Let Mystery Have Its Place In You

Not everything is meant to be uncovered

A friend recently shared this poem, and it’s been sitting on my heart ever since.

Let mystery have its place in you;

do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination,

but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring,

and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird;

keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknown God.

Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to tame it.

If you are conscious of something new—thought or feeling,

wakening in the depths of your being—

do not be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to look at it;

let the springing germ have the protection of being forgotten,

hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in upon its darkness.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

Image by Narcisse Navarre from Pixabay

I can be pretty relentless when it comes to self-examination. I resist the idea that any aspect of the unconscious shouldn’t be brought to consciousness. I believe a central aspect of my own integrity work is bringing as much of myself to light as possible. If there is light shed upon all the disparate parts of me then I have some potential for control over what I actually manifest in my life, or at least that’s what I tell myself.

But I love this idea of not taming the bird that comes to sing among the branches, to allow for a measure of wildness in myself. It reminds me of my deep love for the children’s book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. If you were to ask me why I love that book so much I would first tell you that it is because I relate so much to the main character, Mary— how she is such a dried-up, old, sickly, cranky thing at the beginning, and how she blossoms through learning to relate to the land and love other people. I was not a sickly child, but I did feel like a burdened, cranky old man on the inside, and I find myself getting lighter, more embodied, and joyful as I get older. Though that transformation might have happened regardless of reading the book or not, it did inspire me as a kid. I saw in Mary what was possible for me, and it has proven to be so.

Reflecting on the poem, though, I realize that the other reason I love that particular book is because of the way Burnett champions wildness. Mary meets a young boy who lives nearby, Dickon, and he is a master of wild things. Not because he tames them, but because he allows them to be themselves. He witnesses them and keeps them loving, respectful company, so they trust him.

Mary believes Dickon can actually speak to wild creatures and asks him if it’s so. He replies, “I think I do, and they think I do. I’ve lived on th’ moor with ‘em so long. I’ve watched ‘em break shell an’ come out an’ fledge an’ learn to fly an’ begin to sing, till I think I’m one of ‘em. Sometimes I think p’raps I’m a bird, or a fox, or a rabbit, or a squirrel, or even a beetle, an’ I don’t know it.”

Through Dickon Mary learns to think of all living things as having their own spirit, their own life that is working its way into creation. She learns to treat that burgeoning, wild, magical life with awe and respect, to not try and control it, but simply to keep it company. Together, she and Dickon refuse to turn the secret garden into a formal, carefully tended, and lifeless place. They want it to be largely left to its natural state, the magic that lives in it free to flourish:

I wouldn't want to make it look like a gardener's garden, all clipped an' spick an' span, would you?" he said. "It's nicer like this with things runnin' wild, an' swingin' an' catchin' hold of each other." "Don't let us make it tidy," said Mary anxiously. "It wouldn't seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.

When it comes to people, there is probably something to be said for approaching ourselves the same way. Clearing out the dead brush, giving those tender bits of ourselves trying to emerge space to breathe and grow is honorable work. But trying to prune ourselves into perfect shapes, to tame all the wildness out of ourselves, may just kill our magic.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

If integrity is, in part, a question of wholeness, then darkness and mystery are part of us as well, being natural creatures as we are. Night and day are necessary for the rhythm of life, are they not? Death inevitably follows birth, allowing for further births to follow again. Leaving a field fallow for a season paves the way for greater fecundity in the future. Similarly, we are not meant to put every part of ourselves into constant, conscious production.

We are not capitalist enterprises whose sole use is to turn a profit— materially, emotionally, or spiritually. Instead, we are each a secret garden, meant to be tended gently, with awe and respect, kept loving company so that our wild magic can flourish. Not everything left uncontrolled is dangerous.

Photo by Ian Tuck on Unsplash

How do you tend your wild magic?