On ice flowers, temper tantrums, and what I learned from MLK about being human:

A reminder of the taste of snow by our little one and also the three dimensions of a complete life according to MLK.

Art of unknown artist on our window pane this morning.

Dear fellow traveler, weary pilgrim,

Have you ever felt like arriving at the new year butt first?

I did.

First my husband left for a work week in DC. I thought that could be fun until I found myself buried under too many things at once, my work schedule blew up, and I ran into some mishaps with a friend and then also another, then burned the lunch (how are single moms with three jobs and three kids doing this!!?)

I held it together until my four year old got a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store and there was no way to console her. In the car I followed her example and at the end we both wept. So loud and so weary and so unconsolable!

On the way home, still wheeling and whining, the sky took pity on us. Fluffy snowflakes tumbled down to the grey grounds pulling us back from the brink of agony.

Look it snows!, my daughter proclaimed with great joy like only a four year old can. Look, mummy, it snows!

I laughed through my tears and knew it again: how much I loved this child and what a blessing she was to us. And how small my concerns are as soon as I get them back into perspective.

Like the perspective of a snow day. We watched the dance of the snow from our drive way slowly covering the old grey from last year which had laid bare for too long in too warm and grey a season for the upper midwest. Layers of virgin snow. White and fluffy and beautiful.

My daughter tried to catch them with her tongue.

Can you remember catching a snow flake with your tongue? I promise it will lift your weariness in a heart beat. Just like the ice flowers did to me this morning. (I still need to catch one with my tongue!)

It is what these greetings from beyond do to us. While the skies open, our heart does too. In a child like and innocent way. It reminds us of our being human first and our connectedness to each other and the cosmic blessing which surrounds us. Our sorrows will not be gone and our pain will be still there after this moment of ethereal beauty has passed. But still, we have tasted some consolation, and felt “by gracious powers wonderfully sheltered” (D. Bonhoeffer), even if it was just for a brief moment.

People have found different names for such a blessing from beyond. I like Karl Rahner’s phrase of transcendence breaking in and Hildegard of Bingen’s image of Divine wisdom sheltering us under her wings, or Martin Buber’s beautiful line of the eternal Thou engaging us.

My daughter called it plainly: look, mommy, it snows, and it was surely a proper name, too, for the Divine blessing breaking into our agony.

The three dimensions of a complete life according to MLK

MLK somewhere talked about the three dimensions of our being human as the length, the breadth and the height. It popped into my mind in-between those bungled chores and burned meals. Surprisingly I found the little book in one of my moving boxes still sitting under my desk waiting to be unpacked.

I angled the book from the box and opened it. It immediately pulled me into another horizon and another time.

The first time I read MLK I was a teen living behind the so called Iron Curtain in the last years of the East German so-called “republic”.

I grew up with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King and Anne Frank on my book shelf. So you might get an idea where I am coming from :-)

What fascinated me on reading MLK was his philosophical anthropology¹. I probably did not know the term back then but nonetheless I was fascinated about his description of our human nature. For context, the MLK text I refer to is placed in his reflection on Revelation 21:16, a biblical text where the heavenly city is described as a place of perfect symmetry. He writes:

“For what John is really saying is this: that life at its best and life as it should be is three-dimensional; it’s complete on all sides. So there are three dimensions of any complete life, for which we can certainly give the words of this text: length, breadth, and height.”²

And as the perfect or complete city should be balanced in three dimensions so it is with the our life, too. MLK continues:

“The length of life, as we shall use it here, is not its longevity, its duration, not how long it lasts, but it is a push, the push of a life forward to achieve its personal ends and ambitions. It is the inward concern for one’s own welfare.

The breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others.

The height of life is the upward reach for God.

So these are the three dimensions. On one hand, we find the individual person; on the other hand, we find other persons; at the top we find the supreme infinite person. These three must work together; they must be concatenated in an individual life if that life is to be complete, for the complete life is the three-dimensional life.”³

The problem, according to MLK, is that modern people usually only care about the first dimension of their lives, the length. In his sermon, King laments that “too many of our white brothers are concerned merely about the length of life rather than the breadth of life.”

I have seen that the “American dream” is prone to lose itself in the first dimension alone, in achievements and career stages and school names and important mile stones, in short bios and professional letters, as if our life would depend on these things. Frankly, it is easy to get lost in this way of thinking when first coming to this country.

I once shocked a party goer at a dinner invitation in one of the many academic households of our college neighborhood (very white but with BLM signs in pretty front yards) when he met me with the question: and what are you doing? He was clearly aiming to hear about my academic career which I did not have because I supported the one of my husband. So I said:

“I am trying to live a good life.” He gave me a surprised look and then I could watch in his face how our conversation leaped from brain mode into heart mode. “I love that, he said, I wish I could say that…”

Ice flowers growing three-dimensional at our window pane. Can you see the triangle?

“For the complete life is a three-dimensional life.”

— MLK

Shouldn’t we shout it from the roof tops? Surely MLK only reminds us of what wisdom philosophies and faith traditions all have at their core. We are three-dimensional beings and we need to tend to each dimension equally to not get lost.

Like my four year old and me in our agony. Overwhelmed and thus restricted to our own feeling space (the length or individual dimension) we could not tend to the need of each other (the breadth or social or ethical dimension). Like a blessing from beyond the snowfall broke open our one-dimensional space and let the light (the hight or spiritual dimension) back in. And the four-year old saw it first.

Does that make any sense to you?

So which dimension in your life might need some more attention these days or on a day like this?

Interesting enough I feel I need to care more about my length dimension and I have set out this year to do exactly this. Taking my letter writing more seriously and cherishing it as my work with which I fulfill my calling but also earn my income as part of it. But then the social dimension immediately leaps in: it is you who I am serving and without whom I could not do it. And now the third already vibrates in sympathy: What is really calling me is to share the insights of my own journey towards integration and wholeness.

And what is it for you?

Thank you for being here. Peace and Blessings, Almut

Thank you or sharing this letter with a kindred soul.

Upcoming

There are several projects in the pipeline. I am looking forward to our Winter Solitude at the end of February, a virtual retreat as a thank you for our paid subscribers.

And to (re)introduce you in the next weeks to the different writings of our Cloister Notes publication: Our midweek blessings, essays on “what Chuck is reading,” reflections on health and healing, and our section “On Being Human”, reflections in the intersection of philosophy, psychology and spirituality, which today’s essay was the very first one, and some more.

Missing something? Let me know what you like to read here <3

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About Almut

Almut Furchert, Dr. phil., Dipl. Psych. is a German American scholar and practitioner, a psychologist turned philosopher turned writer, traveler, photographer, retreat leader and mother of a kindergartener. She has taught and published on authors like Kierkegaard, Buber, Frankl, Yalom, Edith Stein, and Hildegard of Bingen. Almut is also a Benedictine Oblate and lives with her family in a little college town in MN.

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1. Philosophical Anthropology is a branch of (mainly European) philosophy which concerns the philosophy of human nature.

2. I quote here from a sermon delivered at the Unitarian Church of Germantown in 1960 which you can read in full here.

3. My emphasis and line arrangement.