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As a child, faith was simple to me, so simple to be simplistic. So, when we say simplicity, we are not saying simplistic. Life is not simplistic. Spirituality as wisdom includes everything. What includes all, is simple and ineffable, depths human intellectualization cannot immerse itself in, only walk the shore.
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I have used the words embracing the Mystery for this way of simplicity. This Mystery is the ultimate mystery of mysteries. By this embrace, relaxing the questioning mind, we can relax into not-knowing. We can relax from demanding to understand what cannot be understood. Then, we experience this Mystery drawing us ever-more into Itself.
What is this Mystery? Well, if I could tell you, the Mystery would not be the Mystery, would it? I cannot put It into words for myself. I am okay with that. I feel no need to dissect the Rose, but to embrace the Rose, and, in embracing the Rose, I find the Rose embraces me ~ a mutual embrace.
Still, we are beings of language. Some persons cannot relate well to personal references to this Mystery, including "God." Other persons cannot relate well to abstract ways of speaking of this Mystery, such as "the Light." The Mystery can include a wide variety of ways we relate with It, both in language, worship, and life. This Mystery can do this, for this Mystery is Love.
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Many years ago, I asked one of my spiritual guides about God being personal or impersonal. Her reply, "Oh, I think both."
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Can you tell me what love is? No. No one can. Can you tell me what the scent of the rose is? No. You can talk about love, you can talk about the scent of the rose. You may use illustrations, stories, analogies, images, symbols, ..., but all this added up does not tell anyone what love is, what the scent of the rose is. So, if this is true of the everyday experiences we have, how much more the Mystery that makes it all possible: as the Greek philosopher, poet, and seer Epimenides (7th or 6th Century BCE) said, and quoted in the Book of Acts 17.28, "In whom we live, move, and have our being."
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The Buddhists have used an analogy to speak of the unspeakable ~ finger pointing to the Moon. The Moon is what cannot be spoken, the finger is the means we point to the Moon. We point to the Mystery with words, confessions, creeds, rituals, rites, acts of compassion, songs, dance, meditation, prayers, silence, art, ... These are fingers, pointers.
So, the finger pointing is a means to relate with the Mystery. As we grow in our spiritual path, we may become less reliant on the finger, as we are drawn closer to the Moon. The summons is to let this detachment occur. Still, this does not mean one needs to abandon the pointers, yet how one relates to them, sees them, will shift. One may even come to see the ways we relate to the Mystery as playful, as poetic.
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