In a recent exchange with a blog reader, we discussed the "mysterious"nature of God. I have always been puzzled by my fellowship's lack of acceptance of one of the Trinity--The Holy Spirit. In all other things, we cross our t's and dot our i's, but here we draw the line----this amorphous, formless being scares the logic out of us! He cannot be difined or drawn (although there is that dove), nor pinned down, nor really explained--which some of like to do to Biblical things. Yet, He is what Christ left us, when he departed this planet--and therefore, should be joyfully accepted.
The person I wrote and his cohorts are desperately afraid of contemplative prayer, meditation, solidude, the saints, and all things unexplainable. (As if one could explain God!) "Eastern" influences in religion are suspect. (Have they ever looked at the map to see where Christianity originated?) The New Age movement worries them. They distrust all things they have not discovered and interpreted in Scripture. They throw around words like "the occult" freely.
They distrust Thomas Merton, Dallas Willard, Richard Foster and "those broken down Catholic saints" and of course, the desert fathers and mothers.
They need to find what Esther deWaal calls "the religious imagination." I leave them with this Celtic (also suspect surely) prayer:
Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair
Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snow-flakes and ice, all in water their origin hare
Three Persons in God, to one God alone we make prayer.
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