“In the Belly of a Paradox”

Parker J. Palmer wrote, The Promise of Paradox:  A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life, in 1980.  I read somewhere that a new edition was published in 2008, but I have not yet read it.  I did read the first edition and found it a “good read,” particularly the first chapter, “In the Belly of a Paradox,” an essay that focused on Thomas Merton’s idea that paradox is an alternative to contradiction.

The word “paradox” often refers to statements that may be both true and false.  Life, said Palmer, is seldom “this” or “that,” but is usually “both/and.”  Elton Trueblood referred to “both/and” as “holy conjunctions.” Charles Dickens, in the famous opening lines in A Tale of Two Cities, illustrates what it means to live in the belly of paradox,  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  A contradiction is a combination of ideas or statements that are opposed and incompatible to one another,  and Dickens’ statement is just that—a contradiction, but it also states a paradox (not “this” or “that,” but “both/and”).

“Rugged Individualism” was a phrase used by Herbert Hoover.  It refers to the idea that each individual should be able to help themselves, and that the government does not need to involve itself in people’s economic lives nor in national economics.  The phrase has taken on other connotations, i.e. “pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps.”  It implies that individuals should  recover from a setback without any outside help; that one’s success is wholly based on one’s own effort or abilities (the self-made man).  The phrase has a biblical basis:  “Each man will have to bear his own load” (Gal. 6:5).  In the same biblical letter, however, and in the same chapter, and just two verses earlier, it is written, “Bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2).  Is it a contradiction (“this” or “that”)  or is it a paradox (both/and)?  We live “in the belly of paradox,” Palmer says, using the story of Jonah as an example,  we must  allow ourselves to be swallowed up and live in the paradox rather than in the contradiction.

In light of the horrendous aftermath of Hurricane Harvey it is imperative that we live in the belly of paradox, in the world of the holy conjunctions (“both/and”).  Either/or just won’t do.

Either a Weed or a Flower
Both  a Flower and a Weed.