MYSTERY AND WONDER

We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.

Annie Dillard

Driven by a desire to be completely liberated from the cultural provincialism of the American south, where I was born and spent my early years, I have dedicated much of my life to the pursuit of knowledge.  Seldom, if ever, have I questioned the metaphorical truth of Shakespeare's observation in Henry VI that "ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven . . . "

Now, however, as I approach the end of my seventh decade, I'm less inclined to see ignorance and knowledge as some kind of binary choice.  Ignorance and knowledge can only be intelligently discussed in relative terms, and they usually walk hand in hand throughout our lives.  Regardless of one's level of education, what one knows is always dwarfed by what one does not know.  Our most profound questions always seem hydra-headed; slay one and two more will arise in its place.  Perhaps Plato's observation still holds true: "The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."

And consider this:  In his recent book—The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality—science historian and writer Richard Panek states that only four percent of the universe consists of matter that makes up you, me, the earth, the stars, the planets, and the galaxies, everything within the ambit of our current knowledge.  The remaining ninety-six percent, referred to by cosmologists as dark matter and dark energy, is unknown.  What's even more stunning, many of the world's most prominent scientists believe that it will continue to remain unknown.

In short—with all of our scientific advancements, with all of our technological discoveries, with all of our penetrations into the worlds of quantum physics—we know only a small fraction of the universe in which we spin our lives.  What we know is wrapped in the larger mystery of what we do not know and may never know.

Set forth below are some interesting observations on the the subject of learning and knowledge on the one hand, versus mystery and wonder on the other.  I have punctuated these quotes with abstract photos in which I have attempted to capture at least a hint of some of the mystery of which I speak.  With the exception of the header photo, all of these images were created by panning my camera at slow shutter speeds across man-made lights against dark backgrounds.  Limited light against a background of infinite darkness seems to be an appropriate metaphor for our place in this mysterious universe.

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery.  There is always more mystery.

Anais Nin

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

Henry Miller

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Charles Dickens

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection, is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days if fatal to human life.

Lewis Mumford

Mystery is a resource, like coal or gold, and its preservation if a fine thing.

Tom Cahill

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.

Anne Lamott 

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

Henry Miller

The approach of a man's life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery.  Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive.  The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember.  The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?

Wendell Berry

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.  He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead.

Albert Einstein 

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

Dag Hammarskjold 

The final mystery is oneself.
Oscar Wilde

RING OUT THE FALSE, RING IN THE TRUE

Celebration

                            Ring out the old, ring in the new,

                            Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

                            The year is going, let him go;

                            Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Tennyson

                              

Once again, we come to the threshold of a new year, the time-honored transitional point where we are expected to pause, consider our shortcomings, and institute new resolutions designed to insure that we reach the end of the year with the perfection of Greek gods. Studies have shown, however, that the vast majority of New Year's resolutions are soon abandoned.  Oscar Wilde once opined that "good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account."  In a similar vein,  Mark Twain quipped:

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath.  Today, we are a pious and exemplary community.  Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings shorter than ever.

Perhaps it is a failure of character on my part, but I have seldom made New Year's resolutions.  The reason is quite simple:  If I need a cultural tradition or a calendar date to set me on the right path, it's highly unlikely that I will remain committed to that path.  I am not inclined, however, to be a complete cynic on this New Year's Day, so, in the spirit of joining the festival of resolution makers, I have decided to take a little resolution advice from the essayist John Burroughs and my old reliable friend, Mr. Tennyson.  Burroughs once stated that the only resolution he ever made and intended to keep was simply "to rise  above the little things," and Tennyson suggested that the best we can do is to simply "ring out the false" and "ring in the true."

Can you imagine what a wonderful world it would be if everyone could just rise above the little things in the coming year, eliminate everything that is false, and ring the bells of truth with every word and every action?  That is what I am going to try to accomplish in the coming year in my little corner of the world.  I would like to rise increasingly above the petty things that contribute nothing to either my well-being or the happiness of the world.  I would also like to intensify the life-long task of eradicating any parts of my life that seem false or inauthentic.  With luck, I will be able to ring out everything that is not truly believed in the little "rag and bone shop" of my heart.  With hope, I will be able to ring in only that which is true.

A HAPPY AND PEACEFUL NEW YEAR TO ALL!

PLAY AS A PATHWAY

"Play is the poetry of the human being."
Jean Paul Sartre

Play has fascinating dynamics; start the process and you never know where it will lead.  In my last posting, for example, I played with the format, design, and color of my blog to illustrate the possibilities of changing the ways in which we both see things and create  things. That posting prompted my friend, Bonnie, over at The Original Art Studio, to create several word games, using an interesting tool named Wordle.  Each word game presents  colorfully scrambled words that can be unscrambled by the reader to discover a wonderful quote of great wisdom.

These little word puzzles have already introduced us to the wisdom of Jung, Nietzsche, Twain, and Buddha.  On top of this, we have been introduced to the creative possibilities of Wordle, which, incidentally, was used to create the header to this posting.

The point that I am making is simply this:  Play can be so much more that just a venue for fun.  It can be a pathway to wisdom, which is critical to our growth as individuals; it can be a pathway to improvisation, which has always been a key to human survival and evolution; it can be a pathway to creativity, which is the wellspring from which all art and innovation emerges; and it can be a pathway to the spiritual realm, where we can discover our place in the great mystery of things.

Listen to what others have said and you will see that play is not only fun and useful in our lives -- it is necessary!

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.  The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."

Carl Jung 

"Very often the effort men put into activities that seem completely useless turns out to be extremely important in ways not one could foresee.  Play has always been the mainstream of culture."

Italo Calvino


"Play is the exultation of the possible."

Martin Buber

"There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and smile."

Edward Hoagland 

"It's a happy talent to know how to play."

Emerson 

"Almost all creativity involves purposeful play."

Abraham Maslow

"What work I have done I have done because it has been play."

Mark Twain 

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

Plato 

"The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion.  He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."

Buddha

"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play." 

Heraclitus

"Play is the highest form of research."

"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential.  Hence the remarkable fact that many inventions had their birth as toys."

Albert Einstein

"The true object of all human life is play.  Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground."

C. K. Chesterton

"I played with an idea, and grew willful;
 tossed it into the air; transformed it;
 let it escape and recaptured it;
 made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox."

Oscar Wilde

"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing."

George Bernard Shaw

"Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf."

Rabindranath Tagore

This is a photograph that I took in Obidos, Portugal.
It reminds me of the constant need to play with the colors, shapes, and forms of life.
It reminds me of the need for variety --
diagonals to contrast with verticals and horizontals,
soft forms to contrast with the hard forms,
low intensity to contrast with high intensity,
warm colors to contrast with cool colors --
in life as in art.

NOTHING BUT BLUEBIRDS

"The bluebird carries the sky on his back."

Thoreau

On almost any summer evening, usually after the sun falls behind the trees, the dance of the bluebirds begins in my backyard.  The seven photos in this posting were taken at the dance just two days ago.  

It was a lovely little courting scene.  The male was the first to arrive at the finial of a garden structure. Moments later, the female joined him, but made it clear that she was looking for something more than just a social visit.  A nice dinner, maybe?  At that point, the male left for a few minutes and returned with a fresh spider.  The very sight of the offering drove the female into a state of ecstasy, but the male was not prepared to deliver until things calmed down a bit. After a moment of reflection, however, he turned and dropped spider into the expectant beak of the female.  As soon as the tasty morsel was devoured, the female flitted off to some other destination, presumably checking out other suitors, while the male, now appearing somewhat desolate, found solitude in a nearby willow.  Things will work out, of course; they do every spring.

"If there is not response in you to the awakening of nature -- if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you -- know that the morning and spring of your life are past.  Thus may you feel your pulse."

Thoreau 

". . . over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and than never happen, of things that are not and that should be."

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying: An Observation

And so remember this, 

Life is no abyss,

Somewhere there's a bluebird 

of happiness.

Life is sweet, tender and complete,

When you find the bluebird

of happiness.

Bluebird of Happiness, lyrics by Edward

Heyman and Harry Parr Davies

Blue skies Smiling at me

Nothing but blue skies do I see

Bluebirds Singing a song

Nothing but bluebirds All day long.

Irving Berlin, Blue Skies 

"Full of innocent vivacity, warbling its ever pleasing notes, and familiar as any bird can be in its natural freedom, it is one of the most agreeable of our feathered favorites.  The pure azure of its mantel, and the glow of its breast, render it conspicuous, as it flits through the orchards and gardens, crosses the fields or meadows, or hops along the roadside."

John James Audubon