I have often thought about how business went on as usual in Palestine while God was walking about her towns. I suppose most people of that time lived quite oblivious to the division of the history of creation. But then Jesus really seemed so normal. You would have had to hear him speak or see him do something quite out of the ordinary even to begin to realize there was something rather different about him. And I can't help thinking of the thousands of people who were God's contemporaries and never knew it.
That's the way it is. Mystery always has a way of getting lost in ordinary life. If God could rub shoulders with a man and be ignored, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that most folks don't mind sleeping through a sunrise.
We humans have an audacious propensity for jumping to conclusions. This is very sad in a world of mystery. When we receive some tidbit of an insight into a mystery our first reaction is to conclude that the mystery no longer exists at all. And this conclusion restricts what we were longing for to what we have acquired. The problem is, of course, that our hearts never really stop longing and so such a restriction makes our inevitable longing absurd. This is a very sad and unhealthy situation.
Therefore, not wanting to be sad, unhealthy or wrong, for that matter, I resolve:
- Never to be satisfied with the rubbing of shoulders or the receiving of tidbits,
- Never to be satisfied with anything less than true statements,
- Never to be satisfied with true statements,
- Never to be satisfied with uncertainty,
- Never to be satisfied with certainty,
- Never to be satisfied with seeking,
- Never to be satisfied with anything less than satisfaction.
In short, I affirm Mystery.