Glimpses

“The Bible says that no one can see God and live. In a transferred sense, no person can see himself and live. All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and contours. You feel the inspiration of its possibilities and the wonder of its mysteries.”

~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

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We only catch little glimpses of the Great Spirit, sense tiny murmurs, hear faint echoes. We think sometimes that we have a pretty good idea and a pretty decent image, we think that we’ve got God pinned down. And then, mercifully, we’re shown–through great love or great suffering, sometimes both–that we know next to nothing. That what we might possibly have is near negligible in the grand scheme. That our best guesses are nothing more than that, stabs in the dark of an impenetrable glistening darkness. And then we can begin.

As with God, so with us. For we are. God, that is. Our soul is but a speck of the cosmic Christ, and our soul is, too, the whole.  To presume to know what’s within our little slice of eternity is equally preposterous as to presume we know God.

We get glimpses. We get flutters. We get just enough, when we are paying attention, to take one more step inwards, one more step outwards.

And that is enough.

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“We can’t know what’s in another person’s heart… we can’t know what’s in our own.”
~ Ruth Anne, Northern Exposure