The early snow gently
dressed the green blades in crystal, while fiery leaves quietly asserted their
presence.
This
image came to me one morning as I was walking back from the monastery to the
Guest House where I live. Autumn was holding on, but winter had crept in with a
shower of ice diamonds. The sun was dancing over both seasonal displays.
Fast
forward about a week. It was a dark, cold night, and I was chipping, hacking
and scraping layers of ice from doors and windows of the car I need to drive
early the next morning. This time there was no sun to give light or heat, just
a continuously running motor to help loosen the doors and undermine the ice's
hold on all the windows. After about an hour and a half, I could get most of
the doors open and had clear vision through all the important windows.
Later,
I was rummaging through my thoughts to prepare a blog entry when it struck me: I
just experienced two starkly different perspectives about ice; there have to be
some kinds of truth buried in this not uncommon occurrence.
The
first thing I realized is that this kind of one-thing-then-another experience
happens to us often, with people, events, even ordinary objects like electronic
devices. Sometimes we see one facet; another time we see a quite different one.
For e.g., trying to learn a new "gadget" can bring us delight at the
thing's potential, then total frustration when it doesn't do what we think we
told it to do. We can plan a party and gladly anticipate the reception of
guests, then afterwards find tinges of bittersweet because some parts didn't go
as intended. Friends and relatives can be sources of joy at one point, then at
another time push all our buttons and drive us to the brink.
If
we are honest, we can frequently see this multi-faceted reality in ourselves. There
are times we live up to our own expectations of ourselves to be responsible, kind,
or understanding, only to later seriously disappoint ourselves (and others?) when
these traits slip out of sight in a given situation.
There's
a saying: "Nothing is simple." I certainly believe this. At times we
can look back at past cultures or even our own personal past thru gold-tinted
glasses. If we romanticize our American frontier days or some Golden Age in
another country, we're not seeing the complexity of things like trying to
create a society in harsh, violent places or becoming a full person in a
culture where wealth and class dictate how one lives.
For
those among us who like things to be simple, to be one thing or the other, not
both/and, contemporary life can be quite challenging. Personally, I have
experienced that many of us belong to the "either/or" branch of
society, and not so many are from the "both/and" department! To
realize that almost nothing in our human experience is black and white is, for
me, a key to recognizing life's complexity and helping us make choices. During
a difficult argument, for e.g.,we can pigeonhole someone to a slot in our
pantheon of unpleasant people. Making an effort to remember some of the more
positive sides of the person can weaken our judgmental walls. This is really
hard to do under these circumstances and requires both faith and a lot of
courage.
To
be a "both/and" person is a major challenge when there is so much
pressure today to reduce fundamentally complex questions to clear black and
white answers. Alfred North Whitehead's observation to "seek simplicity,
but distrust it" seems a useful compass.
It acknowledges that there is always more to something than meets the eye,
and what's unseen may be really important.
Decades
ago, when I was very young in religious life, a wise sister told me that our
faults and our gifts are two sides of the same stick. I have never forgotten
it. It's a symbol that helps me both to know myself better and to gain insight
into others. It says we are integrated human beings, not easily
compartmentalized into good and bad. It's a great symbol for the
"both/and" approach to life, a key to accepting both the ice crystals
glistening in the sun and the frustrating sheets clinging to car doors and
windows in the night.
Sr. Colleen Winston, OSB
