Dear Ones of St. Columba's,

Every once and a while I run across a phrase or an idea that stops me short and grabs my attention. This week, on the second day of the year, I heard a podcast that introduced me to the concept of "productive ambiguity." I was fascinated by the juxtaposition of these two words in relationship with each other. I don't usually associate them. How can ambiguity - the state of feeling or thinking multiple conflicting things at once - be productive? After all, doesn't productivity by it's nature mean closure, decision, the presentation of a finalized product of some sort? There is nothing ambiguous about that. 

It turns out there are educators, researchers, and social justice activists that disagree. The podcast I was listening to is called Invisibilia, and the topic being explored was of all things, the pregnancy test. The journalists were considering how much has changed about the experience of pregnancy since the invention of the test, and in particular how women's agency is affected by the widely held assumption that a positive pregnancy test is the same thing as being pregnant. One woman interviewed told her story of having a positive test but not having a viable pregnancy at her first ultrasound. Her health insurance company refused to cover her treatment because, for them, it was not the pregnancy test that made her pregnant but rather a positive ultrasound. It turns out being pregnant can be pretty ambiguous.

Suzanne Bell, a public health professor at John Hopkins, argues that this ambiguity can be good for women.  It gives women time to process how they feel about being pregnant, and to consider multiple outcomes. It may also be a space for some wiggle room to increase women's agency in their reproductive health. 

I recommend the podcast and if you listen let me know what you think. Click here to listen. 

This has me wondering about the potential for productive ambiguity in other parts of human life. After all, one of the things that draws me continually deeper into the Episcopal way of following Jesus is our tolerance for and valuing of ambiguity. It is okay, in this church, to feel more than one way about something. It is okay to be angry at God and to love God. It is okay to doubt and trust simultaneously. It is okay to long for change while also wanting the present moment to last forever. We acknowledge that ambiguity is a big part of human life. Not knowing the single answer or outcome to our questions or journeys is often an acknowledgement of what is true, even in the face of pressures to choose one way, one outcome, or to focus on one possibility.

Friends, here at the start of the year, many of us are in places of ambiguity. Certainly I am, in this liminal space between the announcement of the Maryland bishop slate and their election in late March. But I am not the only one. Many of us wonder what will happen in the year to come. I think goal setting and resolution making can be one way to minimize the ambiguity of the future in front of us, a way to choose a path in the face of the unknown. But what if our ambiguity was perceived in and of itself as a productive and valuable time? A space to reflect on our desires and get close to our own hearts before a choice is made, before the path is set? 

I don't have many resolutions this year. The word trust keeps coming to me, and I will need that word as we move into the days and weeks ahead. But perhaps one resolution I can make is to experience the ambiguity as a gift, and to use that gift productively, before the moment of decision comes. 

with care and gratitude,

Alissa+