The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
John 3:8
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In our anguish we struggle
To elude Him, yet His love observes
His appalling promise; His predilection
As we wander and weep is with us to the end.
Minding our meanings, our least matter dear to Him.
W.H.Auden
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I have found a hare’s form on the hillside and I have been able to put my hand in it and feel it still warm, and this is my feeling of god- that we don’t actually find him, but we find where he has been.
R,S,Thomas
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How do we know there’s a God? Because He keeps disappearing.
Anne Michaels
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He is such a fast
God, always before us and
Leaving as we arrive.
R.S.Thomas
What’s it like not “having” God?
What’s God’s absence like for you?
God, to be God, cannot be trapped in a form of words, caught even in an experience, confined in a book or a sermon or a poem. We meet the mystery of God when we engage with life at depth, responding to the universal aspiration towards transcendence which alone offers a sense of purpose or meaning or value. This mystery is not a problem waiting to be solved but a deep, inexhaustible truth which asks to be reverently explored and lived- all this within “the warmth and sweetness and dryness and terror of actual living”.
The poet Mary Oliver says: “I don’t know what a prayer is. But I do know how to pay attention”.
So approaching God will mean, approaching life in all its fullness, with attentiveness, patience, openness.
So spend a bit of time sometime soon finding a quiet place, where you can be still and silent.
Notice the things you are carrying at present: and then, see if you can let them go,
not because they are unimportant,
but because they hinder you in paying attention to what surrounds you, looking, listening and waiting,
discovering that truly, the world has depth.
After a while you can move on, picking up those things you have let go for a while, and perhaps seeing them in a new way.
The image in this post is a medieval ink and gold leaf illumination by Hildegard of Bingen and introduces Part 3, Vision 3 of her Book of Divine Works. It shows the leaping fountain of the living God, full of God’s radiance, and pouring rivers of living water throughout all the world.
Karitas
habundat in omnia,
de imis excellentissima
super sidera
atque amantissima
in omnia,
quia summo regi osculum pacis
dedit.
Love
abounds in all,
from the depths exalted and excelling
over every star,
and most beloved
of all,
for to the highest King the kiss of peace
she gave.
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
