I believe the experience of Mystery to be the most powerful, most precious encounters we humans can have. That said, when we use the word “mystery,” it’s important to bear in mind that there are two kinds. The first, more common variety of mystery is the sort we have the potential ability to solve. For example, there’s the kind of mystery at the core of mystery novels. This is a comforting kind of mystery, because at the end of it, the clever detective always unmasks the culprit. The villain is apprehended and order is restored to the world. In a similar way, it’s always satisfying to be the player in the game called Clue who figures out that it was Ms. Scarlet who did it with the candlestick in the ballroom.
More seriously speaking, another example of this first sort of mystery is the kind scientists wrestle with every day. Every scientific experiment is an effort to solve some mystery about the physical world and every scientific breakthrough provides the solution at least a tiny fragment of that mystery.
Then there’s the other kind of mystery, the kind I call mystery with a capital “M.” This kind of mystery is, by definition, an encounter with something ultimately unknowable, a perpetual enigma that neither the scientific method nor any amount of detective work can unravel. Modern consciousness seems to have little respect for or interest in this second kind of mystery. We prefer to think that the solution to every mystery lies in simply obtaining more or better information. Indeed, many contemporary people think this second type of mystery is essentially a kind of cop-out in the face of what we don’t know and can’t explain. I don’t agree. I believe that to dismiss this second, and greater, kind of mystery is to abandon a kind of awareness that is as old as humankind, something essential to the well-being of the human spirit.
Given its many gifts, how might we create spiritual practices to help us embrace mystery? For starters, we could acknowledge that the source of life — by whatever name we chose to call it — won’t fit our explanations or play by our rules. We could practice letting go of the fantasy that we’re in charge here and accept that our plans will often go astray despite our best efforts and intentions.
We could also allow ourselves the grace to respond to life’s ultimate riddles by humbly admitting we simply don’t know, that our perspectives are always limited and inadequate, and that there’s always more to learn. We could make space in our lives for paradox, for a kind of both-and rather than either-or consciousness. As a result, we might welcome the ambivalence and ambiguities of life, to accept the glorious contradictions and inconsistencies in ourselves and everything else.
We could also practice wonder. If we’re looking for roles models and tutors to help us to help us get in touch with our capacity for wonder, I can think of at least two: small children and artists. Both small children and artists inherently understand that wonder starts with a playful spirit and a willingness to let our imaginations soar, to see the world with eyes that are wide open and ready to be amazed by what we see.
In addition, we could practice awe. We know we’re in the presence of awe because it blows away our habitual sense of self-importance and leaves us gasping with the sense of something infinitely bigger than we can grasp with our rational minds. To be filled with awe is to know that the universe we live in is a far greater and more incredible place than we can begin to imagine. If we’re looking for some places to practice our capacity for awe, we might contemplate the vastness of the universe or the intricacies of the human body or the inexplicable inspiration that produces great works of art. That we exist at all–let alone that we are conscious of that fact–is something so incredible and strange, so unutterably mysterious that it alone is enough to fill us with a sense of awe.
Finally, we could learn about mystery in the context of our relationships. Whatever we think we know about love, there will always be something deeply and truly mysterious about our experience of it. Indeed, it is only in the context of relationship that we may truly and fully appreciate the profoundly mysterious, enigmatic and often mystifying nature of our own being.
I’d like to close these reflections with some words of Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church. “Over the years,” he said, “challenged by the demands of love and death, I had to make room in my theology for a more capacious, if unfathomable, power. I had to clear a place for mystery on the altar of my hearth, which before I had crowded with icons to knowledge.”
Making a space on our altars for mystery doesn’t mean abandoning our reverence for knowledge, for the search for answers to the mysteries we can solve. But it does require an acknowledgement that knowledge alone cannot save us, let alone bring a sense of meaningfulness to our lives. Mystery is the source from which come, the essence of our innermost being, and the destination to which must inevitably return.