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.
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