When Truth and Goodness Fight

Beauty stands bravely between them

Plato once said that truth, beauty, and goodness are the ultimate values, but Dostoevsky said of the three it will be beauty that saves the world. A few years ago James K.A. Smith wrote an article for the Christian Century about our inability to think our way through the complexity (he called it mess), echoing Dostoevsky’s sentiment on beauty being the only way through. I tend to agree, in theory, but I can’t shake the need for truth and goodness—as pitted against one another as they might seem in the world today. Or at least my world today.

We were supposed to wake up in Glacier National Park this morning, the beginning of a lifelong dream of mine to see all the National Parks in the United States. On the eve of hitching up our packed trailer and heading out, we received the test results for which we’d been waiting for weeks.

After more than a year of the pounding, skipping, exhausting heart issues Nate has been experiencing we found out he is in atrial-fibrillation 30% of the time, his heart reaching the pace of 180 bpm regularly. He was essentially running sprints multiple times daily. We were able to consult with a specialist that evening. Her counsel? Postpone the trip. He is at risk for blood clots and stroke. Being far from hospitals, at altitude, hiking for days on end is not what he needs right now, she said. Beta blockers will be a temporary help, as well as blood thinners. More tests are needed as soon as possible. The fix is fairly simple (they promise us), but best not to push it until it is fixed.

I canceled all of our campsites and in the morning we unpacked the trailer.

Instead, we pared down our suitcases and packed the Subaru for a week-long trip to Kansas—the trip we’d planned to begin our Natl. Park trip with. Nate and Harper stayed at last minute Airbnb booking while I stayed with my classmates for our last residency and classes before graduating on Saturday. The time was bittersweet. I cannot encapsulate all of what this program has meant to me and what my cohort means to me, I don’t even want to try. It feels too precious in some ways. I have struggled to cry for years and caught myself tearing up almost every day of our last week together. Graduating together with our Masters in Theology felt ancillary to the goodness and gift of our years together.

This week, though, while we took classes on racial justice and sexual ethics in Kansas, back home a family member was finally being sentenced almost a year to the day from his arrest and almost two years from the day a brave person learned of and reported to authorities what many had had the opportunity to report in years previous and hadn’t.