Lectio
“The most divine knowledge of God is that which is known by not knowing.”
— Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Meditatio
A dear friend of mine, a devout Catholic and dedicated spiritual seeker, who sadly passed away last year after suffering a stroke, used to say, “I have no concept of God.” He explained that the closer he grew in relationship to God, the less he understood God intellectually and the less capable he was of defining God with words or ideas. For him, relationship had deepened beyond concepts and experience had expanded beyond belief — not replacing them, but fulfilling them.
When I was younger, I must admit, I scoffed at this declaration. As someone proud of both my desire and ability to understand spiritual and worldly principles, I felt as if there was something disingenuous about his claiming to not have a concept of God. “Of course he had a concept of God,” I would tell myself, “He has a Catholic concept of God.”
That’s the whole point of subscribing to a specific belief system, after all. One becomes a Catholic because they agree with the Catholic concept of God, or at least this was my youthful and, admittedly, immature perspective.
But then one day, after having practiced the centering prayer of the 14th century mystical Christian classic The Cloud of Unknowing, as taught by Thomas Keating, for quite some time, I had an experience that changed my perspective. As was my practice, I woke up early, sat down to read some Scripture, set my meditation timer, and closed my eyes. As thoughts arose, which was often, I gently returned to my sacred word and let the thoughts go. This went on for a while, but then, with no thought or effort on my part, time stood still, my thoughts fell away, I lost all sense of my body in time and space, and what remained was beyond words, beyond concepts, and beyond my understanding.
It was as if I was staring into God and God was staring into me, but there was no I and there was no God. There was only darkness, freedom, and vast nothingness, but it was not emptiness — it was everything and, with no physical or conceptual boundaries separating me from this everything, I was everything. Not annihilated — absorbed, in and as Love. It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was communion.
From this experience, I truly understood, at the essence of my being, what my friend meant when he said, “I have no concept of God.” I, too, have no concept of God, for God cannot be exhausted by concepts — only approached by them. Let us, then, enjoy the silence and spend time with the uncontainable and indescribable God.
Oratio
sweet silence
heaven’s song
call me toward the horizon
draw me into your nothingness
cover me with darkness
strip away my illusions
what remains is you —
beyond words
beyond understanding
beyond beyond
Contemplatio
Have you ever had an experience — however brief — of something beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond understanding? What did it ask of you?
Related Scripture
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Not Saying No: Surrendering To Our Soul’s Longing For Reunion With God, which explores the soul’s ache for divine union from the angle of surrender and longing — and the rare, grace-filled moments when the illusion of separation dissolves just long enough that we know.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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