As soon as mystery is scheduled for solution, it is no longer a mystery, it is a problem.
Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle
I am rereading this book this week and enjoying once again diving into Berry’s writing. Although he writes here of the danger of modern science and technology, it has applications to the larger realm of how we hold what we know – what is called “epistemology” in academic circles. So much has been said on this subject but the colonialism of modern thinking is so epidemic, that a post about it doesn’t seem redundant.
This statement exposes something very important in the balance between faith and learning. Learning, hypothesizing and gathering all one can in an effort to understand is extremely valuable but it is not all there is. We must be willing to hold humility and allow mystery. We must be ready to admit that our systems cannot explain everything and that there are things we simply cannot know.
This humility is required by the post-colonial thinker who clearly sees that all the answers set forth by white privileged men fail to account for what can only be known by those without the privilege of birthright, without the security of country and religion, without turning heads in a room, without a warm bed, without enough food and without relative peace. And for those without, the system created by those “with” has serious flaws… starting with its failure to allow mystery and in the face of mystery, humility.
