Category Archives: religion

Narcissicism and care-giving

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The recent Penn State University sex abuse scandal has brought to the fore again the psychological profile of sex offenders.  The following link connects to a Washington Post story by a Jesuit priest who elaborates on the narcissism of sexual offenders, in this instance,  but also in the Catholic Church sex abuse saga which still rears its ugly head from time to time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/a-priests-view-of-penn-state/2011/11/13/gIQAcevnHN_blog.html

I think that narcissism is a human trait and that all of us should consider its relevance in our own life.  It is a challenge to get to the point in our maturity where we consider from day to day, “This is not all about me” whatever “this” might happen to be at the particular moment.  There is always a context and it is human nature to interpret any phenomena in a self-flattering, egotistical manner.
Being a professional care-giver by training (and disposition), I have learned to monitor myself from time to time and issue that reminder:  This is not about me!   It is so easy to care for some of us, especially we bleeding-heart liberals, but what we don’t want to realize is that this “I feel your pain” tendency is often just simple co-dependency.  We are sometimes just feeding on the anguish of our clients or charges.
And then there is the Jerry Sandusky sexual offender profile, where this “feeding” is not just simply naivety and immaturity, it is outright predatory.  This is garden-variety, plain-and-simple, evil sociopathy.  He purported to care, behaved in a “caring” manner (to all appearances), but he was a wolf in sheeps clothing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/a-priests-view-of-penn-state/2011/11/13/gIQAcevnHN_blog.html

The following posting is in reference to material from the blog posting of 11/3/1, “Paean to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”

When Ali was five, her grandmother orchestrated a “female circumcision” on her, seizing the opportunity provided by Ali’s father’s imprisonment.  Her father had opposed the procedure.  First, it is interesting to note that her father opposed this procedure and was able to prevent it when in the household even though it was a cultural/religious mandate.  I’m curious how he could have done that but am pleased that he did.    Second, can you imagine the balls of that grandmother????   Wow!  In some perverted fashion, she was a version of a “women’s libber” in that she acted contrary to the specific wishes of Ali’s father, a man. (And, this compliment is intended to be wry.  I’m not approving of anything that beastly woman ever did.)   But, of course, she did this in subservience to a “higher truth” which was the unequivocal mandate of the Koran.  It must have been an interesting moral dilemma for her but “moral dilemmas” are more easily resolved if you have a command from On High that you are obeying.

BUT, can you imagine having swallowed any cultural mandate or decree of Holy Writ to the point that you would brutalize a five year old girl, your own granddaughter?   And the brutality was not only physical, but sexual!  What a warped sense of personal and sexual identity it would give any girl.  No wonder that women in cultures of that sort are so subservient.   I would hope that if “God” should ever weigh on me to commit any deed so offensive to basic common sense and contrary to any basic human decency, I would readily tell him to “Fuck off.”  But, or course we routinely read/hear/see in our media gross examples of human stupidity in blind obedience to “God” speaking to them.

I think that it would behoove each of us to just take a time-out anytime “The Spirit is upon me” or “God is speaking to me.”  If we have any thoughts of this sort, we should be given pause for in these communications often lies the portal to gross stupidity and even brutality.  But in that moment, the “old brain”, that reptilian brain…..dare I say “Sataaaan”….is clamouring in our brain and we have a tendency to “know” that we are receiving the truth.  But, even if so, what harm would it do to pause and perhaps get feedback.

And I do think that each of us can say on occasion that “God is speaking to me” or “The Spirit of God is upon me”—I don’t doubt this in the least.  BUT, does it do any harm to give pause and consider the message?  I wish God would impose an early-warning system in our neurological depths and that anytime He was about to speak to us, we would hear…and perhaps see….a “WARNING” message like we see on our car’s dashboard when the engine is overheating.The issue here is meta-cognition.  So often it is lacking.  So often it is turned off when cultural mandates, i.e. the Word of God, is involved.  And I think God is then insulted, that we feel we have to turn off our brain when he is “speaking” to us or even when he is speaking to us.  God is not stupid.  But we often are.

I close with Goethe who in Faust noted, “They call is Reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

narcissism temptation with all care givers.

all of us are healers when we can forget about ourselvesd.

Conservative faith and fear of difference

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Yesterday I noted my reluctance to read Ram Dass even though I stumble upon his teachings often and always find them very insightful.  I attributed this reluctance to my conservative youth when he and his ilk were roundly demonized by my conservative faith.  I often find little intrusions into my life by this conservative past, little themes that are resurrected by day-to-day events in my life and the life of my culture.  For example, I was raised in a racist Southern culture but have gone far beyond racism ever since I made my escape from that culture in the early 70’s.  But from time to time that demon just faintly resurrects itself in my heart with some passing thought.  And, I don’t then berate myself or “confess my sin” to God; I merely exercise “mindfulness” for a moment and then go on with my life, recognizing that all of us have these haunts in our past

It is interesting that Ram Dass and “his ilk” were so hated by conservative Christian culture back then and that it continues today.  I know it had to do with the “foreignness” of it all—trekking to India, studying in an “ashram”, receiving teachings from guys with names like Meha Baba and Maharaja Ji.  And there was all this talk of “foreign gods” and holy literature when I knew there was only one “holy literature” available—the Bible.  They talked a different language than I did and it made me uncomfortable.  And, of course, there was this issue at the root of it all—they did not believe in Jesus and would one day rot in hell for their unbelief.

Perhaps the core issue there was simply “difference.”  I was raised to fear and loathe difference.  I was taught that everyone should be just like me and if they didn’t, it was merely an issue of them getting right with God and joining the Christian fold.  But, this exploration has been deeply enriching to my faith….my “Christian” faith…to learn of different ways to approach spirituality. Not that I have to adopt any of them!  When I explore these other religions I am made more aware of reality and I can bring this increased awareness to my faith.  But in conservative religion, there is no need for ‘awareness”.  There is merely the need to accept the dogma being presented to you, swallow it uncritically, and then regurgitate it the rest of your life.  (This “regurgitation” brings to my mind a cow chewing her cud—-the cow just stands there nonchalantly chewing her cud, apparently just as happy as a bug-in-a-rug.)

Ram Dass

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I keep running across Ram Dass in my readings.  And I still have not read him and his name still rings slightly dissonant in my heart.  But I recognize that this dissonance speaks volumes about me and my conservatism in the 1970’s (when he first surfaced on the cultural scene) and nothing about him.  Though I have not read any of his books, I have discovered numerous quotes all of which speak to his insight and courage.  For example:

In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.

 Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.

 Religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.

 Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it–just don’t get lost in it.

 I recognize why I was so averse to him in my youth and why conservative spirituality still is averse to him and all Eastern religions—he recognized a spiritual reality that is not reduced to the conceptual and which, consequently, cannot be owned and controlled.  That posed a threat for me as it brought into question everything I assumed about spirituality…and I have discoursed here several times re the “tyranny of assumptions.”

One task I have before me is to start reading Ram Dass, probably starting with his book, Be Here Now

Book review re Frank Schaeffer’s “Crazy for God”

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Frank Schaeffer is the son of Francis Schaeffer who was a leading spokesman and intellectual for the Christian Right in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.  Frank himself was groomed in his childhood as their heir apparent for his father and did indeed step into that role as a young man.  But, safely ensconced in that prominent position, he became disaffected and disillusioned by the bigotry and closed-mindedness that he witnessed and eventually left the fold.  But, if that wasn’t enough, he began to speak and write about what he witnessed during his youth, not just with the Christian Right, but with his family itself.  His book, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All of It Back” is the story of his “conversion” from hyper-fundamentalist Christianity and political conservatism to a pronounced liberal stance in both regards.  If you are an ex-fundamentalist, or if you are a fundamentalist who would deign to look critically at yourself, you really need to read this book.

Politically and familial-ly his book is a story of a standard dysfunctional family, a family trapped inside its own limited world-view and incapable of dealing honestly and openly with the world.  Families of this sort are in service to the myth that they are caught up in and dutifully dedicate themselves to perpetuating that myth even at the expense of its members own soul. Yes, it is sheer lunacy at times.

However, let me note that the “lunacy” presented here cannot compare with the lunacy I noted last week when I discoursed re Muslim culture from the perspective of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Any closed-mindedness veers toward lunacy and will end up there unless reality sets in.  But, I much prefer our culture’s conservative lunacy over that of the Muslim world.  There are more limits set here, largely by the power of a liberal and critical press.

Emptiness and religion

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I’m sure you have noted that my posts have a heavy emphasis on Eastern religious, Zen-themes, emptiness and “such.”  This is the result of, first of all, the alienation that has been my blessing/curse all of my life.  Second, it reflects the extensive reading I have done in world religions and philosophy.  These two considerations have left we with strong convictions (i.e. a “bias”) toward the notion that this world is ephemeral and that reality lies beneath the surface of day to day life….or “out there” or “beyond the grasp of cognition” or however you wish to put it.  And to “find it”, you have to “lose” your own grasp of reality or, in the words of Jesus, you have to lose your life to find it.

Western Christian culture often fails to consider that Christianity itself is an Eastern religion that has been dragged kicking and screaming to the West.  And we have done a thorough job on westernizing this spiritual tradition, i.e. reducing it to dogma and mindless ritual.

I’d like to share with you two different translations of one of Lao Tzu‘s verses relevant to the subject of emptiness:

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use

 

Thirty spokes are united around the hub of a wheel,
but the usefulness of the wheel
depends on the space where nothing exists.
Clay is molded into a vessel,
but the usefulness of the vessel
depends on the space where nothing exists.
Doors and windows are cut out of the walls of a house,
and the usefulness of the house
depends on the space where nothing exists.

Therefore take advantage of what exists,
and use what does not exist.

Review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book, Infidel

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I have started reading again, Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  In this book she describes the intricacies of tribal culture and the various myths that shaped this culture.  One thing is standing out in this reading of the book that I had forgotten—-even though her father was the patriarch of the family he was a bit “liberal” and that definitely had an impact of Ms. Ali.  I’m sure contributed to her rebellion at age 22 and her rejection of her entire culture.  The first “mistake” her father made…in reference to the dictates of the tribal gods (i.e. Allah)…was that he got a Western education at Columbia University, majoring in anthropology.  And her mother also was a bit of a rebel herself, leaving home on her own at age fifteen and moving to the city, Mogadishu I think.  And, Ali’s parents met casually and engaged in courtship and married without an “arrangement” by parents.  Furthermore, political turmoil abounded in Somalia in the seventies, wreaking havoc on the country in all respects, including culturally.  This instability there was the opportunity for “mischief”, meaning an opportunity for some brazen children to begin to “question the gods”, that is to say in this case, Allah.

This is a very important book and is very relevant to any culture, tribal or modern.  Ali eloquently portrays the iron-clad grip that her culture had on her, particularly its Muslim religion, and the excruciating pain that it inflicted on her and other females.  She writes in detail of her own genital mutilation when she was aged five.  It was painful to read.  But equally painful was the total and brutal denial of the rights of women and the extremes that her culture went to to keep it that way.

Culture can be ugly.  Or, to be more accurate, human beings can be ugly.

 

 

Wrestling with God

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One of my favorite contemporary novelists is Marilynne Robinson.  Housekeeping is my favorite of he novels and it has been made into a movie with the same name.  It was a wonderful movie and the novel is even better.   She has also written Gilead and in that novel she made the following observation:

In every important way we are such secrets from one another, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, intraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us. (my emphasis)

It is the “spaces between us” that intrigues me and compels me.   Human culture is the contrivance that unites us, it is the “veil we spin to hide the void” (Norman Brown) but spirituality is a quest to delve deeper, to penetrate that very necessary and essential fiction of our enculturation and dance, from time to time, with the emptiness.  I insist that it is in this “emptiness” that we find our Source.  Or, better stated it is in the wrestling with that emptiness, i.e. “wrestling with God” that we find our Source.  Technically, it is not even “human culture” that unites us, it is the emptiness.  Very Zen, huh?

Tebowing explained

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Have you heard of Tebow-ing?  Rabbi Joshua Hess (see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-joshua-hess) defines it as “kneeling to pray even though it has nothing to do with what is going on around you.”  And, of course, I make reference to the ceremonial prayer in the end zone that Quarterback Tim Tebow makes after scoring a touchdown.  I personally think other religious expressions should follow suit.  Perhaps we could see a brief communion service in the end zone, or perhaps a feigned circumcision, perhaps a few strokes of a Tai Chi ritual, or even the sacrifice of a goat.  Actually, I hope that eventually this non-sense will be forbidden and anytime piety overcomes the football hero and he forgets and trots out his ceremony, the referee would drop a flag, and instead of hand gestures to describe the offense, he would quickly kneel, and looking up to heaven as if in prayer would intone, “15 yard penalty on No. 15, Tebow-ing, penalty to be assessed on following kick off.”

Seriously, I’m glad that Tebow has the gift of faith and I hope this faith continues as he matures.  And as he matures, I hope he will realize that ostentatious displays of piety are just that—ostentation—“Hey, everyone look at me!  Not only did I score a touchdown, but I am pious.”  Now, I’m sure this is what going on.  I know.  Been there and done that…..well, I mean I have trotted out the ostentatious piety though certainly not after having scored a touchdown!  I conjecture that Tebow “wears” his faith right now.  In time to come it will become more personal and he will not have to trot it out when it is completely unrelated to the context.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali again

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The following posting is in reference to material from the blog posting of 11/3/1, “Paean to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”

When Ali was five, her grandmother orchestrated a “female circumcision” on her, seizing the opportunity provided by Ali’s father’s imprisonment.  Her father had opposed the procedure.  First, it is interesting to note that her father opposed this procedure and was able to prevent it when in the household even though it was a cultural/religious mandate.  I’m curious how he could have done that but am pleased that he did.    Second, can you imagine the balls of that grandmother????   Wow!  In some perverted fashion, she was a version of a “women’s libber” in that she acted contrary to the specific wishes of Ali’s father, a man. (And, this compliment is intended to be wry.  I’m not approving of anything that beastly woman ever did.)   But, of course, she did this in subservience to a “higher truth” which was the unequivocal mandate of the Koran.  It must have been an interesting moral dilemma for her but “moral dilemmas” are more easily resolved if you have a command from On High that you are obeying.

BUT, can you imagine having swallowed any cultural mandate or decree of Holy Writ to the point that you would brutalize a five year old girl, your own granddaughter?   And the brutality was not only physical, but sexual!  What a warped sense of personal and sexual identity it would give any girl.  No wonder that women in cultures of that sort are so subservient.   I would hope that if “God” should ever weigh on me to commit any deed so offensive to basic common sense and contrary to any basic human decency, I would readily tell him to “Fuck off.”  But, or course we routinely read/hear/see in our media gross examples of human stupidity in blind obedience to “God” speaking to them.

I think that it would behoove each of us to just take a time-out anytime “The Spirit is upon me” or “God is speaking to me.”  If we have any thoughts of this sort, we should be given pause for in these communications often lies the portal to gross stupidity and even brutality.  But in that moment, the “old brain”, that reptilian brain…..dare I say “Sataaaan”….is clamouring in our brain and we have a tendency to “know” that we are receiving the truth.  But, even if so, what harm would it do to pause and perhaps get feedback.

And I do think that each of us can say on occasion that “God is speaking to me” or “The Spirit of God is upon me”—I don’t doubt this in the least.  BUT, does it do any harm to give pause and consider the message?  I wish God would impose an early-warning system in our neurological depths and that anytime He was about to speak to us, we would hear…and perhaps see….a “WARNING” message like we see on our car’s dashboard when the engine is overheating.The issue here is meta-cognition.  So often it is lacking.  So often it is turned off when cultural mandates, i.e. the Word of God, is involved.  And I think God is then insulted, that we feel we have to turn off our brain when he is “speaking” to us or even when he is speaking to us.  God is not stupid.  But we often are.

I close with Goethe who in Faust noted, “They call is Reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

Paean to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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I would like to recommend two books by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (about her rejection of Islam and flight to Holland to avoid an arranged marriage) and Nomad (about her move to the U.S., under threat of death from the Muslim community).  These two books are biographical as they recount her experience of the oppression of women in her native Muslim culture and the identity crisis she experienced as she moved to the West and began to verbalize and write re the tyranny of Islam, especially with regard to women.

Ali was born in Somaliland in 1969.  Her father was a political dissident and while he was jailed because of his political activism her grandmother seized the opportunity to defy Ali’s father wishes and have Ali “circumcised” when she was age 5.  She portrays this brutal practice as only a reflection of the brutal tyranny of the Muslim faith as a whole, a religion which desperately seeks to cling to traditional, tribal culture even as modernity closes in on them.  (I think she recognizes that Islam in the West is often less tyrannical but she argues that the tyranny is inherent in the faith itself, Western version or Middle-eastern version.)

I would like to share a few excerpts from Nomad:   “All my life I have been a nomad.  I have wandered, rootless.  Every place I have settle in, I have been forced to flee; every certainty I have been taught, I have cast aside….Every change of country threw me unprepared into whole new languages and sharply different habits of mind.  Each time, I made a child’s fornlorn, often vain attempts to adapt.”  She described her dilemma when she was in the West as “teetering between the clear ideals of the Enlightenmend…and my submission to the equally clear dictates of Allah that I feared to disobey.”  She described the temption to cave-in, to surrender to her cultural introjections, noting, “I suffered many moments of weakness when I too entertained the idea of giving up my needs and sacrificing my personal happiness for the peace of mind of my parents, siblings, and clan.”  And she summarized the problems of Islam as deriving from the belief that, “Muhammed is considered infallible…and all (the Koran’s) commands must be obeyed without question.  This makes Muslim’s vulnerable to indoctrination in a way that followers of other faiths are not.”

I deeply admire the courage Ali has had to step forth, at the risk of her own life. to pursue self-expression and self-dignity.  It takes nerves of steel to observe personally how deadly indoctrination is and dare to question the basic assumptions of one’s culture.  We can attempt a journey of this sort much more easily than she can as we usually…though not always…can do so without the threat of harm.  Our only risk is a lot of anxiety, perhaps a tad of depression, and guilt from no longer subscribing to the tribal god/s.

A couple of footnotes here:  a)  She rejected the arranged marriage by fleeing to Holland and there she began to get a Western education.  She even became a member of the Dutch Parliament for a few years before death threats forced her to resign and flee the country.  2)  Though Ali is a flaming liberal with regard to her native country, when she moved to the U.S. she quickly obtained employment at the American Enterprise Institute, a very conservative think-tank.  She noted in Nomad…I think…that she had some ambivalence about this decision but decided to take what was the best offer that she had.