October 24: Mysterious Planet, Questions, Mary Oliver, "The Man Who Has Many Answers," Confessions of Saint Marty

Not one to read books on spiritual subjects, on out-of-body experiences, reincarnation, spiritualism, or mysticism, witchcraft or voodoo, Ives was left confounded by the strangeness of his vision.  He sighed, wishing that he had seen the Virgin Mother floating over Forty-first Street and Madison Avenue instead.  Somehow, in his mind, it all related to his ideas of afterlife.  He would think of all the depictions of Christ on the Cross, his tortured eyes looking upward, heaven just beyond, and wonder, to his horror, just what Christ might have been seeing.  What if he had looked up and seen the whirling center of a chaotic universe swallowing him up?  He felt disappointed that he had neither the education nor intelligence to fathom what had happened to him.  On some of those nights, he had concluded that death would not be a joyous ramble with ethereal and eternally pleasant angelic beings, but a chaotic, mysterious, and dark experience, as if a soul, in leaving the body, would alight upon the surface of Jupiter or Mars or some other mysterious planet, such as he had read about in Astonishing Stories magazine, on in the science-fiction books whose covers he had upon occasion illustrated.

Ives spends the rest of his life with questions.  About the meaning of his mystical vision, the four colored winds swirling above the streets of New York.  About the meaning of his son's death.  About Heaven and Hell and the goodness of God.  About the birth of Christ and the crucifixion.  Basically, Ives has a lot of questions and, by the end of the book, very few answers.  Ives lives with mystery his whole life and, finally, embraces it.

I wish that I could simply accept the questions of the universe without feeling confused or angry or unfulfilled.  Of course, it takes Ives quite a few decades to reach that point in his life.  For almost three hundred pages, Ives' day-to-day existence is gilded with doubt and sorrow.  That's pretty much where I am now.

Certainly, I ask questions like "Why did my sister get lymphoma of the brain?" and "Why don't I ever have enough money to pay the bills?" and "Why is Donald Trump leading in the polls?" every day of my life.  It's human nature to search for answers when faced with baffling situations.  It's difficult living with question marks floating over your head.  But, even when I get the answer to some plaguing question, there is always a new, and frequently more troubling, question to replace it.

I'm not sure that answers are really what I need.  What I need, I think, is the ability, like Ives, to live with mystery.  Comfortably.  Without tearing out what's left of my hair in the pursuit of explanations.  Living at ease with mystery is a matter of trust.  If I trust that God is good, looking out for me in every situation, then mystery becomes less challenging.   It's simply a goldfinch or nightingale sitting on a branch outside my window, singing, filling the world with music.

I'm not quite there yet, though.  I hear the goldfinch chirping, but, more often than not, my reaction is not to sit back and enjoy the sound.  I run for a book to try to figure out what kind of bird is in my maple tree.  I find comfort in answers, not questions.

Saint Marty has trust issues.  He double checks his order before he leaves the drive-thru at McDonald's, and he still reads the last page of books first, so that he's never surprised.

The Man Who Has Many Answers

by:  Mary Oliver

The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.

Confessions of Saint Marty