These are just some musings, such as they are, about where my thoughts might come from. Not that they are particularly earth shattering but they might provide some insight or context. I will likely add to this page from time to time as the spirit moves. Not sure where this will lead but here goes!
To me the exceptions are always more interesting than the rule – they expose hidden spsces. I can remember multiple primary school teachers saying I should be a lawyer after constantly probing but why that if this. I wasn’t trying to be a smartass, I just needed to be convinced. My son made me proud when as a young child he began to play the what if game at bedtime. He would ask me a why question and then after getting a perfectly reasonable answer would ask endless followup but what if questions. Having sworn to myself to never answer Because I said so, I was trapped. Sleep could be put off forever so I had to resort to Just one more question. And I loved every minute!
I have always been fascinated by the space between and how we move across that space. The space between life and death, between hope and fear, between like and love, doubt and faith, success and failure, peace and disquiet, action and inaction innocence or guilt, redeemed or lost. We define things with boundaries, edges, borders and view things as being on continuums quarrelling over where the dividing lines should be drawn. But wherever they are drawn there is a space between. And what is in, what happens in that time and space however tiny? That’s a theme in a lot of my thoughts. Did heaven hush is a good example. It was also a hidden theme in my research. When developing a scale what became the dividing point between a positive and a negative result? How many variables needed to be considered before classifying something as present or not, sufficient or not, and how necessary was it to cut finely between the two states – life or death?, treat or don’t treat?, reward or punish?, Be concerned or not? It is probably why I never attempted to find or publish norms for my scales, They might be fine for populations but were dangerous for individuals. Even in a fine balance the fulcrum takes up space.
Then there is the mystery of how we cross that space. How did I come to know, not hope I was loved? When did hope overcome fear. Can we make the space between small enough to jump over? Is the space safe or filled with whirlpools and quicksand or snapping foxes – the stuff my childhood nightmares were filled with. Those thoughts led to a partial understanding of grace, how we can move so close to let someone else cross the space with ease or how another can move so close to me that I can cross trusting the space is both small and safe. And that grace is an action requiring a response to be real.