Holy Mystery

God who is Holy Mystery,

We don’t know you

Just as we don’t know ourselves

That is — we have some sense of shape,

some inkling of ideals,

but we cannot grasp

cannot even get our minds

or arms

around the totality of you

or the totality of us.

But we gather here because

we don’t know how not to —

how not to reach for support

to stretch out of hope

to hold one another

in joy and in sorrow

the big things and the little things.

We don’t know how not to

and it’s not for lack of trying.

Can you hear our timid thank you

for that inability?

 

Can you hear our roaring declaration

of the end of our fear?

And will you now,

in this space and in this time,

amid the noise and through the emptiness

show us your holy and mysterious self?

by Z. M. Willette