Mystery

The author Christopher Pramuk, in his book, At Play in Creation, commented on Thurman’s passage: “There are certain gifts that I cannot give to any person, impose on them, or ever steal away. One of these is the encounter with the mystery and wonder of life itself and with the greatest of all mysteries we name God. For Thurman, the experience of the sheer gratuitousness of life itself – unexpected, unearned, simply given – is the pulsing womb from which all other concerns ebb and flow, inclusive of social and political concerns. Here the individual stands ‘face to face with something which is so much more, and so much more inclusive … that for him, in the moment, there are no questions. Without asking, somehow he knows.’

“Knows what? The reality that we and all things in the universe are in fact ‘one lung’ through which all of life breathes is not new. … The thing that is new is the realization. And this is of profound importance.”