Spirit Quest

THE  MYSTERY

By The Rev. Dr. Hanns Skoutajan

I am penning this Quest on the deck of a cottage that overlooks a beautiful lake in the hills north of Ottawa. The first thing I do every morning is go down to the dock and dive into the cool and, yes, pristine waters.  The last thing I do before retiring to my bed is to watch from that same dock the moon rise over the trees on the other shore.

It is easy in that setting to forget the turmoil of our time. But I am aware that this same moon looks down on the entire surface of our planet. People everywhere, in all conditions, in Zimbabwe and Afghanistan, Beijing and Washington, Paris and Toronto, see this same glowing orb. I recall many years ago standing on Red Square in Moscow. At that time we were still locked in a cold war. I saw the moon and realized that a few hours later my spouse in Toronto on the other side of that Iron Curtain, would behold that same sight.

The moon has inspired poetry and music. And although humans have set foot on its arid surface it has continued to be a symbol of wonders and mysteries.

I like mysteries. I believe that we humans need to stand in awe whether of the moon or the stars or natural phenomena such as that old and weather-beaten pine tree that I see wedged between massive rocks along the shore. I also marvel at the beautiful monarch butterfly that shuttles between a Mexican grove and the milkweed patch behind the cottage. One of the joys of being up here is being surrounded by nature’s mysteries.

On the shelf in the cottage there is a row of guide books that help me identify birds and wildflowers, trees, butterflies and bugs, and much more. These books contain a wealth of information about the environment. 

There is also a map book of the skies, identifying the planets and the constellations, starlight that has come incredible distances to touch against the retinas of my eyes.

This latter phenomenon especially intrigues me, the fact that I am linked to this distant source by a beam of light  that travells 300,000 kilometres a second and yet takes centuries to reach me standing on the dock. 

There is also the awful thought that once upon a time, and not even so long ago, 13 billion years perhaps, all that is was compacted into what scientists call a singularity, a virtually dimensionless mass, It exploded in the “Big Bang” and the universe came into being and continues to expand.

And, here I am standing on the dock looking up into the myriad of stars that compose the Milky Way, the edge of our own galaxy.

I have been reading Brian Green’s The Fabric of the Cosmos. He tries to make Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and such understandable for a layman like me.  I have also read Hans Kueng’s The Beginning of All Things : Science and Religion.

Kueng is a Catholic theologian who got in trouble with his church and was forbidden to teach Catholic theology. However, he set up an independent institute at the University of Tuebingen in Germany to teach theology. In his book he argues that religion and science are not mutually exclusive but complementary. 

Kueng shows little patience for scientists who do not see beyond the limits of their discipline or for believers who try to tell the experts how things have been. It is a very reassuring book for those who feel themselves caught in this science/religion dilemma.

And so I stand on the dock at night or swimming in the clear waters of the morning. I don’t understand the mysteries by which I am constantly confronted. I cannot grasp their truth but instead feel myself grasped by them. 

In the midst of life I sense a spirit that urges me to live and cherish life.

That spirit like the beam from a distant planet has come a long way and it is a’ movin’ still.

Hanns F. Skoutajan
July 11, 2008
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More about Rev. Dr. Hanns Skoutajan’s story can be found in his excellent book Uprooted and Transplanted: A Sudeten Odyssey from Tragedy to Freedom available from Canada Books Online. — Mike Heenan, Literary Editor
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