Sunday, February 28, 2010

Incarnation, Ambiguity and Love. For Matt and Sara

Paradox is easy. Ambiguity takes Love.

This past week, my new family in-law suffered the loss of their new baby whom they named Evvy (E v v y): "the Cleavers", our favorite kind of family, were smashed by a loaded Semi. It wasn't sudden though, they didn't recklessly step into the street. Sara and Matt, young parents of two, learned that all the Mystery that so effortlessly forms babies, (universes really, when you compare them in every way to their own Beginning Bang) failed to form Evvy's kidneys; Potter's Disease is the clinical taxonomy: what do you call it when no clinic, no matter its might, can veer some inevitable truck?

Matt and Sara, packing so much courage into such young lives, determined with their family, that Evvy would know nothing but Love and Celebration while she experienced her brief incarnation as a daughter, sister and niece. They succeeded. I know because at her funeral, Evvy's casket was dwarfed by her presence that remains so large within her family; she's probably in more family photos than my own boys are- and they've been around for a quarter century.

Paradox is easy- consciousness: is it quantum? dualistic? determined? free? soul? material? matter? energy? epiphenomena?

What is easily lost in the convenience of paradox, is ambiguity's torture.

For us who are called into Human Being, we live daily with something that no other species encounters: Ambiguity. I would argue that it's infinitely easier to collapse an ambiguity into simple contradictions and fight over which sides are superior; the more difficult road I would continue to argue, entails holding a contradictory tension until you can find a higher unifying logic- thus transforming such tension into the pleasure that can only come from paradox: reaching a paradox is climatic. Ambiguity is something else.


Of the three, the road less traveled is Ambiguity. Losing a child can't be packed away into contradiction or a paradox: the same qualities that let Human Being into the world of Awe, let us into the world of Terror- where sometimes trucks come from nowhere, and sometimes come from a long way off: either way we hear its rumble... it's just a matter of how long we have in listening to its rumble.

Contradiction only requires cunning; paradox requires deep thoughtfulness; Ambiguity demands all that we have. That's why it takes Love to live in it: That's why- of the three roads- it's the least traveled.


Love has the muscle to rise above Ambiguity's torture. Love can't exist in a vacuum though, it needs embodiment; and more, it can't exist within a body itself, it can only exist in the spaces between Bodies: between Evvy and her Mother's breast; her Father's fierce protection; her siblings' camaraderie; beyond these closest of confines stands her Wall of Love that is founded on her Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. It's Love that sees us into this world, and it's Love that sees us out. It's the road between, with its constant threat of ambiguity, that often scares us off it; soon we acclimate to fear and its myriad of expressions that stem from desperation instead of an inner fullness.

So in the end, there is in actuality, only one road. However, it's how we choose to walk it, that determines where the road will lead; it's destination is relative to what happens in the spaces between us. Hopefully, we can fill the spaces between us the way Sara and Matt filled the space around their daughter Evvy.



3 comments:

  1. so beautiful. resonated with my soul to cause a trembling. blessed. Thank you.

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  2. Wow. Thank you Temitope. And welcome to the blog!

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  3. Simply beautiful.

    "So in the end, there is in actuality only one road. However, it's how we choose to walk it, that determines where the road will lead; it's destination is relative to what happens in the spaces between us."

    I thought this was worth repeating.

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