'Paradox' is an over-used word for describing many of the sayings of Jesus. The term 'koan', taken from the training methods of Zen Buddhism, is at times a more fruitful concept to use. The koan is a statement or story whose wisdom cannot be accessed using the ordinary tools of analysis and logic. Reason understood narrowly, the rationalist in us who wants to take apart and control, cannot get at what it is about. But intellect, or understanding, can come to some understanding of what it might be about, a meditative reception and consideration of what is said, a meditation shaped by experience, a contemplation open to expand and to receive.
On the street one day I saw a homeless man sitting in a porch with his few possessions gathered round him, a dog, a sleeping bag, and a varied collection of odds and ends. It included a reading lamp set up at the head of the sleeping bag. Seeing him became a kind of koan for me as I began to wonder why a homeless man, sleeping on the street, would need a reading lamp, how he could ever get it to work, what he might read by its light (the rationalist in me) ... what was he saying to himself or to the rest of us by carrying around such a thing? Perhaps not saying anything in particular ...
But seeing him became a koan for me, curious and at first sight irrational, but setting off a series of meditations on different aspects of the picture he presented, a homeless man with a reading lamp at the head of his sleeping bag: light, sight, night, knowledge, reading, poverty, wisdom. It brought to mind a comment attributed to Oscar Wilde, that only what is incredible is worth believing. For what is incredible to the rationalist mind is not incredible to the wider, deeper, richer intellectual mind.
But seeing him became a koan for me, curious and at first sight irrational, but setting off a series of meditations on different aspects of the picture he presented, a homeless man with a reading lamp at the head of his sleeping bag: light, sight, night, knowledge, reading, poverty, wisdom. It brought to mind a comment attributed to Oscar Wilde, that only what is incredible is worth believing. For what is incredible to the rationalist mind is not incredible to the wider, deeper, richer intellectual mind.
Jesus in the gospel reading today gives us two incredible sayings to disturb our rational minds -
Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
There are some (reading this) who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.
Let these sayings tease us and provoke us, swish them around in our minds for a while, and open the doors of our understanding to new ways of thinking, perhaps to new realities.
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