Division of opinion, too often the fault line of human relationships, is, when we embrace it openly, what invigorates thinking and stirs new thought. It is the ground of new beginnings, the beginning of new insight, the foundation of new respect for the other. If anything sharpens the dull edge of a relationship it is often when it ceases to be boringly predictable. It is when everybody on two continents knows what we are going to say next that we know we have stopped thinking. Then we need to have a few old ideas honed. We need to think through life all over again. “Of two possibilities,” my mother loved to tell me, “choose always the third.”
Creativity, it is too often forgotten, comes out of differences. It is the ability to function outside the lines, beyond the dots, despite the boxes and the mental chains by which we have forever been constrained, that fits us to be the architects of the future. Instead, we want everyone to think alike when what we really need are people who are thinking newly—about theology, about God, about faith, about morality, about science, about life. “You won’t find this year’s birds in last year’s nests,” the proverb teaches, but we so easily miss the meaning of it entirely. Life is meant for moving on, the observation implies.
Just when we are most inclined to settle down, intellectually as well as physically, the folklore teaches, we are advised to remember that “steady” and “static” are not synonyms. It is one thing to move in steady step from one thing to another, respecting the best in each; it is another thing entirely not to move at all. We fail to realize that it is precisely the ability to think beyond the context of the times in which we live that makes us fit to live in times to come.
Being able to think differently from those around us and being able to function lovingly with people who think otherwise is the ultimate in human endeavor. It requires three things: a heart large enough to deal with conflict positively, enduringly, and kindly; a keen sense of personal purpose, the notion that there is something on the horizon that is worth debating; and a soul sensitive enough to transcend the tensions of the immediate for the sake of the quality of the future.
Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams
Uncommon Gratitude
