Lectio
“When a person in theoretical or practical knowledge or in subjective activity confronts the abyss of his existence, which alone is the ground of everything, and when this person has the courage to look into himself and to find in these depths his ultimate truth, there he can also have the experience that this abyss accepts him as his true and forgiving security.”
— Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith
Meditatio
I have known drug addicts who have said that their first high felt like everything they ever lacked, longed for, or desired was present for them in an instant. I have known alcoholics whose first drunk made them feel like they had arrived — that they were at home in their own skin for the first time in their lives, and that they finally had the courage, liberation, and joy that they had always felt they were missing on their own.
I, myself, have had many such experiences where I felt like a relationship, an album, a book, a philosophy, a theology, or any manner of not-God was the way, the truth, and the life — my final resting place, my forever home in this life wherein I would remain, safe and comforted, with no reason to leave or move on, because I was finally seen, heard, understood; where I was finally saved from whatever ignorance, awkwardness, and insecurity I felt in myself.
But in all of these instances, all of these false idols eventually let us down, leaving us with a deeper sense of longing or lacking than we had prior to our encounter with them and reliance upon them — even if they worked for a while, even if they sustained us for a moment, and even if they felt like divine revelation or communion with something greater for as long as the finite is capable of doing so.
Let down by not-God, through the willingness graced to us by love and fueled by our suffering — if we live long enough to experience it — we come to a threshold, a moment of clarity, wherein our longing for only-God meets the limitations of not-God’s ability to be God, and we have to decide whether to continue reaching for not-God or reach beyond our present state and circumstances toward the horizon of Godself.
But regardless of which direction we turn, we will reach, because it is in us to do so. God’s self-communication of Godself, in and as the very essence of our being, calls us unceasingly toward Godself. Yet our finite capacity for God and our finite vision continually cause us to settle for not-God, even if ultimately on our way to God. And so all of these experiences are, in their own way, an answer to the call of holy longing in and as the essence of who we are in both grace and freedom.
James Finley says that the spiritual-human experience is like that of a stone falling in water, toward a bottomless abyss. You are that stone. The water is God — Love itself. The stone, being drawn deeper and deeper into God, into Love, is powerless over the pull of Love’s gravity because the gravity is within its very nature as a stone. As the stone falls, sometimes it catches on a ledge and rests for a while, settling into its new home upon what it perceives as solid ground, as the ground of God’s being. But the water does not stop moving, flowing, shaking the stone loose from its not-God resting place, drawing it deeper into itself by the weight of the very stone, and so the stone is shaken loose from the not-God — the false idols, false beliefs, and false identities — to which it clung and upon which it rested, moving further and further into God’s endless love.
The stone, as it turns out, is all of us — the drug addict, the alcoholic, the priest, the spiritual seeker, and even the atheist or agnostic — being drawn deeper and deeper into God’s boundless love which resides within us as God’s very own self-communicated nature and in the horizon of God’s limitless abyss, but stopping to rest, to find peace, comfort, and consolation upon the ledges of not-God which will, ultimately, not hold us. We have the freedom to try to stay on these ledges. As Finley reminds us, “That which is essential never imposes itself, for love is always offered. It’s never imposed.” But we are inwardly drawn by the very thing that draws us out. Which is Love.
Oratio
Love shake me loose
from the ledges
to which I cling
shine your light
into the shadows
wherein I hide
draw me out
draw me near
do not let go
Contemplatio
Where in your life have you tried, or are you trying, to make your home on a ledge that was not-God?
Related Scripture
“Upon my bed at night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he gave no answer. I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves.”
— Song of Songs 3:1-2 (NRSV)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Breadcrumbs of Truth: Following God’s Voice Into the Eternal Unknown, which explores how God leaves fleeting glimpses of truth before us and within us — calling us deeper into relationship, in spite of ourselves, and without ever stopping.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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