Taking on the mystery is yielding to grace, letting go of all analyses, explanations, ideologies, self-images, images of God, agendas, and expectations. Taking on the mystery is undergoing the finitude of years, hallowing diminishments, and living into the solitude of our own integrity. Taking on the mystery is undergoing the pain of learning that there re no empires favored by the Holy One ... the grief of understanding that there are not theologies favored by the Holy One. Taking on the mystery is acknowledging that we cannot name the mystery, though we try, we cannot claim the mystery, though we do. The mystery names and claims us ...
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.