Embrace the Mystery

Years ago, when I was living in Cape Canaveral, Florida, I was driving home from work one afternoon when I noticed a massive rainbow just north of east in the sky.

There were too many houses and buildings and trees in my way to get a good picture, but I thought if the rainbow could just stick around for a few more minutes, I might have enough time to race home, grab my camera and head to the beach, because that would make an amazing picture.

So I said the same prayer I always say when confronted with the fleeting nature of … nature, I pointed to the rainbow and said, “Stay right there.”

Five minutes later I was on the beach with my camera and there was this amazing rainbow.  It is literally impossible to know what sits at the end of the rainbow.  It’s why we mythologize it with stories of a pot of gold sitting there in the vast unknown.  Rainbows are, in fact, our own personal illusion.  We see them based on our perspective, our point of view and how the light and the water in the air interact from that point of view.

If we try to move closer, the rainbow moves with us.  If we try to get a different angle, again the rainbow adjusts to our movements.

But that day at the beach, I can tell you that for a moment, the mystery as to what sits at the end of the rainbow was solved.  That day, the end of the rainbow illuminated the rocket gantry that sat on a small peninsula, jutting out into the ocean.  It was incredible.  I took the picture and that same picture is hanging on my living room wall, today.

We human beings are fascinated by mysteries both large and small.  It’s why, on the one hand, true crime podcasts and conspiracy theories propagate so well.  And on the other hand, mystery is at the center of mysticism.  Mystery drives our spirituality.  Mystery fuels faith.

It’s right there in our own liturgy when the priest says, “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith.”

Mystery, in this sense, is something to be embodied, something to be lived—it is not necessarily something to be solved.

It’s like the idea of a prayer labyrinth.  The prayer labyrinth isn’t a maze to be lost in, but a maze to be found in.  It is paradoxical in a way—counter intuitive.

But part of the Christian faith is living with the unknown, embracing it, because God is more than we could ever imagine.  We don’t have to prove our faith.  We don’t have to prove the existence of God, because the mystery of who God is lives inside of us.  And we, too, become a mystery.  We, too, become something more than we could ever imagine.

And isn’t that great?  There is something beautiful in the unknown.  The mystery drives us, fuels us, to be something more, to constantly be on the lookout for the “More” which we also call God.

The mystery fuels artists and poets, but it also inspires physicists, astrophysicists who spend their lives looking further and further out into space and therefore looking further and further back in time, hoping to get a glimpse of the moment of creation.  And theoretical physicists who look to the quantum world, the tiny universes that make us—us. 

Today is a Holy Day—it is The Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

When Mary was told by the angel, Gabriel, she would become pregnant with Jesus, the mystery of it was almost too much for her.  It probably didn’t help that Gabriel told her, “Don’t be afraid,” which I think always has the unintended consequence of making people’s adrenaline spike.

So she asked the angel, “How can this be since I am virgin?”

Good question, Mary!

Mary doesn’t want mystery.  She wants details.

And Gabriel says to her in Luke 1:45, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”

Gabriel brings her back to the mystery.

Mary doesn’t press him any further.  She says in verse 38, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

At our 9 am reflection group this past Sunday, we discussed a section of Madeleine L’Engle’s memoir A Circle of Quiet.

In this particular part, she describes a dinner she had with friends where the topic of the supernatural comes up and a friend says “that when the electric light was invented, people began to lose the dimension of the supernatural.”  With light, we no longer wonder about shadows and darkness, about the things that exist in this world that we cannot see.

L’Engle goes on to quote Albert Einstein who said, “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious … He who knows it not, who can no longer wonder, can no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.”

The other night we experienced a terrible windstorm in my area.  We were pummeled with hail and then gusts of wind that knocked down trees, picked up my storage shed and threw it, and left us without power for around seven hours.

You would think the best time to lose power is at night when you are asleep, but I, for one, can’t sleep when the power goes out.  It’s the unknown that unsettles me.  When will the power come back on? I wonder incessantly.  But it is also the silence that throws me off.  No whir from the refrigerator or the white noise of the air purifier, no hum of the heat kicking on. 

I realized that night how much I try to drown out the background noise with other noises.

For most of the seven hours the power was off, I did not sleep.  I could not settle my mind down.  But I did doze briefly for about hour right around the time I finally convinced myself of this—it will be light again.  Even if the power outage were to last for days, the sun will still rise.

When the power did come back on, shortly before sunrise—when the rain stopped, and the winds died down, I took one of my large Maglites—you know those flashlights that can double as a club if you are attacked—and went outside to assess the damage.

Specifically, I had heard cars all night, running over something on the darkened road.

As I shined my flashlight on the street, I could see several medium size branches—not twigs—that I was able to kick to the side of the road and then, I shocked myself, when the beam of my flashlight caught sight of a massive part of a neighbor’s tree which had snapped off in the wind and crushed the chainlink fence below.  This all happened 20-30 feet from my house.  In fact, I had heard something hit my roof during the storm and then roll off.  I think when the tree hit the ground it exploded and pieces of it flew up on my roof.

All in all, I was very fortunate.

Later in the morning, when the sun was up, I walked outside.  There was trash everywhere.  I live on an alley.  There is always trash, but this March as been particularly windy.  There are black bags from the nearby Corner Store stuck high in the trees, thirty feet above ground.  You want to know which way the wind is blowing?  Look up at the bags.

I also noticed something stuck in the puddle and mud at the end of my drive.

It was a bright pink deflated balloon, the type that holds helium—the kind of balloon frequently lost and cried over by children who can’t quite hold on.

I have always wondered what happens to those balloons once they are lost, the mystery, if you will, of how far they travel, what they encounter and where they finally wind up.

The mystery of faith is always tied to wonder and curiosity.

And so I would say this, if you want to increase your faith, engage those two things—wonder and curiosity.

Explore, create, become a child again and see everything in this world as new and awe-inspiring.  Look for the light, but do not fear the darkness.

And of course, the mystery of faith is tied to love, too.

So, love.  Love God.  Love your neighbor, unconditionally and without exception.

Amen.