Simple Hebrew

The boy Samuel ministered to Yahweh before Eli. The word of Yahweh rare in those days - no widespread revealing. It came to pass at that time while Eli lying down in his place - Samuel lying in the temple of Yahweh where ark of God. Yahweh called to Samuel he answered here I am...

1 Samuel 3 (Transliteration from Hebrew)

The first step of infused contemplation is not faith. The first step has never been faith, and it will never be faith. The first step of infused contemplation is simply the actual encounter with God, and that occurs solely at God's bidding. It is always God’s initiative that begins the encounter. And it is always this encounter that drives on the person to long for it again.

The dogmas of faith that are so important to those who have not had this encounter. To these they are claimed to not be arbitrary rationalizations. But in actual practise, that is exactly what they are. They can never ever form even a flimsy lattice by which encounter with God is understood, let alone prepared for. God is God; notions are notions; human experience is not notional. When the term contemplation itself is added to dogma’s lexicon there is no doubt that doctrine does so with jealous murder in its eyes; genuine love is strangled by deluded rationality and revenge. You can bank on it.

Why cannot people simply read the text? The text is the insight; nothing more is needed. The direct experience of God is the invitation; only a moron confuses the map with the terrain. Nobody in history ever arrived at intimate union with God because of any church’s authority or dogma, much less that that tradition needed to be guarded and protected by its authority. What authority is authoritative enough that God benefits from its protection? The very considering of such a thought is preposterous and an inherent and insidious act of betrayal.

The story of the calling of Samuel is unimbellished in the Hebrew. There are no flourishes. We have been suckled on lies and sumptuously stuffed on enriched fairy tale fabrications.

Although contemplatives are encouraged to read, the actual contemplative encounter with God is not really about reading anything. It is about a fundamental act of openness and presence and attentivness to God directly, and to which even a child is capable of attending. The pompous religious celebrities of tradition have always been snake oil salesmen, and are to be avoided at all cost. In the end Eli - the burned out traditionist - can only serve to hint at the presence of God, but even in its best sense he is not even an intermediary to a simple, direct relationship between God and...a child.