No Answer at All
At a party the evening of my ordination a four year old friend stood by my side helping me unwrap gifts. We’d undo the wrapping paper and he would exclaim, “It’s a box!”. We’d open the box to see what was inside (the adults would ooo and ahh their surprise and approval). Then we’d move on to unwrap the next package. Again he would exclaim, “It’s a box!”
This morning‘s story seems to me to describe, in poetic story form, that same process on a grander scale. The view from a mountain top or the seashore or the desert or a hilltop on a winter’s night–the colors and the scents and the sounds and motions–all that’s the wrapping paper, and the ribbons and the bow. The explanations for the existence of such a wonderful world offered by the passers-by–an egg, a Word, a fire, a great explosion–these are the boxes. Each container-theory sound and comprehensive from the theological perspective or cultural worldview or scientific understanding of the one who offers it. And inside each box the same precious gift, a wonder that needs no answer, no answer at all.
You know this phenomenon well. Take a newborn baby–human or otherwise–the huge eyes and gangly legs or tiny fists and wispy hair are the wrapping paper, ribbons, and bow. The basic biological processes of egg and sperm, fertilization and gestation that we know so well are the box. And inside that scientific container, the wonder of a living, breathing, squirming, already growing and unique-in-all-the-world creature that can’t possibly have begun as a microscopic bit of DNA but did; in other words, a wonder that needs no answer, no answer at all.
Works of art, music, dance, athletic feats, architecture of cathedrals, engineering of bridges and dams and space stations–each of us, to varying degrees and with our own sensibilities, experience them first as wrapping paper, ribbons and bows, visually or aurally or physically playful or exquisite or elegant. And under that wrapping is a box–the rules of design or engineering, the Golden Mean or Ratio, musical scales, physiology and kinesiology and the principles of training and conditioning–the things that explain why the bridge doesn’t collapse nor the space station fall from the sky, why human bodies can move like that. But inside those boxes–pas de deux, and world record breaking pole vaults, the Temple Mikve Israel and the Golden Gate Bridge, The Maple Leaf Rag and The Brandenburg Concertos, the Beatles, Beyoncé, Leon Bridges–wonder that needs no answer. No answer at all.
On and on. The near eradication of polio, antiretroviral therapy, and organ replacement, the wrapping paper and bows; medical and pharmaceutical science the boxes; life the wonder that needs no answer at all. Cell phones and tablets, the wrapping paper and ribbons; microchips and circuitry and satellite technology, the boxes; video dates and meals and birthday celebration and deathbed farewells in the midst of a pandemic, the wonder that needs no answer at all. Friendship, forgiveness, reconciliation, the wrapping paper and bows; dogged determination or chance meeting, spiritual maturity and courageous vulnerability the boxes; connection, community, and love despite this world we live in, the wonder that needs no answer at all.
All of this and so much more has been studied and can be explained, and none of the explanations diminish the wonder that comes to us in the moments we experience them, the moments our lives are transformed or saved or set afire by them–mountaintop vista, medicine, friendship, connection, music..
I said last week that Advent, Yule, Solstice, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s, are really simply segments of ordinary life compressed and intensified. So it won’t surprise you that I’m thinking of this holiday season as this three layer container of wonder this year, too. We wrap it up in lights and decorations, special foods and festive clothes, candles and seasonal music, rituals and parties. Underneath all that is a box. Several boxes really, just like the pile of gifts at my ordination party: One box is Christmas typically understood as the story of Jesus’s birth and Christianity’s annual observance of it. Another box is Hanukkah, a lesser Jewish holiday recognizing the Maccabees victory over the Syrian army. The third box is Yule or the Winter Solstice, a natural phenomenon marking the shortest day and longest night of the year.
The boxes are comprised of history, the laws of nature, of theology. And sometimes as Unitarian Universalists we default to unpacking and pontificating about the history, the laws of nature, the theology. But when we open any one of those boxes we find wonder inside, the real gift. Inside the box marked Hanukkah the wonder is the story of a miraculous portion of oil burning far longer than it should have. Inside the box marked Winter Solstice is the perennial wonder of light’s return, slowly, steadily, just as the northern hemisphere is entering its season of deepest cold (even here in coastal Georgia, I’m told). Inside the Christmas box is the wonder of anticipation and joy, childlike delight–our own remembered delight or the delight of children around us–love and the possibility of peace. All wonders that need no answer, no answer at all.
Bishop John Shelby Spong urged on Facebook this week: "My suggestion is that you separate mystery from history and then enter into and enjoy the mystery of the season. Dream of Peace on Earth and good will among [all], and then dedicate yourself to bringing that vision into being."
It’s good advice. Not to disavow science or re-write history or embrace the supernatural, if it is antithetical to our nature, but to separate the mystery from the rest of it just for a season, that we might discover the gift of the wonder inside the box. Another great teacher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, said, "to be spiritual is to be amazed." Now as we enter the second week of Advent, waiting for the Solstice to tip us back toward lightness, for Christmas to bear Love into the world, now is a good time to engage in the spiritual practice of amazement at the essential, healing, joyous wonder under every bright wrapper and within every plain box. Amen.