It was great fun when a magician came to our house to entertain neighborhood kids. He’d pull handkerchiefs from his sleeve, snatch coins from behind our ears and identify which card we’d plucked from a full deck. He could make a small skeleton dance on the piano. That was super spooky. The show was magic, it was cool, but it was not mystery. Mystery is something very different.
An invisible web connects you and me to the entire universe and to each other. That’s mystery. We’ll have occasional glimpses of this web. It’s similar to how the night gathers dew on spider webs and when the sun rises they glitter radiantly, but only briefly.
Experiencing mystery is like exposure to sunlight; too much can blind us as St. Paul was blinded on the road to Damascus. His sight returned however, and he saw far better than ever before. He even also lost his attitude (breathing threats and murder against the disciples.) This particular kind of confrontation with mystery is called conversion.
Years ago, on my sailboat, I was motoring out of the Patapsco River into the Bay from Baltimore. The air was still. A fog developed. I’d never been in fog so thick. I could see only yards off the bow. No markers were visible. I knew I was right on the edge of shipping channel, but had no idea where currents were taking me. Then suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw a dim outline of a buoy. As I shifted my gaze directly to it, the buoy disappeared. What I couldn’t see head on, was visible from the corner of my eye.
The receptors in our eyes are more sensitive at on the periphery than at the center. I think that’s true of the heart. Its sidelong glances often reveal the sacred to us.
Philosophers call these revelations of the sacred, ‘hierophanies.’ Hierophanies momentarily reveal how deeply you and I and the holy are connected through love, grief, joy, and gratitude. The same potter has turned us all.
Scientist and physician, Lewis Thomas, comments on hearing. “You cannot really hear certain sequences of notes in a Bach fugue unless at the same time there are other notes being sounded, dominating the field. The real meaning in music comes from tones only audible in the corner of the mind.” Whether looking or hearing, we engage mystery best by being still and attentive to how seemingly inconsequential things can become radiant.
The poet William Blake put it this way:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
The sacred lives not in heaven, but in our mundane routines. It’s the last place most folks think to look. We won’t usually experience it head on or hear it amidst noise. A gentle touch, being compassionate, and remaining still will create a few of the optimum conditions to be surprised by the sacred. Meditation helps.
I used to summer on the North Fork of Long Island. My children were six and ten. They wanted to feed chickadees from their hands as they’d seen a neighbor do it. The trick was to extend your arm and stand still because the birds were easily spooked. You’d put sunflower seeds in your hand and hold them palm up. Their attempts to coax the chickadees to land on their hand were thwarted because they couldn’t stay still long enough for the birds to light.
After several disappointing attempts, my daughter decided not to try so hard, but to just stand still with an open hand. She’d figured out that it was all a matter of letting go and not ‘trying so hard’ to make it happen. If she was still and waited, the birds would come – and so they did. As one lit, she swung around and said, “Look, Dad,” and the bird flew from her hand like an ascending rocket, while the sunflower seeds scattered all over the yard.
No matter. She now understood that to connect intimately with the birds, becoming still, being attentive, and waiting patiently was the only way to go. An open hand helps, too.
Do we see best in the brightest light? No. High noon on a bright sunny day reveals the least. There are not the shadow and highlight necessary to expose the texture of landscapes. For elders living in the longer shadows, the mystery often appears during the remains of the day. Kids tend to go for the brightest light.
The problem for elders is our accumulation of junk. We’re like the houses we’ve lived in for years. Our attics are filled with clutter that we don’t know what to do with or even why we’ve kept it in the first place. The advantage to elders is that they don’t need as much light to see what’s sacred. They just need to get rid of the clutter.
The heart has more direct access to the sacred than the mind does. Our minds work too hard. They fidget, fuss, plan, judge, posture, evaluate and rarely remain still. Our hearts “get it” sooner than our minds do. The best way access the wonder of mystery is by holding still, remaining attentive and waiting expectantly.
It’s not magic, but it works.
Lex Fry says
thank you so much for these thoughtful, insightful writings….the essence of our elder wisdom