walking into mystery
/To hear Brandi Read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/pYwpN7IukLE
Walking deep in the woods earlier this week, a rushing sound overwhelmed my senses. Looking up at the tree cover, I paused and searched for the source. The leaves above me were still, confusing my senses as the rush of sound increased. Was wind moving leaves in another part of the woods? Was it raining high above my protected head? Was a plane nearby? I looked up. I looked around. I did not find the answer, but the mystery made me present. I lost myself in that moment.
Mystery is marvelous.
Frederick Law Olmsted was a landscape architect and designer of public spaces. The impact of his thinking on how a park can transform an urban environment is all around us, whether we know to thank him or not. A lasting monument to his genius sits in the middle of the largest metro area in the United States: New York’ Central Park. Designed with Calvert Vaux, the park was first opened in 1858.
Olmsted believed immersion in the natural world restores us. He understood, even in the urban stress of the nineteenth century, that crowded efficiency cannot sustain the human spirit. He was convinced that the state had a duty to create communal, natural spaces that literally interrupted the rushed patterns of the city’s residents. How much more do we need his wise intervention in our twenty-first century?
We are not sustained through accomplishment and business alone. Concrete achieves, but nature grounds us, awakening our senses in baffling but restoring ways. We need the pause that a natural landscape provides. For those who seek solace in the Bible, you’ll find this truth uttered pretty regularly by God and God’s prophets as well. There is mystery in making meaning of life. Purpose, intention and accomplishment matter. Working, creating and improving matter. However, so do wondering and stillness. In the design thinking of God and Olmsted, restful meandering restores dignity as well. Dessert solitude prepares us for excellent communal living. Quiet time in a garden provides strength for a difficult task ahead. Parks remind us to trust this mystery: Slow, present rest equips us for good work.
Olmsted designed mystery into his parks. Like most landscape architects, he was an artist. He knew that while many of us crave order, what we need is to be overwhelmed, even lost. To be reoriented through disorientation. Olmsted would have rolled his eyes at the beauty of Disney-esque, ultra-ordered and symmetrical landscapes. Instead, he wanted the average New Yorker to feel disoriented but curious in every inch of the park. He wanted meandering pathways, rolling hills where the way forward was obscured, sightlines so crowded with trees and boulders that a person couldn’t see the building from which they exited. Olmsted centered mystery in the heart of his design. We can work to find comfort in the not knowing that surrounds us. Allow this truth to seep into the way you interact with others. Conversations are much more fun if you don’t try to predict where they will go. Instead of saying all the things you know, try listening to what you don’t know.
Remind yourself that mystery can disorient us in deeply restorative ways, and then let that fuel you as you walk into the woods or discuss society with another person.
Olmsted believed that public parks create community. Now, as then, we follow patterns that segregate us by race, class, and mobility. Public parks can be one of the few points of intersection in our shared Venn Diagram. Olmsted used the language of aristocrat and commoner, and the terms still convey the meaning he intended. In a park, poor kids and rich kids take turns on the monkey bars. Wealthy folks and struggling folks throw out a blanket and enjoy a picnic. Country Club moms and working-two-jobs moms walk or run, venting to a friend. Public parks bring people together. Moreover, interacting in a park helps us appreciate others without having to figure them out. We stumble in to trusting others, satisfied with what we see without having to explain the mystery of what we don’t.
Embracing mystery in a public park reminds us we belong to a big community that helps provide for us whether we intentionally vet and include each person or not.
So many of us have worked to eliminate mystery from our lives. We get notifications the moment someone asks a question of us. Our lives are controlled by Siri giving us directions, or Alexa telling us when to start the meeting. We are tracked by our computers, and thank Google for completing our sentences. We block people who source news differently than we do, choosing to buzz comfortably in our own hives.
The mysterious rushing noise I heard in the woods this week reminded me of the wisdom of a man who died before our current way of being in the world could even be imagined. His wisdom holds (as it reflects the wisdom of God). Allow yourself to be interrupted by mystery. Leave the sidewalk and wander into grass. Take your earbuds out and hear what you hear. Look up from your phone and see what you see. Look around at the mysterious creatures surrounding you and appreciate them before you categorize them as worthwhile or worthless. Notice the moments in your life when the path forward is unclear, and enjoy the mystery of not knowing what will come next. Appreciate the fact that you are surrounded by unfamiliar spaces and faces. Walk into your own journey without the burden of needing to predict every step. Embrace the wisdom of Olmsted. Allow the mystery of the rushing wind to stop you in your tracks.
I did not discover the source of the rushing noise that day in the woods. I didn’t have to. Instead, I appreciated the moment that took me out of head, while grounding me in my body. We don’t have to understand a thing to appreciate it. Sometimes it is enough to know that a given space offers Holy Ground. That a given moment becomes eternally present with the source of life. When we can’t see beyond the next curve, and we don’t fully understand the person before us, let’s accept the invitation into restoring mystery. Look up, listen attentively, lean in.
