“Inside us there is something that has no name; that something is what we are.”

— Jose Saramago

We spend our lifetimes, if we choose to live with passion, peeling the onion of our own beings and making a voyage of self-discovery that shows us who we are.  It is only human to use our minds — our language — to categorize, define, and name the things we discover each day.  A rock is a rock; but on closer inspection, we see that this rock is jasper.  Looking even closer we discover that the jasper sparkles with quartz crystals; and now I pause to wonder what I might discover if I looked at those crystals through the lens of a microscope.  The more we live and the more we refine our ability to see, to wonder, to step beyond the known and expand our understanding, the more we realize that there are times when our vocabulary is too small to categorize, define, and name.

Nowhere does language fail more miserably that when we try to define who we are — not what we do, but who we are.  Far beneath the surface of woman, mother, partner, writer, and all the other roles that may define me, there pulses a spark of the divine that cries out to be revealed but still remains veiled beneath layers of language that fails in its attempts to name its beauty.  Every time I give myself a name, I find that there is another veil that offers its edge and asks me to lift it, revealing that this is not my name at all.

We are mysterious creatures; and the mystery is part of the gift we are given as our birthright.  Perhaps it is the mystery that keeps us ever striving to express who we are and reveal our own names.  It is the mystery that gives birth, again and again, to the beauty we bring to our world and to each other.  It is the mystery that is so precious and so expansive that we must celebrate the veils, celebrate the layers, that ask us to dig deeper and meet ourselves over and over again.

We are only human; and it is natural that we should want to categorize, define and name who we are.  We are also divine, created in the ever-expanding image of our Creator; and if we are wise, we will celebrate the not knowing, the not naming, the mystery of being who we are, that leads us always to discover that we are indefinably beautiful