Does Love Require Complete Acceptance? (Jedidiah Jenkins)

Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

“Nature, the universe, speaks in metaphor, and one of its truest things is paradox, is holding two things that are both true at once. I remember laying in bed, I was probably 12 and before I go to bed, I'm thinking about the universe because my brain suddenly works and I'm like, how can space be infinite? Infinity makes no sense to my mind. So then I'm imagining space expand, expand, expand. And then I hit a wall, which is the edge of space. And then I go, okay, so let's say if space isn't infinite, well, if you get to the edge of space to the wall, what's on the other side of the wall? There has to be something on the other side of the wall. There can't be nothing. And so I remember thinking in that moment, those two scenarios are both impossible, but then also finiteness is impossible because there must be something on the other side of the wall. And I remember laying there being like, oh, I actually think the computer brain that we have is not designed to understand the wholeness of reality. We're stuck in a partial understanding.”

It’s likely fate that Jedidiah Jenkins is a writer—a New York Times bestseller at that. After all, his parents sold more than 12 million books in the early years of their writing careers, when they were still married, and a duo—they wrote a series of books about walking, yep walking, across America. In Jedidiah’s latest book—Mother, Nature—he retraces their journey by car, with his mother riding shotgun. He suggested this trip to his mother because he wanted to see the world through her eyes—to understand who she is by accessing who she was—and also because of a chasm that keeps them apart. See, Jedidiah is gay, while his mother believes—ardently—that homosexuality is a sin. And a choice. Mother, Nature is a beautiful and tender love story between a mother and a son that revolves around one of Jedidiah’s foundational beliefs: That he cannot excommunicate his mother, even if she might not come to his eventual marriage to a man.

MORE FROM JEDIDIAH JENKINS:

Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to See if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences

To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret

Life Streams to the Ocean: Notes on Ego, Love, and the Things That Make Us Who We Are

Jedidiah’s Website

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