Looking Into The Void

"God is good."

The thought slips into my mind and catches me off guard. As I let the thought settle in me tears prick at the corners of my eyes. It's been so long since I had a thought like that.

I'm heading out of town for work and that thought - the one where I realize some calamity could befall me on the road - pushes me to send Dearest One a text. "I hope you know that I think our life is about perfect." He sends me a text back that lets me know he agrees. There is a contentedness between us - born from all that these past eight months have held - that feels deep and true.

I saw my grief counsellor this past week. I came away from the appointment knowing that I will think up a ritual to help me let go of the old God Of My Understanding and make room for the new. I told my counsellor that even though my belief system seems to be shot to smithereens there is a stillness within me that I've never experienced before.

I cried with recognition when I read the following from this book:

"The present world we live in does not have much use for God as a living reality. It finds a dead God who can be used to justify dead systems more manageable. That is why the path of contemplation is so difficult - because to walk that path we have to come to the edge of those myths which give our lives meaning and look down into the nothingness surrounding them. (emphasis mine) 

Only in contemplation, when we spend time in this nothingness, do we discover that this nothingness is really the mystery we call God.... 

To live in that radical insecurity is painful, because we not only lose a way, we lose even the name of the way. We lose all sense of direction. We are lost in the dark.....
We can only wait in that darkness beyond a particular broken myth until our perspective changes, until our attitudes change, until we come to the lived awareness of how conditional our existence is.... 

We have a hunger for what we do not know. That hunger not only takes away the myths by which we organize reality. It also takes away even the desire for knowledge, for knowledge is now seen to be ineffectual against our need. At this stage, even the wisdom of the wise does not help."