Faith Matters 32: For The Gardner News, March 3, 2007
Encounters With God
With the warm promise of spring in the air, Sophie, our three-year old Springer, and I set out through the still snowy woods on one of our favorite walks. A meandering path took us through a deep and silent pine grove until we emerged on a hayfield lying stark and empty, ridged furrows poking out of the crusted snow. Crossing this barren stretch we entered the shelter of a path that leads to the river. From the safety of a sandbar we watch the ebb and flow of the seasons as banks are washed away and redistributed elsewhere. Birds squawk and call overhead, disturbed by two unwelcome intruders.
No matter how recently it has snowed, our footprints are never the first signs of travelers on the pathway. Sometimes I recognize the marks of the rarely glimpsed owner of the field, who comes at a different time of day to walk her dogs. Sometimes I can identify my own boot prints from previous walks. Always I see intriguing and mysterious prints of creatures I can only guess at. Paw prints leave me wondering if they might have been left by dogs or coyotes. I’m told that coyotes walk with their feet close together, although to my untrained eye, I’m rather at a loss to tell. Other prints were obviously left by hooves, the deer that I sometimes glimpse at a distance. Occasionally though, we will startle one of them and hear it crashing off through the underbrush, leaving behind a glimpse of a white tail flicking farewell.
One morning while Sophie was still a pup, we were halted on the path by the snort of a spotted fawn, frozen in its protective stance some fifteen feet from us. Sophie caught its scent before she saw it. The fawn raised its head and stamped a hoof. I had the presence of mind to slowly sit down in the hope of savoring this chance encounter. And then the most miraculous thing happened. The fawn slowly approached and bent to sniff out the little four-footed brown and white creature it saw before it. Sophie stood stark still, frozen with fear. The deer stretched out its neck to sniff and nuzzle her in a scene that might have looked appropriate on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This short-lived encounter was a gift, the kind that can take your breath away.
Our faith tradition affirms the transcendence of God, present in all times and places, the great sea of mystery in which we live and breathe and have our very being. But if God is everywhere, in all places, how do we really know God? Transcendent presence runs the risk of becoming mere conceptual presence as we pay lip service to God without really experiencing God. God becomes more of an idea than a living presence.
But our faith affirms that God is also immanent, revealed to us at particular times and in particular ways. Sometimes we see traces of God’s presence in the lives of others and in our own lives. We see moments of sheer grace in unfathomable acts of generosity, sacrifice, forgiveness, and healing. We see deep peace in the face of illness, loss and death.
And sometimes God is revealed to us directly through a sudden and chance encounter with the mystery we call God. We can’t make such encounters happen; we can’t orchestrate them. We must wait for God to encounter us, to startle us in some amazing way and take our breath away. This is the essence of what we call revelation, those moments when the divine is revealed to us, not as a concept or an idea, but as something that we can only take in with a sigh. These moments cannot be created. They can only be accepted as the pure grace that they are.