Facing the mystery until it opens

Who is your God? That is sort of the question I ask myself continually. My God is constant, but my understanding of God is forever changing.

In the past I made my faith a matter of believing in mysteries, and told myself that it was impossible to understand, that I must just accept. Such an attitude robbed me of developing a better understanding of my God. Because when I believe I can't know, I don't search.

Sometimes I thought that understanding and knowing God was a matter of deep theology, something academic, agonizing, only open to intellectuals. As though God were some kind of snob that only an elite few can know.

I have thrown those views out of my life. I decided that to understand God better I need to search. I believe searching implies stepping back, not stepping up. It requires not so much a willingness to dig into the mysteries in search of knowledge as it does a watching that discoveries a personality. And just as we form friendships over time, so too, the mystic gaze allows us to "know" God over time, and understand God with the eye of the soul, which is different than knowing God with the mind. For if it is true of anyone, it is true of God, to know God is to love God.

To know God, I must face mystery until it opens.

What to do with unanswered prayer

Unanswered prayer. I don't know about you, but I have many. Not just from today, but from yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. In fact, I have a life time of unanswered prayers. From years and years of asking. From years and years of needs. And so, I look at all of these unanswered prayers and wonder, what does it say about me? What does it say about my God?

I am not sure, but I suspect it has to do with mystery.

Mystery is such a part of our lives that I doubt we think much about it. And yet, we are confronted with it when we think of faith, of prayer, and of eternity. So much unknowing.

The right kind of mystery offers us the chance to sit in wonder. And we can only sit in wonder when we learn silence.

Silence is more than lack of noise. The kind of silence we need to be still before mystery seems to come only after we have been disappointed, when life has not turned out as we thought it should, when answers no longer satisfy. Then, we seem to come to a silence that waits.

I learned that kind of silence as a nun living in a monastery. I learned it through unanswered prayer, lots of unanswered prayer. When you are a cloistered nun, and your whole life is given over to prayer, unanswered prayer is not just an annoyance, it hits at the very core of your dedicated life. It brings into question everything you say you believe in and the very life you live.

In that time, in a time of accumulated unanswered prayer, I gave up asking. I no longer knew what to say. I became dumb before God. It was not a kind dumb, like that of a lamb, but a desperate dumb, like a soul who is in despair. A silence imposed by God's silence. A silence that results from darkness. My unanswered prayers became a kind of dumb that knows not what to say or even what to think.

In that darkness, in that silence, I learned a new kind of prayer. I learned to be open to mystery. I learned a prayer that listens.

Sitting before God in a stance of listening brought me into a whole new relationship with God. Sitting in silence, I discovered that the God I thought I knew was a God I did not know. I came to realize that I was being lifted up precisely when I thought I was being cast down. I found that the fog that seemed to shroud me was really passing clouds along my journey as my spiritual life came to a new horizon.

It was silence that helped me to be open to mystery. And I learned that silence, the right kind of silence, because of unanswered prayer.

And so today, when my prayer goes unanswered, I try to remember the words of psalm 46:10: Be still and know that I am God.  I try to remember, having my prayer answered is not the most important thing in life. Entering deeper into mystery is.

Easter - a time of mystery

Easter. A time of mystery. A time when light shines, and we see things differently. It comes from the darkness of the Passion, from suffering, and from not knowing. It is true, that I appreciate light more when I have experienced darkness. That I appreciate resurrection better when I have known suffering.

John Shea speaks to this in his book Story of God, where he quotes Kazantzakis's description of mystery. It is, he says, the luminous interval between two darknesses. He then notes that when the reliability of all we have constructed is brought into question, we enter the dimension of Mystery (25).

In our desire to know, to be in the light, we forget that unknowing can contain something positive and fulfilling. This is the difference between faith, and having a vague spirituality with no particular beliefs.

This is not an attempt to put a good spin on pain and injustice, emotional distress and suffering. Rather, it is how we make sense of it. For as much as we don't like to admit it, we do not find the depth of our soul until our world falls apart. That experience helps us realize that what has up till now proven good enough is no longer sufficient, and we seek something better.

Shea speaks at some length about the need for our ready answers and expectations to fail. He says Disenchantment is a traditional and well-established path to the awareness of Mystery...the beginning of mature religious consciousness (28-29). Shea's statement is obvious: I suspect every one of us can look back over the times in our lives when we entered into a new spiritual consciousness, and can track it to some form of disenchantment we experienced.

Mystery. It is not something to be feared, but something that invites us to enter more deeply. And only after we enter, do we discover.

And isn't that what Easter is all about?

The question of unanswered prayer

Why can't flowers bloom all year round?

I don't know about you, but I have so many unanswered prayers. Not just from today, but from yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. In fact, I have a life time of many unanswered prayers. From years and years of asking. From years and years of needs. And so, I look at all of these unanswered prayers and wonder, what does it say about me? What does it say about God? I am not sure, but I think it has to do with mystery.

Mystery is such a part of our lives that I doubt we think much about it. And yet, we are confronted with it when we think of faith, of prayer, and of eternity. So much unknowing. So much unanswered prayer.

The right kind of mystery offers us the chance to sit in wonder. And to sit in wonder, I think we must approach mystery with silence. These are not my original thoughts. They are thoughts shared with me yesterday when I met with a friend for spiritual conversation. 

I was asked about my experience of monastic silence. And I had to admit, at first I only practiced the imposed silence of the rule. I thought that kind of silence was good enough, would teach me what I needed to know. But it did not. I had to learn a different kind of silence.

That kind of silence came as a result of unanswered prayer, lots of unanswered prayer. When you are a cloistered nun, and your whole life is given over to prayer, unanswered prayer is not just an annoyance, it hits at the very core of your dedicated life. It brings into question everything you say you believe and the very life you live.

In that time, in a time of accumulated unanswered prayer, I gave up asking. I no longer knew what to say, I became dumb before God. It was not a kind dumb, like a lamb. But a desperate dumb, like a soul who is in despair. A silence imposed by God's silence. A silence that results from darkness. My unanswered prayers became a kind of dumb that knows not what to say.

In that darkness, in that silence, I learned a new kind of prayer. I learned mystery. I learned the prayer that listens.

Sitting before God in a stance of listening taught me a whole new relationship with God. It revealed a God I thought I knew was a God I did not. It lifted me up when I thought I was being cast down. It was the opening of the mystery that shrouded me, only to discover I was in clouds because my spiritual life was on a journey toward a new horizon.

Silence helped me to be open to the mystery, and learn. It was a blessing.

I still ask God for things. At present count, I have at least four huge requests out there waiting on God to give me an answer!

But I am also at peace. Because I know that waiting in mystery is not a bad thing. It is a time to be in wonder. It is a time to prepare.

For as Paul says  in Romans 8:28, For those who love God, all things work together for good. And that goes for unanswered prayer. That goes for silence.