Traditional Religious Language

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael_Mayo
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

Michael_Mayo

Guest
It doesn’t do a lot for me anymore. My deepest experiences are quiet and a bit empty. I am not complaining. I find the subtle experience to be calming and stabilizing. If I have the patience to sit with it long enough it can become exquisite. None of the imagery of our worship language seems to fit. When we speak of “Glory” I do not see or feel anything glorious but rather, something a lot more subtle.
How much of our language is more about our yearning and our needs and maybe expectations?
And how much is actually related to our experience?
 
I think that human language can not come close to describing certain spiritual experiences; we pick the closest words and feel like we have explained 1% of what we want to say.

Have you read about the nine levels of prayer? Do you have a spiritual director?
 
adamhovey1988 said:
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying.
Click to expand...
That is because I did not explain it very well at all.

It has mostly to do with Vocal Prayer and meditation ( the lower 2 of the 9 levels) and the images we commonly use. Even our creed “Seated at the right hand of the Father”, I don’t get to see any of that. My experience of God is not visual. there is no image. “Glory to God in the Highest” I don’t hear any glory and when I look at the world I see some glory but it is also mixed with things like Aleppo and so much that does not give glory to God. How do I give glory to God? God already has glory.

From the Te Deum:
“All the Angels, the heavens and all angelic powers,
All the Cherubim and Seraphim, continuously cry to Thee:
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!”

How do we know that? We never see or hear it. We take it on faith.

May be as I age I get more practical, more sensate.
 
St_Francis said:
I think that human language can not come close to describing certain spiritual experiences; we pick the closest words and feel like we have explained 1% of what we want to say.

Have you read about the nine levels of prayer? Do you have a spiritual director?
Click to expand...
Yes, I think it is in vocal prayer that I find so much that doesn’t seem to esonate with me.
 
St Teresa of Avila said something to the effect that God speaks to us best, within the depth of our being. No words are used, just His presence, yet, we receive from Him grace that can’t be explained in spoken word, and if we try, we only end up confusing others.

I think its why St John of the Cross wrote in poetry, the experience of a soul in contemplation.

He could have done it with ordinary street language.

Like Thomas Merton wrote in his book, “The Inner Experience,” trying to explain these things to people who have not experienced them, is impossible.

It’s like trying to explain what chocolate taste like, to a person who has never tasted chocolate.

Jim
 
JimR-OCDS said:
St Teresa of Avila said something to the effect that God speaks to us best, within the depth of our being. No words are used, just His presence, yet, we receive from Him grace that can’t be explained in spoken word, and if we try, we only end up confusing others.

I think its why St John of the Cross wrote in poetry, the experience of a soul in contemplation.

He could have done it with ordinary street language.

Like Thomas Merton wrote in his book, “The Inner Experience,” trying to explain these things to people who have not experienced them, is impossible.

It’s like trying to explain what chocolate taste like, to a person who has never tasted chocolate.

Jim
Click to expand...
And then I think we all have a tendency to take everything as if it were legal definition.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top