Break glass in case of emergency

“Resolving all tensions is a hallmark of ideology. Easy answers and clear-cut solutions are what authoritarianism offers. Part of the task upon us today is to resist these lures.We must build up tolerance for complexity. We must train our capacity to hold things in tension. We must exercise our communal ability for nuance and contestation. Everywhere, discernment will be needed. Only so can we do justice to reality and to one another.” From For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional by Hanna Reichel

I fully admit that I bought the book because of its title. And because the current moment feels like an emergency, though I’m not quite sure where one pulls the alarm.

I’ve also been re-reading Tomáš Halík’s Touch the Wounds, a potent reflection on suffering and transformation. The strength of faith, he says, consists not of “‘unshakeable conviction’, but of the capacity to cope with doubts and ambiguities, to bear the burden of mystery, while maintaining…hope.” Faith now is an openness to the Incomprehensible, “radiant certainties” are for the life to come.

Obstinacy, stubbornness, the ability to hold onto to a position when it is challenged, would seem to be an asset when it comes to faith. But what if faith isn’t that at all, but a willingness to be open to mystery, open to reality, open to each other — open to the immense, incomprehensible, unfathomable divine. To be faithful is to let go of our certainties and be open to God.

So much of the rhetoric today is of certainties. Certain of what other people believe, certain of what God wants. To be certain that not one tittle of benefits goes to someone not entitled, we would strip benefits from many in genuine need. A miser’s measure for our sisters and brothers, not the full measure flowing over that we ourselves are promised.

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Photo is from Shermeee, used under a Creative Commons license.