Mystery

"Nothing is unexplainable. Everything is a mystery."

-- Ram Tzu

You can find explanations for everything -- even without using Google. Birth, death, suffering, love, sex, taxes, change, even why the Cubs have gone 100 years without a World Series win, are all readily explainable by religious teachers, philosophers, gurus, and pundits of all shapes, sizes and stripes. The only thing is -- none of the explanations really mean doodly squat!

Explanations are fascinating. They're just not the truth. They are a perspective on what is. An opinion about reality, but they are not reality. Life is a mystery. Plain and simple. And I think Iris Dement offers the best advice, musical or otherwise, when she sings, "Let the mystery be."

We spend most of our time in the world of explanation. We're always trying to figure things out, answer the big questions once and for all, and live our lives in a smug complacency, a faux peace, that optimizes pleasure and minimizes pain. OK. It just might behoove us to take off our thinking caps every now and then and slide into the slipstream of mystery. The world of explanation encompasses both pleasure and pain, but the world of mystery is where true joy resides.

So, today let the explanations go as much as you can. Don't worry; your world won't fall apart. The Earth will keep spinning around the sun, which will rise and set as usual, and George W will continue to say incredibly stupid things and make disastrous decisions, just like always. Instead of looking for meaning in it all, delve into the mystery. Be present to what is. See the naked truth sans adornments, accoutrements and explanations. Simply let the mystery be.