Preferences & Certainty

“You do not need to know what is happening or where it is all going. What you need to recognize are the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. The world is transparent and the divine is shining through all the time.” ~Thomas Merton

Recently my partner and I got our wills in order. It seems timely: we are no longer spring chickens. I affectionately refer to us as “autumn chickens”. We share a daughter and four grandchildren. A future without us meets our gaze through their young, bright eyes.

We did the “needful” as an Indian friend says. We barely knew the attorney; she was hired only for creating our wills. Another woman came in the room briefly to witness and notarize our signatures and in less than an hour everything was done. Our documents were slipped into a large plain white envelope and away we went. I was grateful for their competency.

What struck me was how our preferences create an illusion of certainty. I am fussy about my chai latte. I care a great deal if my veggies are steamed just right. I prefer salted butter over plain. Yet at some of the most significant junctures of our lives we are assisted by strangers. We don’t get to choose.

We live much of our lives insisting that our preferences be met and those preferences are driven by a need for certainty. How well can we do without our preferences being met? Can we discern between a preference and a necessity? Are preferences wrong? Of course not. The lesson it seems these days is to hold them lightly and open to the possibility that there is grace in limitations. It’s good to remember too, that such a life of “preference” comes with privilege. Choices are not an equal opportunity event.

There’s a story about places of worship that had been bombed in Europe after World War II. In some communities shards of stained glass were reassembled in a kind of crooked, scarred beauty; but the light shone through. It’s like that. To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, the crack is where the light enters. There are many cracks these days and no guarantee of what’s to come. What would it be like if we discovered enough space between our preferences that the ever present light could shine through?