To Walk with Saints and Scholars

Fifth Sunday of Easter – 05/3/26

“Surf and Turf” Photo by LKV Walsh

This morning while listening to a storytelling radio show called Sunday Miscellany, I heard an author said something I’d never heard before. She said music is regarded by some as the reason our brains developed as they have. Because music is made of multiple sounds heard at the same time, listening to music is, according to some, how we learned to hold two opposing thoughts in our minds at the same time. And that ability to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time is connected to our intellectual development as a species – our evolution.

This feels similar to the messages of numerous wisdom teachings and traditions to me. In fact, Jesus says it several ways this week, including: ” I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” My favorite way of saying it is a direct plagiarizing of Father Richard Rohr: “Yes…AND.” In other words, that is true, and then also other things (and even sometimes opposite things) are ALSO true. Yes…and there is more than that at the exact same time.

I have always been drawn to this way of looking at the world, and probably because it looks so much like “real life” to me. For example, being a mom taught me this in ways almost nothing else could. My children could be my reason for being and simultaneously be the death of me. Two opposing ideas had to coexist in my heart and mind for me to survive, and that is still true for my parenting today. Students’ lives have taught me this, friends’ lives have taught me this, and parishioners’ lives have taught me this. Increasingly, though, I feel I’m looking at a dedication to devolution instead of evolution, and even saying this aloud feels like an social infidelity of some kind.

Of course “this or that” thinking has always existed in society, politics, church, and more. But something seems to have shifted on a personal/day-to-day level. More than ever, folks I run into seem to think we humans can either be happy or angry, either be kind or confrontational. The tolerance of, and maybe even the understanding of, the human condition as complicated enough to both break us and delight us at the same time has given way to a version of “us and them” that feels dangerously backward. At the very least, giving in to these easy but false dichotomies renders us toothless. At worst, it renders us powerless.

Wisdom tells us we not only can be honest that things are awful and also be aware we are blessed. We also MUST be honest when things are awful and also be aware we are blessed if we are going to do more than perpetuate the problems at play. Turning away from the pain and refusing to name it aloud allows it to go unchecked and unchallenged. Seeing only the pain eventually leads to despair. But we have the capacity to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. Things can suck and still be beautiful beyond belief. We have evolved precisely because we can think it so! E. B. White put it perfectly when he said: “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

I pray we remember we must do both anyway. Amen