Deep Calls Too Deep

How often do you pray?

Once a day? Once a week?

What does it mean to pray? Asking? Thanking? Sharing?

Does praying mean talking? listening?

Does it do any good?

Why is it almost always easiest to think about and connect with God in the presence of great fear, tragedy, or loss? When all we have are as Paul says in the letter to the churches at Rome: "Sighs too deep for words." We are, I think, at these times most immediately in touch with "the deepest" most essential parts of our selves.

"Deep calls too Deep" says the psalmist. Praying, meditating, taking time to be quiet, to make a space for God to touch us is important to our emotional and physical health. Researchers are now demonstrating that people who have a regular "quiet time" in their lives even recover more quickly from illness and injury. We knew that! Didn't we?

Throughout the Bible being in touch with that which is deepest -- is a holy, significant and frequently life-changing experience. The first two verses in the book of Genesis tell us:

. . . the earth was a formless void and darkness

covered the face of the deep...

The story of Noah reaches it's climax as:

. . . all the fountains of the great deep burst

forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. As Jacob nears the end of his life, he offers a blessing of life giving power to his son Joseph, overseer of all of Pharaoh's Egypt:

. . . the Eternal One will bless you with blessings of

heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath,

blessings of the breasts and of the womb.

The priestly book of Ecclesiastes reminds us that:

All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, "I will

be wise," but it was far from me. That which is,

is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?

The prophet Isaiah speaks to the ancient city of Ariel:

Then deep from the earth you shall speak, from

low in the dust your words shall come; your voice

shall come from the ground like the voice of a

ghost, and your speech shall whisper out of the dust.

Deep Calls too Deep . . .

The sense of the holy as "deep" extends beyond on our own Judeo-Christian tradition. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible tells us that the Hebrew word that has been translated "deep" is related to the name of the ancient goddess TIAMAT -- the dragon of "the deep" slain by MARDUK in the Enuma Elis creation epic.

Firm ground below had not been called by name, Naught

but primordial Apsu, their begetter, (And) Mummu-Tiamat,

"The Deep", she who bore them all (ANET 60 fl).

Deep Calls too Deep . . .

In our Gospel readings this morning Jesus instructs the professional fishers that they must put their nets down into the deep water, and when they do, their catch is miraculous.

One of the primary tasks of religion is, I believe, to communicate where we and those who have gone before us a sense that we have found a sense of God's presence in our lives: to tell the stories that express the inexpressible, deep and important things that bring us hope.

The Psalmist reminds us that we ARE connected called.

The Deep and mysterious aspects of the source of life calls to, is connected to, is part of that which is "deepest" in our selves. Deep Calls too Deep . . . .

We are reminded that part of what it means to be imago dei - living and breathing images of God -- is to have within us that which is mysterious, hidden, an inexpressible and irrepressible "presence." Finding these "deep" parts of ourselves is not something that twentieth century Americans do naturally. Unlike the psalmist whose daily life included encounters with the mysterious in everyday life, we live in a world that we experience as all too explainable. Our abilities to examine, understand and even in some circumstances manipulate our physical environment has taken the mystery from the night sky, the aurora borealis, eclipses of sun and moon, the cycles of life.

To find mystery in the physical universe these days, one must look with the eyes of the astronomers and the particle physicists. - It is no accident, I believe, that those who seem to have the most in common with the ancient mystics are those who study and interact and seek understanding of the edges, both where the differences between matter and energy become indistinct and where the beginning and ending of our universe are sought. In A Brief History of the Universe, by the brilliant British physicist Steven Hawking, first major proponent of the "big bang" the most frequently occurring word is God!

These folks are stare into "the deep" everyday!

Where are we average folk whose lives are not focused on the edges of reality to find our connections to the deep? In the near-death experiences? In the Celestine Prophecy, the X-files - we thirst to have the mysterious as a part of our lives.

In her book Diving Deep and Surfacing, theologian Judith Christ suggests that we must "give up the quest to ally ourselves with a transcendent source of magical power behind everyday events, manipulating and affecting the events of our lives." For us, she suggests, the modern mystical experiences, experiences of the deep - should be looked for in those moments in which we become aware of our being intimately connected to, a part of, and involved with the infinite sweep of possibility and potential - "the deep" is to be found the hope and belief that our futures need not be determined by our past - our sins, our mistakes, our shames are forgiven -- who we are and what we may have done is known, accepted and the possibility for living differently is eternally present - is eternally connected to the mysterious Deep from which we have emerged. In her book Spiral Dance, the author Star Hawk relates that in ancient Celtic tradition:

. . . the Deep Self is a known as the divine within, the ultimate and original essence, the spirit that exists beyond time, space and matter. It is, she says, our deepest level of wisdom and compassion and is conceived of as both male and female . . . . It is often symbolized as two linked spirals --- A double helix . . . an ancient and modern symbol for the mysteries of life . . .

Do you pray?

Make a time - a quiet time in a safe space - walking in the woods WITHOUT your portable radio or CD, sitting quietly in a quiet room, to go "deep" and connect - it is important.

"Deep calls too Deep"

In the words of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

I love the dark hours of my being

in which my senses drop into THE DEEP

I have found in them, as in old letters,

my private life, that is already lived through,

and become wide and powerful now, like legends.

Then I know that there is room in me

for a second, a huge and timeless life.