Let the Mystery Be

This year, I need all the magic I can get.

Winslow Homer / Public Domain

1.

Our property is near the center of a medium-sized city but we have old trees, a gurgling creek, and the best sledding hill in our neighborhood, which is full of children on any given snow day. We managed to find the most rural-looking piece of property near the center of Lexington. We see foxes scampering across our yard so often that we call our place Fox Hill.

Last night, Christmas Eve, we were preparing to go to the midnight Christmas Eve service at our church. Just as I stepped outside to take the dogs for a walk I surprised a fox that was standing near our porch, surveying the evening from the top of our little hill. We both froze in place, twelve feet apart. Instead of darting away, she considered me for a moment. Our eyes locked for what must have been fifteen seconds but felt much longer. She was so close I could smell her musky scent. Her eyes caught the light from one of our lit windows. An encounter with a truly wild thing has some kind of magic about it and in this case she seemed as mesmerized by me as I was by her. Strangely, she did not seem to be alarmed by the dogs—a beagle snorting in her aroma and a completely uninterested yorkie-poo—and instead seemed fascinated by them. After this brief exchange she trotted away, swallowed up by the shadows. I imagined her slender legs stepping gingerly into the creek as she made her way back toward her den.

2.
Months ago, when Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington D.C., made a principled and diplomatic appeal to the president to have mercy on immigrants and LGBTQ people, many who were in fear of losing their rights under his administration, she became a folk hero to millions who were moved by her fierce yet polite stand and a villian to millions who were appalled that she dared to challenge their idol.

At a cocktail party I mentioned how proud she made me to be an Episcopalian and someone in the group scoffed and said, “You don’t actually believe in all that stuff, do you?” I was so taken aback by this rude response that I didn’t reply for a moment. This person was not someone I knew well and I didn’t think I should have to justify what I believe or don’t believe so I simply said, “It’s more complicated than that,” although I didn’t owe them any kind of response at all. They felt so repulsed by the idea of organized religion that they felt free to criticize it to someone who participates in it. I get that, to some degree. Religion has done so much damage to so many. But it is easy to forget that it has also done much good. I try to consider everything with nuance, especially these days when I think absolutism rules the roost.

And here I wish to be completely vulnerable and honest and say that I have always been a person of faith who has many doubts. But most of all, I love the mystery. Often, when I think of the God of my Understanding, I think of it as The Great Mystery. I am not sure of anything at all but I know that I want to believe in something. I think most of us do. I’ve had to do a lot of thinking and studying to get away from many of the ideas I was taught as a child, but I have gotten there, and I’ve arrived at this comfortable place of loving the ceremony and the scriptures and so much more of it while also keeping my doubts alive and embracing the mystery.

3.

At church, the first song was “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and by the end I was in tears. The music was a mighty wave crashing over us. The organ and the horns, especially the trumpet. But most of all, the voices, united. Everyone singing, relishing the remarkable lyrics, a collection of beautiful words: joyful, triumphant, adore, abhor, begotten, exultation, glory, Word. When people sing together, God listens, because there are few things sweeter or holier than community.

Above is a short audio excerpt from one of the songs at the service.

The music and singing moved me so deeply that I couldn’t help but cry. But it was more than the music, of course. I wept not only for the beauty of art but also because ever since I was a little child, since before I can even remember, belief has been drilled into me, and even when I don’t believe, there is still that little fire burning in me. Sometimes dim, sometimes quiet, sometimes so low it barely puts out any heat. But always there, nonetheless. Faith was instilled in me as a child and therefore I am touched by studying on it, but I am also moved when I wonder how much I believe in it.

I was moved by the mystery, and by the hope. Because no matter what you believe, the story of Christ, especially His birth, is one of hope. No matter what you doubt, the story of the nativity and of what comes after in Christ’s life is about the desire to be good, the possibility of being good and doing good.

To be honest, I was also thinking of myself when those voices and instruments were raised in glorious sound. I was thinking of how I was sitting in that small pew with my shoulders touching my husband on one side and my dear friend on the other and all three of us were gay men who had had to hide, who feared, who were treated badly because of our gayness at some points in our lives, sometimes for years and years. Even today we cannot move through the world as openly as straight people. Even today we do not have full rights. Even today we constantly fear that we may lose more of the rights we’ve fought for. Much of that meanness directed at us was conjured by religion. What moved me so deeply was that all three of us managed to keep that little fire burning enough to come to this church for a midnight service and to be moved by all of it while also aware of all the complications. Belief can be fluid. And there is a beauty in that, too.

And I cried because I was proud of us for having found the helpers, too. Because we all three managed to find people who loved us for being completely ourselves. Because we all three feel part of a congregation where we are welcomed as we are. Where we are not treated as special, but simply as equal. That’s all we ever wanted. To find a church where we are thought of as children of God, and nothing else.

4.

At the end of the Christmas Eve service we all lit candles. The lights were dimmed and we sang “Silent Night” together. Community, again. Holy, holy, holy. We need it more than ever these days. Social media has made us less social. We have to seek each other out. We have to talk to each other instead of at each other. I believe we have to condemn atrocity and stand against the rise of fascism. Sometimes we have to speak out and other times we have to work quietly, in the shadows. We have to draw boundaries with those who continue to support cruelty. That is part of my spiritual practice and my ethical code. That is part of my religion. But I believe that any activism must be rooted in being conscientious. If we are to make a change in the world it must begin with empathy.

5.

This Christmas Eve was unnaturally warm here in Kentucky. I am assuming it was a good winter’s night for the fox looking for food in our neighborhood. Perhaps she was doing more than hunting last night. Maybe she was out for a stroll on a beautiful night, drawing in the smells, the sounds, the sights, the tastes, the textures in ways only an animal is able to. I wonder how the December water felt to her paws when she stepped into the creek. I wonder how her den must have felt when she returned home. Did she collapse onto her sleeping place tired from her midnight jaunt? Does she, too, believe in something she does not understand? I wonder if there was magic for her in our encounter.

I do not understand the natural world completely, and I am glad that I don’t. Therein lies the mystery, and the magic. I am able to believe in it nonetheless. I am able to understand that God is conjured when voices unite but also when a fox pauses to look over the land from the top of a hill.

As a child I was taught that animals talk in human voices at midnight on Christmas Eve. If a human tried to hide and witness this it would not happen. This is a beautiful story, full of mystery for a child, or anyone who believes it. Now I see the way we are always putting humanness on animals to create stories, believing that they want to be more like us, or that it elevates them to take on human qualities. I don’t believe they want it. We are not gods to them. I know now, they don’t need us at all.

-End-

Notes: The title of this short essay is from the wonderful Iris Dement song “Let the Mystery Be”. It has become a cornerstone of my spiritual practice. You can watch it here:

I didn’t take any video of the first song of the Christmas Eve service at Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, which is mentioned in this essay, but you can watch a snippet of a later song here that was filmed clandestinely by someone:

Merry Christmas.