Conveying the Radiance

 

“THE WORD religion points to that area of human experience where one way or another we come upon Mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where we sense beyond and beneath the realities of every day a Reality no less real because it can only be hinted at in myths and rituals; where we glimpse a destination that we can never fully know until we reach it.

 

Since the Reality that religion claims to deal with is beyond space and time, we cannot use normal space-and-time language (i.e. nouns and verbs) to describe it directly. We must fall back on the language of metaphor and resign ourselves to describing it at best indirectly. “

These words written by Frederick Buechner speak to the tangency of words to express the mystery and wonder of the Word, to convey the depth of the Radiance  coming into the world. Certainly poetry including that of Scripture approximates this notion. As Rabbi Heschel has said: the Bible is not holy itself; it is a hyphen to holiness.

It seems to me that the opportunity to attempt itself to express the wonder and grace is important. I am amazed at the variousness and creativity. All of this points to imagination and words are only a part of that dynamic. I am thinking now of art and music as well as poetry. I am thinking about the way a poem is read and about voice. I am thinking about different languages including sign language wherein the sign for Alleluia clearly conveys its intended joy. All of these are gestures which “say” more than words sometimes and radiate the radiance. There are hundreds of ways to kiss the earth. (Rumi)