The unknowability of God

[Tomswife]

One would be difficult, but the short stories of Flannery O’Connor landed hard on me. You could feel within them the unknowability of God, the intangible mysteries of life that confounded her characters, and which I find by my side every day. They contained the dark Gothicness of my childhood and yet made me feel fortunate to sit at the center of this swirling black puzzle, stars reeling overhead, the earth barely beneath us.

"Perhaps he has the final scenes of the short story “Revelation” in mind, but really the quote encapsulates so much of what haunts O’Connor’s world -- and thereby the American Catholic imagination writ large."


Above is a quote from an interview with Bruce Springsteen. an article in Commonweal Magazine. He had often spoken of the influence of the author Flannery O'Connor in his life.

When i was a child and later as a young adult terrible things happened to me at the hands if abusive people. Later. Searching for solace and answers I read the short stories of Flannery O'Connor. I appreciated her writing and insights into people. She wrote about how life can be soft and conforting, and also how life can shake you to your core in terrible nonsensical ways. She taught me that good and terrible things do happen. Just as written in the Bible.

My life has been blessed and I have known great love as Tom's wife. Tom has declined. He will leave me sometime soon and meet his God. God is real. God is mystery and love. God is unknowable. But God always is a force pulling us toward him to be known.

"It is the mystery that does not confuse but halts through wonder; the experience of all life as both suffering and glory; the stubborn refusal to separate nature and grace."

Kathy

 

[Tomswife]

When we have questions ...
We refer to “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir. In the first chapter, the author talks with his spiritual mentor, Moshe. When Elie asks Moshe why he prays, Moshe replies: “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”.

Moshe doesn’t pray for answers. He prays for the “strength to ask [God] the right questions.”

Maybe God doesn’t want us to accept things how they are. Maybe it’s okay to have questions about my faith. Maybe it’s about finding the questions, not the answers.

In search of validation... “it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desire to know better the One in whom he has put his faith and to understand better what He has revealed” .

Edited from source: busted halo dot com

 

[KimT]

Kathy, that resonated with me. Have you read Inspired by Rachel Held Evans? She talks about the difference between how Jewish people and Christian people (many, not all) approach scripture. Paraphrase: Christians use scripture to answer questions; Jews use scripture to begin discussions. It's a good book. We had it in my church book club last year.

 

[Tomswife]

No. I will look for it.
Thanks kim.

 

[Tomswife]

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

 

[Tomswife]

"To love God and experience his love means saying all the time a mature and faithful yes to life — including everything I suffer and everything that remains a mystery and is a source of constant amazement. It entails knowing about the depths of life even at moments when I am so absorbed by what is happening on its surface that I am scarcely aware of its depths.

It means to give up playing the lord and master of life, of my own life and the lives of others — and to do so with understanding, joy, and freedom. To love God means being profoundly grateful for the miracle of life and expressing that gratitude through my life, assenting to my fate, even when it eludes my plans and expectations."
Tomas Halik

 

[Tomswife]

On knowing God.
St. Teresa of Avila

God alone is enough.
Let nothing upset you,
let nothing startle you.
All things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins
all it seeks.
Whoever has God
lacks nothing:
God alone is enough

As I see it, we shall never succeed in knowing ourselves unless we seek to know God: let us think of His greatness and then come back to our own baseness; by looking at His purity we shall see our foulness; by meditating upon His humility, we shall see how far we are from being humble. (Teresa of Avila: First Mansions, Book Two)

Teresa says, “we shall never succeed in knowing ourselves unless we seek to know God”. Our spiritual journey thrives in self-knowledge but is distorted by self-preoccupation. The goal is to be a student of self and know God. The better we know God, the better we know our self.

Four ways to know God better:

Study the life of Jesus: Jesus is the full revelation of God. Jesus is also the full revelation of what it means to be human.

Read Scripture as Revelation: How you read the Bible matters. “The Bible cannot be read unbiblically”. (Karl Barth)

Personal Revelation: God reveals himself to us through mystical prayer.

Other People: God created humankind “in the image of God”. If we want to know God better, get to know our family, friends, and co-workers better.

Teresa says, “if we turn from self toward God, our understanding and our will become nobler and readier to embrace all that is good: if we never rise above the slough of our own miseries we do ourselves a great disservice.”

A poem by St. Teresa of Avila:

May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.

 

[KimT]

I think one of the best ways to know God is to meet people from diverse backgrounds and those who have different beliefs than we do.

I could write a book on my experience with other faiths and how much I've learned about myself from these encounters.

 

[Tomswife]

Yes. Teresa of Calcutta said that also.
One day at work I had a meeting with a new database administrator. We were in a conference room. He asked me. "Which way is east?". I pointed, that way. He said, "I have to pray". I asked him if he wanted me to leave the room. He said, no. So we both prayed in silence together.

 

[Tomswife]

Have Faith that God Wants you to know him

Although faith is not mentioned in Matthew 18:1–5, we know that it isn’t just humility that ushers a person into heaven; it is faith in the Son of God. A humble, unpretentious faith could rightly be called a “childlike faith.” When Jesus wanted to bless the children, He said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10:14–15). How does a child receive a gift? With openness, honesty, and unbridled joy. That type of happy authenticity should be a hallmark of our faith as we receive God’s gift in Christ. (,got questions)

Below is from Richard Rohr
Many of us have heard that word ever since we were children. That’s why Jesus idealizes faith so much and congratulates people who have it. It’s this willingness to live with a certain degree of humility.

When the ego invests itself in its knowing, it is convinced that it has the whole picture. At that point, growth stops. The journey stops. Nothing new is going to happen to us after that point. The term we’re using here, “beginner’s mind,” comes from Buddhism. For Buddhists, it seems to refer to an urgent need to remain open, forever a student. A beginner’s mind always says, “I’m a learner. I’ve got more to learn.” It has to do with humility before reality, and never assuming that I understand. If there are fifty thousand levels of the mystery, maybe I’m at level forty-five. Maybe there’s more that needs to show itself to me. Can you imagine what a different world it would be if we all lived with that kind of humility?