After all my musing about the ephemeral and ethereal nature of the phenomenon we call “God,” I’m sitting at the Notte Dame grotto, a place that was once significant to my spiritual life some fifty years ago. The spark of spirituality for this form of worship, long buried, still lives within me, though it’s expression, more muted more nuanced and less dogmatic is based less on a one way conversation with a human image of a god/man but more of an openness to the essence of this place an essence that evokes feelings of spirituality; feelings both of hope and of gratitude.
This place is evocative, though not in the sense that it once was. My own maturity process, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually gives me a different perspective to engage that part of my nature which earlier I would have called “prayer.”
There is a certain purity of place that penetrates the skepticism and cynicism through which I frequently tend to view organized religion.
It’s not 1966 and my prayer is more of an openness to that which is within me, god within, rather than the recitation of a series of formulaic prayers directed to a person (Jesus, Mary and an assortment of saints represented by plaster statues) asking them to invoke their spiritual powers on my behalf.
To quote or to paraphrase Father Adrian Van Kaam and others: “Faith is a journey to be lived rather than a mystery to be solved.”
As I venture on that journey, I have returned to this place that was once a wellspring of support for my life of faith. As I now return here, I continue to find peace, solace and substance for my faith though in a much different way.