Every now and then, I run across an insight that takes my breath away. It happened again this Advent season. In an eloquent editorial, Father Andrew Greeley offered a quote (from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) that puts the heart of the Christmas message in the language of mystery it deserves:
“There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.”
This is not just about a baby in a manger. It is, rather, a cosmic reality that makes our lives pregnant with meaning and hope. The Utterly Unknowable becomes not only knowable, but personal. In the process, he makes the ultimate effort to know us…by becoming one of us.
It is a story that can change lives.
I pray that this Christmas season—and the new year to come—bring you even more of the Unknowable in your midst. Blessings and peace.
3 comments:
I had read that op-ed column of Father Greeley's in the Times Union, and was struck by the same sentence. And had thought about it for a while.
Although I have a good friend whose favorite thinker is Teihard de Chardin, I've never liked Teilhard's fancer ideas -- like the noosphere. My anthropology is more mundane and material than his.
But that line did match up with my own non-rational experience of conversion: no "belief" but rather a conviction that the birth and the man and the life and death revealed something about the nature of reality -- of the universe. It wasn't a conviction that could be supported by reason.
The Unknowable was still unknowable. (Unknowability is very important to me.) But the Unknowable was now "represented" somehow. It's somewhat akin to saying that the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. But it feels more personal than that.
Thanks for writing this.
Eloquently put, Bill. From my experience, at least, your thoughts about the Unknowable are dead-on. I just tend toward the language of paradox, which is why "the Unknowable became knowable" is so pregnant with meaning for me personally.
I once belonged to a community church where we rotated sermon responsibilities. In one sermon, I talked at length about the utter unknowability of God, then said, "This is so true that it's false"--and proceeded to talk about the "becoming knowable/represented/personal" dynamic of Jesus. Nothing like a little mind-bending for a Sunday morning.
That's an excellent way of putting it -- unknowability is "so true that it's false". To the modern or post-modern ear, that's the point of Jesus.
You're carrying on in his good tradition of paradox and paradoxical parables.
Now if our spiritual language of uncertainty could be cast in certain enough terms to be considered truly inerrant and thus truly religious....
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