Sunday July 30, 2023
It's Sunday Morning
“Mystery” is a term that too many of us are uncomfortable with. We aren’t comfortable with living in the unknown - it runs counter to our curiosity. And yet, mystery sits at the core of our humanity.
Rudolph Otto - a German philosopher - wrote of the “mysterium tremendum.” It’s the way we experience the divine, however we understand that, as mystery that leads not to understanding, but to awe.
In the following poem by Robert Frost, the Great Poet reflects on mystery, and the brevity of that experience.
Something to consider, this Sunday Morning.
For Once, then Something
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths - and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
-Robert Frost (1874–1963)