It is my conviction, and in this I think I concur with both James and Whitehead, that we participate in this Creative Passage as bodily event at a depth and fullness not manageable at the cognitive level. . . . In all of [life] there are depths of awareness accompanying the bodily event of living and experience that yield conditions of knowing which language may not convey, or, for that matter, cannot convey. Whitehead expressed this point in those memorable words, "Mothers can ponder many things in their hearts which their lips cannot express." [Cf. Luke 2:51.] Meland continues this passage by speaking of ways in which men, children, and adolescents, also, ponder experiences which they cannot express verbally.
To me it seems basic to the getting rid of fear to know that our trials, of whatever nature, are not motiveless. In our present stage of development we could hardly do without them. So often looking . . . ugly . . . they are in reality the branches by we which we catch on and climb. They are not obstacles to happiness. . . . Every call of duty has its place in this ideal; every irksome job, every wearisome responsibility. The fact that we are not always aware of it in no way annuls the other fact that it is so. . . .
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.
Please know that I am quite aware of the hazards. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others. [Last letter to her husband before her last flight.]
But when great and ingenious artists behold their so inept performances, not undeservedly do they ridicule the blindness of such men; since sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters, who are themselves ignorant of this art.
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
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