Lately, I have been thinking a lot about mystery. In particular, I have been thinking about what the Irish mystic and poet John O’Donohue called “the mystery of being here.”
And, because I have three baby granddaughters, born within six months of each other, I have also been thinking about the fact that when we are very young, we simply accept the circumstances into which we are born – the shape and size and feel of our parents and others who care for us; the four walls of our home; the toys on our floor. There are tasks to attend to – we must learn to sit up, to crawl, to walk, to talk. These tasks are all-consuming. The present is all there is.
At this stage, as far as I know, we aren’t capable of thinking about the mystery of being here; we are, instead, experiencing the wonder of being here. Each new thing or person we encounter is an amazement. We are dazzled.
And then at some point the questions begin. First come the answerable questions (even if one must resort to Google), such as:
Why is the sky blue?
What is snow?
Then come answerable questions that require a bit of finesse. Here are a couple asked by a daughter of mine before age four:
How did I get out of the baby tummy?
How did I get into the baby tummy?
(I did answer these honestly.)
Then come the questions asked just before bedtime, when you really want to go to sleep. Here is a further sample from a daughter, aged maybe 12: What was the Vietnam war about, anyway?
And, eventually, along come the cosmic questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
Why do we suffer?
Why do we die
What happens when we die?
At first the cosmic questions take up a lot of space, at least, for me, they did. But here’s the thing -- the older I get, the more comfortable I am with mystery, the more willing I am to accept the questions as being unanswerable.
I am deeply perplexed by claims to certain answers to any of these questions. I do not understand such certainty. Where does it come from? The poet Mary Oliver speaks for me on this subject:
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
In allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
It’s true, I do have some intuitions about the cosmic questions; you might even say I have faith in my intuitions. Still, I do not lay claim to any certainties. And I have no interest in trying to convince anyone that my intuitions are correct. (Let me add that I am as uncomfortable with atheistic certainty—what I call unholier than thou – as I am with religious certainty.)
A number of years ago, I read the book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by the Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor. She recounted that several of her parishioners had come to her, struggling with questions of belief, and she began to realize that she was more interested in beholding than believing.
Beholding. I like that word. It allows for mystery. It allows for wonder.
Here's the thing about certainty; it cuts off curiosity at its knees. Certainty is a hardening of our ideas, a shutting down of the possibility that there is another way of looking at things. Acceptance of mystery allows for curiosity, for expansiveness, for taking in new ideas, for the possibility of harkening back to the wonder of our earliest years.
I return to the wisdom of John O’ Donohue:
Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path...
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention...
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
As we begin this new year, may we each awaken to, and accept, the mystery of being here. And may we, with O'Donohue and my granddaughters, behold all that is around us “as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”
Photo by Guillermo Ferla on Unsplash
