Ah Mystery!
If you read the November newsletter, then you know that this is the third sermon in a series based on the eight themes that run through what my colleague the Rev. Roy Phillips likes to call our way of the spirit. Already posted on our web site is the kick-off sermon of the series, Eight Themes That Unite Us, which gives you a sort of map for the series. I talked about one of the themes, The Divine Seed in Every Person, on October 21.
Roy says that Mystery is one of the eight themes. He offers us a metaphor to illustrate the appeal of mystery to our way of the spirit, which has always valued reason as a tool for creating religion. He suggests that we think of the various areas of knowledge as islands in a vast sea. We love these islands because they offer something that human beings need: security or at least the illusion of security. We can explore the islands and come to know them. Islands are havens for us, places we can master, even own. But the sea is mystery, ever changing, untamed and untamable. We love the islands, but we love the sea even more and, in our way of the spirit, while we love the answers, we love the questions more.
We are, after all, seekers. We are the religion that proclaimed from our earliest days that faith can’t be confined by creeds. Religious faith is a matter of individual conscience and the result of personal thought and reflection. Our beliefs are shaped by our own engagement with life, the questions that we ask as a result of our own experiences with love, suffering, evil, unwarranted good, and the inevitable fact of death. Doctrine, tradition, or rituals from the past may offer us lifelines as we make our journey. But our way of the spirit requires us to test this inheritance by the power of our own minds and experiences.
I wonder if we can appreciate the courage of those who set forth from the doctrinal islands of "The Trinity" as well as "The Two Natures of Jesus" and its twin cities of wholly human and wholly divine, "Proof of Divinity by Miracles" and the big one called "The Only Way to Be Saved." Men and women like Michael Servetus, Jan Hus, Queen Isabel of Transylvania and her son, King John Sigismund, Joseph Priestly, John Murray and Judith Sargent Murray, William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Octavius Frothingham, William Channing Gannett, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, John Hayes Holmes, Charles Hartshorne all looked around at the view offered by the doctrines and traditions of the church of their day and began to ask questions. If God exists, what is the nature of God? Who was Jesus and how does one understand his life? What is the purpose of human life? What do other religions have to teach us? How shall we live in the face of death? A longing for a faith they could trust without denying their own sense of truth, their own intuitions of meaning, pushed them from the security of the accepted doctrines of their time and the fellowship of those who found them sufficient, off into uncharted waters. They reported on their discoveries, the new thoughts, new vistas, new images of religion and religious community they had discovered, and these reports brought them both praise and harsh criticism. Like other explorers, they met with storms, unexpected hardships, enemies and odd fellow travelers. Servetus and Hus, the earliest voyagers on this list, were put to death for their heretical journeys. Even though these brave explorers knew that an open-ended encounter with Mystery would bring criticism and danger, they could make no other choice and still be true to themselves. This is our heritage, our passionate way of the sprit that values the questions we are driven to ask — even more than the answers we find.
And so I ask what do you want, you lovers of mystery who have come to the realization that the faith of your parents and grandparents is not enough for your life? If you cannot rest at peace in the assurance of a creed or an ancient prayer, what makes you think that a voyage into Mystery will offer you comfort? And perhaps you are wondering what is this Mystery, anyway?
Mystery is simply that in life which is unknown and unknowable. In the words of Rachel Naomi Reiner, by its very nature Mystery cannot be solved, it can only be lived. To acknowledge Mystery is to understand that all of us, perhaps the whole universe is engaged in a "unique and possibly endless process that may go on over lifetimes." We are all part of something that is beyond us, and that shapes us — some traditions would even say that loves us. This something we are calling Mystery is known by many other names: The Tao, Original Mind, Sacred Mother, Source of Being, Buddha Nature, One in All. The process of shaping, teaching, evolving has been given a variety of labels: self-awareness, kensho, illumination, process of enlightenment, gnosis, God-realization, holy ecstasy. The names are labels so that we can talk about something that is ineffable; so don’t get caught up in the words. What is important is that we recognize that we are more than we think ourselves to be at any given moment. Who I am today is not who I will be by five o’clock this afternoon, and the same is true for each of you. We are unfinished beings, engaged in the process of becoming, whether or not we are aware of that process. As long as we live, we participate in Mystery, in possibility, although most of the time we are not cognizant of this reality. I am not the sum total of the facts of my life, and neither are you. Certainly my family or origin, my genetic make up, my gender, my appearance, the culture I was born into, my own gifts and talents have shaped and perhaps limited the possibilities and the choices I have made in my life. We all come with a lot of baggage. There have also been unforeseen and unpredictable events, relationships, contact with ideas and experiences that have come my way and left me altered. I have not been a passive player in this little drama, for I have also participated in events and relationships, I have accepted or rejected ideas, interpreted experience, and transformed the very small parts of the world that I have touched and changed the options for those who will follow. I also believe that the more I connect with Mystery, the more I can become aware of the incredible freedom that awareness of this connection offers me. I may not be able to change certain circumstances in my life, but I can make choices about how I will use those circumstances for my own growth and in my interactions with the world.
I like what Gabriel Horn says in Native Heart:
When we are born, it’s like taking a cup of spirit out of the gene pool of life that the Mystery provides. We must pour that cup back when we die, like a drop of rain that falls back into the ocean where it originated, except that the drop of spirit we take into this world should increase in size. It can do this if we become closer to the spiritual things of life … that way we put back more that we came in with. This assures each generation of enough spirit power to be born spiritually strong, with innate understandings and knowledge. The key idea is … to fill our cups with goodness. That way when we die, all that goodness pours back into Mystery and into those we love.
Reflections on such a Mystery offer us new answers to some of the questions that have been keeping people awake at night since people could think: "Why am I here?" is one of these questions. The scientific answer to that question is "to propagate the species." — an answer that doesn’t satisfy everyone. Even if you have or plan to have children. once they’re on their own, you might want to ask "What should I be doing with the next forty plus years besides waiting to die?" And speaking of death, what happens to us when we die? Science can answer that one as well by describing the biochemistry of the breakdown of our flesh, but the process of decay of the body isn’t what we’re inquiring about when we ask this question. Again, we’re dipping into the great source of Mystery that looks beyond the physical realities and takes us into the spiritual, soulful wonderings that have inspired composers and musicians, mystics and philosophers, writers of prose and poetry, choreographers, sculptors, and painters.
During the readings you heard how poetic language touches and illuminates Mystery. The visual arts offer windows into Mystery that are equally powerful. On the table in front of me, you may have noticed a copy of a painting called "The Repentant Magdalene" by Georges de la Tour. This work, created in 1640, shows a young woman sitting at a table in a dark room. She is Mary Magdalene, who, according to legend, was an infamous prostitute until her life-changing encounter with Jesus. Before her is a skull resting on top of a wooden box, and the tip of a flame can be seen above the skull. The woman is gazing into a mirror that reflects the image of the skull and box. The fingers of her left hand are resting on the skull, and her right hand supports her head. The expression on her face is calm, but her gaze is intent on the reflection before her. It is impossible to even guess what this young woman is thinking or feeling. But certainly she is contemplating inevitable death, perhaps her own death, and perhaps what may come after death. Certainly she is immersed in Mystery.
Whatever her thoughts or question, the atmosphere of the painting tells us that factual information will not be sufficient. In truth, this woman may not be looking for an answer to a particular question. Perhaps she is simply lost in contemplation.
Contemplation is an art, a way of using the mind to gain insight into Mystery that has fallen out of fashion in a world that is obsessed with facts and reason and doing as much as we can every minute of the day. But this use of the mind isn’t strange to us, it doesn’t require a teacher or years of practice to be fruitful. For most of us, contemplative thinking runs through our lives like a hidden inner spring – sometimes we call it daydreaming or "the stares." We suppose that nothing useful is going on in our heads because we are not thinking of anything in particular. Maybe you’ve noticed that when someone has caught you in this state of contemplation, you’re embarrassed, you laugh and apologize. It might be that you are just a little tired — your neurons and synapses need a rest.
But consider that in these moments you may also be connecting with Mystery, listening to the flow of something unnamed and nameless that is healing, centering, soul-nourishing. This is contemplative thinking. And just as it is difficult to describe or define Mystery, it is equally difficult to explain contemplation. Most obviously, this way of thinking isn’t focused on linear problems solving, knowledge gathering, or definition of experience. It is a mental activity that requires "releasement" over grasping, a quiet waiting rather than a moving towards a goal, an experience of harmony, unity, openness rather than creating distinctions, identifying attributes. Contemplation has no object, it is "waiting without prospect, waiting for waiting’s sake." We enter into contemplative thought almost without intention; Lex Hixon says that contemplations never really begins at a particular moment, "It is always there, pulsing at the core of all thought, waiting." Through this waiting, a subtle transformation of ordinary consciousness occurs and distance becomes nearness, waiting becomes abiding.
Let’s turn back to this picture of a young woman, her hand on a skull, gazing steadily into a mirror. She isn’t looking directly at the skull and candle, although she could arrange that quite easily. Why is the mirror necessary?
From a purely functional point of view, using a mirror allows the viewer to see what the Magdalene sees and to share with her the experience of looking at the front of the skull and for the light of the candle to be reflected back onto her face. But among mystics there is also the understanding that Mystery cannot be approached directly. Most often our encounter with Mystery is oblique, much like the experience of light through a stained glass window. We don’t see the source of the light, but we are aware of its existence.
There is danger in the oblique, and that danger is that we can become confused and distracted by our own response to what we think we experience. Ursula Goodenough offers a wonderful example of this in her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature. She was a young college student on a camping trip in Colorado. As night fell and the sky became a brilliant display of stars and planets, she found herself overwhelmed with terror. Her mind filled with knowledge, facts about the stars and the galaxies that were forming and dying in the immense space of the universe. The final straw for her was the thought of the death of our own sun and the devastation of our planet. As she tells it,
"The night sky was ruined. I would never be able to look at it again. … A bleak emptiness overtook me whenever I thought about what was really going on out in the cosmos or deep in the atom. So I did my best not to think about such things."
She felt defeated by the "nihilism that lurks in the infinite and the infinitesimal." It all seemed so pointless.
Eventually she came to a realization that "there doesn’t have to be a point in any of it." Instead, she could see the infinite, the infinitesimal and everything in between as the locus of Mystery.
The Mystery of why there is anything at all, rather than nothing.
The Mystery of where the laws of physics came from
The Mystery of why the universe seems so strange.
None of these questions can be answered and, as Reiner comments, Mystery requires us to give up an endless search for answers and to become willing not to understand. We live, perhaps, not to possess Mystery by understanding, but to witness to the wisdom that comes from our encounters with Mystery and to the affect that engagement with Mystery can have on the quality of our lives.And what is that effect? They are most profound. I would say a deep trust in the universe, that I can be at peace without having answers to the questions that have the power to arouse anxiety and despair. I can ponder the beauty of the rising moon, the glory of the trees in fall splendor, or the sorrow of death and the grace that is bestowed by a stray kitten. In all of this, I can feel a deep awe that somehow I have been given the opportunity to experience life in all its loveliness, grief, and even terror. Does my life matter? I trust that it does, and that it will. But in truth, it’s all a mystery and, as the song goes, I think I’ll just let the Mystery be.
May it be so
Links to earlier sermons in this series: Eight Themes that Unite Us and The Devine Seed in Every Person. Use the Back button to get back to this sermon.
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