It is why I have increasingly found it very difficult to answer the question, "Do you believe in God?" I am not sure how to answer, because I sometimes do not know what the questioner is loading into the word "God." Or, perhaps as often as not, I do know what the questioner means by "God" and I want to say, "No I don't believe in God ..." But then I sound like an atheist, and I am not that either. I am after all, besides being a philosopher, a Christian priest and gladly celebrate the divine mysteries.
Perhaps therein lies a clue. Mystery. Mysteries are not something to be "believed in." Mysteries simply are. If you understand the mystery, then the mystery is no longer a mystery, and ceases to be. If the divine is the ultimate mystery, and you think you have a handle on the divine—you believe certain "positive" things about the divine—then the divine ceases to be a mystery. When the divine ceases to be a mystery then the divine ceases to be.
Shifting tracks, I've been thinking about consolation, and there is a rich spiritual tradition of divine consolation. Working with the via negativa, we might best consider consolation by what it is not. Consolation is not being upset, agitated, heart-broken, disturbed, annoyed, discouraged, antagonized, troubled, and afraid. To be honest, I have known my share of these conditions, and I don't think I am in any sense exceptional. Would it be too much to say that, more or less, every day brings its share of upset and agitation, discouragement and trouble? If not daily, then weekly in varying amounts and to various degrees? Such seems to be the "human condition," and we cannot escape it. But we do have to find a way to live with it. One way, of course, at my age it to simply become a "grumpy old bugger," to complain, to rage, and to accuse. I'd rather not.
The phrase "divine consolation" seems to imply something of mystery. And the divine, so they say, is not something outside and "way beyond the blue" but inside. "The Realm of God is within you," said Jesus. Deep within the human psyche is mystery, the spark of the divine, the noumenon, the holy. Divine consolation, then, is also inner. Freedom from agitation, from heartache, disturbance and fear must be inner too
According to the mystics—from the Stoics, to the Daoists, to the Buddhists, to the Christian mystics—the inner path is one of non-attachment to the "outer." In my musing on consolation, it would mean non-attachment to comfort, to well-being, and to plain sailing. In the weirdness of mystery, non-attachment to comfort brings consolation—just so long, of course, that you are not attached to consolation. To attach to consolation is to lose consolation.
Enjoy the mystery,
+Ab. Andy
*photo credit, James Fitz-Gibbon