Mystery

For Douglas, Jessica, Corinne & David

Bearing Testimony
In my religious tradition, the practice of sharing what you believe with others is called “bearing testimony”; and it’s a pretty big deal inside Mormonism. We even have a designated “testimony meeting” held on the first Sunday of every month, when anyone in the congregation can stand and tell the rest what they believe. Testimony bearing also happens in less formal settings.  Kids share testimonies around a crackling fire at youth camps, parents and grandparents may bear a brief testimony around the dinner table, on road trips, or at bedtime.

I’ve never been able to remember if the spelling of the word used for sharing a testimony is the “b-e-a-r” version or the “b-a-r-e” version. I have to look it up every time! So, I’m going to take special care of the difference this time. The definition of “b-e-a-r” is to “carry the weight of; support”. For example, witnesses bear testimony to support truth claims important to the details of a trial. When someone bears testimony about their religious beliefs, they share what they’ve personally witnessed to support the truth claims of their religion. So! It is “b-e-a-r” te stimony. (This is also the homophone of the tall, fuzzy, sometimes cuddly, sometimes terrifying animal.) The other spelling, “b-a-r-e” means “to uncover and expose to view”, as in naked rumps and nudes. So, I’ve been wondering…what if we were to “b-a-r-e” a testimony? What if sharing what we believed was the process of uncovering our own truth? What if we were to expose to view something previously un-viewed in ourselves, when we bare our testimony? Rather than bear the weight of someone else’s truth? Decades of carrying the weight of Mormon beliefs has made me strong in some ways; truly. But to be frank, it has also made me really, really tired. And maybe partly from being flat out exhausted, something deep and unrefined has been un-covered in me recently. What follows, is exposing to view the Truths my soul lives among, the
b-a-r-e version of baring my testimony.  Maybe for the first time.

Spoiler
My spiritual identity has outgrown the religious box into which it was born. As Jesus of Nazareth called some to do, I have left my father’s house and cleaved unto another. It turns out, the “another” in this case is my-Self. My-Self is now my source of comfort in fear, my peace in loneliness and the author of my growth. I no longer give power to others to determine the limits or boundaries around what is True for me. To be sure, the othered-guidance of the religion of my childhood; helpful, kind and supportive, was very important in the first half of my life. But well beyond my youth, my religion’s bartering of belonging trespassed into my adulthood. Being helped started to feel like being told and support came at a higher and higher price. The relevance of religious authority was inbred into my beliefs through fear.  Until!  The weight of supporting other’s beliefs broke something inside me.  I was born into an agency for which there was no price. I fell freely from the tight rope on which I’d been compelled to balance all my life, and do you know what caught me?  The innate, undeniable, never-to-be-unseen beauty of the world from which I was created!

What follows is a poetic version of what happened in my brain when this great breaking-awakening took place. If you’d like to talk about it in regular English, let’s go to lunch!

Boundless Love
Separated from the Mother’s meaning at birth, I was raised for the Father’s purpose-
Left alone to paint color into sketches of Love.
Absent of rank so wanting for choice, I painted reflections of love in daughter - sister - friend - wife – mother.
Quite beautiful-
safe,
and quiet,
and small.
Love assigned
Love realized
Love achieved.

Then the ocean called out and the path was washed clean. The sky whispered open, and a curious tune began to play.
The Mother’s roots took hold, and she scooped me up into a Tree She grew for me.
Swing! and Play!, cheered the Mother. Laugh! Let go! Climb and See!
“Yes, this is love”, said the Tree. “Remember?”
Love unbound,
Love unearned,
Love born of meaning, outside of purpose.

I marveled at the Tree, and dreamt of a life-time safe in Its branches. But out of bounds this Love was lonely, and I cowered in shame. I leapt from the heights of Its hopeful shade and hid Its meaning inside purpose for a part of a life-time.

But the Tree had let go of a Mother-seed, and it was planted safe and deep.
Reflecting off the surface of this unbound Love,
Light reached down, searching for me.
And in the darkness, She began to grow.
She
Grew
and She waited
And She grew
and waited
until
She grew through cracks and clefts and fractures and
mighty purpose trembled and spilled and crumbled to the ground.
I stood disrobed, naked and bare-
empty,
alone.
I cried for a part of a life-time.

All grown-up now, She came out of hiding to hold me.
And me became She and I became Her.
We were re-born to Mother’s Meaning, together.
I am blank and She is beautiful,
I am untethered and She is connected,
I am seen and She is set free.
I’ve come home to my-Self, and the only thing left to do
is Live.

The Gist of It All - Maybe all of that could accurately be described as my mid-life crisis. Brene Brown prefers the word unraveling to crisis.  That rings true for me too. Carl Jung held mid-life as the key to self-awareness. I relate to that as well. The mighty “She” re-born out of the ego-rubble is the awareness of a perfectly powerful self. Ted Lasso’s Dr. Sharon has The Middle Passage, From Misery to Meaning by James Hollis on her coffee table.  The title is very apt, and I found the book very helpful. Richard Rohr teaches the importance of moving from first half of life thinking into second half of life thinking. Look, at me! I’m an adult now! I can balance with both hands! I hold belonging to others in one and belonging to self in the other. I’m no longer compelled to betray my-Self to make belonging to another more certain. Esther Perel says accepting the paradox of our need to belong to others and to ourselves is to understand the paradoxical oneness of our being human.

Re-Creating The Mystery of God - After a few years of exploring my-Self-based identity, today I might describe myself in religious terms as a Zealous Agnostic.  For now, anyway. Basically, that means I don’t know if God exists, but more importantly, I think it’s imperative that I know that I don’t know. I used to think my tenacious, rather detailed and certain belief in God proved the strength of my religious faith. But now I see that the acceptance of uncertainty is the courage that enables my faith. I don’t feel that my spirituality or my faith is a sign of devotion to someone else’s Truth. I’d rather call that loyalty. My faith as my not-knowing-for-sureness, as my un-certainty, as the great mystery—- is the seed of my imagination, of my curiosity and creativity; which all lead me to hope and grow and progress. Not-knowing something leads me to do the kinds of things that makes knowing something more likely. I can’t afford to be certain, or I’d lose my faith, my hope, my creative power, my-Self. It’s a paradox, I guess.
The way I figure it, A) a Creator sent me away with the fundamental mystery of not knowing where I came from. This unknowing leads to a desire to know, and this motivates my learning and growth. The Creator themself set my growth in motion by not providing me all the information. Or B), Human brains evolved from energy over millions and millions of years to understand how to make something from nothing.  Every tiny step of learning inspired more curiosity that inspired more learning. Either way, spark of creation or no spark of creation, the only way I can calculate my Truth, is to accept the paradoxical oneness of facts and mystery. One is necessary for the existence of the other.  
According to the Taoist philosophy of Yin Yang, the female yin is passive and receptive, while the male yang is active and expansive. There is a harmonizing of spiritual exploration worlds apart in the symbolism of Eve the yin, as the one to eat the fruit and “surely die”. It is not her foolishness, weakness or impulsivity that brought humanity into consciousness and agency.  Rather, it was Eve’s acceptance of her last breath that breathed the first breath into Adam.  Surely, the Biblical allegory’s symbolism as traditionally presented is not the Creator’s explanation of the lessness of women, but the justification of one gender taking power from the other by disregarding the unity of opposites. Unity depends on the respected duality of the opposites, or the stability created by the tension between them. Upward cannot exist unless there is a downward; hot would not be hot without cold.  Male is not male without female. Both of the others exist because the opposite is necessary for the existence of the other. There is a oneness between them.  As a Zealous Agnostic, I believe the result of an imbalance between mystery and certainty is needless suffering.

Why all this not-knowing, now?
Christian mystics have been talking about the Great Mystery of God and the importance of not knowing for centuries. I’ve been alive for barely the better part of a century. Why didn’t I know that? Because it was important that I believed in a certainty about God because it was important to my religion. It was important that I was certain about my religion because it was important to my people. And belonging to my people was critical because that was the only way I understood my being as a human.
Until it wasn’t.
Now in the second half of life, I understand that as important as knowing was to my childhood; not-knowing is critical to my-Self. And agency over my-Self is critical to my growth.
All this has substantially changed the way I think about the world. Actually, it has changed the way I think about myself in the world and that has changed the universe in which I float. I’m wondering anew about what is good for me and what is actually harmful to me. I’m reconsidering what is right and what is wrong and what is really wrong about the concept of “right & wrong”. I’m exploring the environment in which I was taught to be human and I’m making friends with the parts of me that thought I hadn’t earned enough “ness” to justify my human-ness. I’m reorganizing my hopes and dreams.
As I was taught in Mormonism, I still believe my purpose on this planet is to grow; but not along an infinite, linear path issued by the religion of my youth, but rather in any damn direction I choose. At any pace, for any time, in any color, in any language, in any form, and making any number of infinite adjustments along the way.  I no longer heed a call to repent and do better; but rather, I embrace an eternal cycle of woundedness and healing through radical acceptance of myself and others. Exactly as we are.  That acceptance empowers me with endless expressions of beauty; and I just can’t help but grow. 

My Love’s Blessing For Yours
May the purpose you taste be in the sweet and complex flavors of love.
May you be touched by the meaning in the many adventures of your life.
May you breathe in the peace of knowing you have nowhere else to go, no one else to be,
and nothing else to discover
but the beauty you already are.
May your heart see a path so distant and hear a tune so curious, that it sings a new song,
Unknown to the universe.