Looking down from my junior year, third floor, architecture studio window, I was captured by a most graceful sight. I noticed a student walking past the building with such a lively yet engaged gait that suggested she was in absolute harmony with herself and her surroundings. She was stunning - head erect, shoulders carefree, and arms swaying freely - I couldn't help but stare. Perhaps she was an angel because I have never seen anyone so at ease: sublime in poise, youth, and beauty. Her calm stride defined a peace that I've often tried to emulate but have rarely captured. It was an impeccable presence, the essence of pure perfection.
"I just want to be perfect" cries ballerina Nina Sayers in the haunting movie Black Swan. If you've seen the film, you know that the Prima Donna is anything but perfect. Though she can dance every move with precision, she has yet to transcend beyond rigid discipline to creatively express the requisite inner passion. Her white swan beauty, fragility, and fearful nature is readily apparent, but still her character remains incomplete. Notwithstanding her neurotic psychosis, there is something encumbering her which her choreographer, Thomas Leroy, identifies as fear. "You could be brilliant, but you're a coward. ...Stop being so f**king weak," he chides.
We are all blinded by this fear. The fear of embodying what we were truly made for. It's deep within us and it's dangerous, defiant, and difficult to manage. We may recognize enviable, angelic traits in others - but that's not their specter - for we brandish ours tightly. Keeping it private makes us even more unaware of its power over us. So we try to conform, burying ourselves in a living death of acceptability and respectability. But the only way to be fully alive is to befriend this intimate darkness. Eventually Ms Sayers black and white swans do unite giving life to her spectacle, but she gives her life to do so.
New Years Day 1997 I too struggled with a fate long bound by fear. Was I to continue to hide safely in a life confined by societal controls, or was it finally time to spread my wings and embrace my black swan? It wasn't easy, nor was it pretty, but it was necessary. Thirty-seven years of occlusion fell away as many people believed I hastily transitioned from one person into another. More correctly, however, was that I simply embodied my full identity. The journey to wholeness begins by bringing light to what we are afraid of in ourselves; bringing sight to that which we would rather have kept blind.
That's precisely what Jesus does in today's gospel. Encountering "the man born blind," he brings the light of god's infinite love to the fore. He allows the undiscerning to confront the scary parts we would rather keep in the dark. Knowing that god is always with us, loving us, validating and accepting us, no matter what we may do or how we may be, the frightening shadows are lifted from our doubts, fears, and negativities. Then we see the reality of our own life and can manifest the inherent beauty that was always there even though obscured.
Contrary to the New Testament's implication, none of us are born blind. Only through fear do we inevitably become unsighted to the true possibilities of our life. Indeed, we develop Pharisaical bulwarks against fear - be it through knowledge, skills, or righteousness - that we hope will save us. Yet our salvation is only in accepting our complete imperfection.
pia
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