A Roomy Spirituality: The Elemental Understanding of a Room

Why at all a room need a door to enter in? A door that can be ‘latched,’ ‘locked,’ and opened only with a ‘key,’ is in itself teach an interior philosophy. In the “Theory of Everything,” Stephen Hawking makes a mention of what Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “the sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.” So intend to analyze the three words mentioned above, namely – Latch, Lock and Key and proceed to an elemental understanding of the constituents of a room.

Latch: This term is different from “lock” (a small metal bar that is used to fasten a door or a gate. You raise it to open the door, and drop it into a metal hook to fasten it). We have a phrase in English – “Latch on” which would mean to understand an idea or what somebody is saying. Hence, just after you enter your room, you need to latch on the profound sense of being You in the room. People ask – who are you when you are alone in the room? You are yourself when alone, no one sees you. God sees you as you are. There is also a saying, “God is closer to me than I am to myself” – Here then, as you enter your room latch on the conviction that God is closer to you.

Lock: There is no meaning for a lock if it cannot be opened. Lock presupposes a closure with an openness veiled in it. In theology we speak of God revealing while hiding. Our minds can be opened only when it is opened to the grace of God. Check whether the cells of understanding in your brain are locked with prejudices, fear and many other anomalies. Open them to purify with the key of understanding.

Key: a metal already shaped to fit the keyhole. Only a particular key will work for the particular key whole. Master key is yet another thing to consider.

Hope the following elemental understanding of a room will strengthen the above three words. Their connectivity is the work of the readers.

A room with windows: Our body and its senses are windows to the soul. The spirituality of most saints consisted in training their senses because they knew that senses are a powerful way of awareness, healing if properly trained. Our understanding is facilitated by the senses. St. Thomas Aquinas would say that there is nothing in the intellect which has not first been in the senses. One enters their room with one’s embodied self. The body is housed in the room. The soul is housed in the body. So even though you are alone in your room, there is always a relationship – between your soul and body. No wonder why saints advocated the mortification of senses.

A room with darkness and light: the presence of light is not a complete absence of darkness, darkness is still there. Similarly the light is still there in darkness. Just like clarity contains the previous non-understanding, our bodies too carry the cells of our historicity. To see the things in the room, an ‘entering in’ in invariably and unalterably a ‘necesstiy.’

Chair: Chair symbolically connotes authority. So sit on the chair of your conscience.

Crucifix: A Crucifix is considered as a hermeneutical key to understanding our salvation history. Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me. In my father’s house there are many places (rooms) to live in;… I am going now to prepare a place for you (Jn 14: 1-3). The whole history of mankind’s salvation is summarized in Jesus’ death on the cross. He teaches us a deep truth “you do not live for yourself only, but for others.” Therefore, I prefer to pray – Lord make me a blessing to all the people whom I am sent to. The crucifix also teaches that I am not my own – “You are not your own property, you have been bought at a price” (1cor 6:20). 

Books on the shelf, mirror, and a picture: a monk of the 12^th century Alanus de insulis, in his De Incarnatione Christi writes: “Every creature of the world is for us a book, picture and mirrore.” Fulton Sheen would say that we are all books issued from the divine press. A broken mirror reminds me of Balthasar’s mention of a limpid mirror – “limpid mirror has been shattered, the infinite image has been shattered over the face of the world, the world has become a heap of fragments. But every splinter remains precious and from each fragment there flashes a ray of mystery of its origin” (Balthasar, Heart of the world, 1954).

Space: Eckhart Tolle in his book The Power of Now says, “… you are not what happens, you are the silent space in which all things happen.” The space in my room is limited, but out there, the space seems limitless calling me out to transcendence.

There are many other elements in the room, if I go on it will be a tedious business. But I can stop with this concluding remark: everything points to something or the other, but the greater pointing is the limitedness pointing to the limitless.