Yes, more from Marcia Mount Shoop from "Let the Bones Dance."
Embodying divine mystery is much more concrete than the celestial mysteries we can never explain. Religious experience is not simply an intellectual assent to a great set of moral/ethical standards. It is also not simply a need for a community that has someone bigger than itself at the helm. Embodying divine mystery means we seek out ways to be available to God's capacity to find a home in us. This promise of sanctification is often left to the marginalized traditions of mysticism and negative theology. But far from being on the margins, mystery is at the very heart of religious devotion and experience. Intimacy with God is in the quiet, ethereal, concrete moments of God incarnate in and among us. We can be close to God and close to the world's pain, including our own. It is what Jesus did, and he told us we could too. Eternal life is a brushstroke of this intimacy with God that allows us to be in the world and not be destroyed by it.
Again, it is a phrase about embodying divine mystery that catches me: 'we seek out ways to be available to God's capacity to find a home in us.' I would guess that the ways are limitless. There is no box. There is no special code. There is no exact discipline. Rather, there is God always available so that we will find rest in God alone - a place we can call home and a place in which we become more fully human in the image of God. Our God does not set up a place and a time that is best for us to enter God's Reign. Rather, in the middle of whatever are the highs and lows of our life - the brutalities and the comforts - there is the uncovering of the holy and the transformation of the ordinary into the blessed - just as it always has been. That may be part of the mystery of embodying divine. The divine is present and has been and will be. We are in the midst of it all. We are offered life that continues to be born again within the most simple moments of the day - even when they seem to be devoid of God's presence. Mystery is coming to the surface all the time. Sometimes - we may not be ready to see it. Therefore, God never stops being available.
Connection: God brings us home all the time. We may never see a change or move to a new place - but God opens our eyes and ears so that we are open to how the great mysteries of creation and redemption and the Reigning power of God is now dancing around us.
Though you seem to be so far off, O God, you come again to heal and hold and be the rest of our lives. Blessed are you, O God. Amen.
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