Knowing
In the woods, I greet things I know. I am proud to say I can identify black cohosh, bellwort, spring beauty, hepatica. I can tell the difference between squirrel corn and dutchman's britches. Jack in the pulpit, wild geranium are known to me. Basics plants, but a joy to recognize.
Yet, there is so much I do not know. So many shapes, sizes of green flora I do not know. The teeming life in the swamp: what is there?
Nor, do I realize, do I want to know it all. To know can be to dissect. It can become tamed, familiar, and thus passed by. There can be a distance because it is labeled.
To not know is to let there be a wonder, a mystery. There is a different way of knowing than a name or a label, or of piecing together the bark is such-and-such and so-and-so. A knowing that traces the contours of green, that delights in the shape and edging. A knowing that can tell the different shades of green between this and that.
We are blessed to know God. We name his attributes: compassionate, eternal, omniscient. We love his names: Shepherd, Bread of Life, Morning Star. But let us know in mystery as well, where we go beyond names and labels. We know his compassion because we have seen his tender hand, we can trace his compassion throughout the threads of today in a way that is beyond "labels." We say God is speaking, but we must also know the mystery of the weight of his voice, the way the Spirit just causes it to leap off the page, the tender curling of his whisper in your ear. We say he is mighty; let us also know it in a way that causes our tongues to still and identify his mightiness in our trembling hearts. To know that such a touch is his mightiness, and identify the edges of his mightiness in the events of our times.
Let us know, know the Lord in mystery.
Yet, there is so much I do not know. So many shapes, sizes of green flora I do not know. The teeming life in the swamp: what is there?
Nor, do I realize, do I want to know it all. To know can be to dissect. It can become tamed, familiar, and thus passed by. There can be a distance because it is labeled.
To not know is to let there be a wonder, a mystery. There is a different way of knowing than a name or a label, or of piecing together the bark is such-and-such and so-and-so. A knowing that traces the contours of green, that delights in the shape and edging. A knowing that can tell the different shades of green between this and that.
We are blessed to know God. We name his attributes: compassionate, eternal, omniscient. We love his names: Shepherd, Bread of Life, Morning Star. But let us know in mystery as well, where we go beyond names and labels. We know his compassion because we have seen his tender hand, we can trace his compassion throughout the threads of today in a way that is beyond "labels." We say God is speaking, but we must also know the mystery of the weight of his voice, the way the Spirit just causes it to leap off the page, the tender curling of his whisper in your ear. We say he is mighty; let us also know it in a way that causes our tongues to still and identify his mightiness in our trembling hearts. To know that such a touch is his mightiness, and identify the edges of his mightiness in the events of our times.
Let us know, know the Lord in mystery.
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