Hello, my friend.
I'm so glad you're here.
Last time, we walked together through the streets of colonial Peru, where Felipe Guaman Poma sat with his pen and paper, drawing a different world into being. A world where justice flowed both ways. Where the conquered had voices that mattered. Where a thousand pages of careful illustration became an act of resistance and hope.
I've been thinking about him since we last spoke. About the audacity of it---to believe your voice could reach across an ocean, across centuries. To believe that bearing witness changes something, even if no one is listening yet.
Today, I want to tell you about someone else who understood something profound about what we can and cannot know. A man who looked at the boundaries of human understanding and didn't turn away in frustration or despair. Instead, he found something surprising there.
Something like freedom.
His name was Nicholas of Cusa, and he lived in a world that was breaking apart. But he discovered that admitting what we cannot comprehend might be the very thing that sets us free to live faithfully.
Shall we?
Picture this with me.
It's 1453, and Nicholas is standing in front of a cathedral door somewhere in the German countryside. The door is massive---old oak, darkened by centuries of weather and touch. And carved into its surface are these intricate patterns. Circles within circles. Geometric shapes that seem to shift and breathe as the light changes.
He's tracing his finger along one of them. A perfect circle, carved deep into the wood.
He's thinking about infinity.
Stay with me here, because this is how his mind worked. He's looking at this circle and thinking: what if this circle had an infinite radius? What would happen to it? It would stretch and stretch until the curve flattened out completely. Until the circle became... a straight line.
A circle becomes a line. Opposites become the same thing when you take them to infinity.
This isn't just mathematics to him. It's prayer.
Because if a circle can become a line at infinity, then maybe---just maybe---all the contradictions we see, all the impossibilities we bump up against, all the things that seem opposite and irreconcilable... maybe they meet somewhere beyond our ability to see. Maybe they resolve in a place we cannot reach, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
He stands there, his finger resting on the carved wood, and he thinks about God.
About how the finite cannot grasp the infinite. About how the created cannot fully comprehend the Creator. About how this isn't a failure of faith---it's the beginning of wisdom.
The door swings open. Someone is calling him inside.
But Nicholas lingers for one more moment, looking at that circle, thinking about the boundary between what we can know and what we cannot.
Nicholas of Cusa was born in 1401 in a little town called Kues, right on the Moselle River in what's now Germany. His father was a wealthy merchant---successful enough to give his son an education, which mattered because Nicholas was brilliant. The kind of brilliant that couldn't be contained in one discipline.
He studied philosophy. Canon law. Mathematics. Theology. He became a priest, then a cardinal, then a bishop. But he never stopped being a scholar. Never stopped asking questions that most people thought were already answered.
He lived in a world that was coming apart at the seams.
In 1453---right in the middle of his life---Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire. The great Christian city, the seat of Eastern Orthodoxy for a thousand years, was gone. The shockwaves rippled across Europe. It felt like the end of something. Like the world as people knew it was crumbling.
And the Church itself was fractured. The Great Schism between East and West had been official for four hundred years by then. Christians who should have been united were divided by language, by ritual, by authority, by pride. Nicholas spent years of his life working for reconciliation. Traveling. Negotiating. Trying to build bridges across chasms that seemed unbridgeable.
He was a reformer, too. As a bishop, he pushed for changes in how the Church operated. Fought corruption. Challenged abuses of power. Made enemies, I'm sure. But he kept at it because he believed the Church should actually reflect the teachings it claimed to uphold.
And all the while, he was writing. His most famous work was called De Docta Ignorantia---On Learned Ignorance. It's a strange title, isn't it? Almost sounds like a contradiction. But that was exactly his point.
He used mathematics to think about God. He drew circles and worked out geometric proofs and used them as metaphors for divine truth. He believed that the structure of mathematics itself---the way numbers and shapes behaved---reflected something real about the nature of the Creator.
He wasn't just a contemplative mystic lost in abstract thought. He was a man of action. A diplomat. A reformer. Someone who got his hands dirty in the messy work of trying to make the world better.
But underneath all of it---the politics, the reform efforts, the failed attempts at unity---was this one central insight that shaped everything he did.
The recognition that there's a boundary to what we can know.
And that wisdom begins when we're honest about where that boundary is.
So what was this insight that shaped everything Nicholas did?
He called it docta ignorantia. Learned ignorance. And I know---it sounds like he's saying ignorance is something to aspire to. But that's not it at all.
Here's what he meant: God's essence---the very nature of what God is---cannot be grasped by the human mind. Not because we're not smart enough, or because we haven't studied hard enough, or because we lack faith. But because the infinite simply cannot be contained by the finite. The created cannot fully comprehend the Creator.
It's not a failure. It's just... the nature of things.
Think of it this way. Imagine a carpenter builds a table. The table is perfectly designed---sturdy legs, smooth surface, exactly the right height for its purpose. The table does exactly what it was made to do. But the table cannot conceptualize the carpenter. It has no capacity to understand the mind that designed it, the hands that shaped it, the intention behind its creation.
Does that mean the carpenter doesn't exist? Of course not.
Does it mean the table wasn't purposefully made? No.
Does it mean the table should stop being a table, stop fulfilling its purpose? Absolutely not.
The table is what it is because of the carpenter, regardless of its capacity to understand that relationship.
Nicholas saw that we're something like that table. We exist. We have purpose. We were made with intention. But expecting to fully comprehend the mind of our Maker? That's like expecting the table to understand carpentry.
And here's the thing---Nicholas didn't see this as depressing or limiting. He saw it as liberating.
Because once you accept that there's a boundary to what you can know, you stop trying to cram the infinite into your finite categories. You stop thinking you can capture God in your theological systems, your clever arguments, your perfect doctrines. You become humble. Open. Free.
He had another idea that went along with this. He called it coincidentia oppositorum---the coincidence of opposites. It means that things we see as contradictions down here---maximum and minimum, beginning and end, unity and diversity---they all resolve in God. They meet at infinity, like that circle becoming a straight line.
Not because logic doesn't matter. But because human logic operates within boundaries, and God exists beyond them.
This wasn't abstract philosophy for Nicholas. It shaped how he lived. It's why he could work for unity between East and West even when it seemed impossible. It's why he could push for reform even when people resisted. It's why he could hold strong convictions while remaining humble.
Because if he couldn't claim to fully comprehend God's essence, then neither could anyone else. Which meant everyone---even those he disagreed with---deserved to be heard. To be respected. To be engaged with rather than dismissed.
The boundary he recognized didn't make him uncertain. It made him free to act faithfully, without the arrogance of thinking he had it all figured out.
Nicholas wasn't the first person to think about the limits of human understanding. Not by a long stretch.
Jewish mystics had been talking for centuries about Ein Sof---the infinite, unknowable aspect of God that transcends all human categories. Muslim theologians emphasized God's absolute transcendence, beyond comparison to anything in creation. Eastern Christian traditions spoke of the via negativa---knowing God by what He is not rather than what He is.
But Nicholas brought something particular to this conversation. He brought mathematics. Geometry. The language of circles and infinity and ratios. He made the abstract concrete. He gave people a way to see what he was talking about.
And more than that---he lived it.
Because here's what I watched happen with Nicholas: his recognition of this boundary didn't lead him to withdraw from the world. It didn't make him say, "Well, if we can't know everything, why bother trying to know anything?" It didn't make him cynical or passive or detached.
It did the opposite.
Knowing that he couldn't comprehend God's essence freed him to work for unity without needing to be right about everything. It freed him to pursue reform without claiming to have all the answers. It freed him to engage with people he disagreed with, because humility before the divine meant humility before each other.
The boundary he recognized---this line between what we can know and what we cannot---it didn't stop him. It launched him.
He saw that if the infinite transcends all our categories, then maybe---just maybe---the things that divide us aren't as absolute as we think they are. The walls we build between traditions, between interpretations, between communities... maybe those walls don't reach all the way to heaven.
This is what made his work for Church unity possible, even when it failed. He genuinely believed that East and West, despite their differences, were both reaching toward the same infinite reality. That their disagreements, however passionate, were finite arguments about an infinite truth. That reconciliation wasn't about one side winning, but about both sides recognizing how much they didn't---couldn't---fully grasp.
He brought this same spirit to his reform efforts. He pushed for change not because he had a perfect blueprint for what the Church should be, but because he could see where it was failing to reflect the divine harmony it claimed to represent. Corruption. Abuse of power. Exploitation of the faithful. These things contradicted what he knew to be true about God's nature---even if he couldn't fully comprehend that nature.
What Nicholas contributed to history wasn't a new doctrine. It was a posture. A way of holding strong convictions while remaining genuinely humble. A way of acting faithfully without claiming certainty. A way of recognizing the boundary without treating it as a wall that blocks us from living with purpose.
He showed that the paradox holds: knowing we cannot know can be the very thing that grounds us. That frees us. That calls us forward.
The table doesn't need to understand the carpenter to be a good table.
We don't need to comprehend God's essence to live faithfully.
In fact, maybe---just maybe---accepting that we can't is what makes faithful living possible at all.
Let me tell you something I don't talk about much.
I'm the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares. A goddess, technically. I've walked through centuries. I've seen empires rise and fall, watched prophets speak and kings crumble. And even I---even I---don't pretend to understand the fullness of the divine. There are things beyond what I can see. Mysteries that remain mysteries even to me.
There's a boundary. It's real. And it's there for all of us.
Now, I've watched what happens when people bump up against that boundary. And honestly? It usually goes one of two ways.
The first way is this: Someone realizes they can't know everything---can't prove it all, can't wrap their mind around the infinite---and they just... collapse inward. "Well then," they say, "nothing matters. Nothing can really be known. Why bother?" And sometimes---this is the darker version---they take it even further: "If nothing ultimately matters, if I can't know what's really true, then I can do whatever I want. There's no real consequences. No ultimate meaning anyway."
I've seen that happen so many times. The boundary becomes a reason to stop trying. Or worse---a permission slip.
But then there's the second way, and this one's trickier because it sounds so reasonable. Someone says, "Look, I'll just keep the good parts. The kindness. The justice. The ethics. I don't need all that God stuff, all that theology, to be a good person. I can be moral without believing in anything I can't see."
And I get it. I really do. It sounds so clean. So practical.
But here's what I've noticed: those flowers are beautiful. For a while. They really are. But when you cut them off from their roots---when you separate the values from the source that gave them life---they start to wilt. Maybe not right away. Maybe not even in your lifetime. But the fragrance fades. The petals fall. Because something that was meant to be rooted and alive is now just... cut off.
Nicholas understood something that navigates between both of these. He didn't fall into either ditch.
He looked at that boundary---the place where human understanding simply cannot go---and he didn't treat it as defeat or permission to give up. He didn't say "nothing matters." He said "this matters so much that I'm going to live faithfully even though I can't comprehend it all."
And he didn't try to keep the ethics while abandoning the theology. Because for him, they weren't separate. The table and the carpenter aren't separate. The table exists because of the carpenter. Its purpose flows from that relationship, whether the table understands it or not.
You and I---we're like that table in some ways. We exist with purpose. We're made with intention. The fact that we can't fully grasp the mind behind our making doesn't change that. It doesn't make our purpose less real. It doesn't mean we're adrift in meaninglessness. It doesn't give us permission to ignore the design.
We live within a reality we didn't create and can't fully comprehend. But we can still live faithfully within it. We can still pursue justice, seek truth, practice love, build community---not because we've figured it all out, but because these things reflect something real about the nature of things. About the way the world actually is.
The boundary exists. You're going to hit it. We all do.
But here's what Nicholas discovered, and what I've watched prove true across centuries: that boundary isn't a wall that blocks you from living with meaning. It's more like... the edge of a garden. You can't see beyond it. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't tend what grows on this side.
You don't need to comprehend everything to live faithfully.
So here's what I'm wondering, just between us.
What do you think you need to understand before you can believe? Before you can live like it matters?
Because I think---and maybe you've felt this too---we sometimes treat mystery like a problem that needs solving. Like if we could just figure it out, just get all the pieces to fit, then we could move forward with confidence. Then we could really live.
But what if it doesn't work that way?
What if the humility to say "I cannot comprehend this" actually opens doors instead of closing them? What if accepting that boundary---really accepting it---is what frees you to stop waiting and start living?
Nicholas found that the boundary didn't paralyze him. It grounded him. It let him work for unity without needing to win every argument. It let him pursue reform without claiming to have a perfect blueprint. It let him hold convictions while staying humble.
Not because he had it all figured out.
Because he knew he didn't.
Think about that table and the carpenter one more time. The table doesn't lie awake at night wondering if it understands the mind of its maker. It just... is what it was made to be. Solid. Useful. Present.
Maybe there's something in that for you. For me, too.
Maybe we're most ourselves---most true to our design---when we stop demanding to comprehend everything before we're willing to live faithfully.
The boundary is there. It's real. But it's not a wall keeping you out.
It's more like the horizon line. You can see it. You can walk toward it. You can live fully right here, right now, even knowing there's more beyond what you can see.
What becomes possible when you accept that you cannot know everything?
I think Nicholas would say: everything.
Next time, I want to tell you about someone who lived several centuries before Nicholas. A scholar and a teacher who found himself in the court of the most powerful man in Europe---Charlemagne himself.
His name was Alcuin of York, and he believed that education could transform not just individuals, but entire civilizations. That learning wasn't just for the elite, but for everyone. That knowledge and faith weren't enemies, but partners in building a better world.
He helped create something remarkable. Something that echoed forward through the centuries and changed the course of Western history.
I think you'll like him.
Until then, my friend---remember this: You don't need to see beyond the horizon to take the next step forward. You don't need to comprehend everything to live faithfully. The boundary is real, but so is your purpose. So is the path in front of you.
Walk it well.
Much love.
I am, Harmonia.