Encountering the Holy

The Unnamable

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations…”
Lao Tsu (Tao Te Ching)

Once, when I was in the Arizona desert at a place called Cielo En La Tierra (heaven on earth), I saw a sunset that made me stop in my tracks. Never had I seen such beauty: red, orange, pink, shades of lavender, green and blue. It spread across the sky from horizon to horizon and took my breath away. I watched, weeping, until darkness overtook it. I can see it now in my minds eye, but words do not do it justice. In fact, words cannot express adequately any sublime spiritual experience. By their very nature, words box in and short change any experience of the holy. One can only be in the moment and carry that moment ever forward in one’s heart and mind, understanding it, yet unable to describe it to another.

Mystics have always understood the inadequacy of words, as you can see in the lines above from the Tao Te Ching. Perhaps this lack of spiritual vocabulary is why the God of the Old Testament was never named except as ‘I AM.’ We want to describe that which is divine in human terms, but the terms that fit most closely are ones that we can’t even wrap our heads around—like eternal, limitless, timeless, omni-present, transforming.

Most people encounter that which they call ‘holy’, not in a church or a synagogue or a mosque, but in the natural world, in everyday experiences right here on ‘terra-firma’. In fact, one can find the mystery in almost any naturally occurring thing. Today, take a walk if you can, and choose something you encounter; it could be a pinecone, or a flower, a cloud pattern, ice crystals, sunlight through winter branches. Spend some time with it, long enough to look closely, study it carefully, let it speak to you. You may find that which is holy right in the palm of your hand.

Shalom,
Jane