"where are you
god of my contemplation
o gentle one
who met me on the
mountaintop
ready with dreams and
visions
of life beyond and
life within"

In the last post, I spoke about my own search within the Catholic Faith for a different God from the one I had know in childhood, and which was still preached from the pulpits and on retreats.  Through the writings of the mystics I learned a whole new concept of the Divine.  A God whose presence one could actually feel, a feeling of being enveloped by a Loving Presence.  The Church was wary of mystics and their joy.  The fathers preferred to keep people afraid of sinning, keeping them in line by changing rules and regulations, the need for confession and penance.  They preferred preaching about joy in heaven and not on this earth.  This earth was a wasteland, full of peril, pits to fall into and daily challenges that had to keep you on your toes.  Evil became personified in the Devil,  an angel who had fallen from grace and now was out to ruin our lives.  If an angel could fall, so could we.

Many mystics were told to be quiet, were imprisoned like John of the Cross.  Ecstatic writings were suspicious.  What were they afraid of?

Even in the 1960's some of these notions prevailed.  As young nuns, we were encouraged to stick to the rules, say the formula of prayers in our prayer books, be careful what we read, even the Bible because we could mininterpret it and be led astray.  This was arid territory and I wanted more.  I wanted to feel alive.  I read everything I could get my hands on about how to experience the presence of God, how to be happy in the life of service I had chosen, not because it was hard and against the grain but because it was actually a joy to to help others. 

Through all traditions and faiths, in every culture, and in all the ages, humans have had experience of the transcendent and have tried to put their experience into poems, proverbs, teachings.

"Every
Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don'ts,
Not the God who ever does
anything weird.
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them saying:
"Come dance with Me."
Come Dance."

Hafiz
14th century Persian mystic

I wanted to take part in that holy dance.  The more I understood this aspect of God, the more I questioned the faith of my childhood.  The more I spent time in silence, and felt peace surround me, I knew there was more to this experience than I could understand or explain.  I knew it was right and I knew I was home to myself and to life and I wanted to keep searching.