I am doing a UU service on Mystery (exact title TBD) early next year. I have my own thoughts on Mystery and its spiritual importance, but I wonder what others think.

What do we mean by Mystery when we talk about it in a spiritual/religious context?

What is the relationship between Mystery and God (as you conceive God)?

What role does Mystery play in your faith/spirituality?

Is invoking Mystery sometimes cop-out to avoid problematic questions/answers about faith?

SG posted the following blog by Gretta Vosper in one of the Observer question threads. However, I think goes enough beyond the topic of that thread and is important enough it its own right to merit its own thread. Here it is:

http://www.grettavosper.ca/essential-agreement/

Wandering the deep time

I saw the light of God explode forth

Rays of holy energy permeating me

Filling me, the Cosmos, with God’s Power

God’s Word

God’s Will

God’s Love

And I danced among the stars,

Singing the praises of the Most High

Who had lifted me to Heaven

And filled me with Holy Light.

Amen

We have examined concepts like "God," "religion, and "faith" here on the Café, but we haven't examined "spirituality," at least not recently.

So what is "spirituality" to you? Your personal definition, and/or dictionary definition, and any experiences and feelings that define spirituality for you.

In the thread on Canons, John wrote the following:

I'm curious to know what it is that pantheism promotes that you (or others here) disagree with. Not to confront you or argue with you, but as a starting point to explore the notion of pantheism further.

Hello Everyone been very busy..the last few years and grown oodles and oodles..wow God is Awesome...hope you visit my blog and check things out, always messages there..Blessings..Betty Jean...   http://godtherealthing.blogspot.com

If God is the potter, how pliable should we be? Exactly, what does this mean. Any ideas?

Mendalla, about 'god' you say [quote=Mendalla] I don't even ask the question anymore. For me, God (if God is there at all, but that's another discussion) isn't an interventionist supernatural being.

God, for me, must be something else.

God is the wonder and beauty of the world.

God is the forces shaping a world that is constantly changing.

God is the love and hope in human hearts.

I am going to be annoying.

Some years ago, an evangelist invented a battery that he said would store prayers. The faithful, for a small payment, could pray into it until the power of thousands of prayers was stored up. Then, in a great world crisis, he would turn on the battery and bombard God with thousands of prayers.

That makes as much sense to me as most of what I have heard about prayer.

I do find it very odd

That I have a funny belief in God

The more I learn the less I agree

With other people's theology

What is god? It seems hard

To understand more than a shard

Of an unfathomable mystery:

A universe with growing complexity

That we try to understand, with an alliance

To the latest in quantum science

(of which I know little, in all fairness)

But it involves universal awareness

Human consciousness we dote on

But true also down to the photon