You can never be summed up, understood, grasped, or analysed. Prayer surely has to be a constant letting go of all theory, concept and vision: aiming always to seek to allow You to be who, what and where You really are.  

Wittgenstein

regarding the modern way of seeing: our scientific view of the world. The only anti-dote to scientific positivism - the idea that what the scientist "says" about the world must be true because proven - the world of hard surfaces if you like - has to be a better understanding of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein on the limitations of language. It is exactly the same with what we might call "religious positivism" - which directly opposes "scientific positivism" of course  - but is paradoxically built upon the same scientific view of the world. For the religious positivist it is not the scientist who speaks the truth but the prophets of old - through the Koran and the Bible essentially. Not so much "hard surfaces" in their case but "hard facts" instead. Wittgenstein should be studied by all. If only he was a little easier to understand!

nothing we can say about you does anything other than mislead.  we can only understand you by meeting you.
beauty can never be described: it can only be witnessed. the very word only creates in the mind half-glimpses of dusty images which have almost nothing to do with reality.   

"In the days ahead, the Christian will either be a mystic (having had direct experience of God) or nothing at all. . . . ."        Karl Rahner

I was listening to a talk given by Tim Radcliffe the Dominican in St Paul's Cathedral. He said, "You will know your vocation by the joy it gives you."

"why do you reject me? why do you hide your face?"
only, it is not I who am speaking, but you..

I have no answer.