at the center of paradox

Life is rarely centered when you have young kids. The peaks are stratospheric, and the valleys sometimes seem like the pits of hell. Part of the struggle comes through the process of reforming individual personal identity into the subservient responsibility nurturing emotionally maturing beings who are absolutely dependent. This reformation is especially challenging considering adolescence and early adulthood are consumed with becoming autonomous individuals. During this stage of development, we in the middle class usually finish high school, move out of our parents' home, and gain financial independence. And when we suddenly we become parents, the trend toward autonomy is suddenly reversed.

I have to admit that when I trudge through the gloomy valleys I sometimes imagine a life in which I would have continued my spiritual quest as an autonomous being. This image is never fully formed in my mind, and the particulars continue to rotate through the possibilities, superimposing various locales, vocations, human connections, and creative pursuits upon each other. There are other times, however, in which I imagine a life lived in spiritual contemplation, devoted to the single, inward, pursuit of spiritual purification. In these dreams, I would be a monk/scholar/writer/aritsan/craftsman/mystic. I would be devoted to one thing, and I would do it well.

Contemplation of these competing visions can only be possible because I AM a Westerner - no - an American and I have the luxury of self-determination. In fact, my dreams of an alternate me are driven by the subconscious meta-narrative of the American psyche. This meta-narrative is explored amid much angst in two books I am reading, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and On the Road. In literary form, these books illustrate that we are and always have been a nation of ordained, self sufficient pioneers, searching for a better life . . . out there . . .  out West . . . elsewhere, but not here. That ordination is a manifest destiny that must be accomplished by pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps. And yet this psyche is schizophrenic, existing in compeitng modes of reality. These competition is revealed in my alternat(e/ing) visions of reality.

Within the realization of autonomy lies a paradox. In cutting ourselves off, we do not becomes the kings of the universe. We become nobody. We become nobody because we exist alongside other individuals but unconnected to them, and in our narccistic individualism, we cease to exist outside ourselves. We only every truly gain personhood and become unique individuals as we are defined in relation to the Other.

And so, the paradox of meaning is resolved within community. It is the connection with my wife and children, my friends, my church, my God that ultimately gives me grounding and meaning. When I say grounding I mean that this meaning is not metaphysical. It is immediate and immanent. It exists in the present, at the moment of love, when human connection is made. It is this immanence that makes the paradox of the Incarnation so profound. Meaning ultimately fails when it remain abstract. But when we live and love, the mundane is transformed into the sacred. This is the meaning, the symbolism, and the transformation of the Eucharist, in which we gather together around the LORD's TABLE and we, the base elements, are transformed into the body of Christ.

Motorcycle image property of boston.com
Road image property of pedro