Mystify
Part 7 of Personify Faith
Introduction
Last week we spoke of what we knew of God—what we could testify to as God’s real presence in our daily lives. Within our lived experience, we have some level of certainty when it comes to the characteristics of God. Sometimes, however, we just simply do not understand the ways of the unfathomable God. This week, we are going to step back from our certainties and dogmas and allow God to mystify us. We are going to lean into mystery and wonder and awe. We are going to allow ourselves to say, “I do not know” and “I do not understand” and “I cannot see a way forward” and recognize that God is in the moments of our mystification. In fact, to be mystified is a spiritual practice because we release our understanding and control of a situation into the hands of God.
We like to control what the Greeks called chronos time. This represents the chronological minutes, hours, and days measured by the movement of the earth. While we cannot control its passing, we do have a sense that we can choose our actions within it. There is another sense of time, however, that involves a surrendering to God. The Greeks called this kairos time—a marking of the movement within our spiritual journey. It is the time in which we recognize the intervention of God in our lives. In their book, Bio-Spirituality, Peter Campbell and Edwin McMahon describe kairos as a “bodily-felt sense for the time within which personal life moves forward” and the “process of deepening within the present moment, being drawn inside the movement of one’s own story.” They advocate for times of focusing on our bodily well-being to connect with our spiritual life. What impacts the spirit can be manifest in our bodies. By stopping our chase of chronos time to focus on kairos time, we can better connect with the mysteries of God.
For God to mystify us, we must practice submission to the ways of God’s world. We lay down our crown as king of our own lives and pick up a yoke to carry alongside of Christ. We no longer know where we are going, but we know who goes with us on the journey. Craig Dykstra puts it this way: “Growth in the life of faith also involves a lifelong, continuing process of encountering and entering into the inexhaustible richness of the mystery of God and of God’s love, ever more deeply and profoundly.” Like treasure seekers, we enter unknowingly into a dark cave with the promise of riches within. To find God, sometimes we need less “enlightenment” and more “endarkenment,” as Barbara Brown Taylor would say. She writes that “new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”
Sometimes we need to turn off the lights and encounter the dark. When we shut down the light of our perceived knowledge to wait in darkness and silence, we allow God to be the only source. We experience what it means to abide in God—to rely completely on God for sustenance, even while not understanding God in our rational minds. So, let us now be open to the mystery of our God.
“O, eternal Trinity, You are a bottomless ocean. The more I throw myself into the ocean, the more I find You, and the more I find You the more I will search. I can never say of You—It is enough.” –Catherine of Siena
Day of Preparation
Opening Prayer
Dear God,
Help us to step back from all we know “about” you to experience you in a new way. Let us be willing to go into the darkness and let mystery abound around us. Allow us to ask deep questions as we stand in awe of your power. Amen.
Scriptural Teachings
One does not need to look far into the Bible to find that our God works in mysterious ways. We must be okay with unknowing the knowable when it comes to God. For example, God is more powerful than we can fathom. From the beginning of the Bible, we see a God whose creative abilities are more than we could possibly understand. The Bible gives us two creation accounts which could leave us with more questions than answers. We can spend all our time trying to determine exactly how God made this or that and at what time and in what way, or we can step back like God did on the 7th day and admire creation and exclaim that it is very good. We may not understand the “how” of creation, but we can choose to respond to the love of God displayed in creation. In Psalm 139, David is astonished by how God created him and wonders at God’s provision for him. Take a moment to read this Psalm.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously,
and lift themselves up against you for evil
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
What mysteries of God are evident in this passage? Are you amazed by the immensity of God? Are you awed by the level of detail God knows about you? Are you given hope by the way God can light our path even in the darkest circumstances? Are you overwhelmed by the abounding love of God? What other emotions does this stir in you?
Sometimes the mystery of God has to do with our wonder at God’s love, but sometimes God does things we just do not understand. In Genesis 22, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Even though we know the outcome, it seems extreme for God to make this command. In Genesis 28, God blesses Jacob in a mysterious dream, with angels ascending and descending a stairway, and later in Genesis 32, God ends up wrestling with Jacob. Jacob makes God offer a blessing again before Jacob releases God. Why do you think these are the ways that God appears to Jacob? Moses encounters God on Mount Sinai, but prior to that in Exodus 4:24, God almost kills Moses, if not for the quick action of his wife, Zipporah, in a very mysterious account inserted in the middle of the larger dealings with Pharaoh. Sometimes God acts in ways that we feel like are uncharacteristic or outside the nature of God. Are there stories from the Bible that do not make sense to you?
Even in God’s holiness we are sometimes in wonder of how things from the Bible could have happened. For example, the opening to John’s Gospel begins with the mysterious introduction about the Word of God and how the Word was with God, but the Word was God. The idea of the trinity is hard to wrap our heads around, as are stories about the transfiguration of Jesus, Jesus’s resurrection, and Jesus’s ascension. Believing in things that our rational brain tells us are not possible is one way we can be intentionally mystified by the power and plan of God. What things in the Bible seem mysterious to you? Do you try to seek answers to your questions or are you comfortable living in the gray area? Why must God, by definition, be mysterious to us?
Wisdom from the Past
It has often been the most powerless that have understood the best the power of God to mystify. Those in power rely on certainty and absolutes to maintain control; however, those on the margins are left to wonder at the possibilities of God. Thus, through the years, women have often been noted for their role as mystics. A mystic, through self-surrender to God, obtains a special unity that often allows a greater sense of truth beyond previous comprehension. Sometimes their special connection to God threatened the ecclesiastical authorities (especially pre-Reformation), because direct communion with the divine by laity was not encouraged by the church.
One of these mystics was Julian of Norwich (1342-1417). She had a series of fifteen visions while suffering from an illness in her late 20s. Even though she did not experience any more visions, she spent the rest of her life contemplating and writing about the visions. She had a deep understanding of divine love. Holding a hazelnut in her hand, she perceived that God made it, loves it, and preserves it. Barbara Brown Taylor, in Altar in the World, explains: “Paying attention to it, she learned how God paid attention to her. Holding it, she learned how God held her.” Julian’s words about the love of God seem common place today, but at the time, many saw God as a distant judge waiting to condemn. She personalized God in a way that was not common at the time. She knew that the life of a believer would not be free from suffering, but there was hope: “If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.” How has God kept you in the same precious love as the circumstances of your life have risen and fallen?
Julian of Norwich was not the only mystic that wrote about divine love and mystery. St. Therese de Lisiex, sometimes known as the “Little Flower,” had a dramatic conversion experience when she was 14 and joined a Carmelite convent the next year. She had a deep connection to God through prayer. She wrote, “The good God does not need years to accomplish His work of love in a soul; one ray from His Heart can, in an instant, make His flower bloom for eternity...” Even on her death bed from tuberculosis at just 24, she proclaimed her deep love for God. Her conversion and life seem mysterious to us today. Have you ever met someone with a dramatic conversion experience? Do you think this still happens today or are we too analytical about everything?
Women were not the only ones, though, that experienced God in the mystery. One of the most famous books about the mystery of God and seeking in the darkness is St. John of the Cross’s book, Dark Night of the Soul. John, after studying as a Jesuit joined the Carmelite Order in the 1560s. He worked with another mystic, Teresa of Avila, to reform the order. This became an unpopular stance among the traditional Carmelites, and he ended up being put in prison for nine months until he could break free. During his imprisonment, he wrote a poem called “Dark Night of the Soul,” and then he later wrote an exposition of the same name about the poem. He believed that we could never really be filled by God until we were emptied of everything else. He wrote that God could not be grasped by human words—even using the Spanish word nada for God. With God, he thought there was “no safe place to settle.” St. John of Cross allowed for God to maintain God’s mystery, and in that, continue to stir awe and wonder within us. Do you find yourself awed by God or do you try to rationally explain everything?
Closing Blessing
Most amazing God, the mystery of your radiance surrounds us.
Like the disciples of Jesus,
we confess our unease with transcendent mystery.
Faced with your splendor, we do not take time
for attentive silence as Jesus did,
but we evade the holy with stammering and busyness—
anything to avoid your power.
We also confess those times when we are at ease with holiness,
absorbed in prayer and thought but so in love with your love
that we neglect those in need.
As Jesus descended into the valley
to work among the poor of the earth,
so direct us to our responsibilities.
Such is the mystery of your love, O God,
which both overwhelms and attracts us.
Have mercy upon us and forgive us.
Free us to love and serve in equal measure. Amen.
Day of Action
Opening Prayer
Dear God,
Guide us today to an action that allows us to let go of our conceptions about you and to experience you in a new way. Give us freedom to have faith like a child—to wonder aloud about the mystery of you and to accept what we cannot understand. Help us to re-center ourselves on you. Amen.
Scriptural Reflection
Begin today by examining the following scripture verses that discuss the mystery of God. Jot down a central thought of each passage.
Acts 1:7
1 Corinthians 15:51-53
Colossians 1:25-27
2 Peter 3:8
What kind of mysteries are left up only for God to know? How do you feel about relinquishing control over these areas?
Call to Action
We generally have a good plan for “knowing” things—we can study the Bible or books, ask questions of pastors or teachers, or listen to podcasts or sermons online. “Unknowing” is much harder. Encountering God afresh without preconceived notions seems almost impossible, but there are ways to put yourself in a position where you can once again be mystified by God’s awesome power. Of course, one of the most common ways to connect to God in this way is prayer. Sometimes we do not know where to start with this type of prayer that is not just a “to-do” list for God. Renita Weems says, “sometimes you have to pray the prayers you can until you can pray the prayer you want.” Consistent practice allows for the in-breaking of the spirit. Another way to pray is through what Simone Weil calls “absolute attention.” We give ourselves over completely so that God can know the concerns of our heart. Another practice that Renita Weems endorses is journaling. She explains that “journaling is a patient form of prayer because it doesn’t require me to make sense, get to the point, or even to have a point.” Instead we take captive the thoughts in our brain by putting them on paper. In doing so, we free our brain for the concerns and direction that God would place there. Looking back through our journals through the years can reveal to us the outcomes of some of God’s mysterious ways as well. How have you found that you best connect to God through prayer?
I sense the mystery of God most on an outdoor evening or early morning. Having a feel for the world in darkness brings out the questions in me. To look at a night sky full of stars is to feel both overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe and seen in our smallness by a loving God. Placing our bare feet on the earth can also connect us to God’s creation in a meaningful way. In Altar in the Word, Barbara Brown Taylor writes that “sometimes we do not know what we know until it comes to us through the soles of our feet, the embrace of a tender lover, or the kindness of a stranger.” I think this is why so many people love walking on the beach, where we can feel the presence of God through the sand on our feet, the sea breeze in our face, and the sound of the roaring waves filling our ears. How have you felt the mystery of God?
There are many ways that we can release the reins we have on life and let God mystify us. Here are some suggested practices for this week. For the final one, Lectio Divina, I have included directions from Upper Room Ministries.
Ponder God’s creation by sitting our walking outside
Use meditation or yoga to center oneself in God’s love and truth
Walk a labyrinth
Seek to connect with God through a daily prayer time
Set your phone alarm to remind you to pray for a specific cause
Journal your prayer requests or simply what is going through your head
Participate in the practice of fasting
Walk outside barefoot
Experience nighttime outdoors
Photograph several items from your backyard to observe the details and contemplate
Visit a sacred or “thin place”
Participate in Lectio Divina
Instructions for Lectio Divina (from Upper Room Ministries)
Phase 1, Lectio (reading/listening)
1) Choose a passage of scripture. Although any passage will do, a psalm, a story about Jesus, or one of the poetic passages from a prophet works very well.
2) Read the passage to yourself twice. Don’t be caught by the literal meaning of the scripture. Rather, listen for the word or phrase that catches your attention.
3) Silently focus on that word or phrase. Repeat it a few times. Allow it to sift through your heart and mind.
Phase 2, Meditatio (pondering)
1) As you continue to focus on your word or phrase, pay attention to the thoughts and feelings it evokes.
2) What images, what thoughts, what memories come to mind?
3) Continue to ask God to speak to you through this word, and listen for the reply.
Phase 3, Oratio (responding)
1) At some point, you may find yourself wanting to reply to God. What desires has your prayer awakened in you?
2) Maybe you have found an area of your life that needs some work.
3) Maybe you are grateful for something and you wish to express that gratitude.
4) Maybe you feel called to a new course of action in your life.
5) Whatever you sense, do not rush the prayer. Continue to wait and listen as God forms your prayer and desire in your heart. Speak of your prayer of desire, longing, or action to God. Continue to list in the silence.
Phase 4, Contemplatio (resting)
1) In this final phase of the prayer, the conversation with God draws to a close. Having heard a word from God and having expressed your response to that word, you now allow yourself to rest in the silence.
2) Allow your mind to settle.
3) When you feel that the prayer has come to an end, express your gratitude to God. This can be as simple as saying “Thank you” or “Amen.”
Closing Blessing
Breath of God,
quiet our hearts,
hush our lips,
open our eyes,
and fill us with holy wonder
as we look to Jesus,
our host, your servant, our Lord. Amen.
Day of Reflection
Opening Prayer
Dear God,
Help us to grow comfortable walking in the dark with you. Allow us to listen carefully for your voice and to be open to the mystery of you. Guide us as we seek our true home. Amen.
Reflection
Begin today by writing about your action experience this week. How did it feel to allow yourself to be mystified?
Modern Perspectives
To engage in the spiritual practice of allowing God to mystify us, we must set out on a journey where we cannot see the destination. Chris Webb identifies this as “hiraeth” or as the “heart’s longing for its one true home.” Webb notes that “hiraeth” was used by a 16th-century Anglican priest named William Morgan when he was translating Psalm 63: 1 into Welsh. This sense of yearning and home-sickness is what drives us in our pursuit of God and why we never truly feel “settled” until we are at rest in God. The problem is that we are used to navigating by what we see and know, not by the unknown. Thus, we remain stuck—afraid to venture on because we have not been taught how to navigate the dark places. Barbara Brown Taylor says it best: “How do we develop the courage to walk in the dark if we are never asked to practice?”
Once I took a group of students to a unique experience in Atlanta, Georgia called Dialog in the Dark. The premise was to help people without vision problems understand what it was like to be blind. Each participant was led by a blind guide through a series of different simulated environments such as a grocery store, a city street, and even a boat ride that were completely in the dark. It was a disorienting and helpless feeling not to know where you were or where to go. We had to rely solely on listening to the voice of our guide to navigate the obstacles in our path and find our way out. The interesting part was that we never actually saw our guide as he joined us once we were already in the dark. We had to trust this one small unknown voice and follow it faithfully to the finish. I can honestly say that I was terrible at using my other senses, but it is something that I have continued to try to improve upon. I enjoy telling my kids to turn out the flashlight when we are outside after dark, and I have tried to help them learn to navigate by their night vision. I ask them to trust me, just as God has asked us to trust God.
We will not necessarily just be in physical darkness, sometimes the suffering of the world puts us in a dark place even on the most beautiful and sunny of days. Sometimes we feel something deep in our body before we perceive it with our mind. Walter Wink gives this example: “We are so interconnected with all of life that we cannot help being touched by the pain of all that suffers…We are literally inundated with news of suffering around the globe, and it cannot but affect us…We human beings are far too frail and tiny to bear all this pain. The solution is not avoidance, however. Refusal to read the papers or listen to the news is no protection. I am convinced that our solidarity with all of life is somatic and that we sense the universal suffering whether we wish to or not.” We must let this suffering pass through us for to God to bear. I appreciate his sense that we are all interconnected and can experience grief and trauma collectively. Because it is so much for us to carry, we must rely upon God to help us. That is why Barbara Brown Taylor insists: “…the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.” Sometimes we focus too much on trying to have all our questions about God answered or a perfect retort to any challenge to the Bible or all the answers right on our Bible Study without knowing God any better. Sometimes in the darkness, we can feel things in our bodies that we might ignore in the light of day. In the darkness, we may be more open to the still, small voice of God, saying, “Come, follow me. You are safe with me. This is the way home.”
As an interesting conclusion to our Dialog in the Dark experience, our group was hanging around outside the exhibit hall afterward having dinner in a park and playing Frisbee when we saw our guide leaving work for the day. He was overall a pretty intimidating figure, with his large frame, multiple piercings, and tattoos. It was the perfect gut-check on the assumptions we might have made about this man if we would have seen him with our eyes first. One of the youth remarked that she would have been scared of him if they met on the street, but that since she met him in darkness, and knew the inside of him, she was not afraid. We all learned a powerful lesson about the judgments we make about our fellow children of God. Sometimes we can learn important things in the darkness.
When we are in the darkness, the light of God can come to us in ways that are unexpected. Author Sarah Bessey offers this closing prayer: “I pray that you would experience the weirdness of the divine love in ways that leave you disoriented. I pray that you would be caught off guard when God meets you outside of the boxes you have constructed and yet remains in the places you vacated. I pray you will bless the box you once needed for God and that you will treat it tenderly even as you leave it behind you.” God is so much bigger than any box we could put God in.
Closing Blessing
The truly remarkable transformation is not the one from
unbelief to belief
nor from
despair to hope.
The truly remarkable (and frightening) transformation is from
Dogma to wonder
from
belief to awe.
Today awe returned.
--Renita Weems
Sources
The Worship Sourcebook (Closing Blessings)
Listening for God by Renita Weems
Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor
Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor
The Story of Christianity, Volume I by Justo Gonzalez
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
God Soaked Life: Discovering a Kingdom Spirituality by Chris Webb
Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God by Sarah Bessey
Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross
The Mystery of God and Suffering: Lament, Trust, and Awe by Kenneth Overberg
Bio-Spirituality: Focusing as a Way to Grow by Peter Campbell and Edwin McMahon
Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices by Craig Dykstra
https://www.littleflower.org/therese/words-of-st-therese/love-of-god/
https://devozine.upperroom.org/articles/lectio-divina-listening-to-god/