As I prayed today, I tried to envision God in that very moment. Where is He? What does He look like? What is He doing? What is He thinking? I realized all of the sudden that I have no idea. I can imagine, but I don't want to. People all over the world are imagining God, making up someone to talk to. I want to know the real God, not one I imagine out of pictures I've seen, books I've read, the desires in my heart.

The whole concept has sort of thrown me for a loop today and left me a little lost. Is that all this is- imagination? Is God real or have I just imagined Him? Even as I ask the question, it seems ridiculous. I know all the right answers, but for some reason the questions won't go away. I think also that I'm not ready for them to go away, that I need to sit with them a little longer and see where they take me. I'm not scared of the questions, because part of me knows the answers already and knows that this God I'm banking my life on isn't threatened by my questions either. He'll bring me through this stronger.

I feel like I'm in first grade again, starting all over at this life of faith. What have I been doing for the last 8 years? Right now it seems like I've been learning a lot about God without knowing Him. Even to write that word- Him- startles me. I guess the word God has become familiar and easy from too much reading and writing. I am unsettled to remember that He is real, a person in one sense, and then again, not a person at all.

I'm remembering the first time I had a glimpse of transcendence, as I stood at the edge of Canyon de Chelly at 12 or so and wondered at such a vast expanse, space unending. I feel myself there again, standing at the edge of Mystery-- a little scared, shaken in to the depths of me, on the brink of tears because I don't have any other ideas for how to express this strange and penetrating emotion rising up inside me. If it takes my whole life, I want to know Him. Not to learn about God but to really know Him, the real One, to be caught up in this Mystery so far beyond what I can grasp with my mind.

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