Richard Rohr and the Ambivalence of Spirituality

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I am sharing on this occasion Richard Rohr‘s blog as I have done occasionally.  I will say as I usually do, I really should just shut up and post the link to Rohr’s blog on my blog each day.  He says everything I could ever want to say and more.  But, if I did that, then I wouldn’t have any fun in my life, would I?

Richard appreciates the literary nature of the Bible.  He sees it as a “story’ and therefore needing interpretation.  And, if you think about it, our own life and the life of humankind and of the universe itself is a “story” and it is the job of each generation to interpret this story…and various parts of it…and make it meaningful to the contemporary world.  Richard does an excellent job in this hermeneutic endeavor with the Christian story.

 

 

A Big Surprise Meditation 16 of 49

I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to the little ones. (Luke 10:21 and Matthew 11:25)

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it, and those who deem themselves “morally successful” are often the last to learn it.

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection (like God does), rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond any imperfection.

It becomes sort of obvious once you say it out loud. In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is often the greatest enemy of the good. Perfection is a mathematical or divine concept; goodness is a beautiful human concept. We see this illusionary perfectionism in ideologues and zealots on both the left and the right of church and state. They refuse to get their hands dirty, think compromise or subtlety are dirty words, and end up creating much more “dirt” for the rest of us, while they remain totally “clean” and quite comfortable in their cleanliness.
Adapted from Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life,
pp. xxii-xxiii

 

The “Monkey Mind” and Insomnia

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My “monkey mind” is harassing me again so that I cannot sleep. I am so full of chatter.  And I do like my “chatter” but to have any meaning it has to find the primordial silence that is its Source. And I sure appear to be fearful of this Source even though I so often affirm my faith and confidence in it/Him/Her.

I recently read Jiddu Krishnamurti for the first time, a blog-o-sphere friend having recommended Freedom from the Known to me. This book so eloquently presents what I would call a Presence as encompassing the whole of life. As I read this incredibly insightful and powerful book, I am amazed at how it resonates with me on some level and I even suspect that I have some unconscious memory of having known this Presence in my early childhood and yearn to go back there. I think that probably I did know that Presence but discovered that I lived in a world where “chatter” predominated and opted for the validation that it offered.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from Krishnamurti that really grabbed me:

You are never alone because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday; your mind is never clear of all the rubbish it has accumulated. To be alone you must die to the past. When you are alone, totally alone, not belonging to any family, any nation, any culture, any particular continent, there is that sense of being an outsider. The man who is completely alone in this way is innocent and it is this innocency that frees the mind from sorrow.

We carry about with us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that totally is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young – not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age – and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.

I do not think that Krishnamurti felt that we could or should purge our minds of accumulated memories. His concern was the attachment to these memories, this “accumulated rubbish,” an attachment which keeps us from being able to “be alone” in the sense of being autonomous.

But note what T. S. Eliot said in The Four Quartets on the issue of attachment and detachment and the oblique relevance of death to the issue:

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,

 

The Great Round of Life

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“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (Anais Nin, quoted in http://juliegreenart.com/)

This was a stunning line by Anais Nin. And, though I have not read much of her work, I have read enough to know she was full of “stunning” lines. And I also know she battled her demons throughout her life; it is only as we “battle our demons” that wisdom comes to us.

Remaining in a “bud” is to not live. For the blossoming to occur, the “bud” has to break apart and even disintegrate so that “purpose” might be achieved. This is the wisdom that Jesus had in mind when he reminded us that unless a grain of corn fall into the earth and die, it could not bring forth life. And this is the meaning of the Crucifixion. Ranier Rilke approached the same life-out-of-death theme with these words, “Daily he takes himself off and steps into the changing constellation of his own everlasting risk.” (Duino Elegies)

Shakespeare also knew this essential truth of life, using the “bud” image himself in his first sonnet. In this lovely sonnet The Bard described a young man who balked at commitment to marriage, holding onto his heart’s “bud” and being unwilling to participate in the Great Round:

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

“When Religion Becomes Evil”

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CNN on-line offered a story today entitled, “When Religion Becomes Evil.” Now, of course, we immediately think of “them”, that vast category of people who believe differently than we do, and say of some of them, “Yes, evil!” But, evil is possible even with noble ideas, even those that you and I hold. For, with noble ideas like the teachings of Jesus, we can find ourselves suddenly being obnoxiously intolerant and blatantly overbearing and even brutal. Well, we can make this discovery if we are honest and most of the time we are dead set against that!  You might want to read the article at the following link: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/28/when-religious-beliefs-becomes-evil-4-signs/?hpt=hp_c3. The author, John Blake, suggests four signs that you are verging on evil with your religion:

1.  “I know the truth, and you don’t.” When you run into someone cursed with this illness, you have learned to turn around and walk the other way. There is no way to have an intelligent conversation with them. They are, to use the title of an Eric Hoffer book, “True Believers” which is tantamount to saying they are Taliban-ish.

2.  “Beware the charismatic leader.” Charismatic leaders often carry great wisdom but it is necessary to “try the spirits to see if they be of God.” For charismatic leaders are often in love with themselves and are enthralled with the power of having throngs of people subscribe to their beliefs. Witness Jim Jones and the Jonestown, South Africa tragedy of 1979. Witness also many of the contemporary tele-evangelists.

3. “The end is near.” Well, technically it is as at any minute we could drop dead from a multitude of circumstances and ultimately scientists say that our universe itself will collapse in upon itself. So, sooner or later, one of those “end is near” guys…and they are usually “guys”…will be right. I think that the global catastrophe they prophesy has already occurred…deep inside their own heart.

4. “The end justifies the means.” If you feel you know the truth, then you inevitably feel that you are justified in taking any means necessary to bring about the arrival of truth. The alternative would be to merely believe in Truth, and humbly live your life in patient faith and hope and allow that Truth to become manifest in due time without your ego-maniacal machinations.

The word “religion” has at its stem the same as that of “ligament.” Just as ligaments tie muscles together, religion purports to “tie together” a fragmented soul. We need religion because we know, in the depths of our collective hearts that we are fragmented, but we inevitable create ersatz religions which only blind us to reality. But in the religious sentiment, if we allow a spirit of humility to visit us on occasion, we can find glimpses of that re-integration and find that, in faith, it is in process in our lives…and in the lives of people who believe differently than we do!

 

“The Beast in the Human, and Vice Versa”

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For nearly four decades I’ve been intrigued with Karl Jung’s notion of the shadow and discourse here about the subject often. The “shadow” was the term Jung used to refer to the forbidden dimensions of the human heart which we all have but mercifully are filtered out for most of us. The dilemma, however, according to Jung, is that sometimes the filter is too rigid and leads to compulsive denial of this shadow side leading inevitably to projection on other people.

Creative people are the voices of this forbidden region, giving a voice to our brothers and sisters whose “filter” has not been so successful and whose lives have been hampered or even devastated by these forbidden haunts. One contemporary artist who was featured today in the New York Times is South African artist Jane Alexander whose art is now on display at a Catholic Church in New York City, St. John the Divine. (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/arts/design/jane-alexanders-work-at-st-john-the-divine.html?_r=0) Her sculptures depict the grotesque, the misshapen, the ugly and I’m impressed that this church is giving expression to that macabre dimension of the human heart. And, of course, this church is not glorifying that dimension but merely recognizing it and announcing, “Here it is, people. This is you. And some of our brothers and sisters articulate this ugliness for us in their daily lives.” And when we are willing to recognize this truth, and embrace it in our own hearts, we can be a bit more forgiving and understanding for those who are less fortunate than ourselves.

The article concludes with a description of one gripping sculptured image from the display and then concludes about the image and Ms. Alexander’s work, “In Ms. Alexander’s art there are no good final answers, no clear comforts. What there is is moral gravity — political, poetic — and a deep, peculiar beauty that doggedly clings to margins, where the mysteries are, and soars.”

“Herding Cats” in the First Grade!

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In recent weeks I have made several references to my work as a substitute teacher with early elementary children. I deem this the most important work I have ever done in my life as it is helping shape young children in their early formative years when they are only beginning to make “sense” out of life. Several days ago I referred to “neurological plasticity” which describes their vulnerability in neuro-physiological terms, referring to the fact that what they are learning is very malleable at this point in their life though parts of it will soon be “set in stone. One specific part that will be “set in stone” is their basic self-percept, their basic approach to the world, the basic notion of their standing in the world and their sense of efficacy. This is the reason that early childhood education is so important and why good parenting is essential. Two verses from the Old Testament had this in mind, Psalms 127 telling us, “….”As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth,” and Proverbs 22 noting, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Unfortunately, I fear these two verses are often used to justify some training that could only be described as abusive!)

By the time these children get into school, the subjective cauldron that is their identity has been largely stabilized so that they can “learn from experience” and can function, more or less, in a structured environment. Now this “cauldron” is still bubbling and one of the basic tasks of education at this level, as well as introducing the building blocks of a formal education, is teaching them to live in accordance with a social structure. And, it is fascinating to watch these lovely children as they seek to win affirmation by curtailing those teeming impulses though so often failing to do so and facing a firm but kindly “re-direction” by a teacher…or even substitute teacher. Some of them are still so “teeming” with emotion that the “re-direction” is very painful and they are sometimes crushed.

I often describe my work in the classroom as “herding cats.” These dear little children are just so full of intense emotion, desperate needs, insecurities, emotional hunger, and impulses that it is often almost impossible for them to remember the rules of the classroom. I so remember being part of a classroom like that in my youth and so often the “re-direction” was harsh and punitive, sometimes overtly shaming. I’m pleased now to work with teachers who are much more respective of the fragile world of their charges and will often merely present the miscreant with, “Johnny (or Susie), you are not making a good choice now.” And that intervention is very effective as the child wants to merit the description “good.”

Now let me get “anthropological on your ass.” Children coming into school are raw product who are beginning the process of being “milled” into a finished product who can take their place in the social body in a couple of decades. One could call it “brain washing” but that is not as bad as it sounds. The “brain washing” I observe now is merely the presenting of values and ideas of our culture and they are not presented in a manipulative or tyrannical manner. Education always involves “brain-washing” in some sense but in the modern schools in which I now work, even in conservative Arkansas, emphasizes critical thinking which will allow these children to make mature choices in their future about what values they wish to subscribe to. Some parents opt to avoid the “brain washing” of public schools and home-school their children, failing to realize that “brain washing” will take place nevertheless but the “brain” that will be doing the washing will be very narrow and often “private.” Though some parents who home-school do a very effective job, including addressing social needs, I fear many do not and their precious children are “brain-washed” into a very narrow, maladaptive worldview.

I’d like to close with a poem by Theodore Roethke which reminds me of a more conservative approach to education which prevailed during my youth, when regimentation of the “raw product” was more the goal of the educational system.

DOLOR
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

 

Multi-lingualism Shaping Worldview

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Time magazine recently had an article by Jeffrey Kluger which explained why bi-lingualism has a profound impact on the development of the brain. (See http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/23/bilingualism/) Kluger noted that the child is a “crude linguist from the moment of birth—and perhaps even in the womb—as he/she can begin to recognize sound patterns and to make sense out of them producing what we first hear as ‘babble.’” This “babble” is gradually refined into a language depending on what parts of the “babble” are reinforced by the parents and others in his social world. Kluger used the example of “dog-chien” for children born into one bi-lingual family, as a child in that family will discover that two different terms from what will come to be learned as two different languages are available to refer to the same object. The child can learn to “toggle” between the two different words to describe the same object and in so doing learn nimbleness in reference to language. And this “nimbleness” will be learned at a time when “neurological plasticity” is present, meaning that it is a skill that can be learned and can stay with the child for his/her lifetime. This is significant because the child can learn to apply this “nimbleness” to the whole of his/her world and see things in less rigid ways.

Kluger also cites research by Sean Lynch that multilingual kids may exhibit social empathy sooner than children who have been exposed to only one language. Lynch noted, “The theory of mind—understanding that what’s in your head is not the same as what’s in other people’s heads–does not emerge in children until they are about three years old. Prior to that, they assume that if, say, they know a secret you probably do too. There is a kind of primal narcissism in this—a belief that their worldview is the universal one.” Lynch argues that being exposed to more than one language is very helpful in facilitating a child’s ability to forego that initial self-centeredness and learn that there are other ways of looking at the world.

I found his observation about “primal narcissism” describing the belief that your world view is the universal world view very interesting in light of our own culture. For example, even the stalemate between liberals and conservatives reflects this “primal narcissism” when elements of both belief-systems fail to understand that the other side can have a viewpoint which is worthy of respect.

I’d like to conclude with my own story of discovering a second language and how novel the experience was. When I was only six or seven years of age “French” came to the public schools in “Smallville”, Arkansas in the early ‘60’s. I found it so interesting to learn that somewhere else in the world a dog was called a “chien” or a boy a “garcon” that a father was “pere” or that an apple was a “pom.” This created in my heart even then a rudimentary notion of “difference” which continues to be a compelling interest of mine five decades later. And then one day I learned a particular expression which really nailed the phenomena down for me when I learned that when the French refer to having “goose-bumps”, they say, “I have the skin of a chicken. (avoir la chaire de poule) My little mind was at first puzzled, asking, “Well, why don’t they just use the term “goose-bumps”? “Difference” then sunk in on in some rudimentary fashion, though it would be decades before the true significance of “difference” overcome the rigid conservatism of my upbringing.

In my present employment as an occasional substitute teacher with younger elementary children, I am pleased to note that even in the conservative region of Northwest Arkansas the schools give daily attention to the prevalence of Hispanic and Marshallese children, frequently using terms and even little ditties from each of these languages. This must have a positive impact on the development of these little minds. One caveat should be noted, however. This multi-lingualism helps but it alone will not overcome other pressures in local culture, or in any culture, to maintain that “primal narcissism”.

 

Julia Kristeva, Semiotics, and Violence Against Women

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I recently referred to one of my favorite writers, Julia Kristeva, and her work in the field of linguistics and semiotics. And I’m glad I did so as one of by blog-o-sphere friends find her intriguing and has done some research on her which she shared with me and has stimulated a renewed curiosity of Kristeva on my part. Semiotics is the field of studying the intricacies of language but not a superficial study as in an ordinary language class. Semiotics, particularly as approached by Kristeva, delves into the heart of the linguistic process, down into the “guts” of the verbal process and uses her background in linguistics, philosophy, religion, and psychology to explore this murky, frightening, even terrifying dimension of the human heart as it was constellating. For the heart is comprised of images, feelings, conflicted drives, and emotions which most of us spend our lives oblivious to, even though this dimension of the heart drives our lives even without our awareness of it. This is the unconsciousness, a domain of “feeling” and these “feelings” control us more than reason and even determine how we use our reason. This is the reason that advertising always aims first at our feelings and this certainly true about political advertising..

Kristeva also focuses much of her work on women and the ravages that patriarchy has done on this “fairer sex”, and continues to do so today even though in our culture the tyranny of patriarchy has been diminished in the past hundred years…somewhat! I’m going to share with you my friend “V’s” recent thoughts on this dimension of Kristevan thought. I warn you, don’t read this if you are not open to having patriarchy subjected to a keen analytical mind. And, men, don’t be frightened! The views of Kristeva and her ilk…and of Ms. “V”…merit our consideration and do not have to threaten our masculinity. These views actually can help us participate in a cultural redefinition of “manhood” which our culture and our world so sorely needs.

 

Btw, I’ve been reading about Julia Kristeva this morning. Thanks for turning me on to her. I had never read any of her works. Also been watching some of her video interviews today. I’m now watching the video lecture “The Need to Believe and Desire to Know” on YouTube. What really intrigued me was what I found on her Wikipedia page. I quote:
“It has also been suggested (e.g., Creed, 1993) that the degradation of women and women’s bodies in popular culture (and particularly, for example, in slasher films) emerges because of the threat to identity that the mother’s body poses: it is a reminder of time spent in the undifferentiated state of the semiotic, where one has no concept of self or identity. After abjecting the mother, subjects retain an unconscious fascination with the semiotic, desiring to reunite with the mother, while at the same time fearing the loss of identity that accompanies it. Slasher films thus provide a way for audience members to safely reenact the process of abjection by vicariously expelling and destroying the mother figure.”

I also see a similar symbolism in the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus had feminine qualities which is why most females can relate to him. Even images depict him with a feminine quality. During his time, it was a ‘shame’ for men to have long hair. Women had to cover their heads (hair). A mother image was created in Jesus using mother type symbolism, such as bosom, milk, birth, etc. James W. Prescott, Ph.D. said:

“The dualistic philosophy and theistic theology of gender morality, has had and continues to have devastating consequences for woman and her children. As death of the body is necessary in some religions for salvation, re. the Crucifixion, so too is the death of woman (and her body) necessary for the death of sin and wickedness.”

I’ve searched high and low to find the origins of the love/hate relationship with the mother/women, especially among males, and I found it interesting that nature has created a ‘natural’ repulsiveness towards the mother among her male children as they grow older. This occurs in order to keep sons from mating with their mothers.

I have a dear friend from Wales, and a couple of years ago, he shared a video with me. I’ve tried to locate it but have not been successful to date and he’s forgotten the name of the video. It shows this man searching via spiritual and religious avenues to find that ultimate connection he is driven to experience. It shows him taking part in all the religions and spiritual disciplines and yet still continues to search Towards the end, you see stairs, but don’t know what’s at the top until the end. The man starts up the stairs, and the closer he comes to the top the younger he gets. Then you see this gray cord, and he turns into an infant. The cord is an umbilical cord. At the top of the stairs was his mother. Subconsciously, he was longing for that connection he once felt with his mother when he felt security, when he felt intimacy, nurture and love. When he felt one with his mother.

Back to the Wiki page, it states: “Upon entering the Mirror Stage, the child learns to distinguish between self and other, and enters the realm of shared cultural meaning, known as the symbolic. In Desire in Language (1980), Kristeva describes the symbolic as the space in which the development of language allows the child to become a “speaking subject,” and to develop a sense of identity separate from the mother. This process of separation is known as abjection, whereby the child must reject and move away from the mother in order to enter into the world of language, culture, meaning, and the social. This realm of language is called the symbolic and is contrasted with the semiotic in that it is associated with the masculine, the law, and structure.

According to Schippers (2011), where Kristeva departs from Lacan is in her belief that even after entering the symbolic, the subject continues to oscillate between the semiotic and the symbolic. Therefore, rather than arriving at a fixed identity, the subject is permanently ‘in process’. ”

“Kristeva is also known for her adoption of Plato’s idea of the chora, meaning “a nourishing maternal space” (Schippers, 2011). Kristeva’s idea of the chora has been interpreted in several ways: as a reference to the uterus, as a metaphor for the relationship between the mother and child, and as the temporal period preceding the Mirror Stage. In her essay “Motherhood According to Giovanni” from Desire in Language (1980), Kristeva refers to the chora as a “non-expressive totality formed by drives and their stases in a motility that is full of movement as it is regulated.” She goes on to suggest that it is the mother’s body that mediates between the chora and the symbolic realm: the mother has access to culture and meaning, yet also forms a totalizing bond with the child.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva

Check this new study out. Scientists find the cells of children in the mothers brains, showing the connection between mother and child is deeper than they once thought. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-discover-childrens-cells-living-in-mothers-brain

 

St Francis and his Gift of “Boundary Problems”

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I first became familiar with St. Francis in college studying medieval history. When I heard the anecdote of him stopping on a path to pick up a worm…“Brother worm” to him…and removing it to the side of the path so that it would not be stepped on, I privately guffawed, thinking, “Oh my Lord. That guy was nuts.” And though I have matured and understand him much better and am even very sympathetic to his teachings, I still think he had, clinically speaking, “boundary problems.” His “boundary problem” was that he did not see clearly and distinctly between himself and others and even clearly and distinctly between himself and the earth. But now at this point in my life I’ve even gone further “down hill” and don’t see my diagnosis of “boundary problems” as being as valid as I once thought. St. Francis was just a very sensitive soul who saw the inter-relatedness of all things, of the whole world, and recognized that we are not separate and distinct from the world in the way we think we are. We are, after all “dust of the earth.”

Now, I might add that some people do have “boundary problems” and failing to draw clear boundaries can pose major problems in one’s life. However, someone with this “problem” can be a gifted person who has something to teach us and I think St. Francis was one of those. Furthermore, one of his contemporary devotees, Richard Rohr who is a Franciscan Monk, is one of those gifted individuals and his teachings have had a profound influence on my in the past few years. Here is his blog from today:

When I first joined the Franciscan order in 1961, my novice master told me we could not cut down a tree without permission of the Provincial (the major religious superior). It seemed a bit extreme, but then I realized that a little bit of Francis of Assisi had lasted 800 years! We still had his awareness that wilderness is not just “wilderness.” Nature is not just here for our consumption and profit. The natural is of itself also the supernatural. Both natural elements and animals are not just objects for our plunder. Francis granted true dignity and subjectivity to nature by calling it Brother Sun, Sister Fire, Brother Wind, and Sister Water. No wonder he is the patron saint of ecology and care for creation.

Once you grant subjectivity to the natural world, everything changes. It’s no longer an object with you as the separated and superior subject, but you share subjectivity with it. You address it with a title of respect, and allow it to speak back to you! For so long creation has been a mere commodity at best, a useless or profitable wilderness depending on who owned it. With the contemplative mind, questions of creation are different than those of consumption and capitalism, and they move us to appreciate creation for its own sake, not because of what it does for me or how much money it can make me. For those with spiritual eyes, the world itself has to be somehow the very “Body of God.” What else could it be for one who believes in “creationism”? As Paul puts it, “From the beginning until now, the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth” (Romans 8:22), so it is not only an evolutionary body but an eternally pregnant body besides. God’s creation is so perfect that it continues to create itself from within. The Franciscans were not wrong in not cutting down ordinary trees without a very good reason.

One of the common problems of our world today is that we don’t “grant subjectivity” to our world and even to other people. We assume other people see the world just as we do and often tyrannize our young children into doing so. And when we have tyrannized a young child into forgoing their own subjective view of the world, we have taken their soul from them.

Boston Bombers and the Danger of “Big Thoughts”

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“Big Thoughts Have Got Us.” These words of the poet Gene Derwood come to my mind every time I hear of someone else getting carried away with his/her ideology and carrying it to the extreme of taking lives, their own and certainly those of others. I always remember the wisdom of Mike Dooley, “Thoughts are things. Choose the good ones.”

And they, thoughts, are “things” in that they carry weight and can lead us to actions that are not in our own best interest or in the best interest of others. And I am speaking from experience. Now it is easy to look at the ideology of the Boston Marathon bombers and say, “Oh, why did they ever think that and get carried away by it?” Well, that is a good question and there is lunacy in their thought system that is not present in the thought system of most of us. But all of us have “thoughts” and none of our “thoughts” are devoid of intent, noble though we may think them to be. For example, let me take the thought system of Christianity, a “thought system” which I subscribe to and do so ever more passionately. But the danger I face, and the danger that all Christians face, is that they take their “thoughts” as having ultimate value and fail to realize the emotional valence they have been given by our life experiences. Yes, most of us have “thought systems” which are relatively benign compared with the Boston bombers, but they are not totally benign. I, for one, am appalled to recall some of the things I have done and said under the guise of “the Spirit leading.” For, even with benign and even noble thoughts we can be brutal. Even with “Jesus Christ” we can seek to dominate, control, and brutalize other people.

Let me be more honest. I have had interchanges under this persona of “LiteraryLew” which I have had to confess to a few friends are mean-spirited, to put it mildly. And there will be more of that as I am a mere human, driven by passions which at times consume me. But, may I always be subject to Shakespeare’s “pauser reason” which will make me “meta” every now and then and seek to balance some of my verbal and emotional excess. For, with things we feel so strongly about we can be so brutal.