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Authors: Brennan Manning
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God to liberate me fromunhealthy dependence on people, I listen more attentively, love more unselfishly, and am more compassionate and playful. I take myself less seriously, become aware that the breath of the Father is on my face and that my countenance is bright with laughter in the midst of an adventure I thoroughly enjoy.
Conscientiously “wasting” time with God enables me to speak and act from greater strength, to forgive rather than nurse the latest bruise to my wounded ego, to be capable of magnanimity during the petty moments of life. It empowers me to lose myself, at least temporarily, against a greater background than the tableau of my fears and insecurities, to merely be still and know that God is God. Anthony Padovano commented,
It means I don’t figure out and don’t analyze, but I simply lose myself in the thought or the experience of just being alive, of merely being in a community of believers, but focusing on the essence or presence rather than on what kind of pragmatic consequences should follow from that, merely that it’s good to be there, even if I don’t know where “there” is, or why it’s good to be there. Already I have reached a contemplative stillness in my being. [11]
Being alone with the Alone moves us from what John Henry Newman called rational or notional knowledge to real knowledge. The first means that I know something in a remote, abstract way that never intrudes on my consciousness; the second means I may not know it but I act on it anyway. In The Waste Land , T. S. Eliot wrote, “It’s bad tonight, my nerves are shattered. Just talk to me. I’ll make it through the night.” In solitary silence we listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls us the beloved. God speaks to the deepest reaches of our souls, into our self-hatred and shame, our narcissism, and takes us through the night into the daylight of His truth: “Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. . . . You are preciousin my eyes, because you are honoured and I love you. . . . The mountains may depart, the hills be shaken, but my love for you will never leave you and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken” (Isaiah 43:1,4; 54:10).
Let us pause here. It is God who has called us by name. The God beside whose beauty the Grand Canyon is only a shadow has called us beloved. The God beside whose power the nuclear bomb is nothing has tender feelings for us.
We are plunged into mystery —what Abraham Heschel called “radical amazement.” [12] Hushed and trembling, we are creatures in the presence of ineffable Mystery above all creatures and beyond all telling.
The moment of truth has arrived. We are alone with the Alone. The revelation of God’s tender feelings for us is not mere dry knowledge. For too long and too often along my journey, I have sought shelter in hand-clapping liturgies and cerebral Scripture studies. I have received knowledge without appreciation, facts without enthusiasm. Yet when the scholarly investigations were over, I was struck by the insignificance of it all. It just didn’t seem to matter.
But when the night is bad and my nerves are shattered and Infinity speaks, when God Almighty shares through His Son the depth of His feelings for me, when His love flashes into my soul and when I am overtaken by Mystery, it is kairos —the decisive inbreak of God in this saving moment of my personal history. No one can speak for me. Alone, I face a momentous decision. Shivering in the rags of my winter years, either I escape into skepticism and intellectualism, or with radical amazement I surrender in faith to the truth of my belovedness.
At every moment of our existence God offers us this good news. Sadly, many of us continue to cultivate such an artificial identity that the liberating truth of our belovedness fails to break through. So we become grim, fearful, and legalistic. We hide our pettiness and wallow in guilt.
Conscientiously “wasting” time with God enables me to speak and act from greater strength, to forgive rather than nurse the latest bruise to my wounded ego, to be capable of magnanimity during the petty moments of life. It empowers me to lose myself, at least temporarily, against a greater background than the tableau of my fears and insecurities, to merely be still and know that God is God. Anthony Padovano commented,
It means I don’t figure out and don’t analyze, but I simply lose myself in the thought or the experience of just being alive, of merely being in a community of believers, but focusing on the essence or presence rather than on what kind of pragmatic consequences should follow from that, merely that it’s good to be there, even if I don’t know where “there” is, or why it’s good to be there. Already I have reached a contemplative stillness in my being. [11]
Being alone with the Alone moves us from what John Henry Newman called rational or notional knowledge to real knowledge. The first means that I know something in a remote, abstract way that never intrudes on my consciousness; the second means I may not know it but I act on it anyway. In The Waste Land , T. S. Eliot wrote, “It’s bad tonight, my nerves are shattered. Just talk to me. I’ll make it through the night.” In solitary silence we listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls us the beloved. God speaks to the deepest reaches of our souls, into our self-hatred and shame, our narcissism, and takes us through the night into the daylight of His truth: “Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. . . . You are preciousin my eyes, because you are honoured and I love you. . . . The mountains may depart, the hills be shaken, but my love for you will never leave you and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken” (Isaiah 43:1,4; 54:10).
Let us pause here. It is God who has called us by name. The God beside whose beauty the Grand Canyon is only a shadow has called us beloved. The God beside whose power the nuclear bomb is nothing has tender feelings for us.
We are plunged into mystery —what Abraham Heschel called “radical amazement.” [12] Hushed and trembling, we are creatures in the presence of ineffable Mystery above all creatures and beyond all telling.
The moment of truth has arrived. We are alone with the Alone. The revelation of God’s tender feelings for us is not mere dry knowledge. For too long and too often along my journey, I have sought shelter in hand-clapping liturgies and cerebral Scripture studies. I have received knowledge without appreciation, facts without enthusiasm. Yet when the scholarly investigations were over, I was struck by the insignificance of it all. It just didn’t seem to matter.
But when the night is bad and my nerves are shattered and Infinity speaks, when God Almighty shares through His Son the depth of His feelings for me, when His love flashes into my soul and when I am overtaken by Mystery, it is kairos —the decisive inbreak of God in this saving moment of my personal history. No one can speak for me. Alone, I face a momentous decision. Shivering in the rags of my winter years, either I escape into skepticism and intellectualism, or with radical amazement I surrender in faith to the truth of my belovedness.
At every moment of our existence God offers us this good news. Sadly, many of us continue to cultivate such an artificial identity that the liberating truth of our belovedness fails to break through. So we become grim, fearful, and legalistic. We hide our pettiness and wallow in guilt.
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