Approaching Truth

I am endeavoring to broach the subject of truth in the near future, and to introduce the idea I am going to offer some words by Frederick Buechner-an ordained minister and well-respected author-from his book, Telling Secrets. Please see quote at the top of the blog site as well.

"What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more curcial to true spiritual comfort, as the huge monk in gold put it, than being able from time to time to stop that chatter of spoken prayer. If we choose to seek the silence of the holy place, or to open ourselves to its seeking. I think there is no surer way than by keeping silent.

God knows I am no good at it, but keep I trying, and once or twice I have been lucky, graced. I have been conscious but not conscious of anything, not even of myself. I have been surrounded by the whiteness of snow. I have heard a stillness that encloses all sounds stilled the way whiteness encloses all colors stilled, the way wordlessness encloses all words stilled. I have sensed the presence of a presence. I have felt a promise promised.

I like to believe that once or twice, at times like those, I have bumbled my way into at least the outermost suburbs of the Truth that can never be told but only come upon, that can never be proved but only lived for and loved. It is the experience I think the author of the 131st Psalm is trying to describe, and I will let the final word be his."

Psalm 131

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a child quieted at its mother's breast,
like a child that is quieted is my soul.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and for evermore.