“Compassionate action emerges from the sense of openness, connectedness, and discernment you have created.”
—Joan Halifax
On the fourth day of a week-long backpacking trip, I found myself ambling down a quiet dirt lane with an amiable teen from Brooklyn. After several days of stumbling over roots and rocks on the Appalachian Trail, this was heaven, even with our heavy packs and a blazing sun. I noticed a strange tree on the roadside a quarter-mile ahead, and murmured half to myself, “Looks like that apple tree is completely covered in poison ivy.”
He stopped abruptly. “No way you can see that from here!”
I said I was pretty sure it was a dying apple tree that poison ivy had completely taken over. I was willing to be wrong, and we’d know for sure pretty soon.
“How? How can you possibly know that from this distance?”
I considered as we continued along the lane. “I’m not sure how I know. It’s shaped like an apple tree, but the leaves are too dark, too dense… I don’t know; I can just tell.”
After some silence, I said, “Say you’re out and about in Brooklyn, and there’s a man on the corner two blocks ahead. Can you tell if he’s selling drugs?”
He scoffed. “Anybody can tell that. It’s obvious.”
“I can’t. I wasn’t even sure it was a good example! How can you possibly know that?”
His turn to consider. “I’m not sure. The way he moves, his clothes… I just know.”
More silence, each thinking about the knowledge we don’t recognize as knowledge, and how what’s familiar can obscure other ways of perceiving. When we came under the tree, sure enough, there were a few shriveled apple leaves on brittle-looking branches. Thick, hairy poison-ivy vines strangled the trunk and filled the sky with glossy dark-green leaves.
What’s familiar to me affects how I experience the world. Other people perceive differently! Let me not dismiss or discount the perspectives of my companions.
Prayer
Just for today, let me remember that all I know is just one small piece of reality, a tiny slice shaped by my limited perceptions and biases. Only when my knowledge is combined with uncountable others does Truth emerge. May I remember this, invite others’ perspectives, and behave accordingly.