Accommodating the Full Range of Mysteries

Vinegar Battery, Caleb Charland, 2011

“Events happen to reveal the truth of what our life is about, a truth we try so hard to evade, cancel, or reverse. Yet, is also a given that we will never understand why certain things happen. In fact, the comfort we derive from explanations makes us wonder about the authenticity of our explanations.

Perhaps the need to know is part of the ego’s demand that it be in control. That way of living does not accommodate the full range of mysteries we meet up with in life.

A psychology or religion that explains everything cuts us off from a sense of wonder about the world and from growth in humility about ourselves.

Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic, happily declared his spiritual predicament in this way: ‘I entered I knew not where, and there I stood not knowing: nothing left to know.’ ...meaningful growth comes at the price of pain. Why? That is a mystery, and the fact that there is no satisfying answer is related to the first noble truth of the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of human life. It can only be greeted with a yes, not deconstructed with a reply.”  

~ David Richo, from The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them

Astonishing

"The world—whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering—of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead?—we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world—it is astonishing."

~ Wisława Szymborska, from "The Poet and the World," Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1996

Yosemite HD II from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

See also: McPherson, A. (2014, March 9). Stunning time-lapse video shows rare views of Yosemite. National Geographic Society. 

Unselfed and Decentered by Beauty

Excerpts from "Beauty & Justice," a To The Best of Our Knowledge conversation with Elaine Scarry (Feb. 9, 2014): 

When we speak about beauty sometimes we're talking about the beautiful object itself which could be a child's face, or it could be a beautiful glass vase, or it could be a flower. Sometimes when we talk about beauty what we're talking about is the experience that happens to us when we come into the presence of something beautiful...

I think that we would probably agree with Plato that we're sometimes, by beautiful things, put into contact with a metaphysical realm or maybe one could say with our own best selves or with something greater than ourselves. There's a description that's given by two mid-20th century women philosophers...

Iris Murdoch talks about the fact that she's sitting there being preoccupied by the fact that maybe the world, maybe her colleagues, maybe her friends aren't treating her as well she deserves and then suddenly she sees a beautiful bird lift off the ground, but she could've easily said she suddenly hears a piece of music. And she says,

I undergo an unselfing. Suddenly I move to the periphery of my own world. I'm emptied of self.

Simone Weil, the French mystic said something very similar. She said we undergo a radical decentering, and I use an awkward term for this which is opiated adjacency...There are lots of things in the world that give us acute pleasure. There are also lots of things in the world that make us feel marginal. But there's almost nothing other than beauty that does those two things simultaneously, that gives us acute pleasure at the very moment that it makes us feel marginal and happy to be on the margins, to stand back, to listen to the piece of music and just feel awe at what has been created.

How Little it Takes

Weeping European Beech, Topiary Park, February 9, 2014

Sabbaths 1999, VII
by Wendell Berry, from Given 

Again I resume the long lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

With the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowlyfalling, and is pleased.

Fast Asleep

Sleepwalker
by Craig Minowa (Cloud Cult), from Love

We are your conscience.
We thought we'd tell you,
you've been sleepwalking
through most of your days.

Your eyes are open,
Your body's moving,
Your lips are speaking,
But you're far from awake.

Where is your passion?
Where is your wonder?
Where is your thankfulness?
You put them away.

Time's come to get up,
before you break down.
I know you're on it.

Where is your kid side?
Where is your joyfulness?
Where is your empathy?
Fast asleep.

Where went your moments?
Where went your presence?
Where went your purpose?
Fast asleep.

Time's come to get up,

before you break down.
I know you're on it.

---

See also: Gotta Listen