The Room Where Love Appears

On Mystery

Grace in the Gaps

In Praise of Not Knowing

Sometimes what our hearts need isn’t more certainty, but more space. Here’s a reflection on mystery, love, and the quiet work of grace in the life of faith.

What if the most faithful thing you could do today was admit you don’t know? A few thoughts on why mystery might be the holiest part of the spiritual life.

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Where love grows, mystery is nearby. A reflection on making space for the unknowable and the divine.We can intellectualize God all we want. We can theologize, debate doctrine, quote the church fathers—and, if we are the type to acknowledge such things—even the church mothers. But if we do not leave room to explore mystery—alone and together—we take our place in a long line of sounding gongs and clanging cymbals. The biblical allusion is intentional, for mystery and love sit side by side.

Even when intellect and imagination are sufficiently charmed, even moved to tears or stirred to clarity, if there is no room for mystery in our days, there is no room for love. In the absence of mystery, we risk being forced into the false binary of right or wrong. Tiresome.

Mystery is the space in which love appears, takes root, and—over the course of life—breaks through again and again in the many forms and manners available to us as incarnate beings. The still, small voice. The synchronistic encounter. The repeated word. The unexpected door flung open—as if by happenstance. Even the slammed door that echoes like a final thud. These are only a few among the infinite ways mystery may announce herself.

Mystery is the space in our hearts and minds where grace, mercy, and love enter to guide, to guard, and to instruct. Certainty can be comforting—especially for those of us with anxious minds or long unmet needs—but over time, it can begin to cramp, control, or even dominate.

It is possible to make room for mystery even in the certainty we crave. In fact, we do ourselves a favor by entertaining the angels of mystery in our times of certainty—for it is in those times that we are most at risk of idolatry: of self, of will, of our own rightness, or the grandeur of the visible world.

To disregard mystery is to cut off the inexplicable ways God is present in your life—very real, actual God—the mathematically impossible, the infinite poured lavishly into the finite.

Not to slow down, not to awkwardly attempt unknowing—not to remain open and attentive to what seems like nothingness—is to actively thwart the development of the soul.

But when we make room for mystery, we make room for grace to use both the good and the bad to bring forth beauty, to illuminate the dark, and to speak in a voice not our own.

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