Skip to main content

mystics

This is a church in Point Claire right on the St. Laurence River.

mystic - n. a follower or an expounder of a mystical way of life.

mystical - adj. 1. having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither appparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence. 2. of, relating to, or resulting from an individual's direct communion with God or ultimate reality.

Dean said, "You are such a mystic," to me this weekend. I took it as a compliment, as I try to take most things that people say to me, even phrases like, "You are odd," and "Did you mean to do that?" But then I looked at the last few listings under the definition of "mystic" and they are: "unintelligible or cryptic." Hmmm. I don't like to be unintelligible. I suppose one of the most frustrating things is to be misunderstood. I said something to a friend last night and they totally misunderstood my intention and were offended by it. Oops. Fortunately, we know each other well enough that she brought it to my attention quite quickly and we were able to clear it up and laugh about how silly and sensitive and moody we were being. But still, misunderstandings suck. Most people will not give you the benefit of the doubt, they will just walk away and think bad and sometimes inaccurate things about you without giving you a chance to explain yourself. That's just not fair nor fun.

I guess God knows very well what it is like to be misunderstood and misrepresented and misinterpreted and mistaken for someone or something else. I have done it to him as have most people I know. I love understanding things, but I love mystery as well and when you are talking about human beings, there is always a lot of mystery involved. Relationships are not a science and too often I hear people express the desire to be able to disect and understand God before they believe in him or get to know him. Sorry, it does not work that way. Part of the beauty of relationship is the mystery and wonder of it and I wouldn't have it any other way. Let me be a beholder and wonderer of mystery instead of a judger and critic with what few and limited observations I have.

mystic - n. 4.c. inducing a feeling of awe or wonder.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more