Father Richard describes how Moses gradually learned to trust in God’s love:
According to the book of Exodus, “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a person speaks to a friend” (33:11). And yet the Exodus text also demonstrates how coming to the point of full interface is a gradual process of veiling and unveiling. God takes the initiative in this respectful relationship with Moses, inviting him into a greater intimacy and ongoing conversation, which allows mutual self-disclosure, the pattern for all love affairs.
Moses describes this initial experience as “a blazing bush that does not burn up” (Exodus 3:2). He is caught between running forward to meet the blaze and coming no nearer, taking off his shoes (Exodus 3:4–5)—the classic response to mysterium tremendum. It is common for mystics, from Moses to Bonaventure, from Hildegard of Bingen to the Quaker Thomas Kelly, to describe the experience of God as fire, a furnace, or pure light. But during this early experience, “Moses covered his face, afraid to look back at God” (Exodus 3:6). He has to be slowly taught how to look at God. At first Moses continues to live like most of us, in his shame, insecurity, and doubt.
God gradually convinces Moses of God’s respect, which Moses calls “favor,” but not without some serious objections from Moses’s side: 1) “Who am I?” 2) “Who are you?” 3) “What if they do not believe me?” 4) “I stutter.” 5) “Why not send someone else?” In each case, God stays in the dialogue, answering Moses respectfully and even intimately, offering a promise of personal Presence and an ever-sustaining glimpse into who God is—Being Itself, Existence Itself, a nameless God beyond all names, a formless God previous to all forms, a liberator God who is utterly liberated. God asserts God’s ultimate freedom from human attempts to capture God in concepts and words by saying, “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be” (Exodus 3:14). Over the course of his story, we see that Moses slowly absorbs this same daring freedom.
But for Moses to learn foundational freedom in his true self, God has to assign Moses a specific task: create freedom for people who don’t want it very badly and freedom from an oppressor who thinks he is totally in control. It’s often in working for outer freedom, peace, and justice in the world that we discover an even deeper inner freedom. We must discover this freedom to survive in the presence of so much death. Otherwise, we can become cynical and angry and retreat from God and from other people over time.
In Moses, we see the inherent connection between action and contemplation, the dialogue between the outer journey and the inner journey. Contemplation is the link to the Source of Love that allows activists to stay engaged for the long haul without burning out. Moses shows us that this marriage of action and contemplation is essential and possible.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books, 2018), 158–159.
Image credit and inspiration: Clay Banks, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, USA, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Walking into the wild becomes a mirror of the Exodus itself—risking the unknown so that, in the wandering, we discover the quiet, faithful presence that leads us toward freedom and deeper communion with God.
Story from Our Community:
This poem was inspired by the Daily Meditation, “The ‘Backside’ of God.” Was Moses aggrieved to be shoved into a cleft / and made to wait until you had passed by? / I too see your glory in splinters— / the meadowlark’s early song out of yellow feathers, / the ferocity of wind circling this valley, / alpenglow transforming the dusky mountains…. / I long … to preserve / the essence of love honed in heartbreak, / of songs salted with tears, / of companionship with a single other / tenderized by time together; / how to hold the wonder and terror / of unknowing—to be in this life / whose end I cannot see, to be willing / to lose it, only to find it / in the wake of something bigger, / silently beckoning me to follow.
—Sharon C.
