SacredSpaceNels.jpg

Many of us prepare ourselves for the Great Interior — a life of intimate communion with God. But, after all the preparation, how many of us enter into that Interior? I do wonder if the Interior is where we are known truly, and I wonder if that knowledge gives us fear.
Is there enough silence in your life to enter into the Great Interior with God? Do you need to turn off the iPod, the music, the radio, the TV and turn off the sounds that fill up our moments of silence? 
This is what Dean Nelson in God Hides in Plain Sight: How to See the Sacred in a Chaotic World  addresses in chp. 4. This intensification of the Interior is connected to the sacrament of confirmation, where we enter more deeply — in a committed way — to the faith we have already affirmed. It is deep calling unto deep, or The Deep summoning us into the Depths, and the call echoes the way calls echo on glassy waters.


There is so much poetic imagination in this chp of this book, and it would be hard to summarize it without wounding the poetry. We are given a sketch of a life that yearns for more, a life that, having experienced the glory of God in snatches, wants to bask in that glory and to stand in the presence of The Glorious One.
How do we find this depth? Silence and Spiritual mentors. “Silence,” Thomas Keating says, “is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation.”
More from Beliefnet and our partners
Close Ad