- We are beginning our collections for Fuel Assistance for local families in need
- Death Cafe January 24th at 4pm (we meet monthly)
- Discussion Circle is the Last Sunday after Church
- Bible Study with Seth 1st & 3rd Sundays after Church
- January Belfry Notes have arrived
Visit our Calendar of Events to explore our upcoming dates and times
Our Sunday Reflection is recorded and can be found HERE (posts each Sunday by late morning or early afternoon).
We live on a planet that seems to be both pulled and held by a sun. It’s quite an amazing planet.
We have gorillas in ancient forests and and lions in never-ending savannas. We have giant tortoises on islands with ancient wonders. Whales and octopuses that live in unimaginable ocean depths and watery forests! There are so many things we have never seen and yet we know exist. Intriguing to you?
There are things we have seen that are incredible. Snowflakes and ice crystals. Birds in snow covered bushes. Caterpillars predicting the weather (as effectively sometimes as meteorologists) then they become butterflies. Flowers that follow the sun. Blossoms that bloom under the moon. Favorites?
Creation is pretty amazing.
There is a poet I follow, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (some of you may also know her, she’s great) who says that she spends more time staring into space and out of her windows than she does actually writing. She witnesses.
She writes in awe of birds and trees. Of oranges and pears. Of ants and ticks. She writes in awe of life and death. She writes to help us to see and to help us to work through.
Poetry is its own ministry. Poetry helps us to see things clearly. Poetry helps us to see things differently.
Why the spider? Why the moon? Why the opossum?
Why? Why’s open doorways.
Why is the sky blue? Why not green? What shift in the atmosphere would change the color? And how would that change everything else?
Why is the grass green and the ocean blue?
Why are flowers so colorful and whales so gigantic?
Why are there animals we have never heard of and never seen?
Each of these questions could continue on into infinity. Why? But Why? I mean they could, at least until an irritated parent says: enough, that’s just the way it is, now eat your dinner!
Why opens doors to infinity. Questions are the beginning of our best quests.
Why a baby?
Why a manger?
Why a birth?
Why a donkey and cattle?
Why shepherds?
Why sages?
Big questions are what theologians explore and try to answer. It’s a whole lotta why’s.
Why are we here?
Where did we come from?
Why did we get here?
Why do we die and what happens then?
Why us?
There are answers and then there are more and different answers. There is possibility. We don’t know, but we know. There are never ending why’s within and beyond the answers.
And we land in somewhat the same place, not the irritated parent place, but the same place of unanswerability. That’s just the way it is. It just is. Is-ness.
Unanswerable. Unknowable. Mystery.
Anyone who has intensely studied something learns somewhere along the way that the more we know, the less we know. The more we learn, the more questions there are. The more doors we walk through, the more doors and windows we open to keep walking through. It is never-ending. Learning is never-ending. The mystery is never ending.
I think in this way, theologians are like scientists (and vice versa). It all begins with questions.
And in some ways it can lead to the same beautiful place. Or, maybe better said, lead us to deeply human experiences that can lead us toward Grace (perhaps awe and wonder) in our own ways.
Take Contact, the Carl Sagan movie from 1997 (it’s also a book for the readers)? I hope you’ll forgive me a movie reference, but it’s a great movie that explores how our passionate why’s can lead us both theologically and scientifically…maybe (surprisingly, unexpectedly, mysteriously) to the same place.
In it, we meet Ellie and Palmer. Palmer is a priest and Ellie is a scientist. The first time Palmer meets Ellie, he tells her about a religious experience in which he dropped all fear and met God. Ellie replies that maybe he was delusional or psychologically in need of that experience. She tries to understand it and explain it with intellect and science.
Palmer replies that it was way deeper than that and that his intellect couldn’t even touch it.
It was way deeper than that and his intellect couldn’t even touch it.
That sounds like a God-Mystery experience.
Eventually, Ellie has an experience in scientific exploration that she cannot prove or explain.
It was way deeper than that and her intellect couldn’t even touch it.
It is a beyond science experience.
It also sounds like a God-Mystery experience.
Both Palmer and Ellie have a deep experience that leads toward…something Mysterious.
Our questions can inspire us to dream and explore and grow. They can lead us on a great journey. The deeper we go with our questions and our why’s, the more it becomes…
Unanswerable. Unknowable. Mystery.
Then, there is a moment, a time, when we stop asking. We Pause. We stop striving. We settle or get swept up into…the experience. And it is…enough.
We lose the need to know and fall into the: it just Is. Truth without proof…faith.
We fall so deeply into the dark, unknowable, Mystery that we get “lost” in a good way. We simple Are in the Is-ness of it all.
We don’t need answers. We’re beyond right and wrong. Beyond you and me. We sense into an utter connectivity. A Web of Grace.
It is also…unexplainable. Words, not words can encompass this place of Mystery. It is often said that English is so limited in its words that it is impossible to describe things. I would argue that all language lack the words to explain the deepest mysteries. Eventually, the deepest language is…silence.
That’s why we have poets and artists and scientists. To try to explain the unexplainable. The why beneath the why.
When words fail, paint and canvas.
When paint and canvas fail, words.
When answers fail, more questions.
When all else fails, silence.
In the silence is the mystery of it all.
These unanswerable questions lead us not toward knowing, but also toward the wisdom of not knowing. When we let go and trust (asked of us as faith-full), we fall into awe.
We suddenly know we don’t need to know. We are just swept up in how wonderful it is. We are frozen in a moment of awe and wonder for what it is…exactly as it is. We let go of ourselves. We let go of our need to know and understand. We bask in the wonder of it all!
We stand before Mystery and something greater than ourselves. We find ourselves feeling a part of the great mystery. One with the great mystery. One. Together with one another. At peace and at One with the Holy One.
There are no words. We simply know without words, without proofs, without the need to defend. We sense into something that is way deeper than what our intellect can touch.
We simply Know that it is True and it is Good.
May your journey into this new year be filled with great Questions, illuminating Mystery, and unshakable faith in hope, peace, and love. May you be upheld by the strength of Holy Grace. May that mysterious Grace fill your life with little graces that unfold before you and from you as kindness and tenderness. May the Holy One bring you the quiet that heals the heart and soul and…beyond.
Community Church of North Orange & Tully 