“If we cannot know God's essence, we can stand in God's place --- on the high mountain, in the lonely desert, at the point where terror gives way to wonder. Only here do we enter the abandonment, the agnosia, that is finally necessary for meeting God.” Belden C. Lane. Solace of Fierce Landscapes
This is not the first time I have heard this basic message. Abandon yourself to God, abandon your life to Jesus, take up your cross and follow him, lose your life to find your life. I have never had an easy time understanding it, but I have always found those phrases attractive. Wikipedia says that agnosia is “a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss.” Perception is working, but recognition is not. This is a medical condition that usually follows brain surgery or neurological illness. So why would this lack of recognition be necessary for meeting God? Maybe Lane meant something else that Wikipedia does not cover, but if that is what he meant, I am again having a hard time really understanding these ideas. My best shot at explaining this is that we need to abandon what we think we recognize, and accept the “terror” of not knowing what/who God is or what is really going on in life. It is easier to meet God at his high dangerous mountain, because he is huge and terrifying. It is easier to meet God in the lonely desert because our tiny simple thoughts are lonely in the significance and depth of God and his plan that we cannot fathom. I don’t know, maybe I am stabbing the dark here, but I would be pretty happy if I am anywhere close to being right about the meaning of agnosia abandonment to meet God.
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