Saying For Today: I left, glad to have allowed the strangeness I am to meet the strangeness she is. To let the slippery something kind of hang in the air and questions float around without an answer in sight.
All real living is meeting.
*Martin Buber. I and Thou.
Here, Buber means by "meeting" when the other is met in his or her sacredness, another subject corresponding to our being subject. I refer to this as "connection, "communion," "holy communion," "togetherness," "being-with," "intimacy," "heart-with-heart," .... Then, this meeting is not merely a meeting in space-time; in fact, the meeting is outside time-space. The how, where, and when of the meeting is only the context, not the meeting itself.
This meeting also does not cancel the otherness of the other but actualizes it and enhances awareness of it. I can turn from the otherness of the other, or I can welcome it. In welcoming, I allow the otherness I am to interpenetrate with the otherness of the other. For the Totally Other births this otherness we share, recognized or not by us.
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The effort to disenfranchise the rights of any segment of a people or of one person is a betrayal of what we share, which is what we are. Hence, this effort is a self-alienation of those who seek to disenfranchise. In so doing, one whittles away at his or her humanness, committing a sin not only against others but against oneself. However, in meeting, we affirm both the other and ourselves, enhancing our humanness, our innate dignity.
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One of the underlying meanings of "strange" is, arising from the Latin, "foreign, external, from without." Literally, the other we see to be "outside us," outside the familiar territory we are equipped to see the other within. But the otherness of the other does not fit that territory; we cannot find it on our mental map.
When we meet something or someone we cannot fit into our mental pattern, literally our brain, we may get uncomfortable. We may find a way to make it fit supposedly. But in supposedly making it fit, we have not made it fit. We have devised something other to relieve our anxiety before the unfamiliar. We have failed to appreciate, even reverence, the Mystery the other is. In denying the other's strangeness, we betray ourselves and block out the Mystery. To deny the otherness of the other is to deny God.
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The other is strange. In acceptance, we invite integration into ourselves; still, we cannot understand the otherness or explain it. This foreign to us can be integrated; it cannot be conceptualized, not even imagined. The unknown remains unknown. There remains something elusive present. If we try to tame the intangible through understanding, we violate its holiness, beauty, and Source.
We cannot choose not to meet this Mystery of otherness, for Mystery, Strangeness, is integral to Life. The other in his or her or its otherness appears, yet within the appearance is this singularity. See, we are not merely appearances, we are Mysteries. We are bathed in strangeness, immersed in otherness. And this intangibility is holy and majestic, leading us to adore and reverence that we cannot fathom but can love within the other and, thereby, within everything.
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Sitting with her, sipping coffee, talking, I find a strangeness about her. I explore that strangeness and press onward with questions, challenging. I observe responses, verbal and nonverbal. I do not want to press too hard, so I use humor to soften the sharing.
We talk, laugh, and I keep asking question after question. She searches to find words to answer with preciseness; she struggles to look eye-to-eye. We end, as always, smiling and with the familiar strangeness hovering about us. The strangeness is part of the joy we share, the playfulness that moves and will not let either of us hold it captive.
The questions were not an attempt to eliminate the strangeness, the elusive yet seductive otherness. I sought to affirm it and allow some sense of practical clarity to come forth of matters she struggles to see and give shape to.
I left, glad to have allowed the strangeness I am to meet the strangeness she is. To let the slippery something kind of hang in the air and questions float around without an answer in sight. That is possibly part of this quality of otherness - it will not yield to our grasp and greed for clarification. We may think this detracts from closeness, but deeper intimacy becomes present by welcoming the otherness of the other.
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We want to feel the Unknown alive in and through the other. In some way, we find this Mystery in the otherness of another enhanced through reverence. This reverence is the wisdom of Love. We find we each are a particular, lived radiance of the one Sun, this loving and lovable Grace. We discover deep self-acceptance in the same freely offered to the other. The heart longs for a melting mutually into each other, yet without loss of self, rather a deeper realization of that we are both together and apart.
Video can be accessed on original site via upper artist-title here...
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
