Mystery and Mirrors

The winds were overwhelming but calming.  The periods of rain were drenching but refreshing.  The brisk air cut threw your skin but awakened the very breath of life.  Standing in its midst was somehow a confrontation with truth.  

The Highlands of Scotland, with all of its history and mysticism, with its struggle for freedom and bloodshed, was one of the most peaceful places I have been.  Isolated by its barren lands yet consumed by its beauty, it was a paradox that touched me deeply.  

How could such bareness and lack of color produce such overwhelming beauty? How can a place engrossed with emptiness be overflowing with an undeniable presence?  

Standing in the Highlands felt like a moment outside of time. 

An invitation into mystery.

We all yearn for the moments that transcend us into a deeper meaning of life.  The moments when we experience the good and beautiful in someone or some thing.  The moments that literally make us lose track of time.   

These moments seem to be dripping in mystery.  For there is not a formula for explaining beauty.  There is not an equation for understanding redemptive suffering.  There is not an explanation for those who love sacrificially.

Nevertheless, in today’s post modern world, it seems that we are losing the wonder of mystery.  The very mention of it is met with skepticism and restraint, or with great disdain and anger, or worse still, apathy.  For it seems that if we can’t explain something, it simply can’t exist. 

I once heard that anxiety can be felt when we realize just how finite we are as human beings.  It comes during the spectrum of moments both large and small, when we face the reality of our own mortality.  In other words, we know that there is a finite time to our experiences, and it is precisely during these moments that we begin to feel anxious, because we know that we don’t have control over it.  Consequently, without control, our lives can suddenly feel cold and barren…fearful and lonely.  The “Highlands” of our souls.

That said, maybe it is precisely at the foot of the barren lands of our loneliness we are invited to find a transcendent presence.  It is when we feel the weight and bareness of our vulnerability we are opened up to its life breathing power.  Once we come face to face with the blistering reality of our finite being we can look out into the beauty of the mystery of love itself.

“There is no sunlight in the poetry of exile. There is only mist, wind, rain, the cry of the curlew and the slow clouds above damp moorland. That is the real Scotland; that is the Scotland whose memory rings the withers of the far-from-home; and, in some way that is mysterious, that is the Scotland that even a stranger learns to love.

-H.V. Morton

I am grateful for the brief moments of mystery like I experienced in the Highlands.  There are many places such as these that serve to be a great reminder.  Yet mystery and the ability to lose sense of time, that is “heaven on earth”, surround me daily.  For example, standing in front of a masterpiece of art.  Watching someone offer self giving love towards someone else.  Witnessing a beautiful sunset and/or sunrise.  

And maybe, just maybe, walking in front of a mirror…although that is still a work in progress.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

-St. Augustine