Life Is a Riddle and a Mystery

By Rev. Carol Bodeau

Dear Friends,

Last Sunday at Westside we held our first ever "Mystical Moments" discussion group. It was a fabulous turnout of over 20 people!

This is a new group that arose from our recent Building Your Own Theology class. That group discovered, through their sharing and discussions, that many of them had experienced what they saw as 'mystical' moments in their lives. Others were simply curious about this topic. So we decided to keep the conversation going with a monthly discussion group.

We will be meeting on the first Sunday of each month, generally during potluck, to talk about topics that transcend the ordinary and somehow make us feel we have experienced something mystical or magical.

Our first chat centered around what constitutes a "mystical" moment in the first place. What exactly does "mystical" mean to you? We talked about how these kinds of experiences might be:

- Hard to explain or put into words

- Seemingly illogical or beyond the ordinary senses we are used to engaging

- Life-altering or at least powerful enough to leave a lasting impact on us

- Often making us ask ourselves "did that really happen? Is that even possible?"

In the future, we will be talking about all kinds of things related to experiences and understandings that go beyond the ordinary, the material, and into the realms of things we can't see or touch, but somehow "know." Into places where the logic we were taught in school has to be expanded to newer understandings of how time, space and matter interact with our consciousness. And to expanding definitions of what 'reality' really is.

Whether or not you think of yourself as 'mystical,' and regardless of whether you have had such experiences, anyone who is curious about these topics is welcome to join us.

Life is an endless mystery, where surprises meet us when we least expect them and, as William Shakespeare famously said in Hamlet, "there are more things in heaven and earth…than dreamt of in {our} philosophy." As UU's, we are on an endless search to explore beyond the known, into the new, so we hope you will join us in this continuing quest into the great mystery that is our life.

In curiosity and wonder,

Rev. Carol