Paradox

We live in an era and culture rich in diversity. In few other places can one walk a typical city street and find foods that came from everywhere, Birmingham to Bangkok; music that originated in Nashville or Namibia, clothing from Paris to Pakistan. We are blessed with wide-ranging ideas from so many sources, ways of being and relating that come from a variety of cultures and times. Our history is redolent with the fragrance of human experience; and our prayer is that our future will be just as full.

You could say with some justification that we’re asked to worship that diversity, especially here on California’s North Coast. “Celebrate Diversity,” multi-colored bumperstickers proclaim! Our local public radio station self-identifies as “Diverse Public Radio.” All our focus seems drawn to the differences between us and “other,” as if only by highlighting our contrasts can we appreciate who and what we are as a race.

And yet, We Are One.

Paradox.

Many peoples. One planet. Many cultures. One race. Many agendas. One future. We are melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, all One in the grand symphony of our racial experience. We celebrate the Divine in a plethora of constructs, yet we’re all part of that same Divinity, expressing our Divine nature as creatively and, well, as diversely as we can.

To live within the paradox with grace and elegance, we must learn to balance that which our five senses perceive with what we know in our hearts is true: That our seeming diversity is but the shining of many facets on a single, priceless jewel, ever-scintillating against the lush, verdant backdrop of a planetary stage. What we have created here, the sacred and the profane, is unique. What we have done here, the All and One of us, could never be repeated. How wondrously, breathlessly precious that is! And yet, it’s but a single drop in a vast ocean of Universal experience, hardly noticeable except from a very local perspective.

Paradox.

It’s been said that God can be found in every paradox. Wrapping one’s mind around a pair of seeming opposites leads to a greater understanding of the One Source from which the two derived. It is more than an intellectual exercise, it is a spiritual discipline that drives one into the very heart of paradox, and thus into the very heart, and mind, of the One Source, known by diverse names…

So, yes, celebrate diversity! The vast assortment of experience we’ve co-created shall never be repeated in all existence. While you’re at it, celebrate that we are all busily, enchantingly, universally, individually, diversely — ONE!

Rev. Dr. Alesia Matson writes and teaches extensively on meditation, contemplation, prayer, and modern mysticism. Her book on the contemplative arts is entitled 7 Mysteries: Contemplative Arts for the Modern Mystic.

[tags]diversity, oneness, experience, diverse public radio, paradox, God, one source, spiritual, insight, modern mysticism, meditation, contemplation, prayer[/tags]