What does the term "God" mean for a modern Christian contemplative?

Today I'm scheduled to give a short talk and lead a discussion on the topic: "What Does the Term "God" Mean for a Modern Christian Contemplative?" What was I thinking when I chose this topic? It seems that no matter what we say about our Source, we can't quite get at Its essence. Or HIS essence. Or HERS. For God is always Beyond whatever we can say or think, beckoning us with a hint here, a suggestion there. The best thing we can do, it seems, is simply to enter God's Temple - the solitude of Nature, the liminal space between ourselves and a beloved friend or companion, the dark, magnetic depths of the soul as experienced during contemplative prayer, or the vast spaciousness of awareness that is found during insight meditation - and LOSE ourselves in the same PLACE where God is lost in blissful, self-emptying love.

From that place - that Temple - images then arise which give us a brief taste of our Source. For example, we might discover the world as an echo of a Divine love-word that never quite had a chance to be spoken. Or a universe that is chock-full of mirror-images of an Original that - trickster-like - can't quite be found. Or the experience of ourselves as embraced by a magnetic Gaze arising from a place that is endlessly deep within our being. Or God as a Circle whose circumference is nowhere, and whose center is everywhere. In any case, only poetry can express these hints of who God is.

The best thing we can do is to go to God's PLACE and allow ourselves to be held and embraced by the Mystery. It is from that PLACE that these kinds of poetic images arise. But beware: each time we enter the Temple, the images that arise will probably be different! Perhaps Rumi puts it best: "What I know is this: if God revealed himself a hundred thousand times, not one of them would resemble another. In God, everything is always new-minted, fresh-born. You are actually seeing God this moment; every moment you are seeing God's thousand colors displayed in his works and acts. Not one of God's acts resembles any other . . . The real work of religion is permanent astonishment!"

Photos: The Loch, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, March 2, 2015