First off, MaryAnn McKibben Dana and I had a great conversation in our Pop Culture Pastors’ Hour about the wonderful 2006 film, Stranger than Fiction. You’ll find the video of it here if you would like to take a listen/watch. More of those to come in the coming months - Battlestar Galactica, Station Eleven, and Arrival for sure.
Ok - so Schrödinger’s Hope... If you aren’t familar with the philospohical/scientific concept of Schrödinger’s Cat, click here for wikipedia’s overview. In sum, it is a question of whether a cat in a box is only alive when it is observed to be alive. But if it is not observed, then it is simultaneously alive and dead. Got it?
Anyway, my weird brain went to Schrödinger when I heard this from Joanna Macy in this week’s OnBeing conversation about Grief and Hope.
...we are called to not run from the discomfort and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear, and that if we can be fearless to be with our pain, it turns. It doesn’t stay static. It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it. But when we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face. And the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world.
When we refuse to look at it...This is a statement that speaks to so much. It speaks to grief - if we refuse to acknowledge our grief, it isn’t that it goes away but it will (as a counselor friend of mine once put it) come out sideways. This refusal to look also applies to the ways that people ignore the ongoing realities of injustice that have been there, are still here now, and in fact are getting worse in so many ways across our country.
One of the things about Jesus that I adore is that he never looked away. He didn’t look away from the persons with the skin diseases that others avoided. He didn’t avoid the woman from Samaria at the well, but instead engaged her in honest conversation. He didn’t look away from the woman who touched the hem of his robe. He didn’t ignore the religious leaders who were criticizing him. He didn’t look away from anyone. His followers seemed to pick up on that because there’s a beautiful story in Acts 3:4 when a paralyzed man calls to Peter and John for help. Rather than just keep walking, verse 4 says that “Peter looked intently at him...” Another way to translate it would be that Peter fixed his eyes on this man. He didn’t look away. And then the Spirit did a miracle through him and John and healed this man.
It is so much easier to just look away though whether it is looking away from people, from situations, from injustice, or from our ouwn pain and hurt. Note what Macy said, “It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it.” When we look at it, it can begin to be transformed and healed. When we look, not only is what we are looking at have a possibility of being changed, but maybe even more so, we are changed. In this change, hope can emerge.
I was originally going to center on a photo from a dinner a few weeks ago in our house where our son (who was in Spain the last few months) made an amazing tapas dinner for us all. I texted a dear friend who lived in Spain for many years about the dinner but didn’t send the photo and his reply was, “Pics or it didn’t happen!” The “pics or it didn’t happen” felt a bit like the Schrödinger’s Cat - or in this case Schrödinger’s Tapas...Here’s the photo
But then there was Wednesday morning walking across the same bridge where I photographed the railing with the spiderweb a few days ago. I was walking across while the sun had come fully above the horizon and I saw something that just stopped me in my tracks and I also suggested to several others walking by that they should stop to look as well. The video above is what I saw and what I invited others into. (note that I have edited the video to black and white to help bring a bit more clarity to the video)
What it felt like to me was that I was looking down into the night sky. The glimmers on the surface of the water (from bugs, dirt, something else?) looked like stars and constellations and the mist looked like quick moving clouds across the sky. But for me to experience that moment, I had to not only see it but I had to be having my eyes, heart, and mind open as I walked. I couldn’t be absorbed into something on my phone or lost in listening to music or a podcast. I needed to be open to observing and beacuse (at that moment) I was open to seeing, I saw this moment and in my joy I invited others into it.
Now in this case, just as with our tapas dinner, even if there weren’t pics/video, it did happen. The tapas were made (and they were amazing). The “looking down into the night sky” moment happeneed even if I wasn’t videoing it. But because of not only personally seeing but also sharing, others have been invited in. Hope emerges.
Here are a few other photos from the lake (and a road near it) the last few days...
Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed
PS - Scout’s big shadow she casts...its funny how my shadow sort of blended with her front legs’ shadow...
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