All Words Will Fall Short

Beauty and brilliance:

The beauty of the unconscious is that it knows a great deal—whether personal or collective—but it always knows that it does not know, cannot say, and dare not try to prove or assert too strongly; because what it does know is that there is always more—and all words will fall short. The contemplative is precisely the person who agrees to live in that unique kind of brightness (a combination of light and dark that is brighter still!). The Paradox, of course, is that it does not feel like brightness at all, but what John of the Cross calls a “luminous darkness,” or others call “learned ignorance.”

In summary, you cannot grow in the great art form, the integration of action and contemplation, without 1) a strong tolerance for ambiguity; 2) an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety; and 3) a willingness to not know and not even need to know. This is how you allow and encounter mystery. All else is mere religion.

Richard Rohr, A Lever And a Place to Stand: The Contemplative Stance, the Active Prayer

I read this book last year, and it's going right back on the reading list for 2012. 

Comments

[Dave]

Brilliant in its simplicity. In what appears to be a routine experience of living in an interior and exterior world of of at least partial darkness, behold the Light.