Do you ever find yourself in the “Mystery Zone”?
In early December I was driving north on Oak Park Avenue to an appointment. I was late and didn’t need any more delays than I had already endured. When I passed the Mars candy factory, I began to think I was making decent time (a curious expression, “making time”). Just then the arms of the railroad crossing came down and the red lights flashed their “stay back” warning. The last thing I needed was a long, slow, lumbering freight train, one of those traveling graffiti-artist exhibitions, holding me up.
I descended into a pit of despair (aka the “slough of despond”), which is ridiculous since most freight trains pass in five minutes or less, even though it feels like forever. But I was late, and I hate being late. I don’t want people thinking I’m irresponsible and unreliable. Before you know it, they’ll start using the word “flighty” to describe me. No one wants to be branded “flighty.”
I shoved the car into “park,” my head drooped, and I found myself staring into the cradle formed by the interlaced fingers of my hands in my lap. Then I uttered — not quite a complaint, not quite a prayer — but a deep lament. “Why do things like this have to happen when I’m late?!” It was an outcry directed at the seemingly un-random injustice of a cold-hearted universe. I knew it didn’t “always” happen to me, but I cried out anyway. It was deeply sincere, though childishly self-pitying. As they say, First World problems.
When I looked up, the crossing arms were rising even though no train had passed. Slowly, scarcely believing my luck, vehicles started across. Just in case it was the elevating, not lowering arms, that were misfiring, I looked down the tracks to my left and saw the bright light of a train, at a distance, not moving. As I headed on my merry way, feeling liberated, a cat swallowing the canary, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the arms lowering again.
Many would be tempted to view this as some supernatural intervention in response to my “prayer,” but it wasn’t a prayer really, more of a beseeching whine, even though it came from deep within. Others would assure me there must be some “perfectly logical explanation.”
I didn’t surrender to either description. All I knew was it felt eerily unreal, extravagantly pleasant, and deliciously inexplicable. Maybe God was sick of hearing me complain that such things “always happen to me,” and wanted to shut me up. If so, it worked. I will never again say such annoyances “always” happen. “Often” maybe, but not “always.” I’m cured.
There may well be a logical explanation for what happened that night. Maybe this is simply the protocol when a train has temporarily halted. Maybe the human, not divine, overseer cuts the people up-track a break until the train gets clearance to continue. If so, the railroad people have become a whole lot more considerate of vehicular traffic than they used to be — and deserve positive publicity for it.
I wouldn’t know where to begin tracking down that logical explanation. Maybe some railroad buff reading this will provide it.
I have a friend who, when I told him about my experience, wondered why I hesitated to call it an answer to my heart’s petition. He believes in an interventive, personal God and I find his belief admirably sincere because his faith hasn’t shuttered his mind. But I don’t share his belief in that particular human version of God, so I answered his question with a question.
I don’t feel a need to attribute the unexplainable to a higher power. Did he feel a need for those who don’t share his belief to do so? To his credit, he said no.
On the other hand, I also feel no need to find a logical explanation. There may be one and I won’t be disappointed if there is, but I’m also not looking to shove a chair under the doorknob to prevent the entry of inconvenient mystery. In all things natural and supernatural, I am much more comfortable between the extremes of theism and a-theism, favoring the “mysterious middle.” I like the fact that there is more to our world, and certainly more to the universe at large (mind-blowingly large), than we can fully explain.
I love science and cheer for every step taken in advancing our knowledge of the particular universe we inhabit but, as with the James Webb Space Telescope, each step tends to illuminate the vast scope of just how much scientists, and the rest of us, don’t know.
Science is only a threat to those who live in a fortress of certainty, holding on tenaciously to their cosmic flotation device, but it is no threat to those for whom mystery is the heart of spirituality (and science).
Every time I find myself in the Mystery Zone, I give thanks for uncertainty, and thoroughly enjoy the tantalizing wonder of what might be.
Whoever or whatever was responsible for those railroad-crossing arms going up, I’m deeply grateful.
It felt great to be moving again.