I imagine a beach: white sand as yellow in the sun, unoccupied; blue water stretching beyond the horizon. I imagine the sky is not there and I’m free from the limitations that sight and distance impose, so that the entire cosmos can be seen with its lights and darks and streaks and streams. Though the sky is not there, the clouds remain. Because of the vast distance between the clouds and the cosmos, the clouds appear drastically closer, more like objects with sides than their usual seeming oneness with the sky. Behind me are rolling hills. I am sure that if I climb one I can part the clouds with my hand and touch the cosmos - not to reach beyond it, but into it; beyond the event horizon.
I watch and wonder ‘what ifs’. What if a person created the cosmos: the clouds, the sand, the sea and me? What if a person placed before me a horizon and put limitations on how far my eyes can see; placed on my heart a tether to something just beyond where I’ve gone or ever could go, so that I would always be searching and always be going? What if this person left clues in the stars shooting across the sky, the waves coming in and going out and the sand carried by the wind? So, when I see the stars travelling from somewhere to somewhere, and the waves touch land before sailing out into the mystery and the sand in the wind not knowing where it’s going, I feel a tug on my heart to get up and go.
An aged author and a child; a lover of mystery and a curious mind. The author, rather than writing another novel telling another story, leaves clues for a curious mind. Clues, hidden just well enough that child must look, but not so that the child cannot find. The child loves games and the author does too. With his novels he decides what the characters do and the mystery is only for the reader. But here, the child has a mind of his own so the author prepares one clue at a time. The child enjoys the mystery of what is to come and the author the mystery of what he will do. Though the author knows the ending, he enjoys the journey - because he’s an author and he loves a good story.
My heart is tethered by curiosity to something beyond the mystery, and knowledge is overrated. Knowledge is good, only so far as it propels us deeper into mystery. Theology does not say enough about God. Everyday I reject and then reaffirm this idea, because God reveals Himself to us through scripture, but this remains knowledge about Him and not intimate knowing unless we push beyond. The word spoken is not greater than its speaker. Theology does not reveal to us the fullness of God, but it shows us how to approach Him; knowledge is not the solution to mystery, but it must be the very thing that propels us into mystery - beyond which we find Him.