I remember clearly how I countered atheists as a child,
"I would rather be wrong on the side of faith."
Life sometimes feels reduced to a risk-benefit ratio. Children grow at astonishing rates, far quicker than my aging parental intellect can adjust. The times are changing. Taboos are on pyres of social media before our own eyes. As in generations past, what was dangerous is not only cool, but a political stance, an identity defensible: our children mount heights both indefinable, ineffable, but conscious, decided, strong. They are the new warriors on the edges of social norms. Challenging ideologies and forging paths through a wilderness all their own. Yet I cannot but see them as the college men placing daisies in rifle barrels in the 1960's, my father's generation growing beards in defiance of gender norms in the 1970's, myself growing up sometime shamefully, sometime shamelessly dyke in the 1990's.
I am softened by the Catholic hospital I work at. The humanity and humility of people of faith who surround me astounds and ashames me. I am by definition a fence-sitter in faith: I cannot make myself plant a foot on either side of the fence. My empathy needs bolstering after years of being on the fringes, my seat amongst the outcasts. I carry my identify carefully and stand watch as my children (rebels and pioneers) blaze new trails, yet the priests and sisters who walk an old, established road that has fallen into disregard join them as rebels and pioneers while wielding tried and trusted tools to reach the hurting and restless of this world.
You say I'm stubborn and I never give in
You say I'm selfish, and I agree with you on that
I say we've only known each a year
You say, "I've known you longer, my dear."
You're so provocative, I'm so conservative,
You're so adventurous, I'm so very cautious,
Walking with each other,
think we'd never match at all,
but we do.
(My Same ~Adele, 19)
I look around at a house of mirrors. Faith has always been dichotomous to me: heaven and hell, righteous and sinful, lightness and dark. I remember a quote I loved long ago:
Muses of the gray, beyond your binary definitions, my children and I still adrift on our raft together, and now we gather souls - my wife, stepfamily, friends... trying to live life outside the margins but looking for other outliers. Longing for community, even when we have accustomed ourselves to being outsiders.
I feel the pull of the universe. The need to be right on the side of what is truly right. A song by a favorite bluegrass gospel family band haunts me. I wonder if I can again master the idea that God's hand is unchanging, true...but loving, accepting of difference, uncertainty. Master the dichotomy. I ponder how we all start out so sure of our intuition, fighting for the things we simply know as true, yet as we age, wisdom adds questions, not answers. Survivors and embracers of dichotomy. We are all on this journey, spinning through the stars, marking our short years in evolutions around a dying sun. Of the stars, embracing darkness in light, light in darkness.
Believers. Doubters.
Perhaps we all hold an eternal thread and tug in tension with all of humanity. The pull between knowledge and knowledge of limitations. Love and hate. War and peace. All a part of the dichotomous universe that cradles us in our unknowing. Each of us earth-shattering and brilliant, dull and muted by the mundane of our reality.
Time is filled with swift transition,
Naught of earth unmoved can stand,
Build your hopes on things eternal,
Hold to God's unchanging hand.
(Hold to God's Unchanging Hand, The Franz Family, Sorrow and Wisdom)
I reach into the dark, I struggle for faith. Struggle for vision that Christ is Love, that God, deity by whatever name known...that it is love that wins in the end. That my children and I can be loved with abandon here... and eternally.
"I would rather be wrong on the side of faith."
Life sometimes feels reduced to a risk-benefit ratio. Children grow at astonishing rates, far quicker than my aging parental intellect can adjust. The times are changing. Taboos are on pyres of social media before our own eyes. As in generations past, what was dangerous is not only cool, but a political stance, an identity defensible: our children mount heights both indefinable, ineffable, but conscious, decided, strong. They are the new warriors on the edges of social norms. Challenging ideologies and forging paths through a wilderness all their own. Yet I cannot but see them as the college men placing daisies in rifle barrels in the 1960's, my father's generation growing beards in defiance of gender norms in the 1970's, myself growing up sometime shamefully, sometime shamelessly dyke in the 1990's.
I am softened by the Catholic hospital I work at. The humanity and humility of people of faith who surround me astounds and ashames me. I am by definition a fence-sitter in faith: I cannot make myself plant a foot on either side of the fence. My empathy needs bolstering after years of being on the fringes, my seat amongst the outcasts. I carry my identify carefully and stand watch as my children (rebels and pioneers) blaze new trails, yet the priests and sisters who walk an old, established road that has fallen into disregard join them as rebels and pioneers while wielding tried and trusted tools to reach the hurting and restless of this world.
You say I'm stubborn and I never give in
You say I'm selfish, and I agree with you on that
I say we've only known each a year
You say, "I've known you longer, my dear."
You're so provocative, I'm so conservative,
You're so adventurous, I'm so very cautious,
Walking with each other,
think we'd never match at all,
but we do.
(My Same ~Adele, 19)
I look around at a house of mirrors. Faith has always been dichotomous to me: heaven and hell, righteous and sinful, lightness and dark. I remember a quote I loved long ago:
Muses of the gray, beyond your binary definitions, my children and I still adrift on our raft together, and now we gather souls - my wife, stepfamily, friends... trying to live life outside the margins but looking for other outliers. Longing for community, even when we have accustomed ourselves to being outsiders.
I feel the pull of the universe. The need to be right on the side of what is truly right. A song by a favorite bluegrass gospel family band haunts me. I wonder if I can again master the idea that God's hand is unchanging, true...but loving, accepting of difference, uncertainty. Master the dichotomy. I ponder how we all start out so sure of our intuition, fighting for the things we simply know as true, yet as we age, wisdom adds questions, not answers. Survivors and embracers of dichotomy. We are all on this journey, spinning through the stars, marking our short years in evolutions around a dying sun. Of the stars, embracing darkness in light, light in darkness.
Believers. Doubters.
Perhaps we all hold an eternal thread and tug in tension with all of humanity. The pull between knowledge and knowledge of limitations. Love and hate. War and peace. All a part of the dichotomous universe that cradles us in our unknowing. Each of us earth-shattering and brilliant, dull and muted by the mundane of our reality.
Time is filled with swift transition,
Naught of earth unmoved can stand,
Build your hopes on things eternal,
Hold to God's unchanging hand.
(Hold to God's Unchanging Hand, The Franz Family, Sorrow and Wisdom)
I reach into the dark, I struggle for faith. Struggle for vision that Christ is Love, that God, deity by whatever name known...that it is love that wins in the end. That my children and I can be loved with abandon here... and eternally.
