Embrace Mystery

Series:  Long-Term Vision  #6  (this series began April 30—Seeking Rightness)

In this series I argue against our society’s loss of long-term vision and for the importance of remaining open to new understanding, a key element for long-term vision.  New understanding does not deny what came before; it expands upon it as greater awareness develops.

The scientific knowledge of our world has moved ahead by leaps and bounds over the last 100 years and that clearly is a good thing.  In keeping with that, our education system has become geared to specific absolute answers (multiple choice and true/false testing) and thus we’ve been conditioned to want immediate concrete yes or no answers to all questions.  In addition, computers have totally altered the availability and flow of information (we don’t need to search and wait).  That has increased our expectation of and desire for immediacy.  We’ve become the NOW generation, but without yesterday and tomorrow our vision has been narrowed.  It satisfies the ‘without’ but the ‘within’ is starving.  The ‘within’ is what contains the qualities of love, truth, justice, compassion, mercy, hope . . . the non-material elements that make life worth living.  That’s where God is found.

God is beyond our knowing; we cannot answer the question ‘Is God?’ with an absolute yes or no answer. Neither can we know or understand who or what God is—but since the human first appeared on earth that has been a burning question among all peoples.  Reflective awareness seeks to know and our knowledge is constantly refining our understanding.  There have been a myriad of answers for who and what God is—all with anthropomorphic leanings and all fail to satisfy.  We design our gods to fit what we know . . . but to accept that God is beyond our knowing is to ask us to embrace Mystery and not to abandon the search.

That is what Teilhard do Chardin and many contemporary theologians are asking us to do, to return to Mystery God.  It is not new with them, it goes all the way back to John’s Gospel that begins: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God . . . “, and later Paul in 1Corinthians 15:28 “ . . . that God be all in all.” . . . but that is mystery and human weakness has been unable to grasp it.  Even earlier, to Moses in Exodus 3:14 God self-identified with the words: I AM who I Am” then God added “tell the Israelites ‘I AM sent me to you’”.  

I am is first person singular for the verb to be.  Break that down; ‘I AM’ is ‘to be’ . . . God is Being itself—and that is beyond our understanding.  To accept that, is to embrace Mystery.

As I look back with long-term vision I see evidence of the law of complexity-consciousness.  Life, beginning with simple single cells, continually grows more complex over millions of years to finally bring forth the beautifully complex human form; and I see simple consciousness (a worm bumps into a rock and turns itself to go around it) expands, to eventually develop thought and understanding in the human mind.  In this, a pattern can be seen.  It is more than mere random chance. 

I see the primitive caveman giving meaning to sounds that become words and making marks on cave walls to tell the story of the hunt . . . and I see eons of time with the human consciousness expanding and shaping his environment and culture, bringing forth both beauty and horror.  Then, in our time, breaking free of earth’s gravity to see earth’s place in the vast universe as one whole interacting balanced unit supporting fragile life.  That is the new understanding we are called upon to realize, our global world maintains itself thru balancing all the elements . . . and the human species is one of those elements, the only ‘element’ with the power to alter and control that balance.  

As I turn my long-term vision forward to the future I see two possibilities: either we learn to live by love—or we self-destruct.  That is beyond finding the answer to the mystery ‘is God?’ that is the reality of what love (God?) is about . . . all humanity together building a sustainable future.  Only with love can we change the world. 

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I repeat my two favorite Teilhard quotes:

The day of Nations is past.  The task before us now, if we would not

perish, is to build the earth.

Someday, after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity,

we shall harness for God the energies of love and then for the second

        time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

The Royal Wedding

series:  Long-Term Vision  #3

If you watched the royal wedding on TV last week you heard Bishop Curry’s wonderful sermon on love. He made several references to Martin Luther King but he also quoted the contemporary theologian and mystic Teilhard de Chardin whose works are still unknown to the majority of people.  It is Teilhard’s writings that are the underpinnings of all that I write about—they are the fruit of long-term vision.  He was a paleontologist looking back at the earth’s beginning and ahead to its future trajectory of love’s realization by humanity. 

Bishop Curry ended his sermon with a paraphrase of the famous Teilhard quote: “Someday, after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love and then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

Look carefully at what those words are saying—for humans to have discovered how to capture and control the energy of fire provided us with the possibility of all the great inventions to follow.  Fire was not invented by man, but he discovered how to utilize it to his advantage . . . we cannot imagine our world without that discovery.

Teilhard and Bishop Curry are saying we have yet to discover the essence and energy of love.  The Bishop’s talk is titled ‘The Power of Love’ (go to Google or YouTube to find it).  We’ve romanticized and sentimentalized love, we have given its name to what isn’t love and we have failed to recognize its great power to change the world.

Love isn’t a human invention any more than fire is; love is of God and from God—but too often we treat it lightly, not recognizing its powerful potential.  At it core love is unselfish, sacrificial and redemptive. To choose to accept it and live it requires courage, selfless sacrifice, and long-term vision.

God awaits humanity collectively to live by love and that will take eons of time, as one by one we individually awakens to the true nature of it, live it and by our example pass it on.  As Teilhard said . . . if we harness for God the energy of love, for the second time we would have discovered fire . . . only with love can we change the world.