Black & White World

Living Faithfully in an Ambiguous World

"Our hearts and minds desire clarity. We like to have a clear picture of a situation, a clear view of how things fit together, and clear insight into our own and the world's problems. But just as in nature colors and shapes mingle without clear-cut distinctions, human life doesn't offer the clarity we are looking for. The borders between love and hate, evil and good, beauty and ugliness, heroism and cowardice, care and neglect, guilt and blamelessness are mostly vague, ambiguous, and hard to discern.

It is not easy to live faithfully in a world full of ambiguities. We have to learn to make wise choices without needing to be entirely sure."

-Henri Nouwen


This is the meditation for March 27th. It reminded me of some musings I had jotted down a couple weeks ago.

Our society has been shoved into a black & white, right & wrong, world. Be it from the media and politics. We are assualted from both of the extreme ends of the spectrum. These are the only choices presented to us, no middle ground (and heaven forbid even the thought of working TOGETHER for compromise.)

To take it a step further, to choose one is to determine which end you live with, because your choice determines all choices. Thus to choose a conservative, right wing, christian view such as opposition to abortion is to say that you are not "pro-choice". By this standard I am a conservative, right wing, christian or a republican for short. Which means I side with repression over hedonism, hetero over homo, tradition over progression, religious over secular, morality over ...STOP!

You can see where I am going. We are given only extremes and then we are told that the opposites are wrong. I'm a firm believer in moderation. I like to live in the in-between, because I want to experience the many facets of life. But I do not want to get lost or consumed by the extreme ends that are blind to the value of the all.

I have views and opinions on all the issues I have alluded to, but I try to understand the other side. I value their opinion, because they can reveal something I may be blind to.