Living in the Mystery

Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne: Things that are just on the surface, easy to believe, are not the whole story. There's a deeper, stranger and more satisfying story to be found, both in science and in religion.

John Polkinghorne, had a distinguished career as a Cambridge physicist before also becoming an Anglican priest. His perspective transcends cultural controversies that see science and religion at odds. He uses quantum physics and chaos theory to think about religious mysteries and how the world actually works; from evolution and the afterlife, for example, to how the universe might make space for prayer. (www.speakingoffaith.org)

I will not claim to have anything but a very superficial understanding of quantum physics. So superficial I probably have no "right" to comment on anything a brilliant man like Polkinghorne would say. I'm not saying these things in false humility, they are true, I don't get physics.

Patterns however intrigue me. I love to find patterns or themes in my various readings, personal experiences, etc. I like to “connect the dots” as my co-worker frequently says. So when I heard Polkinghorne mention that things in the physical world can be both/and, such as light can be both wave and particle, it resonated with me. This idea that everything is not simply black and white, either/or, but things can exist both/and was not the only place I had encountered this concept of “holding things in tension.”

Einstein made a famous statement, “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” Mystery is not ignorance or confusion, nor is it a gap in knowledge that is waiting to be filled, or a set of questions awaiting answers. Mystery can be known without being solved. It can be experienced, sensed, felt, appreciated, even loved, without being understood. This may not be easy; it requires a surrender of all willfulness, a risking of self-image and a nurturing of intuition. (Will and Spirit, by Gerald May)

There is tension in holding this deeper understanding of both/and. I want everything laid out clearly. I want to know right from wrong and in many situations right and wrong can be clearly discerned. But as I have personally grown I understand that less and less things fall neatly into the right/wrong or either/or category.

God is calling me to hold more and more things in tension. To live in a mystery in which only He holds the “key.”

Surprisingly I find myself becoming more comfortable in my “uncomfortableness.”
I am becoming more willing and able to rest in the “unknown” and not have all the answers!

Maybe this is faith?
Maybe faith is holding and living in the mystery of God.
I wonder. . .