I picked up a couple of CDs out of the bargain bin a couple of weeks ago—one of which is called Thinkin' About You by Trisha Yearwood, originally released in 1994. I popped it into my CD player on my way to a social event last night and I heard a beautiful ballad called On a Bus to St. Cloud. The song is a about thinking that you've seen somebody you used to be in a relationship with. But that's not what intrigued me.
Here are a couple of ambiguous lines that made me think: In a church in downtown New Orleans / I got down on my knees and prayed / And I wept in the arms of Jesus / For the choice you made / We were just gettin' to the good part / Just gettin' past the mystery…
The lyrics don't provide any more insight into the choice the man made, although I'm guessing it was to leave her. But the saddest part of the song to me is where the lyricist (not Tricia Yearwood) believed that getting past the mystery was the good part of the relationship. I don't think that's ever a good place to be in—no matter whether we are talking about relationships, writing, reading, or anything else. Mystery is the great muse, and very necessary.
I had a conversation with a friend a couple of weeks ago about the marvelous mysteries of Christianity. The Trinity is a mystery. So is the virgin birth of the Messiah. And his deep love for people—even to the point of being willing to die for sins he didn't commit. The Apostle Paul refers to the gospel as being a mystery on more than one occasion. But in that mystery we find wonder and we are awed by it. Or at least we should be.
Romance, by its very nature, is mysterious. It takes our breath away. It pulls us, invites us, intoxicates us, but in the end, nobody can really define it. We just know it when we see it, or better yet, when we experience it. The last thing we want to do is to get past the mystery. At the same time, I don't think that we are to seek mystery as a means to an end, but rather to just draw inspiration from it and to appreciate the power it contains.
