Moving Closer to the Center

"Another practical way to befriend tension is to make sure we are not constantly finding ourselves off center in terms of our view or position on things. 'We are a circumference people, with little access to the center,' [Richard] Rohr avows. Not only do we often locate our lives on the boundaries, but we easily fall into lopsidedness in our thinking. We tend to see narrowly or in a myopic fashion, utilizing only the selective lenses that make us comfortable. We refuse to entertain any other point of view even though we know that we are limited by our own. Author Madeleine L'Engle reminds us: 'I have a point of view. You have a point of view. But God has view.' God does occupy the center point of everything — which is also the still point.

"When it comes to the liberty of choosing sides on any matter, it is all too easy for us to let the pendulum swing to one extreme — either to the right or to the left — and conveniently bypass the middle. This carries over in the rigid attitudes we adopt concerning our political as well as religious views. We are only too swift to categorize our own position (as well as others') as either conservative or liberal. Henri Nouwen did not welcome such unwarranted labeling. He lamented:

" 'In religious circles, we often divide people into two camps: believers and nonbelievers, churched and unchurched, conservatives and progressives, orthodox and non-orthodox, saint and sinner. Characterization is common but narrowing. Labeling is always limiting.'

"Specifically, labeling people 'left' or 'right' has become a convenient rhetoric for classifying their positions. Employing either term somehow affords us the illusion that we have people all figured out — that we can actually 'box' them and thereby deal with and manage their presence around us more easily. Henri Nouwen was hard to pin down as either to the right or to the left on the spectrum. As one interviewee for a film documentary on Nouwen's life commented, 'You cannot call Henri liberal or conservative; he is radical.' His radicalism — without superficiality — makes it difficult, if not impossible, to pigeonhole Nouwen so easily.

"Centrists are hard to come by because most find it knotty to assume the middle ground. Some even think that camping in the middle is tantamount to wallowing in compromise. We much prefer to stake out our position so as not to leave any room for others to speculate about where we are on any issue. Being definitive conveys decisiveness and feeds our inner need for some semblance of security and control. Henri Nouwen, in the latter part of his journey, admitted to reaching a point where he had to let crumble his own constructed 'fences' and defenses that he had spent a lifetime building around people. Applying his newfound freedom In light of his reframed vision of community, Nouwen confessed,

" 'The great Christian call is not to be different but to be the same; not to wander off to the periphery of life where I might discover some small differences but to go to the center where I realize my solidarity with all human beings.'

"When it comes to our adherence to certain truths or moral principles that govern our lives, there is a world of wisdom wrapped up in the saying that truth lies in the middle of two extremes. We may not always strike a good balance in our continuing pursuit of truth, but that is not a good excuse to allow ourselves to constantly fall to one side or the other. L'Engle assures us: 'The center is always there, waiting for us to discover it.' For those willing and able to accommodate both the collision and coincidence of contraries, there is room for a 'Third Way,' the tertium quid — which Rohr likes to refer to as the real contemplative stance — that may well emerge for us. In short, we need to be more intentional about moving as close as possible to the center and there be able to hold the tension better — that is, in a far less, if not totally nonpolarizing way. Deciding to go for the via media in the face of obvious contraries by no means eliminates tension; it does, however, cushion the brunt of it and conserves our energy, since we are no longer required to deal with extreme options and demands for closure or complete resolution."