Windows

Thanks for your insightful comments, Michiel. Most of us think from within the confines of our ‘comfort zone’ which can be seen as a room with only windows – no doors. Though we may label the various structural elements of such rooms as ‘tolerant’ or ‘liberal’, this does not essentially change the dimensions of these rooms. We still continue to linger at the windows, looking out. And if some notion, like that of ‘religion’ or ‘conservatism’ should appear, we simply draw the blinds and do not allow them to touch us. The same is true of the devoutly religious and the most rabidly conservative.

In order to end the gridlock, there must first and foremost come the recognition that ‘atheism’ for example is merely the flipside of ‘theism’; that ‘conservatism’ is merely the flipside of ‘liberalism’; that when any concept segment (with one extreme at the top and its opposite at the bottom) is bent to form a circle, both extremes meet at a single point.

Nowadays, the distinction between windows and doors has largely eroded; one-eyed peepholes (in doors) have evolved into sliding plates of solid, shatterproof glass. Our houses always tend to have many more windows than doors. (I count TV sets, computers, books, newspapers and magazines as windows of a sort.) Still, a door implies some kind of journey, perhaps - a becoming.

Nothing changes when we look through a window. In this, whether we like it or not, we tend to closely mimic God for He (actually) is eternally condemned to living in an (admittedly) large room with many windows and no doors – we, on the other hand, are not. (For one thing, we are allowed to die.)