Island Horizon - Boon or Marooned

Let go into the mystery

Let yourself go

You've got to open up your heart

That's all I know

~Van Morrison, Lyrics, The Mystery

https://genius.com/Van-morrison-the-mystery-lyrics

“Consider, then, the sum total of our accumulated knowledge as constituting an island, which I call the ‘Island of Knowledge.’ By ‘knowledge’ I mean mostly scientific and technological knowledge, although the Island could also include all the cultural and artistic creations of humankind. A vast ocean surrounds the Island of Knowledge, the unexplored ocean of the unknown, hiding countless tantalizing mysteries.”

~Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning , p. xxi.

One way to consider mystery is to think of it as everything unknown or un-understood. We describe that as a mystery, something we can’t “fathom” or go deeply enough into to discover. Yet. I like Gleiser’s metaphor of an island, containing all that we do know. As our knowledge grows, he says, so does the island, but so too does the shoreline. The island may get bigger, but the waters surrounding it, the horizon we can see, just continues to extend beyond our ability to even imagine. Sometimes, as we discover that something we thought was true, wasn’t, the island of knowledge shrinks. But inevitably, through fits and starts, as more is discovered and understood, the island grows.

This suggests, Gleiser says, that the growth of knowledge has no “final destination” but rather leads to “more questions and mysteries” (p. xxii).

What lies beyond what we know is the mystery. The mysterious. Some questions, says Gleiser, a professor of Natural Philosophy and Professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, are beyond the reach of a scientific approach. Some understandings, in fact, “are unknowable” (p. xxiii).

Abraham Joshua Heschel, a towering religious thinker, looks at this through a different lens but leads, me anyway, to a similar conclusion. He, to share just one snippet of his thinking, eases us off the cognitive island Gleiser describes - and upon which so many of us become marooned - and takes us to the ineffable. Yes, Heschel is an intellectual, but hear what he says. “To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainment. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live.” (p. 141).

Experience lets us step into the mysterious. Letting go of our preconceptions, thoughts, ideas, and beliefs – suspending them, bracketing them for a little or for awhile – can take us beyond the known into the realm of the not-yet-known. This can only happen in the present moment. Right now. Empty, yet completely full. (With a h/t to my friend Vincent Fortunato, who helps me to consider these possibilities)

There are mysteries of the natural world. There are mysteries of the supernatural world. In both lie wonder. Both unearth more questions with every “answer”. Both reveal more shore to explore, more unknown revealed, for every bit of “known” we think we have locked down.

“According to tradition, the 100th name of God cannot be known or spoken. Like some of the greatest haiku, it is pure mystery” (The Art of Pausing, p. 11)

“All haiku share a common impetus: the distillation of experience” (The Art of Pausing, p. 11).

Words try to express

What may not be expressed. Ever

The ineffable.

~Michael Kroth, Journal, 2-21-19

References:

Gleiser, M. (2014). The island of knowledge: the limits of science and the search for meaning . New York, Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

Heschel, A. J. and S. Heschel (2011). Abraham Joshua Heschel: essential writings. Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis Books.

Valente, J., Quenon, P., and Bever, M. (2013). The art of pausing: meditations for the overworked and overwhelmed . Chicago, IL, ACTA Publications.