Working on Mysteries

So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, You know me, and you know where I come from? But I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know. -- John 7:28

I woke from a dream last night, and I wrote this down:  I am what I do not know.  

I am often unhappy with the way I am.  I do not like the way I react to things sometimes.  I do not like getting angry.  I get annoyed with myself for procrastination, for a lack of discipline in this area or that.  But who is that?  How do I get angry with myself?  This is not magic – not even, I don’t think, mysticism.  It’s just giving up needing to know, or being able to explain everything. 

Jesus was trained as a carpenter.  He would probably be right at home working an adze or a drawknife and building post-and-beam structures.  Would He have trouble understanding modern techniques, methods, and tools?  What about cars and computers?  If He was God, why didn’t He give us lessons in mathematics and quantum theory? 

Could it be because, as Heinlein said, specialization is for insects?  Perhaps we are meant to “generalists”.   Or maybe that’s a bias I have given that I have a tendency to know a little about a lot of things and prefer to talk in metaphors.

In the seventh chapter of John, it was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, and people had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate.  Jesus went up separately from His kinsmen and secretly, for the religious leadership was seeking opportunity to imprison, if not kill, Him.  Once in Jerusalem, He began to teach, and many began to wonder, given His authoritative doctrine, if He was, indeed, the Messiah.  There was quite a bit of debate.  Some said the Messiah had to come from David’s hometown of Bethlehem, and they knew that Jesus came from a town up north in Galilee.  Others said that the Anointed One’s origins would be hidden and unknown, but they knew, or thought they knew all about this Jesus. 

Jesus answers, at least, this last point:  You think know Me?  You think you know where I am from?  You know it not, just the name of a village where I was first seen.  You know nothing of My origins, of who I am, why I am here or Who sent Me.  That’s the Unknown of the Anointed One. 

Others all came or will come from the understandable.  They come as conquerors.  They seek glory or riches or power.  Those things are knowable.  They want to rule and exploit.  That’s understandable. 

But what if someone came who was true – who was Truth itself?  Would we understand that?  Would we be able to know that?  How paradoxical it seems that the One who is true we do not know.

We know personas.  We can see the edges of the masks.  We can look into the faces of the actors.  We can memorize the scripts.  But who puts on the play, and whose stage is this, and whose poetry do we scrawl in captured snatches?  Him, we do not know. 

He saith also, `Thou art unable to see My face, for man doth not see Me, and live' (Exodus 33:20, Young's Literal Translation).

Middling

Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, Look, here it is! or There! for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.  -- Luke 17:20-21

How critical can a preposition be?  It seems rather important here.  Various translations may tell us that the kingdom is within us or among us.  The most literal seems to be that given in the ESV “in the midst of you,” which remains slightly ambiguous.

If the kingdom is among us, the emphasis would fall on community and our relationships one with another.  Most of our concern would be focused on dealing with all around us in a righteous and loving way.  We would do our best to put the needs of others before our own and follow the Golden Rule:  whatever we others to do for us, we will do the same for them.

If the kingdom, though, is within us, we would before all other things attempt to have Christ indwelling us as individuals in mystical union.  We would try to live right and always do the right thing so as to not grieve the Holy Spirit, for everything would depend upon Him and His presence in our lives. 

Fortunately, we do not need to worry about which reading is correct.  In essence both views are correct.  Some of us are inclined to a mystical approach, others to the expression of love in word and deed.  So long as our motivation is communion with God and citizenship in the kingdom, the end will be the same.  Christ will indwell Martha when she is working and Mary when she is listening.   Jesus did not chide Martha because she was trying to feed everyone and get everything in line but only because she allowed herself to be distracted from Him.  Now the Spirit may fully inhabit our lives and possess our attention and devotion while we go about doing our work and taking care of the needs of others.

It certainly doesn’t hurt to retreat once in a while and be refreshed – just you and the Lord, but He is always in our midst.

The Lights of Home

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge – Psalm 19:1-2

At night, the brightest light around is my own security light.  I had a switch installed on the pole when the Co-op put it up so I could turn it out because sometimes there is something I need more than security.  Sometimes it is important to study in the dark.  Sometimes I get my shaky, goofy little telescope out and peer at red Mars or the moons of Jupiter that Galileo saw or the rings of Saturn so far away.  So far away.

But last night I just looked up standing in the deep shadow of a pear tree to see the luminous spill of the Milky Way, countless burning atomic furnaces unified in an ethereal body to my dull vision.  The many dimensions flooded my consciousness in a flash as I transcended the flat sky illusion.  The nearby wanderers are there with the transfixed blinking beacons that have not moved perceptibly in a thousand lifetimes.  In ten thousand years a man may stand on that same worn spot and see the Plough and find true north. 

Who knows?  By then there may be no men.  There may be only whispering ghosts and ruins.  There may be spaceports and ringed, ringing satellites and levitating, talking dogs and wormholes to Arcturus and Buicks bound for Eden. 

Or there may be a white-haired man walking back to his cottage after a long day in the vineyard, his basket laden with clusters to be crushed, broken, and bottled who pauses in sight of his homely light and gazes upward at mirroring planets and misty fixed fires, who loses in a moment the illusion of a flat sky, whose consciousness is flooded with many dimensions, who hears a luminous and holy ghost spilling stillness and whispering of the Way who still loves the deep shade and studies in the dark.