Highlights

despite all the very bad stuff happening in our world at the moment, both at home and abroad, there always remains in play the mystery of the world's appearance and reality which is not something that can properly or fully be understood through human categories, whether moral, philosophical, religious or scientific.

"Whatever else the word God may mean, it is a term used to designate that Something upon which human life is most dependent for its security, welfare and increasing abundance. That there is such a Something cannot be doubted. The mere fact that human life happens, and continues to happen, proves that this Something, however unknown, does certainly exist" (Henry Nelson Wieman: Religious Experience and Scientific Method, Macmillan, 1926, pp. 9).

amidst all the uncertainty in the world, it is with this mysterious "Something" that "cannot be doubted," that I think we need to remain connected. It is also why I believe a creative, free spirituality, jiyū shūkyō, remains so vital.

"Whether we speak of gods or Buddhas (神とか仏とか) or not, it is the attitude of life that one must stand on the foundation of something ultimate to carry out everyday living that is, I believe, a religious attitude"('What does it mean to "base education on religion"?' in "Seisoku's Education," 1967).

although there are problems which arise in life that need to be analysed and, if possible, solved with the aid of reason and evidence, the mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but something very, very different.

Gabriel Marcel (1889--1973) who said:

_"A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and initial validity" _(Being and Having, p. 117).

"our experience of the world involves us in a mystery which can be intelligible to us only as a mystery" (Henry Bugbee, The Inward Morning, p. 76).

John Locke (1632-1704) in his introduction to his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690):

"When we know what our muscular strength is, we shall have a better idea of what physical tasks we can attempt with hopes of success. And when we have thoroughly surveyed the powers of our own minds, and made some estimate of what we can expect from them, we shan't be inclined either to sit still, and not set our thoughts to work at all, in despair of knowing anything or to question everything, and make no claim to any knowledge because some things can't be understood. It is very useful for the sailor to know how long his line is, even though it is too short to fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is good for him to know that it is long enough to reach the bottom at places where he needs to know where it is, and to caution him against running aground. . . ."

I realised I needed more fully to heed the poet John Keats' (1795-1821) prescient reminder that for human beings to live most fully and creatively they needed to remain "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." This is, of course, Keats vitally important idea of "negative capability."

But in today's science and technology driven world, when the problems we need to solve using reason and evidence are so many and huge -- and, potentially, so overwhelming -- it is vital that liberals, who have abandoned formal, traditional religion in their millions, are offered ways by which, with a clean heart and full belief (pathos), they can regularly come back home into a community that is consciously centred on the mysterious "Something" upon which all life depends.

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References

Brown, Andrew James. “A Mystery Is Something in Which I Am Myself Involved.” Caute, 6 Jan. 2024, https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2024/01/a-mystery-is-something-in-which-i-am.html.