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“To love is to bear with the chaos.” — Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep
If you’re looking for ways to support Palestinian people in a direct and material way, consider contributing to Hani Abu Rezek’s fundraiser, who writes, “The essence of being Palestinian encapsulates resilience and an unyielding spirit; my profound love for my homeland fuels my commitment to forging a brighter future for my family in Gaza.”
Earlier this summer I had my natal chart read by Isa Nakazawa for her amazing new podcast, Stars and Stars with Isa. In the episode, I divulged one of my biggest insecurities which is that I’ll always be a mile wide but just an inch deep when it comes to the things that I study. I’m always starting books and not finishing, reading bits and bobs that entice me, and peace-ing out when I’m bored. This insecurity, which I could convincingly argue is rooted in some deep-seated belief about not being enough, has impacted me in all kinds of ways.
My studies in narrative therapy have taught me to locate and interrogate dominant discourses that condition the things that I think I should be. For instance, it’s been helpful to reconsider the idea that to be a serious scholar means one pursues expertise, with an ultimate end-goal of attaining “deep knowledge.” There is an implication there that depth exists on a vertical axis which leads only to truth, and that the truth one discovers at the end of the line is singular and absolute. Narrative practice itself undermines this assumption, which I’ll say more about later.
I am re-reading the pre/face to Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming for what feels like the twentieth time. In it, she articulates a way of thinking about depth that is not what I typically think. The very notion of depth implies a binary opposition; the “shallow” or surface face of a thing, and the depth that exists somewhere beyond it, that is often presumably more true.
In suggesting that depth does not need to imply a sort of boiling down or getting to the bottom of something, Keller suggests a depth that jeopardizes the very assumption that a single truth is available, whether from going deep enough down that one uncovers the ultimate thing, or giving the chaotic deep a singular name that could appropriately and fully encompass it.
I like this language a lot. But as a social worker, one of my commitments is that for an idea to be good it has to be useful. Keller’s way of thinking about depth is useful for me because it illustrates something about interpretation and meaning-making that I experience as relevant to everyday life.
Keller cites Saint Augustine, who wrote on the Old Testament’s Genesis about how foolish it is “among such an abundance of true meanings” that might be gleaned from the creation story, to rashly “affirm which of them Moses chiefly meant.” In “claiming the validity of his own interpretation,” Augustine was insisting that while Moses may have had one single meaning in mind, whatever meaning he intended was just one of many that can possibly be true.
To the extent that my pursuit of “depth” assumes I’m going to uncover some ultimate, complete, and closed truth—for instance, I’ll go deep and discover exactly how I feel about something, or the ultimate truth about some fixed, finite past—I may be missing out on the deep that’s available right here, where I am; the many potential meanings that can be made from a given experience. And for me, the experience part is key.
In the literary practice of deconstruction, the surface of a text is engaged first with respect and rigor, and then again with a critical eye about what’s been unnamed or marginalized. Similarly, we can take the face of our material and narrative lives as a starting point for making meaning. And while any number of meanings can be made, it is importantly not a situation in which anything goes. The meanings I'm after emerge straight from the face of what’s happening. Let me give an example.
I’ve spent the last year trying to understand something very intense that I went through over the last couple of years. At first, I coped with the overwhelming pain of the thing by spending exorbitant amounts of energy trying to get to the truth. I may not be a good scholar by dominant standards, but I can make a good argument that I’m an excellent storyteller. Which some times means I’m good at holding paradox, and others means I’m good at convincing.