"Duplicity............................."

“Prayer emerges from and leads to a certain way of knowing that is most difficult to communicate in words, the immediacy of the experience making almost impossible to do so. It is much like describing the taste of salt to someone who has never tasted it. Such encounter with God is, like love and death, an unexpected and unprecedented event.”…”Palace of Nowhere”

The subject of the above paragraph, in grasping what its author means, must first be defined in terms, itself, as to how each of us holds it in our own personal dictionary. The book I just pulled from my computer shelf expresses it as “addressing God” with a number of possible issues. The question it leaves is whether or not we expect, in doing so, any sort of conformation at all that divinity is actually receiving our efforts. Are we satisfied with merely “shooting messages into outer space” in the name of “faith”, content to accept that however events evolve is, in itself, an answer from on high? My words are not meant to mock another’s endeavors, nor to suggest that I, myself, always find connection “through the veil” every time my spirit cries out in need. In no way do I claim it possible to “own” Him in such manner. Using St. John’s imagery that there is a path to walk with “no light except the one that burns in your heart”, Merton speaks of setting out “to find Him who calls you out of nothingness to union with Himself, even though an inner wisdom tells you know that “to reach Him whom you do not know, you must go by a way you do not know. You’re “lost” before you even start! Yet, in “letting go” of everything within us, a desire to see, to taste, and to experience the presence of God overcomes fear, opening a door for Him to fill our void. There are no guarantees. Our invitation remains His to accept and there is no shame if the union falls short. Reaching out through Christ unto Him, though, ought to be more than just making a list, fulfilling a requirement. Calvary didn’t just buy us a free pass into Heaven, but purchased, as well, the availability of a Holy Ghost escort into His throne-room In that I rest, the promise of His peace upon me…...