Beautifully profane.

"When what is beautiful looks broken and crushed" -Derek Webb

Since my wilderness theology class I have really been thinking alot about the Monastic Concept of Via Negativa. For many of the early theologians and church fathers, this referred to describing God by saying what God is not; God is not hate, so God is love, God is not unjust, so God is Just etc. But many monastics use this phrase to describe how one can find God. We find God at the end of ourselves. We find life in death, we find joy in pain, God speaks when God seems silent....we can even find beauty in despair.
I find this to be a wonderfully hopeful way of thinking. It seems that hope is always present. Even in the deep dark pit of anguish and grief. When we think that we have lost faith...maybe that is when we truly find it.
That is why many of the early monastics retreated to the desert. They found God in the hunger of fasting, in the sleepless nights, in the extreme heat and cold. They found God in the silence. I could do well to learn from them. I often find myself frustrated in my search for truth and grasping at the straws of faith. But when I reach the end of myself and of my striving...truth is often hiding quietly under a rock.