Mystery

I've been away and apologize.  The holidays, the business of work, and much time, focus and effort spent on preparing for and then attending the men's retreat at Wintergreen earlier in January have all pulled me away from "Laying Hold."  But it was well worth it...

"The best is perhaps what we understand the least," said C.S. Lewis.  I've been embracing this idea of late...the idea of mystery in my life.  I am, in most every regard I can think of, a puzzler.  Better yet, a "solver."  I enjoy looking at problems and tearing them apart and piecing them together and, ultimately, understanding them.  I am often distracted or even spun into a cycle of frustration when confronted with an issue or problem that I can't quantify and contain.  I play the "what if" game; visiting and revisiting the same scenario with new and different elements inserted as I try to predict how the outcome might change, for better or for worse.

And I hate not knowing.  My gut reaction to not knowing or misunderstanding something is anger and fear.

Sounds almost scientific, doesn't it?  Apart from the anger, I mean. For me it is almost exclusively social: my interactions with my boss or employees, my relationship with my pastor or my family, my understanding of an account and its problems or opportunities.  Far from science it is much more assessment and, often, preparation.  The real magic always happens "in the room" when live interaction and depth usurp every imagined possibility, replacing it with the truth of experience.

This past week I had the chance to exchange the cold and wet Roanoke Valley winter for a few days of summer sun in Vero Beach, FL.  It was a great time away with the family.  It also afforded me several opportunities to break out the salt fishing gear and wet my heavier-than-usual lines in the surf.  Before we left I spent no small amount of time checking into the local area (Sebastian Inlet, a fishing mecca on the east coast, was less than five miles away from our hotel - a destination well worth researching for the variety of fish one can target) and "gearing up" for the trip.  I found out what kinds of lures I should need, how to tie a bottom rig that might best attract Pompano, when the tides were High, Low or slack...all of the things that might best prepare me for a good catch.

But then I went fishing.

The glory of fishing, you see, is in the mystery of the catch.  The research, preparation and even dreaming of the trip ahead are all vital.  They are all of the things that I can know and understand based on my previous experience and the experience of others.  But in the end I am left with bait or a lure somewhere under the surface of water in an environment that I can't really see or fully understand hoping and praying for a bite.  And when it happens I get to enjoy the fun of bringing the line back in to find out just what I've hooked on the other side.

Mystery.

Not something I'm uninformed about.  Not something that makes me "dumb" for not knowing.  Far to the opposite, I enter prepared and informed and well provisioned.  But there it is: something mysterious...and glorious.  "The best," as Lewis says...

Have you seen the film "Shakespeare in Love?"  It is a fantastic and fanciful journey back into the story of Romeo and Juliet.  Well worth watching.  The movie unfolds as a story inside a story...William Shakespeare is caught in a love affair that must end badly as he struggles to author and ultimately produce the infamous play (complete with its own tragic end).  The producer of the show is a man named Philip Henslowe (played by Geoffrey Rush - probably best known for his role as Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies).  Mr. Henslowe, in a conversation with an investor who is growing deeply concerned about the liklihood of a profitable production ever coming to fruition, offers perhaps the best perspective on mystery, well, ever:

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.


Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.


How remarkably freeing!  And true.  Mystery doesn't change my effort to understand things in my life: my role, my relationships, my hopes.  It's not like I'll stop investing in my 401k and, with a shrug, turn to my wife and say, "I don't know how we'll retire...guess it's just a mystery!" But mystery does offer a strange and comforting hope that my effort, preparation and understanding are both necessary and good, yet ultimately limited.  If Lewis is right, the best things in my life...even the best things about me...are those things I don't yet understand.  The best things for and about me are hidden under the surface of that other world waiting to be discovered and fulfilled when the time is right.