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Through The Deep
Living SoulJuly 28, 202300:07:06

Through The Deep

The poetic version of this reflection serves as a partial introduction to my book: Poetics: An Exercise in Theoria.

Here is the link -- https://a.co/d/g5WrV9R

This transcript is also available on my blog: https://themeaningofworship.com/blog/through-the-deep

Transcript: Through The Deep

“If you speak what is precious, and not what is worthless, you will be as my mouth,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 15:19.

The Christian life is based on the possibility, based on the reality, that we can speak with God in the heart, through Christ.

Welcome to The Meaning of Worship

We as Christians believe that there is a fundamental distinction between the voice of intuition, and the Voice of God.

We believe that God has spoken to many, as Hebrews says, “at many times, and in various ways.” And we also believe that He continues to speak, because Hebrews says that Jesus Christ, “yesterday, today, and forever” is the same.

We as Christians follow the pattern of scripture, and therefore also believe that He has spoken to us in our own lives, “at many times, and in various ways.” And because it is actually Him who is speaking, His Voice is not reducible to our own “intuitions.”

The reading which follows is fundamentally a poetic reflection on His speech. Some may now ask what, precisely, the Voice of God sounds like. To help answer this question, let me take you to the door of my Master - In the style of Thomas Aquinas: inheritor of both Jerusalem and Athens - yet entirely a son of God.

One asked what the Voice of God sounds like. I respond: Before we consider the Voice of God, let us investigate intuition itself - that voice with which we are all most familiar. I ask you, “what does ‘intuition’ sound like?” - that voice which, by definition, comes from beneath, and comes immediately? We cannot repeat its tone, but still, we instantly recognize that it’s speaking, that we are ‘intuiting,’ that something is leading.

Yet, this awareness of our own interiority ought not be mistaken for “The Deep” 
 to which even intuition, that which comes from beneath, calls 
 for speech. For, a phrase like, “as intuition calls to me,” according to the language elected by the collective experience of human societies, has never been able to adequately describe “that Voice” 
 which comes through The Deep.

Rather, we have always relied upon the psalmists, the song writers, to describe that Voice which, as Deep calls out to Deep, comes running. The Voice that chases my awareness with goodness and mercy. That Voice which now sets me to chase the One speaking; like water in a dry and weary land - that He would all of my attention 
 I recognize Him.

All of this happens in an instant, and through many instances; like the rising tide. All of God speaks to every part of me; as Deep
calls out to Deep
I hear Him.

I close:

If we cannot repeat the tone of intuition, how much more ought we struggle to re-collect and re-cite The Deep - through which there are brought forward such incredible mysteries. With this struggle in mind, how much more then ought we to wrestle to describe the Voice of the One? The One from both intuition and The Deep derive their being? The One who is the ground of all speech?

When He speaks, everything breathes.

This is why it is written, “Everything that has breath, praise the Lord.”

This is the Meaning of Worship.
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