The temperature on my phone’s weather app reads zero degrees (F) – a large oval sphere with a small circle outside its upper right corner. The sun outside is puzzlingly brilliant until I notice the telltale sparkling of ice on the upper branches of the trees. Only the most intrepid and well-dressed adventurers would welcome a hike on a morning like this. “But it is so beautiful,” my inner voice says. I know that to be true, but know as well the dangers of too much cold. Wise people need to be prepared on days like this.
As I look at the zero, I begin to muse about more meanings of the word. Is there no weather advice in a zero? Does it mean there is no warmth and no cold but rather stasis? (i.e. the state of equilibrium or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces) It does seem very quiet outside – no cars, no voices, no movement of the trees – just…zero. I am also in a period of semi-stasis. Nothing is moving as I sit in this chair except my fingers as they move across the keyboard of my computer. Everything in my bedroom is at a point of zero when considered in this way. Nothing moves. I know, however that as my prayer plant sits in a stance of reaching out toward me and appears frozen in that position, there is consistent growth going on under the surface. And I know the same to be true in the stillness of my body as I feel breath moving in and out of me.
Thus I begin to shift the lens to see zero more as equality rather than nothingness. I am no more or no less – on the inside – than anyone else I might encounter. Warm and cold might be seen as relative terms from the perspective of an Inuit and a resident of Southern California. Perhaps we ought to think more of moving toward zero in all of our judgments, especially about people. Hmmm…
I was jarred into wakefulness this morning by a paragraph in Alan Cohen’s book, A Deep Breath of Life, that reminded me of something I believe about perspective. I trust that I have the power to choose the way I look at life. Here’s how Cohen described it.
Last Sunday, as I listened to a dramatic reading of the entire gospel of Mark, I was struck by the number of exorcisms Jesus performed. In the different ways that “evil spirits” manifested in people, Jesus commanded those “spirits” to “come out!” and the people were healed. I’m wondering this morning if all the synoptics were similarly engaged in reporting such events. My attention was a caught because today’s gospel from Luke (11:14-23) begins with Jesus “driving out a demon that was mute, and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.”
There’s a subtle shift for me today in the Advent theme. Perhaps it will only last until tomorrow but the message of anticipatory waiting is given an additional push from the gospel acclamation – in a rather unusual way. After the psalm I read: Alleluia, alleluia. The Lord will come; go out to meet him! He is the prince of peace. Alleluia, alleluia.
While I’m not certain that the adage “Seeing is believing” came as a conclusion from the story of Thomas, the Apostle who was missing when Jesus appeared in the Upper Room on Easter evening, it certainly applies in that case. It’s difficult to believe what we have not seen with our own eyes (our physical selves) and thereby experienced as true. How is it that we come to believe what we cannot comprehend with our “ordinary minds?” Moreover, what is it that so stirs a person to envision the possibility of something that has never been done – and then to carry the process forward until that possibility becomes a reality? It seems that great inventors must not only be gifted with vision but with steadfast perseverance. And then there is the willingness of those who come after that visionary soul to continue the work. I think here of scientists and medical advancement and immediately my favorite example in a different but related sphere comes to mind. I’m fond of saying, “Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years” as the miracle of flight astounds me each time I feel the take-off moment from inside a plane.
In the Genesis story of disobedience in chapter 3 (1-8), when both Adam and Eve had “eaten of the fruit,” the text tells us, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened,” and they saw the truth of what they had done. In the gospel of Mark (7:31-37) there is a story of the healing by Jesus of a man in the district of Decapolis. “Ephphatha,” he said, touching his ears and tongue and “immediately the man’s ears were opened and his speech impediment was removed.”
