Youth Ministry and the Limits of Knowing: Carl McColman on Language and the Divine

Recently I have been lucky enough to discover or re-discover a number of blogs that I haven't read in a while.  One of my new favorites is that of Carl McColman, The Website of Unknowing.  Mike Morrell led me to Carl's website and I'm glad he did!  If anyone were looking for a great listing of Mystical literature and theology, I'd tell them to start at this page on the Website of Unknowing.



In addition to being a wonderful blogger, Carl is also an author of numerous books on mysticism and spirituality.  I've been slowly reading his book entitled Spirituality: Where Body and Soul Encounter the Sacred, which was re-published in 2008 with the title, Spirituality: A Postmodern and Interfaith Approach to Cultivating a Relationship with God.  As far as I know the two editions are pretty much the same with different covers and subtitles.



At any rate, I've been reading the section on prayer since that's something I've always struggled with in my own spiritual journey.  And I ran across a fascinating section on silence and the limitations of human knowing, particularly with regard to human language.



For all the talk among emerging/emergent folks about "epistemological humility," I think Carl McColman's thoughts on silence and prayer have done more for me in terms of allowing me to understand my limitations than any emerging/emergent writers have done. 

That's not to say I haven't been helped in this regard by many in the "conversation" but I think Cal put it best when he wrote the following:

Ultimately, language fails before the Great Mystery.  As language fails, so also do all our concepts, ideas, notions, and depictions of "God," "the Sacred," "the Divine."  We may say that God is eternal and omnipresent and perfectly good, but words like "eternal" and "omnipresent" and "good" and "perfect" all signify something that we humans understand in terms of our own experience.  Since the nature of God transcends all human experience (and indeed transcends the universe of space and time itself), our language cannot adequately describe God, since the qualities of God exist beyond the limits of a word's possible usage.  If words cannot adequately describe even the attributes of God, how can words ever describe God's essence?



Recognizing the inability of language to fully represent God, we are left only with silence.  This applies not just to literal silence (both internal and external), but to metaphorical "silences" as well.  Just as silence is defined as the absense of sound, metaphorical silence may involve the absense of language, the absense of light, the absense of certainty or meaning.  Silence and darkness, in fact, are siblings in the realm of spirituality.  God is light, but sometimes the light is so dazzling that we all can percieve is a "darkness" - like turning on a light in a dark room and being blinded until our eyes adjust.

More and more these days, I'm finding myself in need of silence.  Especially when I think about my work with the youth @ Centenary UMC, the desire to help them cultivate habits of listening and stillness seem to permeate my thoughts.  Which, of course, is difficult when churches expect "results."  By "results," of course, they mean an exciting youth "program."  But in my five or so years of doing youth ministry, I've never really been "in to" doing "program-oriented" youth ministry.  In spite of my efforts toward a "presence-centered youth ministry" I think I have often fallen prey to the temptation to work for tangible results like higher attendance and the praise of coleagues, parents and church members.



This, of course, has led me to desire - even crave - more times of silence and to cultivate (imperfectly, of course) my ability to listen before I speak.  I know Carl wasn't writing especially for youth workers but I do believe we who work with youth in the church ought to think through the implications of what it would mean for us to give up some of our certainty about God, theology and even (or especially) the way we work with our youth.  Of course, we can agree that there are some "best pactices" for youth ministry but we need to be more aware of the way(s) that our use of language and space as well as our cultivation of relationships can potentially be manipulative, disingenuous and even maybe harmful to the young people with whom we work.  What might it mean to help young people to cultivate habits of listening and silence?  What might it mean for youth ministers to do the same?