Life is a Mystery to be Lived!
Join me on the journey!
Original was unpublished: 4 May 2021 | Amended & published: 16 March 2023
As I take a backward gaze on my three score and 5 years of life on Mother Earth so far, I’m drawn to ‘Mystery’ as one evocative descriptor of my life’s journey.
For me, there is both a sacred and secular quality to this Mystery
As sacred, I’ve been helped to embrace both the unfathomable and inexplicable features of life (and death) all around me which have been steady and strong signals along the way, pointing me to a Creator, God, or Source of All. As secular, I’ve been drawn again and again into the materiality and messiness of life’s realities in a way that instilled increasing curiosity, compassion, and courage, as I dared to open up more and more spaces in my life to the adventures of living with paradox and ambiguity and flow – all this with its ups and downs. This journey has never been completely smooth or straight, rather it has been a craggy path (as I attempt to describe in my poem below).
Mystery offers me more space…
Much of my journey from childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood has always been steeped in experiences of God, the Divine, and the spiritual, each of these undergoing several calls to conversion in my life, as new experiences, crises, and compelling challenges came to bring about new insights and new shifts in my own understandings and interpretations for life, God, faith, the human condition and those ultimate questions of meaning, purpose, and significance. The journey along this craggy path continues. And now more than ever in my latter years in life, Mystery offers me more space for wonder rather than worry, for paradox rather than certitude, for letting go rather than clinging, for new discoveries and learning rather than stagnant piety and unchangeable truth.
So, in matters of faith and truth, the following words resonate…
“As a young Christian philosopher, I wanted to be the confident, heresy-hunting Augustine… As a middle-aged man, I dream of being Mr. Rogers.
“When you’re young, it’s easy to confuse strength with dominance; when you’re older, you realize the feat of character it takes to be meek. I used to imagine my calling was to defend the Truth. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to love.
“It’s not that I’ve given up on truth. It’s just that I’m less confident we’ll think our way out of the morass and malaise in which we find ourselves. Analysis won’t save us. And the truth of the gospel is less a message to be taught than a mystery enacted.”
~ James K. A. Smith
www.christiancentury.org, February 25, 2021
[Source: Philip Yancey, Facebook post, 3 May 2021]
The accompanying poems are my own feeble attempts at expressing this Life lived in Mystery.
Journey into mystery
I oft have cause to wonder,
In musings on my faith,
How tight-held pinnacles flounder,
Upon Life’s rough-hewn lathe.
What once seems bed-rock solid,
Upheaves itself in protest,
What previously gives comfort,
Engulfs the soul in contest.
The journey into mystery,
Both unsettles and uplifts,
With deepening curiosity,
Both clear skies and dark mists.
So letting go of rectitude,
Faith fresh formed in discovery,
Escape from pious platitude,
Released into Divinity.
© Roger Arendse 20120715
This journey of life is a craggy path
This journey of life is a craggy path,
With sudden dives and unexpected climbs;
Troughs and mountains intertwine,
Ravines run often deep with mystery.
As winding maze ways stretch on and on,
The end, even from craggy heights,
Never seems quite ablaze with certitude,
Though, the distant horizon beckons in the dawning light.
What change, what transitions may yet come?
What paradox-filled swamp or fertile land?
We know not, nor able with indelible pen to craft,
We trust in the unfolding Hand.
And so, our faltering steps spurred on,
Our hearts and souls strangely aflame,
Drawn forward by the Irresistible tug inside,
And promise of the finish line.
© Roger Arendse 20120702