“The Greek Fathers liken man’s encounter with God to the experience of someone walking over the mountains in the mist: he takes a step forward and suddenly finds that he is on the edge of a precipice, with no sold ground beneath his foot but only a bottomless abyss.”

The Orthodox Way (Revised Edition, page 13), Bishop Kallistos Ware

The passage above is my favorite quote from the Orthodox tradition.

Beginning in October, 2016, I was gifted with an extended period of contemplative prayer (more of that story is told here). I didn’t have words at the time to describe what I was experiencing. Not only did I not have words to describe the experience, no human words were needed in prayer during that period. I experienced that prayer can simply be – in the type of rich abundance written about by Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross – “being with God.” Later, I heard a Seattle priest talk about experiencing “an encounter with God” he had in his twenties while living in the U.S. Southwest. Ah, the words to describe my prayer experience from 2016 and extending for a time: an encounter with God.

The extended prayer encounter I experienced began with a responding to a prompting of the Holy Spirit. We all occasionally feel an emotional tug encouraging us to act. Sometimes we respond. In 2016, I responded.

I’ve come to recognize since 2016 that we can all see the opportunity to be loved by God. Related to this, we can also continually learn to better love the people around us (Matthew 22: 34-40: “The greatest commandments are…love the Lord your God….and….love your neighbor as you love yourself”).

Just as I took time to learn to do photography – and thereby recognized that a misty day was a great time for the photo of Seattle’s Green Lake shown above (with “Duck Island” in the background, where my maternal grandmother learned to swim), we can all look for opportunities for “the experience of someone walking over the mountains in the mist: he takes a step forward and suddenly finds that he is on the edge of a precipice, with no sold ground beneath his foot but only a bottomless abyss.” Those moments – those steps – are moments of grace offered to us by God. Yet, we can be open to those moments of grace.

Ways of being open to God’s grace:

• Make regular time to participate in your faith tradition.
• Read writings of the mystics. A few reading suggestions are offered here.
• Make time to step away from busyness. Westerners, for the most part, live in “busyness”. We need to “do this, go there, run from one life experience to another.” In so doing, we ignore our inner life. We ignore any emotional ugliness or challenges that we’d rather ignore. We also lose the opportunity to resolve “the ugly stuff” and we lose the opportunity to be with God. We reduce the opportunity to notice the “emotional tugs” that are promptings of the Holy Spirit inviting us into encounters with God.
• Make time for prayer and solitude.
• Be reflectively observant about what goes on around you and of what comes out of prayer and solitude.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!).