Writing
The truth of paradox is a piece of my personal theology that opens me wider to the thundering complexity of all that is. Paradox is defined as a statement or concept that combines contradictory qualities. A paradox can feel impossible or difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics. A paradox pretzels my thinking mind into strange shapes and can be a tool to point me to my own perceptual limitations.
More and more I think Paradox is God mind. It is holistic thinking that disavows binary, simplistic reductions in favor of a mentality that can encompass multiple truths at once. These days I find myself looking for the ways paradox shows up in my life experiences and in the wisdom traditions I study to help illuminate my path. And I keep finding examples that show me the ways contrasting and seeming incohesions don't have to only be about opposition and tension, but can also be instructive teachings on how to hold and accept that a complementary and dynamic wholeness that exists in all things; reminders of the massive balancing act that when peered at on the cosmic, divine level looks a lot like harmony.
I think about yin and yang. How a stark duality and contrasting forces when merged are capable of influencing and transforming each other. A mellowness in the middle made possible by the harmonizing of two contradictions. Does dark not benefit from light's exposure? Does all seeing light not receive a reprieve from the covering void of dark?
I mingle daily in the endless circles of grief and death. I have learned to share the paradox with those I serve that we are all born to die. I have begun to decipher the way that unlimited life unpunctuated by death would be meaningless, just as forever youth would be wasted on the forever young.
I study the goodness of Nature to show me the holy truth that deconstruction is also constructive, that every death is also a new beginning. If you've ever wandered through a mountain forest blighted by fire you have seen the way the ashy ground and charcoaled timber yield soil that is luscious, rich, bearing new tendrils of life just weeks after everything seemed to be laid bare and barren. I think of Valerie Kaur's beautiful question in her book See No Stranger, is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb?
In another life I hope to have a brain that can better hold the awesome study of Physics, which feels to me like God’s machine shop, explaining with precision the dynamic paradoxes that exist in the workings of all of creation writ large and extraordinarily small. I think of the particle and wave paradox in quantum mechanics. The way light and matter can be both wave and particle depending on circumstance and observation. A cosmic duality of form that seems to invite the knowing that we can all be everything at once, none more or less than another, only just right for the set and the setting, and the purpose of each moment we are designed to meet.
These days it is becoming commonplace to hear folks use the phrase “It’s a both/and.” This is paradox thinking becoming normalized and taking root in a culture that has been obsessed with binary oppositionals for far too long. I feel so happy to see the way unpacking this aspect of culture is leading to more complex, nuanced truths about Self and the world around us. We are stepping into a righter relationship with all that is when we can both/and ourselves and our lives together.
There are two notes posted on my bathroom mirror placed there so I am confronted daily to hold a paradox that has become a touchstone in my relationship to Spirit and to my identity. It comes from the Jewish tradition where rabbinical teachings say that it was once written on two separate slips of paper, each carried in a pants pocket. The first note says "For me the world was created" the second says "I am but dust and ashes" This partnership of contrasting beliefs inspires me and feels like a doorway to theological and personal balance. The confidence and wisdom to claim absolute and necessary partnership with the Divine in order to live to one’s fullest purpose and capacity on the one side, and the humility, realism, and wisdom to hold one’s own impermanance and powerlessness in the grand design of life on the other. The dynamic tension propelling me towards a vision of myself and my life that feels whole and worthy of my own divinity. And yours….