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After the benediction the night of my stepping forward to receive Christ, I walked out into the night air and waited at the car for my parents. Alone, I felt inside a newness I cannot put into words, except by the word “clean.” I was clean inside, through and through. Perfect peace pervaded me. I knew something had changed, and that life would never be the same.
This was not a psychological experience; strictly it was not a religious experience, either. What was done for and to me, in Love, resided both within and outside everything I had ever been taught about God. The Numinous encountered me, and I would not be able to get away from the Mystery, nor have I been able to get away from the Jesus, with whom I was wedded in Love through the teachings of my parents, my home congregation, and my innate passion to seek God, even as a little child. I ran from Jesus for years, only to have the running to lead me, ironically, right back to Him and more deeply into a profound transformation of my experience of that very Person who is still, after these years, my best Friend. It seems the running away was the only way to return to embrace Jesus with a vision matured over the years, the same Jesus I knew as a little nine year old, but a different, more mature, and more inclusive, indeed, universalizing, experience of Jesus.
Hafiz speaks to me of this numinous, beautiful transformation, one that can and does happen to many through a sudden breakthrough, though, in my estimation, such Divine Inbreakings occur only after a period of preparation. Even the “cells of your body” are introduced into the “great Journey of Love.” And, our first to-be-broken promises and later stumbling does not diminish, at all, God’s delight in us.
And to what is this Divine Inbreaking? Not, finally, a spirituality, not a religion, not the church, not a doctrine, ... Indeed, one who has been confronted and converted by this Mystery has no time to argue over the petty religious matters that occupy those who play on the front porch rather than enter the House of the Beloved One. Neither does such a one have room for any arrogance whereby he judges himself capable, based on the little he knows, or thinks he knows, or of received words and teachings of man and women like himself, of knowing how God will or will not manifest to others, in order to reach out and draw them to Himself. No, he who is consumed by this Love has no capacity to be enamored with defending his faith, for there is nothing to defend, only to live. The defense of a faith can be left to those who have not been lured into the Divine Flame, wherein all felt sense of separation, even from those most affirmed to disbelieve, or loved as dearly as those who vow belief. And the one consumed by Love would rather do one deed of loving kindness to one unknown person, a kindness declared to no one, than proudly parade his devotion to a myriad of admirers. Love is its own defense and witness, and the loving of God-lovers speaks its own Truth. No, this waking up, this being awakened, encountered, even confronted, is to our own, innate “deep need to love and serve the Friend.”
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Listen to St. Augustine, in words reminiscent of St. John of the Cross, in one of the most beautiful writings ever penned:
Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee; deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odours, and I drew in breath and panted for Thee. I tasted, and hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace. (E. B. Pusey, Trans., The Confessions of St. Augustine).
Likewise, Rabia of Basra (ca. 717-801), a Sufi and one of the most influential of Islamic mystics, writes of her ardent passion for the Divine:
With my Beloved I alone have been,
When secrets tenderer than evening airs
Passed, and the Vision blest
Was granted to my prayers,
That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame;
The while amazed between
His Beauty and His Majesty
I stood in silent ecstasy
Revealing that which o'er my spirit went and came.
Lo, in His face commingled
Is every charm and grace;
The whole of Beauty singled
Into a perfect face
Beholding Him would cry,
“There is no God but He, and He is the most High.”
(Translator Unknown)
This spoken of by Rabia, St. Augustine, and Hafiz is none Other than the One who captured my heart by incessant summons and fastened it to Her heart, forever, and leads me, as all lovers of God, from Infinite Shore to Infinite Shore. And even our failings at Loving are seen with delight by the One who is the Inspiration for all efforts to Love. This is Grace!
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