“This is of course the ultimate temptation of Christianity! To say that Christ has locked all the doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved—while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.”
—-Thomas Merton
None of us, I suppose, have very big pockets. There is a limit, then, to what we can carry along. And the things we choose can’t take up much room. Preference is given to the concise, the economical, the sturdy. The bulky, fragile, fussy and complicated need not apply. Small, smooth stones are in. Mysteries are out. Certainties are easy to pocket. Ambiguities take up way too much space. Little wonder that Christianity has fallen captive to the stony economy of certitude. It’s easier that way — all those clear and circumscribing answers that delimit wonder and truncate questions.But why, then — if the Evangelists of scripture are to be believed — would Jesus make such heavy use of metaphor and parable that defy dogmatic reduction in service to prodding curiosity; lengthy chewing as opposed to easy swallowing? Why did Jesus work so hard to push the envelope rather than licking the adhesive to seal it closed?
David Wilcox, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, has a new song that confesses, “everything I know, I think.” Which is to acknowledge the tentativeness that tempers all of our supposed “knowing.” We conclude, we go out on a limb, we stake our claim…but at the bottom it’s finally supposition. It’s a best guess…at best.
If we were to take seriously the biblical definition of faith — “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” — couldn’t we have the humility to acknowledge the imperfection, or at least the incompleteness, of those very hopes and convictions? Given our incapacity for bona fide certitude, can’t we give ourselves and each other permission to protect the space for mystery? As simplifying as it might be, it is ultimately dispiriting to think I might have something — anything — so large and ultimate and salvific boxed, contained and “figured out.” Stand beneath a starlit sky and dare to say, “I get it.” Watch the waves at the beach roll in undulating fury and claim to comprehend it. Stand on a mountaintop and gaze at the vista and pretend to take it all in. Gaze into eyes of any human being, be it spouse, sibling or total stranger from across town or across the globe, and claim anything more than marvelous but finally unfathomable inscrutability. I’ll call you seriously deluded. I’m grateful for the gift of what I need to know, but dare not presume it to be all there is to know. Such is the ultimate hubris. Surely it’s all larger and more amazing and mysterious than can fit in my head…or soul.
And so I’ve scissored off the bottoms of my pockets. If it can be contained there, it’s too small. I treasure what I’ve learned — or at least what I think I understand and have come to believe — but I treasure in equal measure the breathtaking profundity and life creating immensity too large for me to fathom. Give me the messy complexity of ambiguity and possibility; the the joy of that much-maligned “mystery.” Give me wonder, what David James Duncan defines as “unknowing experienced as pleasure." Give me the “mystery of the freedom of divine mercy” that is surely deeper and rounder than my capacity to understand it.
Give me, in other words, a God who is big enough to take seriously, rather than one tidy enough — two-dimensionally transparent enough — to fit in the palm of my hand, or oily enough to fuel my prejudice...
...That I might sidestep the “intolerable flippancy of the saved.” Give me, to beg it another way, bigger pockets.
May we all be so fortunate, so capacious,
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