Not Without Reason

A Friend e-mailed that she was about to embark on some spiritual exercises including fasting. She said she expected that her fast, undertaken in the spirit of Christ, would have a different quality from a fast previously undertaken in connection with another religious tradition. She questioned the rationality of this expectation, and I replied that perhaps whe was being "suprarational." She asked what this meant, so I went to Merriam Webster's online and found this definition:

"transcending the rational : based on or involving factors not to be comprehended by reason alone "

This definition was very close to what I was trying to express (I love it when that happens): it implies something that isn't without rationality, but that draws on other faculties such as intuition, "leadings of the spirit," etc. Thus I try to be careful about words like "irrational" -- just as "All God's critters have a place in the choir," and all Friends in Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business will be heard, so all inner "phenomena" (as the Buddha put it) get their hearing in the presence of the attentive and affectionate Christ within. This does not imply that every inner "nudge" will lead to action or expression, or even ultimate acceptance, but it will get (on my better days at least) an opportunity to be examined "in the light" where the wheat may be discerned from the chaff.