synthesis God

For many years the ideas surrounding the words balance, irony, paradox and even dialectic have been a big part of the grand landscape of my thoughts. Perhaps it was after I first went to the Leland Center almost 5 years ago that these ideas began to have a place in my conscious brain.

But I also remember, during my last year at Capital Bible Seminary, thinking that the most fundamental principle of theology was balance. So many of the questions I was being challenged to consider seemed to have both possible answers - no and yes - it was always dependant on what was meant be the question, how you defined the words, and how far you took the implications of the answer. Perhaps this is when I first began to ponder whether, in some sense at least, truth actually is relative.

This question of balance, the irony of truth, has followed me through the last few years of my life, casting an alternative light on my experience that has caused me to ask questions utterly foreign to my childhood and come to conclusions which sometimes seem like a betrayal of basic faith, but that is my journey. I have come to find truth not in absolutes, but in the indefinable synthesis between absolutes - the dialectical meeting between two extremes.

As this has become my mental landscape, perhaps it is fitting that it has now also become my emotional and relational life. Over the Christmas holiday I received regular updates on the grave health of my grandmother. These updates brought home to me just how close to the end of life all my grandparents are. She seems better, for now, but she is not what she once was, and will never be that again. Yet while so many in my family were dealing with the legal, medical and emotional issues surrounding my grandmother's illness, I was spending my first Christmas with the man who became my fiancé on Christmas day. As my parents and grandparents faced the possibility of death, my life was full of newness and joy.

This contrast was highlighted again two weeks ago, when I received the shocking news that my best friend's 5-year-old son had died. Lucas may never have been well and strong, but neither was it expected that he would suddenly be snuffed out. Suddenly he was gone, and my heart ached for my friend, even as I was considering a wedding dress and thinking about planning dates. The stark contrast between new life and plans for the future, and a sudden and irreversible ending again obtruded itself onto my notice.

In some ways it causes me to ask: "why me?" Not in the traditional woe-is-me fashion, but why am I so blessed while those I love suffer pain and loss? Why do I look with joy to the future, while others weep, trying to find a way forward? How can I be so full of joy for myself and pain for my loved ones at one and the same time? The scriptural injunction to 'rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn' never felt more appropriate, for both are indeed one and the same. Another irony, another paradox, another dialectical truth. It isn't one or the other, it's both.

It reminds me of a conversation we had about Haiti. As he talked about the pain of sympathy with those people, I realised that I simply turn it off. Why should I think about it? Why should I suffer the pangs of sympathy? There's nothing I can do, bar praying. I have no money. I have no time to offer. I'm sorry this has happened, but why should I grieve? Because we are all part of the human race, was his answer. I left it to hang in the silence.

So perhaps I have found that the paradox of truth is also the paradox of living, the paradox of loving, the paradox of feeling - joy and tears - anticipation and grief - love and loss - gratitude and regret. These do not just follow one another, often they exist simultaneously, challenging the limits of our self-understanding and testing the boundaries of our love.

Yet all this time, outside our boundaries, God still is - greater than all boundaries, more loving than the most famous lover, more joyful than the happiest mother, more grieved that the one who has lost all. Somehow God encompasses all, and still manages to be the same - yesterday, today, forever. Perhaps that is where I can find the bravery to experience the dialectics of life in a new way, because I know the one who is the synthesis.