The Unspeakable Truths

I’ve stated previously how language is the lowest form of communication. Fr. Richard Rohr gives an example of this in his book The Naked Now. He describes how the term “non -violence” never appeared in our language until the 1950’s. The reason is because we didn’t have the language to express it until then! How is this even possible, you might be asking. Fr. Rohr states how all language is based on experience. In other words, the entire corpus of human language up until that time only had a language which could describe violence, but never had any verifiable experience with non-violence. That is a pretty crazy thought to ponder.

The apostle Paul writes in the twelfth chapter of 2 Corinthians of an incident of an individual caught up into the third heaven how hears unspeakable words which are not lawful to utter. Paul over the next five verses will speak about how his desire for glory needed to be suppressed or else being thought of as a fool because he sought the Lord three times about his infirmity and not wanting to be exalted above measure. Then he hears the Lord say to him, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The Connection

This passage from Paul is a foundational example of what Fr Rohr is describing about language. Paul has an encounter with the Divine which rocks his concept of reality. He has no words to describe it and feels that his weaknesses don’t even allow him to be in the Presence to begin with. Even though he admits having a great deal of revelation, somehow the intensity of this encounter has humbled him down to his weaknesses. And yet, grace…

Encounters with the Divine do this to you. I’ve experienced it several times. Every time though, there are no words available to me to describe what I had encountered. Speaking becomes like a game of darts with the Encounter in the middle and darts of words of varying degrees spread out all around it trying to point to the spot in the middle that I hit on accident.

Let’s call these Unspeakable Truths: Divine encounters where past experiences have not formed the words to express them. Marshall Davis in his book The Tao of Christ, a Christian version of the Tao Te Ching, provides the following example,

“The God who can be described
is not the true God.

The name that can be spoken
is not the name of God.

God is unnamable.
Naming God is the beginning
of religion.

Let go and you find God.
Hold on, and you get theology.

Knowing God and not knowing God are
ultimately the same.
Their source is Unknowing.”

The Strength to Encounter

This is going to sound flippant to many of you who are seeking an encounter with the Divine, but you do not have the strength to endure it. You never leave the same way you entered. The bible warns repeatedly that to see God is to die. You will. Every. Single. Time. That death forces a recalibration of what is know of as Life and how you are going to live it.

You will know grace on a level never encountered in these moments. What you thought was grace prior to the Encounter is fly ash afterwards. Yet, grace remains your strength in the weakness of being human before the Creator. This becomes one of your unspeakable truths.

With all the encounters that I have had, the one constant with them all is my inability to accurately describe what they were like and how they transformed me. I have been around others who confess the same result. We each sit in the peaceful tension that such an encounter has created within us. Satiated in the moment yet ravenous for more.

There are others who can intimately articulate their encounters with the Divine as though it were a trophy in their big game room. I always wonder if they are playing Paul’s fool in their recollection.

I offer this to you in your journey. If you can’t express the terrain in words, you’ve entered; keep going. If you can express it in words, even one word, keep going. Unknowing is the source.