Ambivalence has been a recurring theme within my first few weeks of school. The idea of having two ideas contradicting each other, and yet both are true. So often we feel the need to choose one side of the contradiction and stick to it with dear life as truth, all the while ignoring the other side of the coin (or truth). How hard it is to simply allow the contradiction, the ambivalence, to rest within us.
I was reminded today of my journey to Germany earlier this year. Prior and during the trip I felt this urgency to understand what God wanted to do with me, with my mentor Kathy, with the ministry that would be done. There had to be "one thing" that God desired for this trip. It was painful the amount of speculation and analyzing that went into discovering the great, "one" mystery!
About half way through the trip, when in fact many great things had happened, I finally had to admit that perhaps God was bigger than "one thing". Perhaps God desires many things for me, for us, for that trip to Germany. For some reason that was a very hard conclusion to come to for me. Now I understand why...Because it required me to live within the tension of contradiction, which made me expand my understanding of how big God actually is. It also required me to give up my dogma of "one thing" which is so safe and comforting.
What I have yet to learn is what is actually means to rest, to sit, with ambivalence...Perhaps there isn't just one way!
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