Perceiving God with an Open, Childlike Heart
There are hundreds of Biblical texts from Genesis to Revelation, a handful of which we will explore in this chapter, that Christian mystics of all ages of the Church have considered mystical. In other words, they echo the mystery, the awesomeness, the paradoxical nature of God himself as experienced by contemplatives of all the centuries since Christ. The key to recognizing this is to see as the mystics see—to “see” or perceive God not with the eyes, not with the mind, but with an open, childlike heart—just as Jesus taught: you must become as a child again to enter the kingdom of Heaven.
This is why many contemplatives practice Lectio Divina: a way of reading the Word of God from the heart, not primarily the mind (or not just with the left brain); reading in a way that is prayerfully open to God and his inner light, not just to whatever comes through that cerebral filter the Age of Reason taught us to test everything with. Even those who say they are always listening for the still small voice of God in their Bible reading are sometimes appalled when, upon careful analysis, they find out just how much their rational mind filters out things that don’t “make sense,” twists them until they do, or insists that something like the Transfiguration of Christ is not mystical. Such people are often delighted when they learn how to allow God to teach them in ways that go beyond the rational mind—to take them into places the rational mind can never go.
Book excerpt from Contemplation: Only the Crucified are Truly Alive
Gary Michael Hassig
From Chapter Two: What the Bible Says about Contemplation, p. 65
