Do you hear what I hear?

Last night as our group was gathered around the fire, my curiosity got the better of me. I asked if anyone there had a transcendent experience of God. In most groups, you can talk about sex, theology, painful personal experiences and all sorts of struggles rather freely. We’ve grown accustomed to doing what my Grandma used to call hanging out our dirty laundry for all the world to see. But sharing an inexplicable outside the reality realm experience of God, a time when you were at your most vulnerable and connected to some shimmering sense of all that is Holy, that is most difficult.
It is difficult for several reasons, I think. One reason is the sheer inability of words to transmit the Reality which cannot be confined to words. Jewish tradition has it right. We cannot say the Name of God no matter how many words we use. I told my story of sitting on a mountain top at the end of a hike, surrounded by friends and strangers, watching the sun rise, seeing and feeling the world ablaze with the Glory of God, being caught up as one with creation. At the end of my telling, my friend Janet said, “Is that all? Is there more?” I laughed at the absurdity of trying to capture God experience, God presence, God among us in prosaic words.
Yet we must try to share our experiences of the mystical movements of God in our soul lives. How else can we know and be known by others who are struggling as we ourselves are, trying to find God in our daily living? How else can God know that we noticed His/Her presence among us unless we tell what happened, poor substitute though it might be for the Reality we felt in our whole selves? So some of us tell of hearing God’s voice speak, hearing a Word that brought new revelation to our lives. One tells the story of being at an Easter sunrise service at the Grand Canyon, led by a Freewill Baptist pastor, turning as the sun rose to see, really see the faces of believers lit not just by the sun but by the sure knowledge that death is vanquished because Jesus still lives. Our stories were different but in the telling of them, for a fleeting moment in time, our faces and hearts were illuminated and warmed by the memory of God among us.
Another reason we don’t share our mystical memories of God is fear of being judged and found wanting. In this new Age of Reason, mystics are prophets without honor in their hometowns. We give awards for preaching and a good preacher can write a book of sermons. Peace and social justice activists get newspaper stories and have flesh and blood people and programs to work with and on. Teachers have students who learn the books and stories of the Bible, students who ask questions and learn the faith of their fathers and mothers as they craft a faith of their own. Mystics have themselves and God.
During Eastertide, I give thanks for all those women and men two thousand years ago who shared the inexplicable experience of Resurrection with their world and with me. The stories I read in the Bible can no more capture the reality of their experiences than my words can capture my mountain top experience. Thank God they kept on telling the story whether they were believed or not, whether they were judged or not, whether they were understood or not. The retelling of those stories, the rehearing of those words, the renewal of life after death grows more powerful each year as my treasure chest of God Presence continues to be filled.
It is enough that I speak my story, that others speak their stories, and that we honor our mystical knowledge of God. Like the people at Pentecost, we all are amazed and perplexed, wondering what it all means, but willing to speak our truths whether we are understood or not. Someone hears, and Someone understands. I am content.