Mystery, Beauty, Passion
The title here is a quote from Billy Bragg, actually, who uses it slightly differently, but it was too good to miss and so it embedded itself in my imagination some ten or twelve years ago.
These are the three vital things we need in life, and they may be the only three things we need. As we live and grow we’re invited to nurture a sense of the mystery and endlessly fascinating aspects of life; to recognize an awareness of the real beauty that is all around us; and to feel a sense of Passionate engagement with the wonder of being alive.
Like a three-legged stool, though, we have to have all three or it doesn’t work. One can be Passionate about mystery and ugliness, in which case one descends fairly rapidly into the dark regions of the soul. One can be Passionate about the obvious and beauty, in which case one never finds anything more than surface beauty, glamor, and glitz. One can also appreciate beauty and mystery in a half hearted fashion, in which case one fails to be fully alive.
If one has all three, if one chooses to nurture all three over one’s lifetime, then one sees more beauty - for even in places that are not picturesque there can be beautiful actions. One will see that the mysteries of life are endless and create reverence and wonder in us, and a passionate wish to be part of that exploration. That in turn grows our sense of what love can be in the highest sense, and that we’re all linked by it, part of it, like leaves carried along a river.
Without these three aspects, I suspect that the world will appear as just an assemblage of odd pieces and disjointed artifacts. Mystery, Beauty, Passion. They help us stay human and move us towards the divine.
