The very moment when I think I’ve got it nailed, it moves. Jello to a wall, as they say.

I don’t know how people can be so sure of what they know – sure enough to tell me what I should do; sure enough to claim an infallible authority that is not possible within the context of human endeavor.

Yet, it is hard to move forward in jello. This whole postmodern thing is really slippery. The very seat of our assurance is our perception and the understandings drawn from those perceptions – and perceptions are, well, certainly not clear or trustworthy – tainted, as they are, by our desires and contexts.

So, I want to move on to an assurance that rests on a ‘who’ rather than a ‘what,’ but its really not much better there. I’ve been fortunate to live my life within a set of very dependable relationships – but there is evidence enough that even those can – will – fail. If not in betrayal, then in death.

Perhaps that is why I find some comfort in the suggestion that it is not what – or even who – I know. It’s who knows me. ‘For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.‘ Even more so, when I see that suggestion set in the context of love – love that is patient and kind and never-ending. And when I read that famous passage on love in the context of the idea that ‘God is love.’ Then I feel a bit better, a bit more assured.

Even when I slip in that jello, or slip up in the context of my life – its not the truth I hold, but the truth that I am held that keeps me going.

I think I will put down the nails.
We have a history of using them wrongly … Especially when we are sure that we are right.

[photo 1 by Markus Homann per cc 2.0]

[photo 2, cropped, by Damian Gadal per cc 2.0]