Contrasts

Sermon Bereishit

וַיִּקְרָ֨א אֱ’ לָאוֹר֙ י֔וֹם וְלַחֹ֖שֶׁךְ קָ֣רָא לָ֑יְלָה וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד

In some of my zanier moments, I do think about what the world and life would  look like had God created things differently.  Silly things like a button to relieve gas, especially in babies. Teething seems a painful waste of time. Instead of awkwardly explaining you’re angry, you just glow bright red. The ability to switch off sound or smell or to choose the hight you want to be. How about being able to undo what you just said, a take back button the rewinds the last few seconds. We could probably suggest quite a few. Personally, I don’t sleep very well. The night hours are a bit of a waste of time, a quick charge that fills you with energy would be much more useful. So why did Hashem create us the way He did? I don’t actually know the answer to that question, but I do think that what appears jarring, frustrating, at times humiliating or inconvenient might just reveal a theme running through creation.

Hashem’s creation is intentionally imperfect. Hashem invites human partnership and initiative despite our limitations. Darkness came before the light, imperfection before perfection. But even in our “night,” Hashem prepares a “morning. The Torah does not hide moments of disconnection, instead it invites us to experience the rhythm of darkness that precedes the light. How long the gap between the two will be we don’t know. The word YOM in our text just means a period of time.

Hashem could have created a world of pure light, constant clarity, but instead, He made a world of cycles, contrast, and limitation. Our frustrations with “imperfections” (sleep, pain, confusion) reflects the human yearning for perfection, but those very limits create meaning, empathy, and relationship. Our vulnerabilities and weaknesses are part of Divine design.

Negative capability is a phrase coined by John Keats to describe the ability to live with uncertainty and mystery.

John Keats coined this term in a letter to his brothers George and Thomas (December 21, 1817). He wrote:

several things dove tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

Negative here is not pejorative. Instead, it implies the ability to resist explaining away what we do not understand.

Rather than coming to an immediate conclusion about an event, idea or person, Keats advises resting in doubt and continuing to pay attention and probe in order to understand it more completely. In this, he anticipates the work of Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman, who cautions against the naïve view that “What you see is all there is.”

It is also a good idea to take the time to look at matters from multiple perspectives. Keats reminds us that we are most likely to gain new insights if we can stop assuming that we know everything we need to know about people by neatly shoehorning them into preconceived boxes.

Negative capability also testifies to the importance of humility, which Keats described as a “capability of submission.” As Socrates indicates in Plato’s “Apology,” the people least likely to learn anything new are the ones who think they already know it all. By contrast, those who are willing to question their own assumptions and adopt new perspectives are in the best position to arrive at new insights.

Keats believed that the world could never be fully understood, let alone controlled. In his view, pride and arrogance must be avoided at all costs.

Keats suggests that human beings are always more complex than any simple categorisation.  He anticipates another Nobel laureate, writer and philosopher Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote that instead of good guys and bad guys, the world is made up of wonderfully complex and sometimes even self-contradictory people, each capable of both good and bad:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Uncertainty can be uncomfortable. It is often quite tempting to stop pondering complex questions and jump to conclusions. But Keats counsels otherwise. By resisting the temptation to dismiss and despise others, it’s possible to open the door to discovering traits in people that are worthy of sympathy or admiration. They may, with time, even come to be regarded as friends.

We often demand certainty, yet life itself is full of contradictions, often highlighted in comedy.

From Carry On Cruising

Mr. Marjoribanks is the character played by Kenneth Williams He serves as the first officer to Sid James's Captain Wellington Crowther.

Now then I am going to be blunt, and make some very cutting remarks. 

On the face of it that's a contradiction in terms.  But English is a very curious language.

If you interrupt me once more Mr 

Mr Marjoribanks sir

Thank you. If you interrupt me once more mate you'll hear some really curious language

We can spend our time keeping calm and carrying on in the best of British stoic tradition attempting to live stable simple life’s, or we can carry on with being blunt and cutting, embracing the humour of imperfection , knowing that ultimately God chose the latter. But of course,  The choice is yours.