The Temple Invisible

It was at the end of 1967, while praying in my sister’s Chicago apartment, where I was spending the Christmas holiday, that an unseen door between this and the “other side” opened, and my soul was gently lifted up and guided into what would become the home of my heart for the next five years. It remained as invisible as it was real and permanent in its effects. Yet what is it, and where is it?
It turns out that there is an underground river of prayer, arising spontaneously like a spring from the unreachable depths of our heart, which flows inevitably into what has been called the “Temple Invisible.” It is in this mystical and unsearchable realm where prayer becomes a dialogue rather than monologue, something not just from you, but also from God. Your prayer may begin as you seeking God, but once you enter the Temple, you will discover that it is in startling fact, God who is seeking you. And God will always find you, when you are ready, and desirous of being found by God.
Yet you must be invited to enter the Temple Invisible. Once there—wherever “there” is—you will not want to leave. The Temple is the sacred meeting space of God. The air is strangely heightened; the atmosphere is more real then what seems real in this ever enlarging cosmos of time and space. The Temple is at once within you, around you, and inexplicably between you and the unseen God. It will feel as if you are somehow sharing in God’s own breath. No wonder the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1320) said, “You can only experience God in God’s own space.”
The immovable Temple stands hidden between God and us, between the universe of matter and the universe of Persons, both human and divine. It is the singular meeting place between heaven and earth, this world and the world after, if not also before, this life.
It is in this invisible domain of God where ineffable moments of union with God may occur, as reported by mystics throughout the ages. I, too, have been blessed by such ecstatic moments. I, too, have attempted to put words to this glorious yet invisible temple:

I want to build a Temple for You in words, a place for You to dwell in listening silence, a place for Your Spirit to breathe upon and fill.
Yet all I have to build with are human words, and how inadequate they are to the task: You cannot be put into words or housed in language any more than in stone.
And where temples of whatever sort have been built, idols and image-worship seek to move in like noxious weeds into a garden.

I want to build a Tabernacle of language which will last, and not deteriorate or crumble clay-like with age.
And I want to plant it in the midst of humanity, as if to point and attend to You.
Yet You have no body, and there is no place You are not.
No matter what words I could use to carve out my gratitude, Beloved, they would fail to lift off the dusty ground of my being as if to hover about You like Your adoring cherubim.
Yet all language begins in Your Word of address, and shall return to You in Your timing and way.

I do not want to be silenced by Your ineffable presence; I want to say something positive about You besides the stammering utterance: “I love You,” which expresses feeling without form.
Perhaps the only Temple my words can construct would rest unseen between You and me, built like the covered bridges of old, shadowy yet strangely heightening; a place where mystery could discreetly meet Mystery, and where any words would be for our ears only.

If these words intensify your desire for God, then let the prayer arising spontaneously from your heart, guide you to this secret Temple between God and you. God will not refuse your heart’s desire. Once in the Temple, you will finally find the God who has long sought you.