Ambiguity
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What are you? Are you a man? A woman? Person of color? Are you straight or gay, able or disabled, citizen, immigrant, settler? Are you legal or illegal? Do you belong here?
Where is it documented? Your birth certificate, in your skin, on your wheelchair, the shape of your hips, or your DNA—does it have a US stamp of approval? Tell me, what are you?
That question: “What are you?” is the clash of cultures working itself out in the flesh of those of us with identities on the margins. In this process we can experience and re-experience pain, sadness, embarrassment and fear of our deepest selves.
We try to respond, wanting to make a connection and to know ourselves, but are often left feeling fenced in, stripped down and depleted. As a result, our humanness is squashed and evolution is halted. The beauty of migrating identities is lost.
In life we often encounter forms that ask “what you are.” We check boxes of gender, age, race and so on. Sometimes, at the bottom of the list, we are given the option: “OTHER” with a space for a description. We might pick “Other” out of desperation to numb ourselves and move on. Or we check it with frustration: Ugh, I’m always Other.” And, there are times when “Other” is the ambiguous place that saves us. I am an Other! Hallelujah!
Ambiguity is a saving grace. Ambiguity is that vast space between two clasped hands, the sound of silence, a breath-taking glance from another, an anger that surfaces our love, a deep belly laugh in the midst of great sorrow. At times ambiguity can be anxiety-provoking and unpredictable, making us want to clarify the rules. Yet it can also encourage us to be more than what is documented in laws or bylaws.
Ambiguity knows that in welcoming the stranger we ourselves become the stranger by crossing the borders of our consciousness. Ambiguity gives us permission to imagine a new being, within and outside the walls of our bodies, communities, states, countries. It is becoming “the other” and responding with a Hallelujah.
Our Unitarian Universalist faith insists that we do not limit the infinity of grace. Therefore our job is to cultivate possibility in response to isolation and suffering. The feeling of chaos that is inherent in possibility makes us uneasy. But when we embody possibility, we are creating a new story to explain the world and our participation in it. We are taking an evolutionary step forward, one that allows for a future in which our children themselves can be creatively ambiguous in heart, body, and mind.
You know, sometimes those forms ask: “What is your religion?” We are given a list. At the bottom of the list is that nebulous “Other.” That is the space where we can write in: Unitarian Universalist. Because, What are we? We are religiously “Other.”
Therefore, let us embrace another ambiguous “Other” together; and respond with Hallelujah!
