisible that you can never lose or finally cancel.... You know your real life is happening here. Yet your longing for the invisible is never stilled. There is always some magnet that draws your eyes to the horizon or invites you to explore behind things and seek out the concealed depths. You know that the real nature of things is hidden deep within them. When you enter the world, you come to live on the threshold between the visible and the invisible.... When you become aware of the invisible as a live background, you notice how your own body is woven around your invisible soul, how the invisible lives behind the faces of those you love, and how it is always there between you. The invisible is one of the most powerful forms of the unknown. It envelopes our every movement. It is the region out of which we emerged and the state we are destined for...

-John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong