Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

After returning from an 11 day trip to Wales with my family, everything I’ve tried to write hasn’t seemed appropriate. Everything comes out cliche. It was life-changing. Best trip ever. Great food, great people. It was rejuvenating as a vacation before starting the new ministry at Restoration. Those are all true things, but they’re not the most true, you know? It’s like one of those standardized tests we had to take when we were in high school. Which of these answers is the most true. I hated those tests. Truth was supposed to be black and white, a binary. It is true or it isn’t. That wasn’t hard, and any test that had True or False questions was almost always easier for me than a test that had multiple choices or fill in the blanks. Oh, but those questions that had “which of these is the most true” really got to me.
In this unprecedented era of fake news and alternative facts, the idea of multiple truths is still super frustrating for me. I want things to be easy, they are or they aren’t. Yes or no. True or False, Black or white. Binary.
But the most true thing about this life is that there can be multiple truths. It doesn’t have to be and/or. It can be yes/and. That’s a deeply held theological belief at the heart of many religions. It is most definitely at the heart of my religious convictions. For those of us who believe in God, the idea that the deepest and most abundant source of creative energy and dynamic force in the cosmos could be reduced to simple black and white terms is laughably arrogant.
So is the idea of labeling reporting and feedback you don’t agree with because it portrays you negatively as “fake.” But that’s another blog post.
Yes, more than one thing can be true. Like how a word in English and a word in Welsh can mean the same thing. That’s something I learned in the UK. We went on a pilgrimage to explore the Torfaen valley in Southern Wales, north of Cardiff. In 1870, my great-great-grandfather left with his family from their home outside of the small town of Pontypool. Grandad DC Jones followed his older brother, our Uncle Jenkin, through New York City and on to Kansas, before finally settling in the Texas Panhandle.
Southern Wales and West Texas couldn’t be more different. Wales is green and hilly, full of one lane roads and tons of sheep. West Texas is flat and brown, windy and full of cows.
Black and white. Binary. One of these is not like the other.
Except.
Both are full of hard working farmers and children who grow up dreaming of what it might be like to move away and see the world. Small towns that revolve around ball sports, football in Texas and Rugby in Wales. Both places feature locals desperately trying to hang on to their way of life as the internet and progress and diversity “threatened” to swallow them up. In wales, everywhere you go, you see signs that read araf and gofal, words that are not singular in their meaning. They don’t only have Welsh meanings, that is, but they do have particular meanings for the Welsh. Araf means “slow” and gofal means “careful”.
Two words that are both Southern Welsh and West Texan. Life is slow there. Life is careful. People don’t like to get going too fast, as my grandad used to say. We stop and smell the flowers. We chat on porches. We don’t like change. Slow and careful. Araf and gofal. Multiple truths.
Southern Wales and West Texas are both a part of who I am, and that affirmation and confirmation of my identity was brought on by this family pilgrimage.
As I start a new ministry in Philadelphia, I am emboldened by this reconfirmation of my both/and theology and lifeview. I am still careful/gofal to araf/go slow in this burgeoning experience and if I get too bogged down in perfectionism, success and failure, I’ll never live up to the expectations I have for myself. My job is to go into the darkness and find the light, within myself and within others. Dark and light. Goodness, isn’t that something? We are so quick to think in the binary, but life is rarely in black and white. It’s usually in beautiful shades of grey.
Except.
Except that if you look closely enough, are not grey at all, but brilliantly colored in all the wavelengths of the rainbow spectrum. Enfys, as my Welsh cousins would call it. Greys and rainbows, all the colors and all the shadows and all the life changes that a trip can bring, along with the beauty of life that stays right here at home. I’m looking forward to going slowly through all of it, learning to pick out and embrace which of these is the most true. Today and everyday. Will you join me?