The Tyranny of Being Right

4 Replies

One of the earliest “distinction drawings” I learned after becoming conscious was that the world was divided into two categories—“saved” and “unsaved.”  And from that font of binary thinking I learned there were Baptists and then there were other religious denominations who did not understand the Bible “right.”  And even worse, there were the “Mary-worshipping” Catholics and also the Jews who weren’t even Christian!  And even within Baptist ranks, there were my particular brand of Baptist (Landmark Missionary Baptists) and then those “liberal” Southern Baptists from which we Landmarkers had split off from in the late 19th century.  And even within Landmark churches there would often arise doctrinal squabbles which would lead to a split and the start of another church.  Note that the phenomena of needing to draw distinctions was a fundamental premise.  And in my denomination, there was even the phenomena of the Bride of Christ which was an honorary place in heaven for Christians who had belonged to the church which most closely adhered to the gospel and could trace their historical roots back to Christ.  Yes, I was honored to learn that this was my church.  Yes, even in heaven there would be distinctions drawn.  Gawd it was comforting to know that I was so special.

And please note that this “distinction drawing” was not the exclusive domain of Christianity or even fundamentalist Christianity.  It is merely part of being human and is toxic only when we never mature enough to make the need of drawing distinctions less important than finding common ground.  It has always been present in human history and will always be present as it is inherent in cognition itself.  BUT, it is possible…I am finding…to be a thinking human being and realize that some of the distinctions I have drawn with such rigidity in my life are not quite as black and white as I had been taught.  But for those who are stuck in what Richard Rohr calls “binary thinking” cannot help but obsessively seek for distinctions which leave them separate from others and thus “right.”

One result of this emphasis on my early life was the need to be right.  I quickly learned that there was “right” and “wrong” and learned that “right” consisted of basically adhering to the rules that constituted “right.”  I now realize that existentially, in the bowels of my young heart, I had perceived myself to be intrinsically bad but that I could be “good” and be “right” if I followed the rules, if I would be a “good little boy.”  This put me on the path of being a very good hypocrite, for the word hypocrite merely means “to act.”  I am not denigrating myself in the least with this point.  I was only a child and had learned how to find validation and that was in “acting” right and I did so with utmost sincerity.  Richard Rohr has pointed out that most of us spend the first half of our life as an actor in all respects and only then begin to wrestle with the under-lying dimension of life which always involves opening Pandora’s box in some way.  But it is hard to impossible for a guilt-ridden Christian to admit they have been “acting” for doing so would be to acknowledge and embrace the feelings of “wrongness” which have always tyrannized them into outward compliance with rules.  They would have to realize they have been living in bondage to “the law” albeit a “Christian” version of bondage.  They have been socialized or enculturated into their faith…which is a necessary stage of faith…but at some point it is important to acknowledge the “act” they have been putting on and allow the “Spirit of the Law” to begin to flow.  James Alison, who will share the stage with Richard Rohr in a couple of weeks, has written a book entitled “The Joy of Being Wrong,” describing the release he found when he no longer had to be constantly trying to be “right.”  And of course, in the need to “be right” I constructed various constructs in life in which I could be “right” and “they” would be wrong.  Oh, how comforting it was.  And how hypocritical.

Drawing Boundaries in Religious Experience

2 Replies

After another long hiatus, I’m resuming my blog with the intent of pursuing a theme for periods of time.  Beginning today I am introducing the notion of human beings as “distinction-drawers,” a notion that I broached casually months ago.  And this is a very personal issue as “distinction-drawing” is very close to the core of my ego identity though now I am apparently in “recovery” from this death trap.

We are born into a world that was “always already underway.”  Even before we started to venture toward consciousness, this pre-existent world was beckoning, a gentle beckoning which would become more demanding as our journey through infancy continued and we approached the threshold of consciousness.  Becoming human depended on acceding to the demands of this “exterior” world and formulating a template through which we would view the world, a template which must be shaped so that it is consistent with the world view of the tribe into which we were born.  This template is a narrow prism through which we view the world and we will never completely leave it behind…even when in the “recovery” mentioned earlier.

One primary feature of this “template” is thinking itself which is a carving up of the world into discrete categories, providing escape from that matrix into which we are born and in which we spend the earliest months of our life.  This matrix (i.e. mother) is a womb, the mythological Uroborus in which there is no distinction drawn between me and the outside world.  It is the Garden of Eden from which we must be banished.  And if we fail to escape that matrix (i.e. “mother”) we will not be able to “join” the human race.

I will admit that there is some sense in which I have never made this escape as I’m still deeply rooted in that primeval world where distinctions are not as clear as they are to most people. I have spent most of my life “pretending” to have escaped by imprisoning myself in a conceptual world which has allowed me to function well in the “real” world.  This “real” world is a world of reason, a highly structured world which we call culture.  Without this fabricated world we would still live in that Ouroborous which means we would not really have a world at all, living in an undifferentiated state of unity with all things.  Having an “object world” is necessary for the creation of culture and our own infantile development of an “object relationship” with the world is necessary if we are to participate in the world into which we are born.

Joining our “object world,” our tribe, always means subscribing to reason and the “rational world” of the tribe is a “necessary evil” that we will need to gain some freedom from when we mature.  And that certainly does not mean we will need to become “un” reasonable only that we learn to see that the distinctions that we have learned to draw in our early tribal life are not as pronounced as they were seen, and felt, to be.  Early cognitive development turns us into a “distinction-drawer” and that is a developmental imperative.

Problems come, however, when neurophysiology creates too great of a reliance on this “distinction-drawer” and we never learn to see the world in terms other than black and white, us vs. them, good and bad, Republicans and Democrats, right and wrong, etc., etc.  And another dimension of this infantile imprisonment is that sometimes the social “norms” are so rigid that the developing child is basically tyrannized into his/her “distinction drawer” which helps the tribe to perpetuate its collective “distinction drawer.”

In my next post, I intend to explain how my Christian faith contributed mightily to the development of my “distinction drawer.”  And this is not the fault of Jesus Christ but merely an illustration of how human nature tends to use everything at hand to formulate a “distinction-drawer” early in life.

Confessions of a “Scaredy-Cat”

2 Replies

 

As a child we would taunt each other with, “You’re a scaredy-cat, you’re a scaredy-cat” in an effort to goad a friend…or someone we didn’t like…into doing something risky.  And of course, that would produce the expected exchange, “No I’m not, you are!” on and on for a few minutes until laughter broke out or someone had submitted and done something stupid.

Well, I was a scaredy-cat, being a little too timid…and I still am in the depths of my heart.  That fear base which terrorized me in my youth is still there, murmuring to me quite often, though now maturity has given me some balance so that these taunts from my reptilian-brain fear base do not have the power they used to.  For example, this morning I read a news story about an antibiotic-proof strain of virus that is now in our country and first thought, “Oh no, here comes the hysteria!  Here comes the fear-mongerers crawling out from underneath their rocks to announce national and even global catastrophe!”  And, true enough, this is a serious event and, true enough, things could get out of hand.  And the “scaredy-cat” did stir for a moment in my heart and I felt that fear-base taunting me on multiple issues.  But on this occasion I employed a newly found maturity to be able to “name the demon”…so to speak…to put words to the subjective experience that was having and not allow fears to predominate.  The fear was there but I was able to employ “the pauser reason” and not imbibe of the hysteria that media is always trying to create.

Life is inherently tenuous.  At the moment when we are born, and certainly at the moment when we come “on line” as a conscious being, our little ego is fragile and desperately needs that “fig leaf” that God so graciously gives us to hide us from our nakedness.  T. S. Eliot described that moment of vulnerability as “That tender point from which life arose, that sweet force born of inner throes.” The “fig leaf” of ego structure is a necessary part of life and allows us to “join the human race” by acquiring a persona and taking our place in the tribe.  But ideally when we reach middle age…and certainly old age…we will achieve maturity enough to open up a bit, broaden our view and experience of the world, which always means encountering that subterranean fear-base to some degree.  Most of us get this piece-meal and only have to deal with some degree of internal duress—maybe anxiety or depression.  Some are not so fortunate and are overwhelmed and crash and burn, the filter provided by their ego structure proving to be incapable of handling the turmoil of unconscious energy.  Many simply go through a mid-life crisis, then “gird up their loins” and get back into the trenches and resume their life.  Others have to endure the “Dark Night of the Soul” that St. John of the Cross wrote about.  And then many others have an ego that resists fear feverishly, and they cling desperately to their persona.  And these “darkened” and “unlightened” souls have a very important place in the unfolding of our world also and rarely do any of them merit the description of “darkened” or “unenlightened.” (But oh how delightful it is to be able to make that judgment!!!  The ego just loves the power of drawing distinctions and casting someone into “outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”)

Actually, what I’m now trying to say is, wording it facetiously, “I fear that I have found courage.” And I have found that courage does not mean the absence of fear but having the wherewithal to persevere even in the midst of fear, of doubt and insecurity.  I credit this to something which happened about two and a half years ago as a result of having read Stephen Levine’s book, “Healing into Life and Death.”  Levine taught that “healing” occurred when one embraced his fears, “stepped into” them, rather than running away from them.  In his book he was talking about helping people who were facing terminal illness and reported that the “healing” often meant coming to acceptance of death and being able to die peacefully. But he also reported that with many others when they embraced their terminal illness and accepted the finality of death, they were healed of their illness.  Two and a half years ago I stopped running from fears and insecurities, began to embrace them, and am discovering the wisdom in the mantra, “This too shall pass.” But when we run from “stuff” it we only perpetuate it and allow it to continue thwarting the unfolding of our life. The culture of my youth taught me to run from “stuff” rather than deal with it.  Even my Christian faith imbibed of this avoidance principal, using the teachings of Jesus to avoid reality rather than to embrace it.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mutant-superbug-us_us_57474a21e4b055bb11719d35)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

Ideologues Can Be Liberal!!!

Leave a reply

I have posted frequently about ideologues, explaining that I’m one in recovery and like being “in recovery” with any illness, the illness will always be present!  But “naming the demon” gives me some distance from the poison that would otherwise still have me enslaved.

I’ve very troubled with my country’s election campaign this year.  Yes, Donald Trump is “troubling” but that is not my only concern.  The fans of Bernie Sanders are demonstrating an investment in him which often puts me off given the frequent self-righteous fervor and invective that is taking place.  At times it is quite apparent that they love “Bernie” so much that they are responding with downright hatred for Hillary Clinton.  I really like Bernie myself and have greatly admired him though this admiration is currently being given pause.  His “success” in the primary season and reached the point where I fear that he is posing a threat to the best opportunity my country has to thwart this Trumpian beast that is “lurching toward our Bethlehem.”

Bernie is a wonderful voice for the progressive cause.  But he should remember the wisdom of W. H. Auden, “Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too steep.”  Or, to frame it another way, “Discretion is the better part of valor” and I fear his obsession with his campaign is lacking discretion.  This Trump monster that is threatening our village is deadly serious and at this point in the campaign Hillary is in a commanding lead that most competitors would respect.  Sure, the “system is rigged” in that there are rules in place that Hillary is benefiting from but it is a little bit late go be complaining about the rules.  It reminds me of Trump himself who brazenly disregards all rules.

Here is a link to a blog that prompted me offer this discourse:

http://www.shakesville.com/2016/01/the-inherent-misogyny-of-sanders.html

 

Thinking about Momma Nature

2 Replies

A Facebook friend just shared a paean to the tree by Herman Hesse which I will share here when I conclude.  Hesse so eloquently puts into words a passion I have had for the past twenty years or so for trees, part of the love affair I’ve been having with Momma Nature.  For a long time I’ve been telling friends and family that when I pass away,  “Don’t buy flowers.  Plant a tree!  Plant a tree in your yard, in a friend or neighbor’s yard, in the woods, in a park, but plant a tree!!!  There is nothing I feel would honor me more than the planting of a tree, and Hesse’s narrative helps me to understand why.

Nature is a calming presence in my life now.  I see daily the beautiful sights of Northern New Mexico and understand that I’m seeing the handiwork of God.  I’m now an avid gardener and take great delight in finding out what plants and flowers are native to this desert environment and can survive.  My sun room becomes a seedling nursery in late winter and even now still has seedlings ready to find a home outside.

One of the faulty perceptions I learned in my youth was that mankind was separate and distinct from the earth.  In fact, I learned that it was ours to master and control and not Gaia to live in harmony with.  But I’ve matured to the point where I can handle paradox and contradiction, realizing that yes we are “separate and distinct” from the earth but simultaneously “dust of the earth” just as the Bible teaches.  We walk, breathe, live, and die in the Unity of All Things.

FROM “WANDERING” BY HERMAN HESSE

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. It wants to be nothing except what it is. That is home. That is happiness.

 

The following picture is the Rio Grande meandering alongside Hwy 68 south of Taos, Nm.

blog pix.jpg

 

 

 

 

A Lesson from a Rabbit

5 Replies

Becoming real means finding the courage to wade into the difficult dimensions of human experience, a courage which is usually the function of the wear and tear of daily life, the relentless oppression of those “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”  Becoming real means you find the courage to tippy-toe…at least…into the “unreal” in that you find that what was once so certain is no longer certain, discovering only then an inner core which has always been present but unexplored due to your lack of courage. Becoming real is a liminal moment, approaching the boundaries of existence itself which is always humbling. Becoming real is finding what Paul Tillich described as “The Courage to Be” which always means flirtation with non-being, its presence announced by intense anxiety.  Norman Brown summed it up pithily decades ago, “To be is to be vulnerable.”

Here is a beautiful summary of this experience from the children’s classic, “The Velveteen Rabbit”:

What is real asked the Rabbit.. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”  (“The Velveteen Rabbit,” by Margery Williams. see http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html)

 

 

Who Am I?

2 Replies

This question has haunted humankind for eons.  Most people resolve the issue readily be donning the “suit of clothes” proffered by their family/community but for many of us that necessary “fig leaf” ceases to work at some point and we begin to wrestle with the essential issues of identity inherent in the question.  I realize now that assuming an identity in my youth was challenging, even very early before I was even conscious.  The angst did not really become conscious until pre-adolescence, then it beat the hell out of me for several decades, before I gained the maturity to begin to wrestle with the issue with an increasingly mature spiritual grasp of the matter.

Now let me reassure you, if you get to even middle age and give too much thought to “who am I?” you might go to your physician and seek a pharmacological easy way out!  For the quest to answer that question is a process and the answer will come in realizing that the process…like all things that are “process”…will never be completed.  This involves real work, spiritual work, spiritual work that cannot be resolved by the “well-worn and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness” even if they come from your favorite holy book!

Here I want to share a lovely poem from a lovely soul that I left behind in Fayetteville, Arkansas just over two years when I moved to Taos, New Mexico, Sue Coppernoll.  I did not know her well, but well enough to know she was a fine poet and a keenly sensitive spirit whose spirituality, like mine, had its roots in very conservative fundamentalist Christianity.  Here Sue so eloquently captures the fragility of an identity, particularly in its early formulation, and the resolve she had to “carry on” even when life dealt her hard blows.

MEMORY

Words

Worked out with toothpicks

On the royal blue carpet

On the living room floor.

 

First

My name,

WILLIE FAYE

Biting my lip in concentrated effort

Laboriously arranging wooden sticks

Into recognizable patterns.

 

I’m Real!

I have substance.

See, there I am,

Right there on the floor.

WILLIE FAYE

That’s me, I exist, I AM.

 

My baby sister crawls

Onto and through

My toothpick words.

 

My heart is broken.

 

I gather up the scattered sticks

To begin again

The construction of my self.

 

WILLIE FAYE

 

 

I wish I’d have gotten to know Sue better.  This poignant expression of a child’s heart just past the threshold of coming “on line” into conscious existence is riveting.  And the child at that point is so vulnerable and the mirroring from “momma” and the rest of the family and world is so critical.  But this validation is never perfect and even then Sue recalled having the experience of clinicians call “ego integrity,” allowing her to repair the damage to a particular disappointment.  And though, as noted above, I do not know Sue well, I did get to know her well enough to know that life dealt her more than her share of the Shakespearean “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir too” and that she has continued to employ that “ego integrity” and is today a beautiful soul and a beautiful woman.  In the terms of Judeo-Christian tradition roots that she and I hailed from it is the “Spirit of God” that provides that “ego integrity” which is a Presence described in the New Testament as that “by which all things cohere”

Trump is an Overly Indulged Child

Leave a reply

At times I actually feel sorry for Donald Trump.  For, like all of us he is a child at heart and his campaign demonstrates that beneath the surface he is a frightened, even terrified little boy.  Anyone who harbors unconscious terror like that must find someone or some group to project their own perceived inadequacies.  And it is a clinical fact that privileged children who have been overly indulged have a difficult time with boundaries, not learning that there is a world “out there” beyond their own private fantasies

Trump has consistently demonstrated blatant disregard for common courtesy and civility.  He even told the nation last week about his penis size, not being aware of how incredibly gauche this was.  And I’m sure he exaggerated…like I always do! Most of us who would make a declaration like, especially being in his position, would be checked by consideration of how it would be perceived by his audience and by the nation.  But with his narcissism, he lacks a “filter” or antennae which would allow him to be aware of how he is coming across to those outside of his private fantasy.

Someone with this deep-seated malady cannot admit they are wrong; they must always be right!  That is because beneath their grandiose persona they are filled with an unconscious dread based on the perception they are intrinsically wrong.  This “wrongness” is certainly nameless and if one with this problem could ever manage to simply muster the courage to own this feeling of wrongness, to acknowledge it, to “name the demon” there would be some relief if not complete.  It is similar to the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous, “Admitting that I am an alcoholic.”  This is the reason that every time Trump makes an outrageous statement or does something ridiculous, he never back tracks but only doubles down on his position.

But, back to my original point, he is in a world of pain.  I am not, however, excusing him or attempting to mitigate the tragedy that he is putting on our collective table.  We all live in a “world of pain” and carry the impact of the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir too” inside our hearts. I certainly do. But most of us have some ability to address this pain, acknowledge it, make appropriate adaptations, and live in this world with some respect for his fellow man.  Trump is sorely lacking in this regard and, as Shakespeare told us, “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”  And, I would add, “not so great ones” also.

Winning the World to Jesus!

1 Reply

In my youth, this was a favorite evangelistic cry in my fundamentalist religion and it often stirred my adolescent and, later,  young-adult passions with visions of “taking the world for Christ.”  Yes, I needed an identity back then for I had none otherwise and when I “surrendered to preach” I immediately knew that my life was laid out for me, that I had heard and answered “the call” and God would do great things through me.  And that passion and ambition is appropriate and common  in our youth and fortunately the exigencies of life slowly eroded the hubris and I am learning to approach spirituality with more maturity.

But looking back on the zeal to “win the world to Jesus” and seeing the same clarion call being announced from pulpits, and some version of it even from the political the platform, brings memories back about that phase of my life and the community I was raised in.  I see so very clearly now that my desire to “win the world to Jesus” was my desire to “win the world to Lewis Earl Chamness, Jr. (aka “literarylew”).  It was a deep-seated need to make “the world” like myself with my “world” being primarily those around me, those unfortunate souls who happened to cross my path.  I was lonely, alienated, depressed, anxiety-ridden and the anguish that tortured my soul could be mitigated by the comfort of having a safe little world of people who believed just like me.  And, yes, the long-term goal was to win the entire world to Jesus but mercifully my narcissism graciously allowed me to focus primarily on my little obscure tribe.

And now, having retired after careers teaching history and practicing as a mental health clinician, I’m finding the courage to apply my clinical “gaze” more to the human “predicament.”  The snapshot of my early spirituality presented above is seen with more maturity and even humility.  We are all children at one time and when we were children we behaved as children.  But if we ever find the courage to look back on our childhood, and discover that it still is very much present with us and very much an influence in our adult life, we can learn so much about ourselves and find the power and grace to make better choices.  This “gaze” allows me to see the fundamentalist zeal of my little Baptist sect (Landmark Missionary Baptists) in an historical context, realizing that the origins of this group were in the post-Civil War South as an expression of poor Southern white people who were feeling disenfranchised or dispossessed.  Any group feeling intense grief like that will always find some means of claiming “self” importance and with my little church it glommed onto the common notion in religion that they were “special” and that they, and other Christians, had to task of “winning the world to Jesus.”  (Though with Landmarkers, there were Christians and then there were real Christians who when in heaven would have the exalted status of being included in “the Bride of Christ.”}

But everyone’s belief system has an historical and personal context and that does not necessarily leave it without value.  For example, this critical look at Jesus presented above has nothing to do with the historical figure of Jesus; it merely demonstrates that Jesus, and any spiritual teacher, will always be utilized to some degree to fulfill tribal and personal wishes, including thate for aggrandizement.  But for people with a fervent spiritual impulse, recognizing and owning this need for aggrandizement, and other base impulses, is very difficult to entertain.  These baser impulses are what the Apostle Paul called “the flesh.”

I think that “winning the world to Jesus” could still be a valuable goal in our world but it would require a critical look at the terms and a willingness for those consumed with this passion to take a critical look at themselves.  In other words, it would require self-reflection which is very difficult, and often impossible, for those who are comfortably ensconced in the firm conviction that they are “right.”  Jesus was not, and is not, a toy or bauble for children to play with to avoid their existential malaise or anguish.  Jesus was, and is, about relationship and “relationship” involves connection with other people and with the world itself.  “Relationship” is not about subscribing to dogma and learning a lot of theology and philosophy.  It is about finding the courage to being open to other people and to see the inter-relatedness of all people even those that we find it easy to banish into that vast category “them.”  The spirituality of my youth, my passion for “Jesus”, was merely about maintaining a precarious immature identity which could only be done by drawing rigid boundaries between me and the world, having imbibed of the “us vs. them” mentality.  The Christian faith of my youth was only for the purpose of maintaining my isolation which theologian Paul Tillich described as “an empty world of self-relatedness.”  Oh how empty it was!

Mitt Romney, “Profile in Courage”

2 Replies

I never thought I’d be singing the praises of Mitt Romney but I doff my hat to him for having the courage to succinctly and eloquently articulate to his Republican party and to the American people why Donald Trump is a danger to us all.

Trump is a scary person.  Any bully who disregards common courtesy and civility, “rules of the playground,” is frightening and I recall as a child learning to avoid them.  For persons like him have severe boundary problems and will stop at nothing to get what they want.  We have watched the rest of the Republican candidates this year cower before him, fearful to challenge him, knowing he would respond with painfully personal insults.  Now that it is too late, two of the candidates have come out swinging; but it is apparently too little too late for base of the Republican Party has been enthralled by this psychopath and will not listen to the carefully reasoned argument of someone like Romney.

But Romney displayed statesmanship yesterday.  He knew that he was opening himself up to ridicule and sure enough Trump delivered.  Romney often looked very foolish and inept in 2012 when campaigning took him out of the comfort of the corporate boardroom and exposed a social and occasional verbal awkwardness.  But Romney appears to have a spiritual valor that most of his party does not have and dared to make the only formal, carefully reasoned explanation of why Trump is so dangerous.  It makes me think of the famous line from W. B. Yeats, “The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  (“When love begins to sicken and decay/It useth an enforced ceremony/There are no tricks in plain and simple faith/But hollow men, like horses hot at hand/Make gallant show, and promise of their mettle.” Shakespeare)

Being raised in the American South, as a fundamentalist Baptist, I have a faint residual disregard for the Mormon faith.  But, in fairness to myself, it is faint!  But Romney demonstrated real faith yesterday in that he “put some skin in the game” and risked his ego.  I don’t care if he is a snake-handler or a Rastafarian, that is more courage than I’ve seen in any American politician this year, including those who are obnoxiously, ostentatiously “Christian.”