The Wisdom of Paradox
All that is hidden, all that is plain, I have come to
know, instructed by Wisdom.… Within her is a spirit
intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, active,
incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, …
dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all-surveying…. She
pervades and permeates all things. She is the
untarnished mirror of God’s active power.… She makes
all things new. In each generation she passes into holy
souls.
—Wisdom 7:21–24, 26, 27, Jerusalem Bible
Richard Rohr believes wisdom arises from living with
paradox.
Whenever I teach, I am not trying to change anyone’s
dogmas or beliefs, but only the mind with which they
understand those dogmas. This new mind has everything
to do with seeing and thinking paradoxically—grasping
the truth of something that seems a contradiction.
Great dogmas of the church are almost always totally
paradoxical: Jesus is human and divine, Mary is virgin
and mother, God is one and three, Eucharist is bread
and Jesus. Because paradox undermines dual thinking at
its root, the dualistic mind immediately attacks
paradox as weak thinking or confusion, somehow separate
from and inferior to hard logic. The modern phenomenon
of fundamentalism displays an almost complete
incapacity to deal with paradox, and shows how much
we’ve regressed. Today the church is trying to catch up
to what mystics have always known, and great scientists
now teach as well.
The history of spirituality tells us we must learn to
accept paradoxes, or we will never love anything or see
it correctly. The above passage personifying Wisdom is
an insightful description of how one sees paradoxically
and contemplatively.
Each of us must learn to live with paradox, or we
cannot live peacefully or happily even a single day of
our lives. In fact, we must even learn to love paradox
or we will never be wise, forgiving, or possessing the
patience of good relationships. “Untarnished mirrors,”
as Wisdom says, receive the whole picture, which always
includes the darkness, the light, and subtle shadings
of light that make shape, form, color, and texture
beautiful.
Reality is paradoxical. If we’re honest, everything is
a clash of contradictions, and there is nothing on this
created earth that is not a mixture at the same time of
good and bad, helpful and unhelpful, endearing and
maddening, living and dying. St. Augustine called this
the “paschal mystery.”
Western Christianity has tended to objectify paradoxes
in dogmatic statements that demand mental agreement
instead of any inner experience of the mystery
revealed. At least we “worship” these paradoxes in the
living collision of opposites we call Jesus. But this
approach tends not to give people the underlying
principle that Jesus, the Christ, has come to teach us
about life and about ourselves. Jesus, as the icon of
Christ consciousness (1 Corinthians 2:16), is the very
template of total paradox: human yet divine, physical
yet spiritual, killed yet alive, powerless yet
powerful.
Jesus reveals the great cosmic mystery and calls us to
see the same truth in ourselves and all of creation.
Read this meditation on cac.org.
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