For Advent, I’ve been reading, “God is in the Manger,” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The focus of week two is Mystery. On day one, he wrote the following:
We destroy {mystery} because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with mystery . . . . Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world.
As adults, we want control. Control of our budgets, our careers, our lives and our kid’s lives. As kids, we are much more prone to adaptivity. Just look at how we go hiking!
Whenever we take our kids on a hike, how often do we discourage our kiddos from wondering around the mountainside? “Stay on the path,” we say trying to keep them safe but discouraging their mystery of the natural forest. “The sign says to stay on the path,” we argue, eager to follow the rules lest we be judged by the many other path-beating hikers. We end up spending our time keeping our kids on the straight and narrow rather than on the mystery of nature.
We keep our eyes focused on a northern star because it provides us clarity, direction, and something with which to measure our progress. Seeing constellations, however, requires us to stop progress, to see a bigger picture, and to allow for ambiguity, for interpretation, and for messy lines and figures. It requires mystery.
I’ve often wondered who saw the constellations. Was it adults? Or was it kids who, while listening to the boring life lessons of their parents, stared into the night sky and drew pictures with the stars?
The story of Jesus has become so common to our western world that it no longer carries the mystery of constellations. It reads like a straight line. Largely because of how we tell it. Mostly because of how we live it.
The same applies to so many other components of life. From how we teach and discipline our students to how we love and interact with our families and friends. We have lost, many of us, the desire for mystery, to look around and see the bigger picture, and to enjoy the beauty of the unknown. Largely because we’re afraid. Mostly because we lack faith. In our God and in being god.
“Mystery does not mean not knowing something,” Bonhoeffer continued. It is knowing something deeply, personally, and intimately. And then, it is wanting to know more.
This podcast was highly inspiring and influential in this week’s thought: Thinking Differently with Mathew Barzun
Throughout the week, with Mystery and Constellation Thinking on my mind, this poem by Walt Whitman was continually on my mind.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
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