that which cannot be described.....

I get an e-mail occasionally from Heron Dance,an art and writing blog that I found many years ago.Often,I have used the site's musings to trigger my own.They are in Vermont(where else?) and I have purchased many gifts from them.Maybe,this summer,I'll drop by.

Today,I read this:"The Tao suggests that we seek harmony with that which cannot be described or explained,the wisdom beyond words ,the silence deeper than quiet.The emptiness beyond empty."Heron Dance.

These words touched a chord in my soul.Have I been reading the author's mind,or he ,mine ?

Just last night while talking to a beloved niece, I shocked her(not really) by telling her that I believe that our true happiness is not found by seeking it but by divining the will of the Creator and lining up with it.Harmony.Somehow, we all know when we are not there,but often we don't have the words.

Harmony with the silence beyond quiet.The winds that blow gently through the colors of the Painted Desert.Speaking.This is me,this deep,eternal quiet that causes the earth to hang like an ornament in space.One has never seen stars 'til you gaze at the Southern Cross in the middle of nowhere, Australia.In the silence of a field.Harmony.

That which cannot be described.But we try don't we?January 21,1989.On the floor of my bedroom.Eyes closed ,lotus position.One word:"Jesus".And a flood of what I cannot name reached into me and filled me.The power of it so great that I thought,"I am dying in this bliss and soon my head will spin into the air."I got up before the filling could continue ,so afraid of the unknown was I.
I still don't know the name of what happened.Jesus.

The emptiness deeper than empty.The emptiness of God is the exact opposite of what we expect.
The emptiness of my mind in Centering Prayer that I trust is being filled with this Lord, who is empty.
This trust is all we have in our feebleness of understanding.

When the great thinker  St. Thomas Aquinas, was near the end of his life,he who wrote myriad tomes on theological matters,a fellow monk found him in the chapel levitating with his face drenched in tears.Apparently, he had an encounter with the Lord but never spoke of it.He stopped writing and when pressed, said that all he had written before was straw.That which cannot be described or explained.