Smitten by God: Grasping at the Ineffable

Smitten by God: Grasping at the Ineffable
by Nancy Bowers, RScP

Breathing in the chill of early morning freshness, I pause to appreciate the way nature has the power to connect me. I notice the beauty of it all.  I allow it to stir up creativity.  It arouses something deep within.  It pulses love and appreciate for simply being.  This is the moment.  This is the time.  This is where silence rushes in and in that stillness, I am birthed into the heart of gratitude.  I am enveloped by knowingness. Yet that knowingness is ineffable.  It touches me.  It transforms me, but the desire to pin it down into something tangible exists only in the realm of art, of music.  It dances with me.  It caresses me.  I can only surrender to Its melody by allowing myself to be taken beyond.  It is pure experience begging to express its own uniqueness.  Hello, my friend.  Where would you like to take me?

Surrendering into the Divine, I allow Its Ecstasy to own me.  In the throes of appreciation, judgment dissolves, and with it the idea that definition could somehow capture the wonder of pure awe.  I can only hint at Its expansive nature.  I can dance around the edges of It and invite my friends to come play but until they too have been smitten by God, they will be stuck with wan smiles that hide their baffled witnessing of an experience.  The intellect can’t grasp it.  The mind tries to assign meaning so it can categorize, as if in naming it could file away the ephemeral and pin down the whirling dervish. Perhaps I can stash Its singularity within some memento that can remind me of how wildly my heart beats in Its presence.  Perhaps I can store this present for some future moment so this piece of the past can nudge me back to groundlessness.  My humanity wants desperately to grasp this fleeting intimacy and extend it into eternity, but I have no pause button.  Life continues to rush by.  The best I can do is learn the conditions that allow this connection to occur and become skillful in my ability to return to it.  I remember that the Sacred is constant.  It is only my tendency to be oblivious to It that robs me of my opportunity to embrace It.  Being just is.  I can only appreciate it by allow it to be exactly that.

I surrender.  I surrender.  Thank you, Lord, for showing me Your Beauty.  Thank you for fluttering my heart and sweeping me into Your Love.  My gratitude is beyond ability to express.  Help me to release any and all judgment.  May I let go of my tendencies to limit.  May I simply bear witness, appreciate the Holiness, let words evaporate into the Sacred Silence.  Just be.  May I simply be and in that beingness, discover Your constant companionship as You lead me into Heaven, as you lead me Home.

I am eternally grateful, even though I have not mastered how to stay there.  It is still worth the visit. 

And so it is.  Amen.