Delightful ambiguity

I am the first person to accentuate the fact that life is not as easy as “black and white” – I have experienced the truth of this so many times – life is more about navigating shades of grey. But I can understand why so many people try to make life that simple. Heck, I sometimes feel the desire myself!

Why? Because it would be SO much easier! No more complications, no more having to think of all contingencies, no more worrying about all the different angles and perspectives, no more having to think long and hard about the people in front you and around you…about their lives and experiences and where in the myriad shades of grey they find themselves and having to accommodate that in your thinking, speaking and living. Just simple, easily identified truth…one truth…

The mundane plodding life

But then I can’t help but think of the movie “Equilibrium” and of how (literally) grey that world of “black and white” becomes…how deadening simplicity and one truth can be (is?). And I think of Edward Norton’s words: “All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It’s fun, and it’s fun because it’s hard.” And I realise that it’s not only true of characters, but of real life; for aren’t we all mere actors on the stage of life (thank you, William Shakespeare)? Which, once again, confronts us with ambiguity – for easy and simple does not bring joy or the fulfilment that a full and complicated life has as its reward…

Life: the complicated version

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

So here’s to life in all its colourful shades of grey, to ambiguity, to the struggle of living complicated lives and engaging with complicated people. Here’s to no easy answers…sometimes no answer at all. Here’s to the colour and beauty and passion of living in the shades of grey. Here’s to the kaleidoscope of people and circumstances we then have the privilege of sharing life with. May God grant us the grace to live here as a blessing, even though it’s hard.

Tangled

It was Sir Walter Scott that wrote – “oh, what a tangled web WE WEAVE” – referring to what happens when we start down the path of deceit. But after today I feel the need to elaborate on that by saying – “oh, what a tangled web IS WOVEN” – for sometimes life becomes unbelievably complicated and tangled up without our having a hand in it. Great sadness is folded in with utter joy, the blossoming promise of new beginnings with a poignant reminder of those dreams yet left unfulfilled. And it’s not as if we want it, as if we are looking for it or hoping and planning for it to happen – it happens unexpectedly on a lazy Saturday afternoon; or in a joyous Sunday morning service. And it shatters us completely. It leaves us broken and confused. It freezes us between worlds. The strand of our life gets snagged.

What to do in those moments? Those moments when our hearts are suddenly squeezed so tight we can’t breathe? Those moments where we want to cry and laugh simultaneously? Those moments on the edge of reality…of sanity?

The Native Americans have a tradition of leaving a blemish in one corner of the rug they are weaving. Why? Because they believe that that is where the spirit enters. Now, it might sound like some ridiculous New Age mumbo jumbo to you, but I have come to realise that there is a lot of truth (and Spirit) in it – even the failed pieces, the painful parts, are essential. For it is exactly in the disappointment, the sadness, the confusion and the pain of things “not going how I wanted them to go” (whatever that may mean for you today) that I come to the end of myself – of my power, my strength and my understanding – only to find a strength and a peace there that weren’t there before. It is only in that place that we are reminded that true life in all its colour can only come when we reach the end of ourselves, when we give up and let go, when we are willing (sometimes forced) to give up everything. And so I keep discovering that it truly is in those tangled times, those bruising blemishes on our lives, that the Spirit does enter. Because those times leave us no other choice than to imagine totally new tomorrows. Tomorrows where we can do and be nothing but honest and real, stripped of all pretence and of our imagined selves.

And in all this we need to be reminded of the fact that we serve a God who is not somewhere else – remote, detached and distant – but a God amongst us, feeling what we feel and aching how we ache. That is the point of the incarnation, of God becoming fleshly human like you and me – God came into the world and screamed alongside us. We are not alone. Does this make those moments any less heartbreaking or any less shattering, any less disappointing ? Never. We can never be prepared for when the rawness of life hits us.

But it can give us a better question to ask and a new way of walking through and out of the tangle and the mess – instead of asking “Why this?” we should rather be asking “What now?” May God help us all in our trying and messy times; may He give us the strength to ask the right question; and may He be the one to guide us through and untangle us into new possibilities.

May the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God, and the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit be with us all when life gets tangled