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December 2009

Shadows of Unknowing

Let [us] cultivate the moral affections, lead...independent lives; let [us] make riches the means and not the end of existence, and we shall hear no more of the commercial spirit…. This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired than it is to be used…. Be not among those who have eyes that see not and ears that hear not.
By Henry David Thoreau, from a commencement speech entitled “The Commercial Spirit.”

Grey, the color of the lake before sunrise; grey, the underside of the gull that flies overhead while the earth blindly searches for morning.

Give me grey. Grey the color of not sure, don’t know yet. Grey the color of compromise, maybe, let me think about it; grey for talking things over, listening again, thinking some more. Grey for the shaded areas of the other point of view, for the possibility of change. Grey for the smudged edges of what once was dogma, and now is doubt. Grey.

In the bright red and green, and blue and gold of the season, and the noise and the festivity, give me grey, for the quiet of my soul, the moment of heaviness before sleep, the peace of meditation.

The steel grey of the lake mirrors the grey clouds overhead, and the bird meanders through the grace of morning flight, waiting, watching the movement of a grey walker watching him. The earth bows to find the dawn and feels its first slanting beams.

Can I take this as a promise, I wonder. That after the questions, the doubts, and the hours of contemplation, there will be gold through the grey, promise fulfilled and truth revealed. I don’t know, but I believe in small epiphanies, a single beam of light in the darkness, some sought-for-star, some one certainty emerging from the grey. Meanwhile, let us embrace the doubt and cherish our unknowing and patiently await the dawn.

By Elizabeth Tarbox, from Evening Tide: Meditations, published by Skinner House in 1998.

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Last updated November 23, 2009