Encountering Mystery

As I readjust to urban living, I try to remember to take time to get out of the city and into the wild things, as a way to feed my soul. A few weeks ago, I took a drive up through the Skagit Valley, north of Seattle and into some of the richest farmland in the country. Late in the afternoon, I stopped at a little preserve to watch the immense flocks of snow geese that were wintering in the valley. 

As I walked through the preserve, with a vast field of geese on one side and a creek on the other, just as the sun was setting, I felt myself ushered into the presence of mystery. I wanted to take a picture or a video of what I was experiencing, but I realized that nothing, absolutely nothing—not even my words—could capture the mystery of life that was unfolding around me. The sound of the rustling grass and the constant honking of a hundred geese and the wind reverberating in the valley. The bald eagle perched above us, ever watchful, and the hawk swooping through the grass. The wind in my hair, the thick mud under my feet, and the brilliant colors of the setting sun. The vast dome of cloud swept sky above and around me. And still no words were sufficient.

I wonder if, in the end, all our theologizing and all our church liturgies are just that—pale attempts to capture the ineffable mystery of the human encounter with God, with the divine. No church building, no liturgical celebration, no library of theology will ever be able to fully capture the Great Mystery. God will never fit into our boxes or our theories or our ideas.  

And yet, while I could never capture what I experienced in the wild places that day, I still hold on to the pictures and the memory and the inadequate words. Because they remind me of the mystery. In the end, in our theology and our worship services, perhaps that is what we are doing. We are reminding ourselves of the Great Mystery, straining to catch a glimpse of it.