The best way to talk about God is art. The true mystics got this. That He deserves an invitation rather than a doctrine. The best medium is art.
Jesus left no systematic theology. He left stories and riddles-or parables. He left a symbol we are invited to climb into! The main one about Him, told by those nearby Him.
When He did formally teach, He told stories and koans or parables. This was normal for Rabbis then. They realized that God is both ineffable and effable. That He is namable and the One who cannot fully be named.
But all the great mystics spoke in creative language in order to invite us towards God. To show us the gate or door (or, even a door bell for those of us who can’t hear well, when someone comes to the door and knocks!), but not to tell us everything which was on the other side. Jesus speaks of a “Kingdom” borrowing from the Roman Empire.
And then describes this kingdom using metaphors and symbols.
Mysticism is not anti-rational, but rather trans-rational or supra-rational. It speaks in symbol and stories like the Song of Songs. It speaks of intimacy with the Divine in metaphor and symbol—like a poem between two lovers.
Jesus used parables when inviting people to enter into the Reality of His Father’s Realm. He did not leave us a systematic philosophy or theology. He left us an invitation. His method was the symbol of His Own Life and then His cryptic but enterable tales and parables. The Kingdom is like….similes and metaphors were His pedagogical method. Telling that.
God can be named, and can’t. An invitation to encounter God is more useful than a thousand books about God.
St John said, God is Love. The most abstract and true thing ever said.

And the truest. But how is love encountered. The rest of His gospel is stories and tales of signs and wonders, miracles and tall tales—just tall enough to walk inside and know.
John and Jesus left us invitations! Our mailboxes are filled with them by now. Do we want to go to that banquet or not? The mystics went! Let’s join them.
Art invites us to participate in the Reality to which it is pointing. That’s what Jesus did. If you have “seen” Me, you have perceived My Father.
Jesus was the finest art ever.
To the degree we engage our whole selves with Jesus and His stories and parables, we enter into the reality to which they both point and participate. That is how to read the Bible. And certainly how to encounter the art of Jesus.
Thomas Merton pointed out in his book on Zen, is that the Zen masters were trying to guide people into and encounter with ultimate reality, which was outside of language, but which was not anti-linguistic. Language itself is symbolic.
Jesus is called The Word. The Living Word. He is the pure symbol of what He Himself is. He is the Word which doesn’t stand to represent the Word, but is the Word. So He is the ultimate art.
Art invites us to participate in the reality from which it speaks.
To be mystical, in our culture, implies anti-rational. I would suggest, that mysticism is just to engage the whole self in encountering the Ultimate. When we listen to music or look at great art, we are trying to “enter into” what is Real. The Pure image of what is, as it’s been called. Jesus is said to be the exact representation of God. The Pure Image.
So we, who are made in His image, are wise, to fix our gazes on Him, as the pure invitation to know and be known by God.
Art is the shortcut into Reality. As you see in Tolstoy’s “Confessions”. The whole book is him overcoming an overly rationalistic view of God, but it ends with him telling a dream. The dream is what lets you into what he discovered in his life.
Being to being, deep to deep living, requires us to enter into what each symbol participates in.
Mysticism is taking out the trash while being aware of God.
When everything in your life becomes a “spiritual” practice of encountering and collaborating with God, you’re a mystic.
Love God, and do whatever, as St Augustine, who may or may not have been a mystic said.
My point here, is that art—the language of symbols and forms-is the most direct method of presenting what is Real. And what is Real is the gospel. That God so loved the world…..
Mysticism is just to be expectantly reliant on something Loving which is larger than us, and was here before and after us; to humble ourselves enough to know we are kids in this Universe, and find our names as we lean into upwards and within to The One who knows His Name and is the Father of all names.
The symbolic, one strata of meaning, is the quickest way in.
King David prayed to become a living symbol or portent for others. Jesus was the ultimate port. And, we in His Image, are signs and symbols pointing to the Great Creator of names!

The reason even the Western masters like Kandinsky spoke of painting from the Transcendent, was that the only way to express the aquarium we are all in, is through art! It’s the closest proximity and the best form of invitation to Life. Art addresses our conscious, unconscious and every level of who we are–the gospel requires our entire being to awaken to know it! Art is the best sort of language for that type of transformational encounter! And the gospel isn’t new news. It’s ancient, and requires ancient techniques to be expressed well. When we worship, we employ art. And worship may be the highest form of art. That makes sense. Given, us being human!