Community Mys’tere

(The Ultimate Human Experience)

Fifteen hundred people sat in the horseshoe-shaped auditorium with the high ceiling stage extending into their midst.  The program was ninety minutes of short blended acts of dance, circus, comedy, opera, mime, and acrobatics woven together by special music and props – all designed to engage the audience in a sense of mystery.  It ended and the people sat still for a few moments before finally rising to leave in a hushed sense of awe.  There was subdued murmuring and as we exited into light there was moisture around many eyes and some with tear drops flowing down cheeks. 

When asked for a word that might describe the experience the consensus response was: mystical.  What was obvious during the performance was the gradual bonding of the people into an entrancement – which the hushed exiting revealed they wished to retain as long as possible.  It was one of those moments when a sense of oneness was created by a splendid array of artistry.  It was that rare experience in which the boundaries of individual identity were lost to community unity.

It was a Sunday afternoon symphony matinee.  The program ended with the orchestra performing The Russian Easter Overture by Rimsky-Korsakov.  At its conclusion, the audience sat for five full seconds in stunned silence before erupting into wild shouting and clapping.  The prolonged silence between the concert ending and the audience response indicated a gathering into rapt bonding created by the music.  It was that rare experience in which the boundaries of individual identity were lost to community unity.

They were gathered to hear a famous preacher deliver a sermon.  It was about the certainty of moral justice based on a story in the Old Testament about an evil queen named Jezebel. The title was: Pay Day Someday. The theology of the sermon and that it was a religious gathering is unimportant.  The point of this telling is the capacity of the minister to enthrall with his colorful description of this biblical tale.   There were ten thousand people present and for a solid hour he held them spell-bound with hardly a stirring of any kind. And even though they knew ahead of time what it was all about they still hung on his every word. It was his prowess of language and its dramatic delivery that created the bonding of a multitude. It was that rare experience in which the boundaries of individual identity were lost to community unity.

I was standing on a hill in a deep darkness void of city lights.  The Milky Way spread across the heavens.  The vastness of it all touched the outlines of the earth in every direction.  And I was overwhelmed by the sense that everything around me, including myself, was part of one unending ecological community drama.  For a few moments, I was totally lost in this sense of oneness that spanned billions of galaxies and uncountable eons of time.  It was that rare experience in which the boundaries of individual identity were lost to universal unity.

Mys’tere is a French term that seeks to capture that which baffles, that which cannot be explained, that which is beyond comprehension.  Behind the mys’tere of community is the truth of the universe.  Everything that exists, no matter how large or small, is some form of community, and all of these communities mushroom into an expansive universe.  We humans are occasionally drawn into an experience that signals we are part of this wholeness of community – that our sense of being individually apart from everything is an illusion. 

Experiences, such as I have mentioned and in which I participated, remind us that we are birthed of community, live by community, and die back into community – that everything worthy of our life investment has to do with nurturing the blessings of community because it is the wellspring of all that is profound, whatever its size or source.  My only clue as to why this is the case is that everything is made of the same stuff and longs for communion.  But, whatever the reason, the mys’tere of community awaits our investment in its possibility.

My personal history is attached to the history of the human community.  The human community is simply a microscopic historical timeline that parallels a tiny bit of the earth’s history.  And the earth’s existence is only a finite measure of the universe’s history.  During the meantime, while our limited individual histories play out their duration, may we open ourselves to that mys’tere that reminds us of our real role in the entire drama of creation.  I am.  But I have no ultimate meaning except in the midst of we.  Immersion in mys’tere dramatically draws me into the ultimate truth of human reality.

Merry Mys’tere!

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it

for a few moments, including you.

–Anne Lamott

Robert

Robert T. Latham

mythinglink.com