For three days, Jonah, Jesus, Saul, sat in the belly of the whale, of the grave, of the darkness and saw nothing. And in the nothingness, their chance for the next—a next mission, a next form, a next vision. And when Gabriel pressed the coverlet of brocade against Mohammad, Mohammad thought it was death and out of this death, where he could not read before, he could suddenly read and recite a new revelation. And when Gautama died to what he had been led to believe, he went from home into homelessness, and set his roots in the Nothingness.

The epiphany of the Creator is consistently incurred upon the waste and the void, within the darkest face of the deep, within the unfathomable Nothing. 

An epiphany—a manifestation of God,
an avatar—an incarnation of God,
a bodhisattva—an enlightened being of God
who returns as teacher—
all reveal that God is active upon 
and activated by the waste and the void,
the dark night of the soul intently filled with nothing, 
intensely emptied of everything.

And where do we fill up with nothing in these days of so much to do and so many things to manage? How do we push ourselves into the void and the deep so that the Creator may move upon our waters and awaken in us his next epiphany? We are the rods that rise out of our houses and collect the flashing light and transfer the lightning charge into enlightened action, into a new manifestation of the God. Though we are fathers and mothers, working men and women, student and dreamers, we are the world’s chance to be, where the soul’s DNA can recombine into an epiphany of divine being and animal longing, into an epiphany of true revelation and transformed choices, into an epiphany of grace and submission. Our path to giving birth again to God is in our commitment to the voice, the Nothing, the virgin deep.

I do not understand the message
but I recognize its truth
in the lineage of all manifestations of God:
“See Nothing.”
“Sink your roots into Nothing.”
“Hold on to Nothing.”
And upon the face of your waters—
A new creation, an epiphany
 of unimagined divination.
An incarnation of the buried God in you 
will be raised anew.
Praise God. Praise Allah. Praise Yahweh.
Praise the name in you
(as Paul was raised out of Saul and Abraham out of Abram)
yet to be raised. Amen.

More Mystery of God Contemplations

Holy Bones — Teri Martin
Every Moment — Ben Leichtling