This is Good

Sometimes you come across things that just ring true.  And since this also something that I have been learning about my own faith - to embrace the mystery - and love and believe and hope in spite of and because of it, I wanted to share this article.

"I'm Right, And You're Wrong" by Dan Miller
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.  He to whom this ‘emotion’ is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder, or stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.”  Albert Einstein 

In today’s world it seems we want to remove the mysterious. We all want “evidence” and we want to be “right.”  In religious and political circles we’ve abandoned civility for the sake of proving who is “right” and who is “wrong.”  Richard Rohr says he doesn’t recall Jesus ever saying “This is my commandment: thou shalt be right.”  The amazing arrogance of people today to claim the truth creates walls, wars, and wailing. 

Where is the embrace of the mysterious?  When asked which is the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus replied:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:36-40) 

Does loving our neighbor require that we first prove who is right?  Does standing in awe at the sunset require that we first argue about color refraction?  If I am in Venice, Florida and pull into a service station, do I demand proof that what comes out of the hose is gasoline before I pump it into the tank of my beautiful car? 

Faith, by definition, requires walking ahead without clear “evidence or proof” that what we believe will happen.  If we remove faith and the mysterious from our lives, we are not reaching for our ultimate best; rather, we have deteriorated into mechanized robots — or as Einstein says, “as good as dead.”