It is official. I think I am delusional and prone to some kind of mental illness. It is either that or... who knows?

People who go around saying that God talks to them make me a little nervous, actually a lot nervous. Especially if God talks to them like we chat with folks at the proverbial water cooler. "God told me to go to this church...God told me to give you this....God told me to tell you to do this." Just can't relate to that. I've had my share of contemplative moments, deep times of prayer and inspiration, but don't think I can verbally express exact words that "God" spoke to me.

But I don't need to. Contemplation, prayer, mystical experience is at a deeper level than words. It is at a deeper level than feeling or emotion. It is a relationship. It is a simple, loving awareness of the immanent presence of the transcendent God.

And that's it. What more can words say? When I tell my wife or children "I love you" do I reveal some cerebral knowledge that they didn't know before? They know I love them not by what I say, but by what I do, by who I am: their father, husband, lover, friend. The word part is to confirm the already existing relationship. Real relationship goes much deeper, is more profound than what just words can express, what idea we can conjure up.

A simple loving awareness of the immanent presence of the transcendent God. Like when I'm standing in the yard very early in the morning and hear hawks screeching overhead. When I'm hiking in the woods and stop to hear the utter stillness of a forest, waterfall, leaves falling, wind blowing through trees. When I'm walking into church and hear the beckon of a solitary crow against a cold gray sky. When I receive the body and blood of Christ, with my community locally, universally, and historically. When I hear a loved ones voice calling me from a thousand miles away. Something stirs inside. Something interior, beyond words, beyond comprehension says, "life." I am alive, we are alive, that transcendent other, inconcieivable being, ineffable Creator, is real. He, or she, is greater than thought, gender, dogma or doctrine. Their love is beyond belief. But I know it, more than I know anything I've ever known. Not by understanding, not by words, but through a mystical experience of faith, a relationship.

Which brings me back to why I'm fearful I'm a mental case. In one of my textbooks for Foundational Theology, I read this about mystical experience, or revelation as inner experience: "While in theory anyone can be the subject of mystical experience, few are. Most of us are left with so-called secondary formulations."

Really? I thought we all had a personal (not private) relationship with God? You mean people actually devote their lives to a religion that they only know in their head and have no direct experience in their heart? That is not love. That is not faith. That is a pre-arranged convenience marriage without any soul.

I don't go around with stories of how God told me this or God told me that. I haven't had any apparitions or physical theophanies. I don't talk to God like Oprah or Ellen talk to their guests. I can't comment on what God told me like Rush or Chris or Sean comment about Hillary and Barack. Jesus didn't come over to watch the Super Bowl and have a brewski. I am certianly not special or privileged, but I don't think I'm crazy either.

I do sit in silence in the morning; sometimes just sitting, and sometimes sensing a presence beyond me. Sometimes I hike in the woods and have to stop, look at the bright sun revealing a huge forest with snow on trees, and wildlife peeking out from hidden coves looking for spring. Sometimes I watch a flock of geese fly overhead, snow gently begin to fall, squirrels foraging for food, trees bursting with buds, daffodils struggling to erupt from frozen ground, and a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the middle of it all, with his hand pointing to his heart, to a presence, experience and love beyond my comprehension.

I just want to sit and listen, to look, to observe. To ponder on what it is, or who it is, that is behind, before, ahead, and beyond this hidden, obscure life of prayer and love.