It is official...the smile...and lisa G....is her name....

Not all mysteries should be revealed. Some should remain sacredly left to our imaginations. Once a mystery is solved, then the quest for the answer no longer holds allure. I love a mystery. Why?

I believe in mystery and multiplicity. Even my religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity. "Hints and guesses," as T.S. Eliot would say.

When I was young, I couldn't tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust for answers and explanations. Now, at age 53, it's all quite different. I no longer believe this is a quid pro quo universe...faced my own dilemmas too many times and been loved gratuitously after too many failures.

Whenever I think there's a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say "only" or "always," someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like "principles of uncertainty" and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. Me, well I love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that I am a person of "faith"! How strange that the very word "faith" has come to mean its exact opposite.

It's the people who don't know who usually pretend that they do. People who've had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don't know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.

It is the ultimate mystery of the universe, from which all mystery comes. If you can ponder the mystery of God...then all mystery becomes almost spiritual...and all spiritual things, lead to some tiny moment...of revelation, only to be thrown back into the abyss of question...thus being humbled by mystery.

So, although intellectually I like knowing the name of the lass...Lisa Gherardini. And a little about her life...she was the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. It was the eyes, and the smile, and the mystery that drew us in. So much so, that many thought it was a self portrait...some enterprising individuals, superimposed the artists features onto hers. But, that was part of the splendor, the mystery...now solved. We know the name...she was real, and she was us. Little does this give my heart reason to celebrate...

The magic was in the mystery. Or at least I think so.



Do you smile to tempt the lover? or to hide a broken heart?

Ah...are you warm? are you real? or just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art?

You see...a mystery...

Love,
The Lass