Mystery

Every year at this time I sing the same song; it is a consistency regardless of my location. So much so that I had to reread past blogs to make sure I'm not reposting. If I am outside and can feel this transitional air, I cannot help singing to myself:
"I could go crazy on a night like tonight
When summer's beginning to give up her fight
Every thought's a possibility
Voices are heard but nothing is seen
Why do you spend this time with me
Maybe an equal mystery.." *
I can remember being on a camping trip with my youth group in 1994, listening to that song on my walkman (yes, it was a tape) and looking up at the stars. It is still, over ten years later, a vivid and vibrant memory. In that memory there is a feeling--that mix of environment and experience, emotion and encounters--that arises when the season suggests its shift. I am basking in it.
And that question, "Why do you spend this time with me?" is something I think we all want to ask those that we love. In hopes of what? Identity? Affirmation? Is there a deeper meaning in that mystery of encounters? Why do we want so badly to be seen or be known anyway? Every person I have met has had a deep and basic desire to know and be known by someone or something; where and when we find what we seek: that is really the great mystery.

* From "Mystery" by the Indigo Girls. Off 1994's "Swamp Ophelia".