"When I was a child, I was frequently surprised by Holy Mystery, as I suspect many children are. Sometimes as I would steal into the twilight of my cavernous parish church and see the tabernacle light flickering way up in front, I would know with absolute certainty that I was in the presence of Mystery. The liturgy, with its ever changing readings, colors, and moods, would sometimes crack open, and I would be face-to-face with the mystery that God was present in this ancient ritual. The soft quietness of the host on my tongue convinced me that God was closer to me than I was to myself. But try as I might, I could not find adequate words to express the Mystery. I still cannot. Everything I say to describe these encounters is flat and lifeless compared to the encounter itself. Yet I too experience Emily Dickinson's reality. She speaks of God as a mystery as deep as the sea, for whom the more she searches the more she finds, and the more she finds the more she is driven to search.
"After entering the religious congregation to which I belong, receiving my first professional education as a teacher, and surviving a baptism of fire teaching junior high science and math, I was offered the opportunity to further my education. I headed off, I realize now, to probe the Holy Mystery and the words we use to describe our encounters with it. In the midst of my doctoral studies, I found myself still seeking the Mystery and still unable to express the reality in my poor words, now more complicated and complex and abstract and accompanied by even more words as a result of all the study. The words of poet Rainer Maria Rilke addressed to 'neighbor God' accompanied me during those years:
" 'Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.
Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and bv sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.
The wall is builded of your images.
They stand before you hiding you like names.'
"Though I've focused my ministry as a spiritual director around attending to how people speak about God and helping them to bring these encounters to speech, I still find that my own attempts at speaking leave dust in my mouth. So every year when I head off for my own retreat, I find tucked into my bag alongside my Bible and journal a book of poetry. Hopkins, Levertov, Oliver, Herbert, Dickinson, Rilke, Neruda, and my all-time favorite, the Psalms — they've all had turns at helping me see the Mystery permeating my life and bringing it into speech.
"It so happened that the time I had set aside to write on the spiritual life immediately followed my latest poetry-infused retreat. The poets who had been helping me express my own spiritual life simply kept speaking, offering me words and images to describe that elusive reality. The spiritual life is, after all, about responding to Holy Mystery, isn't it?"
