I have long said that if I were conducting job interviews for any position in Southeast Alaska, my first question would be, “Do you like black and white photography or black and white movies?”
These art forms are not stark black and white; what makes black and white movies and photos so striking is the interplay of gray. Seeing and celebrating the variety, contrasts and beauty in the range of the gray tones is critical for appreciating life in Southeast.
Last week, I sat on a bench overlooking the water, and the bright, flat expanse of nickel-gray sky met the steely, hard gunmetal-gray surface of the water, while the warm, lavender grays of Etolin Island rose up amidst the diminishing, foggy grays of the farther-flung islands. It took my breath away.
I find appreciating the grays equally breathtaking when considering the Bible. Scripture insists that we see the wideness of its tones and hues and variations, and not default to a black/white polarity.
The very first stories in the Bible are two stories of creation that do not correspond with each other. While there are those who will work hard to harmonize them, they are distinctly different, even in the name used for the Creator: In the first story, God creates the cosmos in a particular order; in the second, the LORD God concentrates on creating the stuff of the earth, in a very different order.
Noah takes two of every living thing into the ark, right? Except in the paragraph right after it, God tells Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals, and one pair of unclean animals. The four gospels of Jesus tell a variety of stories, some shared across all four, some only in a particular gospel. Scripture itself invites us to see variety and possibility.
Some people use these kinds of examples to pick apart the Bible, to discredit it, to make it unreliable. But just as the sky is the sky, and the sea the sea, and Etolin is Etolin, these grays do not change scripture’s realities and truths. They just help us to see all the beauty and wonder, to one day see them this way, and another day to see them in a different light.
Those different shadings often highlight something we may have missed before: The way a tree grows into the skyline, a clearing that catches the clouds, the way a cove edge meets the water, an uprooted tree that glints and glimmers in the water.
A creator can have many names. The one who created living things wants them to survive, thrive and multiply. Stories about the teachings and activities of Jesus are many and varied, but all end with sacrificial love and life.
I rejoice in the gifts and blessings of the grays.
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