Experiencing the Divine

One of the deep questions which, I believe, is lurking behind or beneath life to day is, do people have an experience of God, however you want to name that experience of the divine, the ineffable other in your life?   Perhaps some people do not even have an awareness of that presence in their lives.  Perhaps they are not paying attention to that being too busy with the day-to-day routine or work and busy schedules which life seems to be organized around these days. 

In our culture for many people that experience used to be found in worship on Sunday morning or whenever the designated time was for their religion to come together and worship their God.  For those of us who attend church services today, how many of us have an experience of the presence of God/the divine in that time and place?  Organized religion, for many people, is no longer the designated institution in which people turn to for that experience.  Of course, worship is more than that – than an experience of the divine.  We come together to give thanks and praise to the source of life, to acknowledge our separation from that source, God i.e. our sinful estate, to ask for and receive forgiveness for the things we have not done that we ought to have done and the things we ought to have done and have not done.  Hopefully, we receive inspiration from hearing God’s word in scripture and being preached.  We physically receive the presence of Jesus Christ if the worship is a Eucharist. 

However, my question remains; do we experience the presence of God in our worship?  Liturgical renewal is an attempt to make worship more relevant to those participating in it.  It put worship in language which is supposed to make it easier for people to understand using the language of the day – language which is clear and easy to understand.  However, the divine and my experience of it is not clear and easy to understand and is primarily a mystery and is at its core mysterious.  Our culture does not encourage experiences which are mysterious.  Can you worship God with a Tweet or in clear simple language?  Or perhaps my question should be, can we experience God in a Tweet et al at all? 

In the work that I do with dreams we identify dreams as God’s Forgotten Language.  To understand our dreams, we need to learn the language that God speaks in dreams.  In the same way in our culture, we need to relearn the language of the experience of God.  Perhaps God can speak to people in clear, simple language.  However, that is generally not my experience with some notable exceptions such as the New Zealand Lord’s Prayer which I wrote about last week.  The genius of that prayer is its clear language which is also poetry.  It speaks to the soul and resonates at a deep level.  That is what is needed in our worship. 

Blessings on your journey.