The Great Silence

Sometimes I feel like my life is too full of mystery, of silence, of unknowing. I’m sure that mystery if a good thing – a part of life – but at the same time, you don’t want it taking over your life and turning it into some sort of creepy swamp filled with unidentifiable wildlife.

Not all mystery is bad; when dealing with the Divine, for example, you really don’t want to know everything. Despite my general aversion to disorientation, I think I’m getting used to letting God be in the driver’s seat…well, more like a really loud and belligerent front-seat passenger. I’m starting to embrace the mystery of God’s unplottable plan for my life. In the beginning, it was a small adjustment that totally derailed the train that is my journey…or anyway, redirected it. I was planning to go off and study some sort of philosophy of mental illness and, instead, I went to theology school. Trust me: they are not basically the same. At the time, it wasn’t totally a mystery: I did experience a very clear command. The point is what still escapes me. Why did God send me theology school, exactly? One step at a time right? Step one: admitting you are powerless, or something.

It is as if…imagine looking up and seeing a blue light streaming down on you, rays drenching your face. A white dove appears in the midst of it, coming down toward you, seeming to alight on you (because, clearly, there’s no representation of the Holy Spirit other than a dove). A blue mist-like light fills the room, like a film obscuring everything behind it. You can feel it on your face, in your hands, and it’s like a light curtain, soft yet palpable, something you can reach out and touch. You can put your hands under it and lift it up, see behind it at the bottom, but if you try and raise it too high – try and see more of what lies behind it – it slips through your fingers. That’s what mystery is like: thus far shall you see, and no farther. I can believe that that’s good mystery.

But I don’t think all the mystery of my life is good; some of it feels downright oppressive. There are things I wish I could talk about but that I can’t say, and sometimes I feel like parts of my life are full of white cobwebs, a knotted film covering up and hiding and trapping things about me inside of it, made up of every time I’ve dodged a question or left something out or been creative with the truth, trying to make sure it’s impossible to see the things I’ve spun around and kept closed within. I do a pretty good job of appearing completely transparent and open, but really that just misdirects people away from the idea that there might be things I’m not saying. It makes me feel safer, less vulnerable. But at the same time, it’s really hard knowing there’s so much pain I can’t express, so much truth that I can’t share, that there are things no one knows. On the one hand, there are things I had to promise not to say in order to pursue justice or whatever. But on the other hand, I also feel like it wouldn’t be at all fair to tell anyone anyway, because it isn’t really my right to make people listen to anything that might make them hurt somehow, not that I really expect my life has that much impact. I can’t risk doing that to the people I care about.

So I live in my little mystery world, mystery girl. I wonder if I could get some kind of superhero outfit? I’d totally want it to be black and purple, with a cape, and maybe some impressive boots.