Walls of Entanglement

I like living behind walls. They keep the outside out, and the inside in.

This is especially important in my part of the world. Winters get cold. Well-insulated walls keep the cold out and the warmth inside. If my walls are not doing their job, my life is uncomfortable and my heating bills are exorbitantly high.

Little wonder that a common refrain in my house during winter is: “Shut the door! You’re letting the cold in!” That’s to say nothing of the snowdrifts that form inside our entryway door–but those are another story.

Now, walls do some other things as well.

They define space. They tell me what’s mine and what’s yours. They help me keep what’s mine in my space and what’s yours in yours.

There’s nothing like finding a foreign object in a space I consider mine. “Who put this here?,” I might call out to my family.

Or, a more common experience is not finding something where it’s supposed to be. In our house, keys are famous for their nomadic behaviours.

In the early days of my marriage, there would be the stereotypical early morning panic to the chorus of “Where are my keys?? I’m late, and I can’t find my keys!” The result would be a frenzied searching.

Then, once the wandering objects had been found, one of us would say: “You really should keep those in the same place because then you’d be able to find them!”

When an entire space is yours, what’s importantly yours can easily get lost. So, some definitions of space are important, if not necessary.

Some definitions of space are important, if not necessary.

But what’s the point of all this spatial wondering/wandering?

I’ll tell you:

I’m experiencing a bit of internal tension. On the one hand, I belong to a faith tradition that has been millennia in the making. My tradition has clear teachings on a whole host of matters, most of which concern the ultimate nature of reality.

Important, right?

To this I respond with a resounding, Yes!

As much as science, institutions, and governments can help us structure our lives, none of them, read none of them, can help me answer the question of why I, in all my messy selfhood, am alive.

Yes, they can respond to that question from the perspectives of evolutionary history, biology, and my contributions to my country’s economic and social wellbeing.

Yet none of these can tell me who I am.

Even though governments, scientists, and statisticians might collect a lot of objective data about my age, my education, my socio-economic class, or my professional involvements, they are not interested in my specific, quirky brand of humour, why I like certain kinds of music, or the fact that my last batch of sourdough bread didn’t rise properly, thus causing me great frustration.

Science, institutions, and governments simply aren’t interested in those realities.

But to me, these things are of infinite importance. They’re what make life liveable, enjoyable, and rich.

Now, strangely enough, these are precisely the kinds of things that faith traditions are interested in–the seeming minutiae of lived experience.

Faith traditions are interested in the seeming minutiae of lived experience.

Why? Because faith traditions are connected to questions of what constitutes the good life. They help us understand what’s good, true, and beautiful by offering us compelling pictures of reality.

Yes, many of the symbols, metaphors, and morals offered by faith traditions are challenging. Many consider them outdated. But, when engaging them with the appropriate experiential depth (not necessarily intellectual depth, although that’s important too), they can also be profoundly transformative.

(There are some extremely important questions bound up with this last statement–those will be dealt with elsewhere)

So this is why the question of fit and boundaries becomes so important.

To know where you stop and another person or tradition begins helps to create a stable sense of identity. Developmentally, having a stable identity is a foundation for mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

So, to know your own faith tradition, what it teaches and what it doesn’t teach, is extremely important.

But it’s also important to know how to recognize and embrace truths that seemingly come from other places as well.

It’s also important to know how to recognize and embrace truths that come from other places as well.

“Oh no!” you might say, “now you’re undermining my sense of self! If I admit that other places might have truths to share, doesn’t that compromise what I’ve come to understand as good, true, and beautiful?”

My response? Well . . . yes . . . and no . . .

Here’s what I mean, using the metaphor of walls.

Walls are typically built to keep the outside out and the inside in, as I said at the beginning of this post.

The challenge is walls would not be necessary had I not first encountered something needing to be kept outside in the first place.

In my part of the world, the walls of houses are built using specific materials. These materials are used because the winters can be very cold and the summers very hot. Making sure our house’s walls can withstand both the heat and the cold is therefore necessary for the comfort and wellbeing of my family.

But, my family also expects certain kinds of comfort and wellbeing, in part because of how walls in my part of the world are constructed.

If we lived in another part of the world, we might be limited in the materials we could use to build our houses. Therefore, our house might be cooler in the winter, and warmer in the summer, and we wouldn’t know the difference.

But then people in that other part of the world might also have developed traditions of weaving intricate tapestries and carpets to provide more insulation for their walls and floors.

People in my part of the world use carpets and wall-hangings as well, but not necessarily to keep themselves warm.

But my family lives in one of the oldest neighbourhoods of our city (this is true). Our house was built a long time before good insulation was being manufactured.

If we wanted to spend a lot of money, we could get the house re-insulated.

But for that kind of money, we might want simply to move to a different house with better insulation. Doing so, however, would mean leaving a house we’ve lived in for over decade, where our children were born, and where we’ve made a lot of memories with family and friends.

So, what if finding some really effective carpets and wall-hangings would help our house feel warmer?

And what if the carpets and tapestries from that other part of the world were really effective in keeping houses warm in the winter and cool in the summer?

And what if they also add an element of beauty and elegance to our house that could not be achieved using the insulation techniques available in our city?

Now, this metaphor is, in some ways, laughable. Not only does it suggest an impracticality that few would indulge. But, when brought into conversations about religion and spirituality, it suggests such matters are questions of mere preference or artifice.

What remains, then, is the reality we are always bringing things within our walls, just as much as we are taking things outside them. It could be as simple as bringing home the groceries, or as complicated as building materials for a comprehensive renovation project.

The fact is walls are never solid. Even if a person lives in a fortified bunker, it is likely they are trafficking in ideas and information. The internet, news media, social media, not to mention all the various art forms and community projects make it impossible to keep the outside out and the inside in.

A person could argue there is no true outside nor no true inside.

In fact, a person could argue, there is no true outside nor no true inside.

Even though the walls of my house keep the heat of summer and the cold of winter outside, my body is still shaped by the changing of the seasons. My sleep patterns change as the dark of winter descends on the northern hemisphere. And then, when the light of spring and summer returns, my circadian rhythms change yet again.

So, in faith and religion, I am familiar with my tradition. But, to what extent am I familiar with all the different forces that shaped my tradition. To what extent am I familiar with all the forces that shape me, regardless of whether they “belong” to my tradition or not?

Whatever walls I might want to build around my tradition are always, always, entangled with realities I can scarcely name.

But, if I believe faithfulness to my tradition involves engaging life in all its fullness, from its intimate minutiae to the social, cultural, political, global, and cosmic forces in all their fullness, then it is impossible to escape all my entanglements, regardless of the numerous values I might place on them or not.

So, yes, let’s be aware of our walls and how important they are. But let’s also be consciously grateful for the conditions that necessitated the walls in the first place. They too can be great teachers, if only we let them inform how our walls might continue to exist into the future.

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Despite our older house having many problems, my wife and I don’t want to get rid of it, at least not yet. There’s too much at stake in moving right now. Does that mean we’ll continue living here for the rest of our lives? Probably not. But for now it’s home. When we outgrow it, or it no longer serves the needs of our family, we’ll probably find another place to live.

If treated as a metaphor, this is a challenging one, to be sure.

But I wonder for how many people this metaphor expresses the truth of how they engage their specific tradition.

At the very least, it gives me a lot to ponder.

Disclaimer: The advice and suggestions offered on this site are not substitutes for consultation with qualified mental or spiritual health professionals. The perspectives offered here are those of the author, not of those professionals with whom readers might have relationships as clients or patients. In crisis situations, readers are encouraged to contact these professionals for appropriate support and treatment if needed.