The Geography of Chaos II...

Recently, I have been taken by the serenity of the many dragonflies which gather over the hot springs we have been visiting - in the shadow of a nearby volcano. Hovering and lofting over the swirling, warm air currents, they are like miniature hangliders.  The fragility of the dragonflies – their delicate asymmetrical balance. The almost infinite possibility of their next movement – forwards-sidewards, upwards-backwards, sideways-downwards – fills me with energy.
 
Together dragonflies dance a dissonant rhythm – a lite and uncomplicated sense of order filled with the risk of the unpredictable next moment. That dragonflies together give themselves over to seeming chaos – I find the rhythm of it profoundly alive and soothing!

The tranquillity of this dance of asymmetrical flight gives way to the poise of absolute stillness when one is at rest on a rock beside the pools. There seems to readiness & intention encoded into the very DNA of the dragonfly – they seem glued into the possibility of the next unpredictable movement. Dragonflies are hard to catch & yet for my young son - not impossible.
 
This is the field of chaos – unforming, reforming, tremendous elemental energy, danger, possibility, newness & even death ! Like the undecidability of  a decision – to leap into the unpredictable next moment is an action of faith & hope – two steps further along in the passage towards the other !

The Geography of Chaos...

Here I am on the margin of chaos. To exist on the edge pushing outwards is two steps beyond the sum total of facts. A leap beyond all prior preparations. There is certain madness in it. To hesitate, to pause, to even stop here is like dwelling on the knife edge of undecidability. Deferring decision means the knife cutting deeper into my flesh urging me on.  Do I move out further into vulnerability & weakness or do I retreat back into the safety of the familiar ?
 
Abraham was given his name by God – ‘father of a multitude’ & a son to go with the promise. Yet God asks Abraham to walk away from the responsibilities of that promise - to sacrifice his son & heir. Obediently Abraham journeys away from the safety of the center. Each step extinguishing the possibilities of the known – position & status, stripped away. Jacques Derrida says, ‘Abraham is at the same time the most moral and the most immoral, the most responsible and most irresponsible…’. He has stepped between - into transparency – again a wanderer.
 
Abraham is familiar with the rhythm of transparency - of being sensitive to asymmetrical & unfamiliar places. 3 times his name is called & each time Abraham answers by position – ‘here I am’ ! He is a deconstructed wanderer blessed with the wisdom of the margins. In the seeming madness of blind obedience, Abraham is uniquely positioned to let ‘the other’ come – truly ‘the Lord will provide’.
 
Oh the tension of the bitter comfort of sameness and the intoxicating discomfort of difference – holding me painfully between. I am cocooned within the anxiety of dissonance. These are shadowlands of undecidability. I think when it comes down to it I fear encountering otherness on its own terms. Yet Proverbs (1:7) tells ‘the fear of the Lord - ‘Supreme Otherness’ - is the beginning of wisdom’.
 
I reflect therefore I pause, I think and I stop… yet I am empowered when I intuit & keep moving. Here I am and I cannot stay here ! Outwards & downwards.

In the Neighbourhood of God II

There is a tale that tells the story of a man inspired by God who once went out from the places inhabited by people into the vast waste of a desert. In that place the man wandered for along time until he came to the Gates of Mystery. He knocked.
 
From within came a voice, “What do you want here ?”

The man replied, “I have proclaimed your praise in the ears of the people but they were deaf to me. So I have come to you so that you may hear me and reply.”
 
“Turn back,” spoke the voice from within, “There is no one to hear you here. Don’t you know I have placed my hearing among the deafness of mortals”.  

In The Neighborhood of God...

There are times when I feel transparent – almost invisible. It is a fragile state in which I am diminishing. I have this feeling of being stretched so thin, of being insipid, diluted – a lite version of me. It is like speaking in a crowd and the conversation continues right through me – no one hearing. It is like being one of the weathered, nameless ones, appearing at my car window begging & when sated, blending right back into the shadowlands. Where did she go ?
 
The transparency of God. Abraham Heschel says that life passes on in close proximity to the sacred, “You are not alone, you live constantly in holy neighbourhood: remember: ‘Love thy neighbour – God – as thyself.’” The accessibility of God, God drawing near – holiness moving in next door.
 
The discipline of transparency is positional. It implies sensitivity to place & openness to otherness in close proximity. It has that sense of vibrating in tune, of being immersed, enveloped and eventually becoming at ease and purposeful there. It is relationally significant yet non-threatening – reflective yet non-judgmental.
 
Transparency has that sense of being poress & permeable – of light passing through the thing uninterrupted. Relationally it risks greater vulnerability and exposure of self.
 
Transparency pragmatically embraces truth; not so much truth - universal & immutable but truth - local and dynamic. It is at ease with a reality that is pitted, asymmetrical & irregular. I think transparency is a choice – I choose to be present, I choose to immerse myself & to allow myself to be penetrated & shaped by this place !
 
As for those others dwelling out on the margins – disempowered and vulnerable - the anonymity of transparency is a discipline of necessity & survival. Outwards & downwards !