Revelation and Meditation

Richard Lederman

Ha-shamayyim mesapperim kevod el

u-ma’aseh yadav maggid ha-rakia’

The heavens reveal God’s presence;
and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Psalm 19:1

I am reminded of an experience driving through a wooded area in Maryland at the peak of the fall leaf season. As I marveled at the gift of beauty in color and light that graces our world, I was led to marvel as well at the human capacity to perceive and contemplate that beauty. The saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” is no trite adage. The true source of “beauty” is the ability of our eyes and minds to see and perceive.

Revelation is a human response to the manifestation of divinity or transcendence in the cosmos. Like beauty, it is the human ability to perceive that forms the basis of revelation. A bush burning in the desert though not consumed is not a revelation. It is Moses’ perception of the phenomenon and his response to it that turns the event into a revelatory experience. “When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses! And he said, ‘Here I am’” (Exodus 3:4). Had Moses not “turned to see,” there would have been no revelation.

Most of the world’s religious traditions understand their origins in terms of this kind of call and response. Apparently out of the blue, God calls to Abraham and tells him to leave his family and his homeland, and travel to some unnamed place that God will show him. There he becomes the father of a multitude of nations. On the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus receives a blinding vision of the risen Christ and is transformed into Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. Poised for battle against his own family and friends, Arjuna becomes a disciple of Lord Krishna, who teaches him the art of detachment from desire and material things. Alone in a cave at Mt. Hira in Arabia, the prophet Muhammad is visited by the arch-angel Gabriel, who declares, “Recite,” and thus begins the emergence of the Qur’an, “the recitation.”

In each of these cases, a human figure destined to become a religious leader encounters a divinity or transcendent Being who transmits teachings and instructions that eventually are incorporated into a religious scripture. It is then the duty of the devotee to study this scripture and to follow its instruction as a way of entering into a proper relationship with that transcendent Being or some transcendent realm of existence.

In western tradition, within the so-called “Abrahamic faiths” (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the dominant “God as Cosmic King” view of divinity incorporates an understanding of divine revelation as “God as Lawgiver/Rule-maker,” a deity who dictates proper belief and practice as the primary path to establishing a divine/human relationship. This, however, is inconsistent with a theology that eschews the portrayal of a transcendent, hierarchical, patriarchal, authoritative deity in favor of an image of the divine as immanent within the created order, as I opined in the “God and Cosmology” post.

There is, of course, another model of revelation provided by a Hindu prince named Siddhartha Gautama, who came to be known as the Buddha, “the awakened one.” Having failed to discover the meaning of human suffering and death through the ascetic life of the monk, Siddhartha sat for many days under the Bodhi tree, deeply contemplating his own inner life and the workings of the cosmos. To this day, meditation remains the primary Buddhist practice, a method of discovery involving a personal inward journey as opposed to truth seeking through adherence to a scriptural doctrine.

Ironically, one tradition holds that the Siddhartha achieved “awakening” just as a full moon gave rise to Venus in the morning sky. The voyage of discovery is not simply an inward journey. “The heavens reveal God’s presence.” The created order is itself a revelation, and humans have been graced with the abilities to perceive and contemplate that created order—to come to know it, understand it, appreciate the balance and harmony that underlies and sustains it. God is not revealed in some book—any book. God does not write books; God does not whisper propositional words into the ear of a prophet. God reveals God’s self within creation—within the created order and within the human condition. It is this divine revelation manifest in the created order and our ability to perceive and understand it that should serve as the primary source of guidance to the religious seeker.

As the same time, we cannot simply ignore the impact of our religious scriptures as sources of inspiration and guidance. There have always been humans who have unique abilities to perceive reality that remains obscure to others. Some of these people we call prophets, and some of the unique abilities to perceive hidden reality are demonstrated in our traditional religious scriptures. I would, however, insist that all great artists, poets, song writers, story tellers, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and other thinkers are endowed with these unique abilities. All of these are sources of divine revelation, but only if we “turn aside to see.”

Sr. Sharon Dillon

“Breath of Heaven, hold me together, be forever near me, breath of Heaven.

Breath of Heaven, lighten my darkness, Pour over me Your holiness for You are holy,

Breath of Heaven.”    These are words from the popular Christmas song by Amy Grant, Breath of Heaven or “Mary’s song.” The words capture the essence of one woman’s experience of revelation and her exchange with the HOLY.  A young woman, pregnant, full of new life, praying for wisdom...and fully aware that she is loved. The same Breath that will be received by the babe at birth...BREATH….we live, we breathe and therefore we live and breathe...a continuous cycle until our body gives way to be united with the earth.

Catholic doctrine defines revelation as the communication of some truth by God to a rational   [and I change the word to relational] creature through means which are beyond the ordinary course of nature...the Church proposes these revelations are “truths which have come down to us from heaven,” and differ from inspiration….I would agree, and believe revelation is what every woman must experience on some level with pregnancy and the giving of birth. The common understanding of being born is the essence of taking in a breath.

“Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”  This request is a reminder to the Israelite community, to be holy because God is holy. It is the revelation shared in the book of Genesis, that in essence we are made in the same image and likeness of the HOLY ONE...the true and living God. For me, holiness is about connecting, not separating, about being in relationship with the breath of God, or the breath of Heaven.  It is about putting aside fear and alienation and learning to reach out in love.  Our holiness or our lack of holiness is continually witnessed in the way in which we live out our lives.  I am sure I am not the first one to hear, “think of your life as the only GOSPEL someone might read.”  To be holy, to live life worthy of being read as a Gospel, (a revelation of the divine) is to be in relationship and to continually give witness to the God of love revealed in our lives and through our actions.

As Judy Cannato states, “We are all one—all of creation, all that now live, all that have ever lived.  And I am an integral part of the great mystery.  THAT is the revelation and revolution that flows from Christianity. It is GOD’s very call to us, and we are summoned to recognize this truth deliberately” and share it in our life choices and through our actions.

Our most fully embodied experience of the love of God is the essence, the very source of our capacity for transcendence, for the exchange with the Holy.  The exchange or “the crossing over,” the relationality as determined by our very BREATH, that makes connections between ourselves and others.  The very breath we breathe is the divine, the VERY BREATH, is the essence.  Through our breathing in and out we live, we feel our being, through our body-selves we become and are born. We breathe, we are aware and are empowered, and are connected...which is our most full embrace and exchange with a living GOD, a rootedness in the sacred moment of the exchange of breath and love. To breathe is to be, to breathe is to reveal a piece of the divine.

Anyone who has ever lovingly kissed another knows of the exchange...the exchange of breath, of tenderness, or passion. The physical exchange can be manifested in many ways but the essence of any such exchange is breath. Breath can be shallow, regular, long, short, quick...but without breath, there is no life. Without the exchange of breath, there exists no relationality.

Fr. O’Murchu in his book, Adult Faith, states, “Relationality hints that eroticism and sexuality are values that underpin all others, and are manifested as the power of love. It becomes for many the virtue of all virtues and yet one of the most elusive and difficult to fully understand [or celebrate].  Our culture and religion remain the poorer for the absence of the discussion— exploration and expansion of the very subject, sexuality, eroticism and LOVE—which is the very core of the religion we profess. Instead of the compulsion imposed for control of love as expressed in our sexual selves,” we need to redirect our creative energies to learn anew the skills of RIGHT RELATING, if not for ourselves, then for the future and the protection of the earth, for the air we breathe, for the love we share...for the divine we embrace...for the Holy we desire to emulate.

Sr. Sharon’s Response to Richard

“Restore to Beauty, that which has been destroyed” is credited to the Catholic Franciscan theologian Jon Duns Scotus...and one of my favorite quotes. It captures what Richard is sharing in his view of the fall trees on his ride in Maryland.  

It explores further our responsibility to restore and to evaluate that which is destroyed. Richard shared that after a drive in the fall admiring the foliage, he was led to marvel at our “capacity to perceive and contemplate beauty.”  And that beauty (my interpretation) is a manifestation of the revelation of the divine, a place to perceive and find God.  If beauty, in whatever way an individual defines it, contains a universal truth, then surely the divine must be revealed.  Haven’t we all stood at a sunset and admired its breath-taking beauty in the sky? or had an awe-moment when we saw something that could not be caught in words or photos?

I agree with Richard, God, the Divine is continually revealed through creation. All of creation is continually in a state of self-renewal. Ah, if only we followed suit for our own spiritual selves...would there be any wars?  would there be famine?  would there be individuals, most especially children, that are homeless?

When and where did the destruction of that which is beautiful begin?  When did I participate in the destruction of beauty and how do I continue to do so?  To participate in such destructiveness is to destroy the revelation of a loving and caring God.  So what I truly desire—and I pray that humanity is truly working daily for—is restoration.

Restoration of beauty...planting a tree, a flower, an act of kindness...these actions restore the essence of the revelation of a loving and caring divine in our midst. Nature is only one piece of the whole.  But doesn’t our heart ache when we watch the global or local destruction done in an act of nature...when we see the effects of a horrific flood or earthquake? We become aware in our limited way of the forces beyond our own limited capabilities.  

Each time I go to the ocean, I am awestruck by the waves both small and large—their power and their influence upon the wind and the environment, and the feeling of renewal on my skin after time in the salt water.  I often feel restored, and renewed.  God has a way of sharing the restoration within us, the time of revelation, even without our knowing.  The sense of knowing and being aware is one step in the restoration of beauty and the experience of revelation.  Over the course of my life, I have come to know of one certainty and that is that God is always there, always restoring the beauty both within and without.  My response: am continually in awe.

Richard’s Response to Sr. Sharon

Sr. Sharon reminded me of an aspect of revelation that I overlooked even though this aspect was a key element of my “God/Cosmology” post. Yes, I noted in this post that revelation is as much an inner human response to an external call as it is that external call itself. Yet what I missed—and what Sr. Sharon recalled for me—is that the inner and the outer are not necessarily separate realms. Each of us is an image of the divine; each of us experiences life as breath, the divine breath that is our life force. Ultimately, there is no distinction, no separation. God’s name is Yahweh, translated as some form of the verb “to be.” God’s name is Being itself, and God is One; Being itself is One. Indeed, what is often referred to as “the fall of humanity” in the Garden of Eden is precipitated by an awareness of separation, distinction: the distinction between good and evil. And that awareness of separation leads to alienation, between God and humanity, between the male and the female, between humanity and nature.

Yet, this divine within, this Oneness of the cosmos is subtle, elusive, ethereal. Can we find some more explicit human experience that can model for us that Oneness? I believe Sr. Sharon is correct. It is in that shared breath of the loved one’s kiss that we can discover the cosmic Oneness. It is the look of love that we see in the lover’s eyes that brings us into a unity that is of a kind with the cosmic unity. As Sr. Sharon points out, the so-called “Holiness Code” of Leviticus 19 enjoins us to be holy as God is holy. It also insists, “love your neighbor [who is just] like you,” and “do not oppress the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” We have the capacity to experience the divine within, to experience the Oneness of all Being in the experience of human oneness, human relationship.

“The heavens reveal God’s presence,” but I am reminded of the words of Edgar Allan Poe in his love song, “Annabel Lee.”

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

The biblical poet gazed into the heavens to marvel at the revelation of God’s goodness, beauty and harmony. Poe, on the other hand, saw in those same heavens the goodness, beauty and harmony of his lover’s gaze. Sr. Sharon has taught me that those two perspectives are One.