"What makes the spiritual journey both exciting and terrifying is its hiddenness. The God that we worship is hidden from us. He is beyond any possibility of our manipulation or control. He is free. Yet we are made 'after his image and likeness.' If he is the God who hides himself and we are made in his image, then we too are hidden from ourselves: 'it doth not yet appear what we shall be.' (I John 3:2). The psalmist understood something of this: 'But as for me, I will behold thy presence in righteousness: and when I awake up after thy likeness, shall be satisfied with it.' (Psalm 17:15)
"Let us attempt, then, a journey of self-discovery by venturing into the darkness and hiddenness of God. It is in him that we shall 'know even as we are known.' The hiddenness of God is that which safeguards human freedom. Human beings tend to tyrannize and even brutalize others with the god they have uncovered for themselves. The hidden God, however, cannot be used, nor can he be pinned down by definitions or expectations — and neither can we.
"We cannot delay. Time does not stop. The journey has already begun. Its hidden, secret quality drives us into a world of strange reversals and frustrating opposites, of sitting still yet always moving, of praying and not praying, of waiting on God but ever searching for him, of letting the self go and allowing the self to be. It is in this 'conjunction of opposites,' of striving not to strive, that we will begin the journey into the freedom of God. We will begin to encounter the mystery of who we are, the mystery of the living God who made 'the sun and all the stars.' ”