[Nan] Shepherd knew the Bible, including the story of the burning bush, well enough to also know the significance of the words I am. When Moses, as we have already noted, is described in the Book of Exodus encountering a bush that is on fire with divine presence without being consumed, he asks, “What is your name?” The response is not, “I am this or I am that. I am God or I am Lord.” The response is “I am who I am” (Exod. 3:14). And in Hebrew the meaning of these words is not limited to the present tense alone. It can also mean “I have been who I have been” or “I will be who I will be.” In other words, “Don’t try to name me. Don’t try to tame me with definition. Don’t try to claim me as this or that. I am who I am. I transcend names. I am beyond designation.”
Newell, John Philip. The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home (pp. 42-43). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
“How delicate are the appearances of the Thou,” says Buber.17 They come and go like the breeze on a summer evening. We don’t know where the breeze comes from or where next it will be going. We simply open to it and are renewed by it. So it is with the delicate appearances of the divine in our lives. We are simply to open to them and find ourselves renewed. Buber calls this type of faith “holy insecurity.”18 Our encounters with the living Presence cannot be tied down or defined. We are simply to receive them as gifts and then let them pass in their own time like the summer breeze that will come again and renew us.
We cannot capture the mystery of the divine by time and place or by religious belief and utterance. God can be “addressed,” says Buber, but can never be “expressed.”19 We can speak to God, uttering from the depths of our souls, but we can never truly speak about God. A German pastor once asked Buber if he believed in the divine. Buber responded by saying, “If to believe in God means to be able to talk about God in the third person, then I do not believe in God. But if to believe in God means to be able to talk to God, then I do believe in God.”20
- Friedman, Encounter on the Narrow Ridge, 78.
Newell, John Philip. The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home (pp. 59-60). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
