(I posted this almost 14 years ago, but someone found it yesterday and “liked” it. I’m thinking it might be good to share again because we all have our little hills.)
Did you ever wonder about Mizarin Ps 42–where it was and what was its significance? (Maybe you didn’t, but have I piqued your curiosity?) Here’s Amy Carmichael’s take on it:
Ps 42.6 The Hill Mizar
Did you ever feel that you had nothing great enough to be called a trouble, and yet you very much needed help? I have been finding much encouragement in the hill Mizar. For Mizar means littleness–the little hill. The land of Jordan was a place where great floods (the swelling of Jordan) might terrify the soul, and the land of the Hermonites was a place of lions and leopards [FYI: these are the places mentioned in this verse]; but Mizar was only a little hill: and yet the word is, I will “remember You from . . . the hill Mizar”, from the little hill.
So just where we are, from the place of our little trial, little pain, little difficulty, little temptation (if temptation can ever be little), let us remember our God. Relief will surely come, and victory and peace; for “the Lord will command His lovingkindness” (v. 8), even to us in our little hill.
Just thought I’d introduce you to Heather King if you haven’t discovered her yet. I love the suggestion she passes on that we stop seven times a day to stop and think of God for one minute.
When I was a child I once sat sobbing on the floor Beside my mother’s piano As she played and sang For there was in her singing A shy yet solemn glory My smallness could not hold
And when I was asked Why I was crying I had no words for it I only shook my head And went on crying
Why is it that music At its most beautiful Opens a wound in us An ache a desolation Deep as a homesickness For some far-off And half-forgotten country
I’ve never understood Why this is so
But there’s an ancient legend From the other side of the world That gives away the secret Of this mysterious sorrow
For centuries on centuries We have been wandering But we were made for Paradise As deer for the forest
And when music comes to us With its heavenly beauty It brings us desolation For when we hear it We half remember That lost native country
We dimly remember the fields Their fragrant windswept clover The birdsongs in the orchards The wild white violets in the moss By the transparent streams
And shining at the heart of it Is the longed-for beauty Of the One who waits for us Who will always wait for us In those radiant meadows
Yet also came to live with us And wanders where we wander.
The second antiphon for morning prayer this morning (Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul) reads: “Paul, my grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness.” I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me to put my own name in place of Paul’s and pray it again: “Dorcee, my grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness.” I would like to suggest that you do the same. Place your name in the blank and then pray it slowly a few times. For it is truth for your soul as well as Paul’s.
_____________________________, my grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in your weakness.
_____________________________, my grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in your weakness.
_____________________________, my grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in your weakness.
I recently recommended a few of Joshua Elzner’s books. Today I would like to post an excerpt from another of his books. It speaks to me deeply–as I assume it will also to you–because he addresses the times when we feel like we just cannot pray the way that we desire. May it bring you hope, as it did for me this very day.
“I have no desire to forsake prayer, to live it behind and to busy myself instead with superficial things. But I cannot pray in the way that I am accustomed, in the way that I would desire. But how can I go beyond this dilemma: to pray when I am incapable of praying, to rest when I am incapable of resting, to gaze upon God when I am incapable of gazing? The only answer lies in letting God come to me first, in letting him draw near to meet me in the very place where I feel my poverty and incapacity so deeply. I will not find him in the flight from my weakness to the periphery, where I occupy myself with things to distract my attention from the pain, things with which I try to pass the time that I once spent in prayer and recollection and filial play in his presence. But neither will I find him in the forceful effort by which, with the vigorous activity of my will or my intellect, I try to break through my limitations and to achieve what he is not giving. Rather, I will find him only when I sink down into the very heart of my littleness and incapacity, when I let him approach me, touch me, and cradle me at the heart of my deepest weakness, poverty, and greed.
“And when this happens . . . ah, when this happens! Then the very pain and incapacity and weakness that hemmed me in before become a living sacrament of his presence! The very difficulty and suffering that I experience become a living space of his compassionate love, which sensitizes my heart both to his own goodness as well as to the suffering of my brothers and sisters, which, in him and with him, I tenderly take up into my heart and hold in his presence. My suffering, in other words, becomes a living space of yet deeper encounter and get more profound intimacy. Yes, my poverty becomes but the flip side of his abundant fullness; my incapacity becomes a living space of receptivity to the ceaseless activity of his love; my pain and restlessness in the suffering of my body and my spirit, touched by him and surrendered to him, becomes pervaded by a deeper peace and rest and serenity.
“The pain and incapacity do not disappear, as God does not somehow dissolve my limitations and make possible what, in my very suffering, is now impossible. Rather, he permeates the living space of my consciousness with his presence, such that he meets me in my very littleness and limitation, and makes this something radiant and expansive and beautiful. For, after all, what makes something truly great is not what it looks like on the outside, How much it sparkles in the eyes of the world, but simply how much God there is in it, and how totally and intimately it is held by him, permeated by his presence, and filled with the sweetness of his love and tenderness.”
I have known the breathless feeling of a sponge that has been wrung thoroughly and roughly above my life’s chipped sink, squeezed to the point of tearing by the chapped hands of God until my shape was nothing. Until I could not think.
I have known the way one squishes at the crushing of one’s foam, have felt the curious balling of a thing without a spine. But all of it led to a hope I do not hold alone: that when my water’s all pressed out, I might soak in his wine.
I prayed for wonders instead of happiness, and You gave them to me. —Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God: Man
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) is known for his prophetic action and commitment to “radical amazement.” Theologian Bruce Epperly explains:
Heschel lived out a holistic balance of delight and awe, radical amazement, and prophetic challenge.
At the heart of Heschel’s mystical vision is the experience of radical amazement…. Wonder is essential to both spirituality and theology: “Awe is a sense for the transcendence.… It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine.” [1]
Wonder leads to the experience of radical amazement at God’s world. Created in the image of God, each of us is amazing. Wonder leads to spirituality and ethics. As Heschel noted, “Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy. The moment is the marvel.” [2]
Heschel considers the significance of a worldview of radical amazement:
The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face.
We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.
All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it….
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.
Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery.
Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.
Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God. [3]
References:
[1] Bruce G. Epperly, Mystics in Action: Twelve Saints for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2020), 81; Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked for Wonder, ed. Samuel H. Dresner (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1983, 2022), 21.
[2] Epperly, Mystics in Action, 81; Abraham Joshua Heschel, “To Grow in Wisdom,” in The Insecurity of Freedom (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 82.
[3] Abraham J. Heschel, Who Is Man? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), 88–89.
Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Madison Frambes, Untitled 4, 1, and 7 (detail), 2023, naturally dyed paper and ink, Mexico, used with permission. Click here to enlarge image.
When we are in awe, there are no deeds to be done or words to be said; a simple, ecstatic surrender.
Witnesses to Hope 