Mystery, Wonder, Trust
Jack DeLoyht
Celtic Reflection
April 10, 2016
Yeah, I am an old dude! I am 89 years old. It's hard for me to believe. I am living my 90th year.
When I was four years old, to get me out of her way as she was doing laundry, my mother told
me to go draw pictures. I drew a picture. I drew a portrait of God. He was an oblong blur, a
misshapen rectangle with great round eyes, stick arms and legs, with a mouth in half a smile.
I was certain that that picture was of God. I learned it was probably not a true likeness. As I
grew older, I found out many people have drawn pictures of God. As I have grown older than
that, I've found out no picture is really God's image, even the one by Michelangelo.
When first I thought about this reflection, I was going to make it an abstract or précis of my
spiritual journey: what I chose to do and what happened as I went through life that resulted in
certainty or a least a reduction in perplexity – that would have been a pack of lies.
I loosely hold, now and then, to certainty. I default to perplexity. What I chose to do and what
happened as I have gone through life have led to less and less certainty; have not reduced
perplexity. You ask me what I know for sure. I must say very little. You ask me what I
understand thoroughly, I must say almost nothing. But, I see mystery.
What is mystery or more properly, what is mystery to me? Mystery to me is what is there, what
there is, when there is no answer, no explanation, no certainty, no reason, when there is
seemingly nothing, when there is no accounting.
Mystery is the evidence of the holy, the sacred; it is the sign of the numinous, the uncanny.
Mystery is holiness with location. Mystery is the mark of Thin Places. Mystery is the carrier of
Love, always around mystery: the Sacred Presence.
Mystery appears to us at the happiest of times, the saddest of times and in time of suffering
and always in time of healing. It rises up in the most dangerous situations and can be equally
apparent in the safest havens. Mystery is there in every hall of experience. It is most often
hidden from us behind a wall of everydayness.
We live in everydayness. We must act everyday doing those things we must do to live. We have
to dig out from under them to find mystery even though everydayness, itself, is permeated with
mystery.
I find mystery at ends or edges, at depths or horizons. Mystery makes me look when I am
looking. I catch my breath. I stop. I find it when meeting another person, when quietly being
with other persons. It's always there at every separation, binding everydayness all together.
The world, the universe, reality is filled, is suffused, is abundant with mystery. I stand at an
edge and dip in a spirit toe, take a step toward and then recoil, snap back to everydayness with
tears in my eyes. I reach the nether most tether of my desire for certainty. Hear the siren call of
sureness, security, serenity howling the dull safety of everydayness retrieving me for a
benighted journey through its halls to darkness, the end point, death.
But I took the step at an edge and I found it there. Mystery! I will step again from other edges,
other ends; feel into depths; see vaster horizons; meditate mountains, forests, prairies and the
sea; ponder the fog shrouded, winter bare, oak tree; ride the wild, wide sounding wind; will
look when I'm looking as I move and with courage brave the fog of mystery, the loss of
certainty; stay longer and longer until, instead, I live there, there in mystery -- dip into
everydayness now and then.
Have you pondered the mystery of water? Have you stopped and considered the mystery of
light? Have you let the mystery of death draw you up with a start? There is wonder in these
should you leave them as mysteries.
When I leave death a mystery, don't try to explain, don't try to fill it up with stories of
everydayness, stand still within the mystery until the wonder comes, stand still in touch with all
the mysteries of wild, irresistible, incredible Creation; let the wonder pour over and through
me, a profound, a magnificent Trust arises, a trust that whatever the upshot of death, it is
bound in love. It is very good.
Unless it be a blank page titled: Mystery, I give up drawing pictures of God. I want to live in the
Mystery. I want to be taken up by wonder. I will trust the Darkness that I see in the approach of
death. I will trust that darkness is dispelled, dispelled in the mystery, the wonder of:
Resurrection.
Is e mo drui Crist mac Di