I'm reading John Shea's Story of God and find his concept of mystery fascinating. He uses Kazantzakis's description of mystery, the luminous interval between two darknesses and takes it one step further, when the reliability of all we have constructed is brought into question, we enter the dimension of Mystery (25).
It's amazing to think that in a world of knowledge, unknowing can contain something positive and fulfilling. Are we just trying to put a good spin on pain and injustice? Are we making light of sickness or poverty or emotional distress? I don't think so. Science bears out the fact that having the ability to find something good in a bad situation actually speeds healing. But this is more. This is discovery, and sometimes we don't really search until our world falls apart with what has proven good enough, and we need to find something better.
Shea speaks at some length about the need for our ready answers and expectations to fail. He says Disenchantment is a traditional and well-established path to the awareness of Mystery...the beginning of mature religious consciousness (28-29).Shea's statement is obvious: I suspect every one of us can look back over the times in our lives when we entered into a new spiritual consciousness, and can track it to some form of disenchantment we experienced.
Mystery. It is not something to be feared, but something to embrace. For it has the power to lead us to new depths.
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