The Expansive Mystery of God and Apophatic Humility.

Confessing our Small-Mindedness

We
confess to you our Father,

our small-mindedness and limited appreciation of
your greatness.

We
confess that we scarcely consider

your mighty movements at the beginning of
time,

creating the heavens and the earth;

nor do we even barely notice

the potential purposefulness of ordinary moments.

Lord we have sinned:

Forgive us and enlarge our
understanding.

We
confess to you Lord of Life,

that the life and death and resurrection of the Word made flesh,

do
not expand our thinking as they should:

we are hemmed in by transitory
interests and temporal pursuits,

and afraid oir unaware of the essential and eternal.

Lord
we have sinned:

Forgive us, and deepen our
love,

We
confess to you Spirit of God,

that we do not value

and seldom welcome

the gift of your Holy
Spirit

to liberate our tongues to praise you

and energise our lives to serve you.

Lord
we have sinned:

Father forgive us for our
failures and our sins,

Through the love of our Lord
Jesus:

And help us by the power of
your Holy Spirit, Amen

((c) Jim Gordon: Please feel free to use for yourself or in worship services)

One of the more expansive minds in my poetry canon is Denise Levertov. In her poem Candlemas, economy of words contrasts with the enlarging images of open arms, light, new life, deep faith and illumination. But the theological jolt of the poem is the final turning of Simeon, who held in his arms the Light of the World, towards that deeper darkness where the ineffability of God remains eternally secure from human prying.

A recovery of apophatic humility is now an essential dimension of a spirituality capable of withstanding the ephemeral, endlessly articulated imprecision of the noise and chatter of information, connectivity, immediacy of communication, transience of contact and superfluity of trivia. In other words, perhaps God is calling for a recovery of depth in our feeling, attentiveness in our hearing, reverence encouraging reticence in our speaking, and a reacquaintance with silence as the sign of a soul that, before God, knows its place.

Candlemas
By Denise Levertov

With certitude,

Simeon opened

ancient arms

to infant light.

Decades

before the cross, the tomb

and the new life,

he knew

new life.

What depth

of faith he drew on,

turning illumined

towards deep night.