Great Mystery

What is your favorite name for God? (There are those who say "God" is just a title!)

One of the names used by some Native American tribes is best translated as "Great Mystery." I like that. For one thing, it keeps us humble. After all, how much do we really know about God? Or life, for that matter. I, for example, do not understand electricity at all, even though I use it every day. It is a great mystery to me. As am I to myself. And as are people, including my mother, who you would think I know pretty well. But still, when it comes right down to it, she is a great mystery. I know so little of what goes on in the secret depths of her heart, or who she really is to many other people. I could say the same thing about any one I know.

The Great Mystery that is God dwells, it seems to me, at the heart of every one and every thing, including the whole universe. Whenever you stop to really examine, or think about, or ponder anything very closely, you find mystery. Or at least, I do. There is the mystery of light on rocks. Of aisles of pine needles in a forest leading into the dim unknown. Of the way the sun colors the water when it sets, and does so differently every single night. There is the mystery of color, and how we perceive it, and how it affects us, even physically. I could go on and on.

When I am mindful of the mysterious depths of people, creatures, and things, my sense of wonder steps to the forefront, and my judgments and labels take a back seat. (whew!) It is easy to be humble when I realize, for instance, that I have never really met anyone, even those close to me. I have only met and relate to my impressions and interpretation and ideas about them, based on my experience of them, and perhaps some hearsay thrown in. But the whole person, however familiar, in all the depth and mystery of his/her being from the moment of conception until death--- is mostly a great mystery. And anything I think about them is at best only partly true.

Then how could it not be true that the Source and Creator and Sustainer of this marvelous, mysterious universe and everything in it is also not a Great Mystery? I find it wonderfully calming to just rest in Great Mystery, and let go of trying to figure it out or define it. I relax as I realize that Life is mysterious in a myriad ways. Many of my questions about it will never be answered. And that's okay. I can give my mind a vacation now and then and just BE in The Mystery.