It’s been awhile since I’ve written. More than a month. So much for the bi-weekly blogs I said I’d write. Monthly might be more like it.
Life has kept me hopping. Two trips to the Midwest have taken my time–one to reconnect with college roommates and another for a national conference of a religious body with which my ministry is linked. Soon I head south to a recital in which my daughter will play her oboe. She will complete a graduate degree in music performance next summer and then be married. All good things–all take my attention away from my writing, and this blog about my “plunge into Mystery.”
I wonder whether writing about “Mystery,” i.e. the Ultimate/Divine/God, is all that helpful. I mean, despite the tomes in libraries all over the globe, can any of us know finally what to say about this Ultimate–this Mystery–we call God. Why do I try to write about God? I don’t know, except that it/he/she seems the matter most worth writing about when all is said and done. Everything else on earth simply reflects some shadowy aspect of this Mystery. At least that’s my view at this precise moment.
What drives me to care? Am I the only one to really care? (I doubt it, but sometimes I do feel so alone in my wonderings.) What makes me want to wonder a loud, here, in a blog, of all places, about something so nebulous–so beyond my knowing. My private journal, I understand wondering there. But publicly?
Maybe what I really want to know is what do you think about the paradox of the Mystery of God–or the Mystery of Life–or those questions that just can’t be sorted out, no matter how hard you try?
I have been pondering lately that I might be better off to let go of trying to probe too deeply this Mystery and just describe what I experience. I’m told that Native Americans in early days avoiding talking much about The Great Spirit with others. Each person’s sense of this nebulous Spirit was left to their private ruminations. There is some Wisdom in that, it seems to me.
So perhaps I would do better to turn to descriptions of the mixed colors of the blueberry bushes lining our back fence or the golden glow of the dogwood and birches gleaming bright gold along our back fence. These matter too, flashing their message of beauty–just as does the hug of a spouse, the thoughtful note from a friend, a phone call from our daughter brighten my day with a sense of being loved.
I can’t really understand The Mystery, but I can name the elements of my day that reassure me life is worthwhile, that encourage me to believe that goodness and beauty will ultimately win the day, despite the darkness that can seem to prevail, especially if I believe what I read in the news–all the violence, the cruelty, the heartlessness. Writing this blog about Plunging into Mystery may simply in the end be about plunging me into my own life, inciting me to appreciate it more fully–every single minute–even if the gift is not immediately evident. Even in the midst of pain.
While I was with my college roommates, celebrating the life of a friend who died this year, far before her time, the phrase kept popping up among us as we talked about what we might do next. “It’s an option, ” I heard us say more than once.
I kept wondering, What is this option? What are we choosing between? I wonder if perhaps my/our basic option is the choice of whether to pay attention to the details of my life–whether to savor the beauty that surrounds me in the simplest of moments– or to press on so busily that I miss the gift of life I’ve been given.
I don’t want to miss my life. I want to live it to the full. And I’d like to share with those of you who want to read about some of those moments that seem most intensely alive to me. I’d like to hear about the moments when you feel most alive too. Welcome your comments on that–when have you felt most alive lately?
I’ll be back with some of the moments that emblazon themselves in my memory in the weeks ahead.Will it be bi-weekly? monthly?
I’m not sure….one of these days….in the meantime–I’m interested in how you experience Mystery in the everyday of your lives.
Eileen
