Prayer begins where expression ends. The words that reach our lips are often but waves of an overflowing stream touching the shore. We often seek and miss, struggle and fail to adjust our unique feelings to the patterns of texts. Where is the tree that can utter fully the silent passion of the soil? Words can only open the door, and we can only weep on the threshold of our incommunicable thirst after the incomprehensible.
Heschel understood as few others have, that when deep calls unto deep, words are not only irrelevant, but their utterance can seem irreverent. In a culture battered into submisssion by torrential verbiage, I am looking for writing that values the holiness and humility that gives human longing its trajectory towards eternity. So I find Heschel’s description of prayer hints at the ineffable mystery and compelling attractiveness of God.
When I read a paragraph like that quoted above, I long to be that ‘tree, seeking to utter fully the passion of the soil’. And that ‘incommunicable thirst after the incomprehensible’ points to the deepest desires of which, if mine is any to go by, the human heart is capable. Sometimes I am embarrassed by the superficiality, pragmatism and functionalism that turns prayer from such wondering adoration into a pious exercise akin to retail therapy. In the way that matters most, Heschel’s writing does my heart good.
Leave a Reply to Endlessly Restless Cancel reply