The Veil

If you know anything about contemplation, or even contemporary Christianity you must have run across references to the veil. It's in songs and literature. Without going into a whole dissertation on it, the image refers to the cloth that was hung in the ancient Hebrew Tabernacle to separate the area known as the Holy of Holies...or the place set apart for God's presence to reside. It was a very restricted place because...well, it was holy...in the true sense. God's presence was too powerful for people to experience. It would kill the mortal who entered without the proper preparations. I'm not going to go into why right now; that's a whole different topic. Suffice to say it became the symbol for the necessary separation between God and man.

When Jesus died, the Bible says that the veil in the temple was torn in two, symbolizing that there was no longer any separation between God and man. Also possibly that God's presence was no longer residing in that place...but that is a thought that just occurred to me on the spot...I'll have to think that one through more.

Anyway, throughout Chrsitianity, the symbol of the veil remained as a metaphor for the aspects of God that we can not comprehend or know. Sometimes it was called the Cloud of Unknowing. It is also used in a variation on this sense when someone refers to experiencing God in a way greater than normal. They may say they, "passed through the veil." or that the veil parted.

I have always wondered, and longed for, sometimes even raged at the lack of experiencing God more fully. If He was real and He represented ultimate reality and this world is but a shadow, why did He not show up like a pillar of fire! If not that grand, at least a concrete experience that could not be mistaken or denied. Why didn't He simply make Himself plain!

Of course I've heard all the answers about the need for faith. But that is insufficient. I'm not talking about a lack of belief. I believed as much as anyone could, but I wasn't going to pretend to be blind or deaf. If by faith someone meant pretending to be satisfied with arid prayers and the occasional emotion stirred by music, that was not going to cut it! Were those "charismatics" as I heard them called growing up, really experiencing something I wasn't or were they all wrapped up in emotion and mass-hypnosis/hysteria as was supposed by many?

Even as I learned more and experienced more and was given answers they were still not sufficient to satisfy that longing for something real. Now that I had experienced God in ways that I never had and was totally assured of His existence, why couldn't I touch Him? Hadn't Jesus parted that veil? Why was He still hiding behind it? I had read the mystics experiencing perfect union and describing it in very physical terms. I wanted that! Why only glimpses? Why nothing sustained? I had heard the explanations that it was so I could function in this world as I couldn't if His presence was that strong, but that is not sufficient either. World be damned! I would take all of Him any day! Plus God was a God of order, why couldn't He reveal himself more concretely without harming me if He chose? Why, why always the veil!

Of course, I have gone through the entire gambit of responses. Pressing harder until Iwas ground to the dirt straining against the immovable, fasting until I was so weak I collapsed, holding myself to such strict account of my behavior that I was locked in self-loathing, giving up and resting in that there was nothing more, feeling rejected and unworthy, striving to mentally unlock the secrets...and many more. Through it all, I still didn't understand that blasted veil that shouldn't be there.

Recently, I ran across an article that really lept off the page to me. I was reading, in a modern voice, what Contemplation was and how to verify it. I felt like I was reading a chronicle of my own experience. I had read this same kind of thing many times, but always in such an ancient voice or muddled by the incoherance of the mystic that I couldn't quite grasp it all. But here I was reading it in clear modern English. The effect it had on me is too deep for words, especially blog words. Lest I start babbling like a mystic, suffice to say I understood much more than I had and was humbled.

Then today, I was thinking about the great mercy that God has given us. That's when it hit me that the veil is also an immeasurable mercy! Just as the Hebrews needed to know that God was with them, but couldn't survive the presence, just as God had to cover Moses' eyes when He passed before him, so the veil was not an indication that God was hiding, but that He was present! Now that the temple veil is split, God truly is always with us. He is not hiding. He truly does reveal himself to us, and by ever greater degrees as we seek Him. But only in His way. To get to a new place we must go by the directions we are told. If we don't follow the one who knows the path, we can't expect to arrive. So we must come to know Him in the right path. Unfortunately, the Cloud of Unknowing is far more apt a term than I had ever known. There is no hard fast boundary to a cloud of moisture. We aren't outside it, and then inside. As it approaches, it gradually obscures our vision until we can not see. Likewise this Cloud gradually takes us beyond our ability to comprehend so that unless we are told what is happening, we are gradually more and more confused. We feel less and less. In truth, He is closer than He ever has been in this time. But we can't see it or even recognize the effects it has on us because He is beyond mortal sense and we are operating in that mode in the Cloud.

When He steps out of the cloud to reveal himself, it is a necessity and greatest mercy that He stays behind the veil. Otherwise we would be terrified and unmade. The veil is not a means of hiding himself from us, but of revealing when we are too unprepared for the greater presence! The fact that I recognize the veil is not a mark of how little I experience of God, but of how great He has chosen to reveal Himself to me. If I were to see Him concretely as I had wanted, that would be so much less of who He is because it would be confined in the mere mortal sense (like the tesseract is only a shadow cast by the 4 dimensional object). Perhaps this is what the apostle was thinking when he wrote that God humbled himself to the point of being human. My problem was not that I wasn't experiencing God, but that I assumed the experience would be a sensible matter. How could it be?! And how great a mercy that despite my pleas and tantrums and vanities, God continued to walk me by the hand down the road of revelation to a far greater place than I had realized.

That said, if I had the advantage of a trusted director to help me understand these things, it might not have been so difficult for me to come to this understanding. That is another reason this blog exists. Lacking any organized and wide-spred community of contemplation where we might find experienced teachers and directors, perhaps my ramblings may be helpful to other children of the woods wandering outside the Keep. And just perhaps, some Godly experienced teachers may find this letter in a bottle and realize that there are thousands more adrift looking for someone to help us understand this fog, if only you would sound the horn!