What’s life’s deep secret? Do we ever really understand life? Do we ever really get things right? What lies at the center of life? These are the deeper questions that gnaw away inside of us and we are never really sure how to answer them.. Do we ever really understand what our lives are all about?
Yes and no! I suspect that most of us go through life bouncing back and forth between knowing and not knowing, between feeling steady and feeling insecure, between having days when we feel we’re getting things right and having days when everything seems out of sorts. As the Sufi mystic Rumi, once put it, we live “with a secret we sometimes know, and then not know.”
And what is the secret of life itself? In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says: “To you is given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but to those outside, everything is in riddles.” To whom is he referring? Who is “you”? What is the secret? What puts you inside? What puts you outside and makes the Gospel a riddle?
The answers to these questions are clear: You are “inside” or “outside” the true circle of understanding, not on the basis of being Jew or Gentile, of being man or woman, or of going or not going to church. Rather you are inside or outside the circle of true understanding on the basis of “getting” or “not getting” the secret. And what is the secret?
In essence, the secret to life is the cross of Christ or, as various scripture scholars and spiritual writers put it, the brokenness of Jesus on the cross, the wisdom of the cross, the invitation that lies inside the cross, and the willingness to live out the demands of the cross. How would one summarize this secret of life?
It’s living with the understanding of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, God’s loving presence inside of human twistedness, vulnerability as the path to intimacy, God’s identification with the poor and the excluded, the necessary connection between suffering and glory, the paradoxical nature of love and life (which can only be received by giving them away), the centrality of self-sacrifice as the key to love and fidelity, and the importance of giving our lives over without resentment (of not sending the bill whenever we carry someone’s cross).
Understanding this at any level is the beginning of wisdom and living out life’s secret.[Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Getting and Not Getting the Secret” January 2007]
