Children Belong to All of Us!

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Melissa Harris-Perry (weekend MSNBC news talk show host) provided fodder for the right-wing extremists last week when she emphasized our collective responsibility for our children. This immediately got their “panties in a wad” but this wad became even tighter when Sarah Palin came out from under her Alaskan rock, displaying her intellectual acumen (or lack thereof), and alleged that here again was a “liberal” effort to encroach on parental responsibility. To summarize conservative concerns, “Our children are ours! Keep your government hands off of our children.” This mind-set sees children as property, as extensions of the parents selves.

But my real concern here is the simplicity of thought that was demonstrated. Ms. Palin and her ilk demonstrated again their inability…and spiritual unwillingness…to hold contradictory notions in their mind at the same time. They failed to see that Ms. Perry was not proposing that children are not the primary responsibility of parents. She was merely emphasizing that children are a gift to us all, that we have a collective responsibility to provide an hospitable world to them, and that failure to do so is a grave error in judgment. It is possible to hold both notions in one’s mind at the same time but it will not happen with the hard-core extremists who are not capable of Pauline “spiritual discernment.”

And this problem is very much related to their anti-science stance.  Quantum physics portrays the world as full of contradictions and conflicts, a teeming morass out of which our God-given mind has given us the ability to impose order upon. But beneath this “order” there is still Mother Nature in all her conflicted glory and we ignore this conflicted glory with our neat little conceptual packaging at our own peril. One anecdote from quantum physics which is very relevant is the notion that molecules are “waves” and “particles” at the same time. That makes no “sense” at all but Mother Nature is not required to fit into our world of “sense.” Quantum physics also teaches us that we are basically empty space and that the world we see is ephemeral, including the world of our own body and psyche. Grasping this notion is very humbling but very invigorating and empowering. It has allowed me, for one, to see God at work in a marvelous though mysterious way that is tremendously exciting. But I am deprived of the specious “power” of having it all figured out any more or having any hope of doing so. Alas and alack, I’m left with nothing but faith!

Now, I am wont to emphasize that I see both sides of the picture and give some faint nod of respect to the other viewpoint. But, there are instances in which I am less apt to do so and this is one of them. Keep in mind I am not talking about conservatism as a whole, only those who are what Karl Rove called the “nutty fringe.” Their ignorance is not merely a lack of intelligence or education but is darkness personified. And, unfortunately, there are many conservatives who know better, who do not subscribe to the lunacy of the extremists, but who have allowed themselves to be controlled by them merely to get their vote. “The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” (W. B. Yeats)

Bonhoeffer’s Mystical Faith Experience

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In yesterday’s blog I expressed concern about the need for external reference with one’s life, especially with one’s belief system. Faith is, in a sense, a very narcissistic enterprise and always runs the risk of being merely a gross narcissistic indulgence. That has been the case with my faith so much of my life. And now my faith is taking a radically different direction and that gives me pause lest I too suddenly find myself all alone, believing in isolation, subscribing to some “unique” belief system for which there is no external validation. That is why it is important that I come across other people in my community, in my reading, and on the blog-o-sphere who have walked a similar path of faith or are doing so now. Yesterday, I discovered this marvelous quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer who so beautifully describes my faith. (http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com/):

A Reading from a letter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his friend Eberhard Bethge, written from Tegel Prison, dated 21, July, 1944

During the last year or so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but simply a human being, as Jesus was human — in contrast, shall we say, to John the Baptist. I don’t mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.

I remember a conversation that I had in America thirteen years ago with a young French pastor. We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it. I suppose I wrote The Cost of Discipleship as the end of that path. Today I can see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by what I wrote.

I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world — watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes a human being and a Christian. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?

I am glad to have been able to learn this, and I know I’ve been able to do so only along the road that I’ve travelled. So I’m grateful for the past and present, and content with them. You may be surprised at such a personal letter; but for once I want to say this kind of thing, to whom should I say it?

 

Mental Illness is a Reference Problem

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Suppose you woke up in the morning and knew that the moon was made out of cheese! And, if that was not enough, suppose you knew that this was an important truth which you must passionately share with other people! Well, if that should happen, let me assure you that you would be correct, you would be one hundred per cent right…IN A UNIVERSE THAT IS HOPEFULLY VERY SMALL! And, hopefully that would be a universe of just one person!

Now, if that should happen, please hope that you have friends who will intervene and try to get you some help real soon, although you will be protesting that you need no help. The irony of a private world of reference is that the more private it is the less amenable is one to feedback from the outside. When your lunacy has run full circuit, you will arrived in Eden itself, completely free of any discomfort, stress, or strain. You will be free from that “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” that trouble Hamlet. Now, true your friends and acquaintances will be shocked and saddened at your situation but that will not be a concern of yours. You will be safe and secure.

My point here is an old bromide that I’ve found valuable, “Mental illness is a reference problem.” It is very dangerous to find yourself in a world where you have disdain for outside feedback and even try to arrange to not get this feedback. We must never lose our antennae and we must always listen to the feedback these antennae are picking up.

Re the collective version of this madness, W. H. Auden noted, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”

 

The Pain of “Seeing Things Too Well”

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And one trembles to be so understood and, at last, To understand, as if to know became The fatality of seeing things too well. –Wallace Stevens

Matthew Warren, the son of widely-renown evangelical pastor Rick Warren, has taken his life. Only in his mid-twenties, the report from his father was that his son had struggled with depression and “mental illness” for most of his life, often pining for death to ease his pain. I was deeply troubled by this story, so sorry for the young man who was so overcome with the difficulty of life and for his family whose life has now been shaken to the core.

“You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man,” Warren wrote. “He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He’d then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them.”

This anecdote from Pastor Warren reveals that Matthew was a very sensitive soul, who could be described as “having boundary problems” and taking on the troubles and pain of other people. In my trade, I once heard a psychiatrist describe a similar soul as suffering from “porosity of boundaries.”

I don’t know anything about the Matthew and never will. But I certainly identify with him as I know what it is like to overly-identify with other people and, on occasion to cross a line and take on more of their pain than I should. That is why I was a “mental health professional” and often could have uttered the famous words of Bill Clinton, “I feel your pain.” But, mercifully my “porosity” never reached the extreme of this young man and I’ve never had to battle with suicidality.

Life is really painful. Most people are “blessed” with blinders but some are not so fortunate. If they are lucky, they will be able to channel this anguish into a productive outlet…art, music, “care-giving” professions, ministry, etc….; otherwise, they suffer terribly and sometimes opt for the “bare bodkin” that Hamlet pined for. Most cultures do not make room for young men and women of this cut, those who “see things too well.” This greatly exacerbates their pain, forcing them to suffer in isolation. I’m reminded again of the wisdom of Leonardo da Vinci:

O cities of the sea, I behold in you your citizens, women as well as men tightly bound with stout bonds around their arms and legs by folk who will not understand your language; and you will only be able to give vent to your griefs and sense of loss of liberty by making tearful complaints, and sighs, and lamentations one to another; for those who bind you will not understand your language nor will you understand them. Leonardo da Vinci, from “Of Children in Swaddling Clothes”. Just as Jaspers would note, da Vinci knew that we “have to take it where we find it.”

“Unpacking My Heart with Words” Review

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When I started this “literarylew” adventure about two years ago, I prefaced my efforts with a line from the book of Job, noting that “my heart is full of words, like a taut wine skin, about to burst.” I then borrowed a line from the other important body of Holy Writ in my life, Shakespeare, and proposing that I would “unpack my heart with words.”

As I have been “unpacking” in word, and in the “deed” of my day-to-day life, I’ve realized that when you “unpack” anything at some point you empty it out. You realize the obvious, the suitcase or box is empty and you can quit unpacking. But when you “unpack” the heart, you do discover and experience “emptiness” but you find that it is a never ending “emptiness” and that, paradoxically, in some very uncanny way you are full when you are empty.

Now part of me is still very vain and wants the above to conclude with some report of an epiphany of sorts, some glorious spiritual experience which puts me up with the luminaries of the past and present. And, I might add, this “unpacking” spiel kind of invites it! But, it ain’t there! And I’m so glad I don’t want it to be and in part this is because of cowardice. I have a hunch it would be too painful. “It is what it is” or “I am what I am” or the Popeye the Sailor Man version, “I yam what I yam.” I know emptiness more than before but mine is mercifully a very prosaic emptiness. Thus I’m not a poet, huh?

We so miss the point. And we do it persistently, brazenly, and deliberately. This is because we do not like to confront our emptiness for doing so exposes our frailty and foolishness, showing us to be veritably “strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage.” Now, don’t get me wrong. My life is now also daily “strutting and fretting” but I view it with a different perspective now. I don’t take it (i.e., myself) so seriously and, paradoxically, realize just how infinitely important “it” is. The Infinite becomes manifest through each of us as we go about our day-to-day lives humbling chopping wood and carrying water.

I want to share again Lao Tzu’s thoughts about this emptiness:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
�Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.
(trans. By Witter Bynner)

 

A Poetic Paean to Burgeoning Spring

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“The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork.”  And this is the time of the year when this glory is so manifest as the earth begins again to blossom, a magnificent delight I’ve been part of for sixty one years.  And it gets more delightful each year as I am more attentive to this unfolding and conscious that a parallel unfolding is present in my heart and life.

We can worship God, find attunement with Him, in so many ways.  We can worship him formally with other people in organized religion, we can worship Him in work and play, we can worship him in psalm and hymn, and we can worship him in careful attention to the beauty of his natural world.  And “attention” is a critical word for I think early in our life we learn to put blinders on and live with only cursory awareness of our world, including even our own body, by the way.  So, when the beauty of Spring graces us each year, we see it and note, “How pretty” but do so in that cursory fashion without any real attention.  The Buddhists would use the term “mindful” to describe this careful attention.  And this is not to stare at a flower or bird like some zombie and zone out into some alienated bliss.  It is simply to be “aware” from time to time each day.

I would like to share with you a couple of poems by a soon-to-be friend of mine who has this “mindful” awareness.  She is Sue Coppernoll who is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister living in Northwest Arkansas.  My wife has known her for a couple of years and I’ve become familiar with her poetry through her.  And later in this month I will get to meet her.  But she has allowed me to share these two beautiful poems with you, poems in which she echoes the observation of T. S. Eliot that “April is the Cruelist Month” in reference to natures vicissitudes.

The Very First Day, Again

Sunlight streams through slats
In blinds on the window
Birdsong blends with gentle breeze
No Fool she,
April has come to the mountain.

Wild pear, hyacinth, tulips and forsythia
Wreath hills and hollows in glorious array.

Mocking Bird atop the tallest tree
(a redbud about to burst)
Presents her eclectic performance as a gift
To all who would hear – and welcome –
The magic of her songs.

“Get up,” her command issues forth.
“Walk in the grass.
Inscribe your dreams
Upon the cathedral of the sky
With the fingertips of your heart.”

April, who has come to the mountain
Awaits you there
In the splendor of rebirth and renewal
Her hand outreached in welcome
She beckons you to join the dance of life.

Susan Starburst Coppernoll
1 April 2013

Dialogue with April Second

Where’d you go?

Has April left the mountain?

Cloud cover obliterates visions of spring,

Tulips and daffodils bend their heads to the ground,

Battered youngsters in a sea of mud.

How so perfidious, lovely one?

Have you no constancy, no shame?

Birdsong falls silent in the dark of noon,

Yearling rabbits do not parade across the garden,

Squirrel chatter disturbs not our ears.

Whither your promise, April?

Are you gone from us, or hiding?

Lungs eager for respite gasp in the cold air,

Arms prickly with chill reach for a comforting cape,

Feet return to shelter of rain boots.

Do you hear our lament, cruel month?

Shall we cling to anticipation of your return?

Warmed by a glorious glimpse of Earth’s ripening,

We bow in supplication, we nurture in the caverns of our hearts

Dreams of yesterday’s joy, tomorrow’s delight.

A Picture of Me Being Enlightened!

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I finally “saw the light” and it hit me like 240 volts, as you can see.

Yes, I was reading in the book of Deuteronomy, wholly consumed by the intricacies and hidden meaning of the “begots”, and suddenly I felt a rumbling in my bowels, my head felt faint, and suddenly it got me! Seriously, a good friend of mine and I were having coffee last year and were kidding each other about our respective quests for “enlightment” decades ago. We were chuckling at our immature and ego-ridden our quest was. And I certainly admire anyone who seeks spiritual maturity under any guise, and all such seekings have ego involvement, but mercifully if we are patient enough God will address that ego. Actually, he will begin to address that ego as His work will continue the rest of our life on that issue.

The Passion of Christ Caricatured Unwittingly

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This picture is a road sign outside a fundamentalist church in southwest Arkansas with the caption, “This Blood’s For You.” The quality of the photo is poor—it is a picture of Jesus with a crown of thorns on his head and blood streaming down his face. “This blood’s for you” is a play on an old Budweiser beer jingle, “This Bud’s for you.”

This road sign illustrates the meaning of Easter for some conservative Christians, capturing so eloquently the pathos of their experience and even their very existence. When I saw this sign two years ago it just brought to my mind so vividly the caricature of the story of Jesus that I am so familiar with and which captivates so many people around the world. By calling using the term “caricature” I do not intend to diminish the story itself in the least. I am merely referring to the misplaced emphasis, the “Mel Gibson Passion of Christ blood-and-guts gore” theme that will get such wide play today in Christian churches today. This emphasis misses the point. For example, when the Apostle Paul spoke of being “crucified with Christ” and the need to “die daily”, he was making reference to an historical event but speaking of an experience in his contemporary life. And the “crucifixion of Christ” is still an historical event but if it is to have any personal value it must be interpreted in personal terms. If meaningful interpretation is not done, if hermeneutics are not employed, then the literal brutality and ugliness of the crucifixion will supersede the symbolic value of the event, and the personal value and relevance will be diminished. The over emphasis of the literal event by the clergy will allow them to get their flock’s “panties in a wad” once again but will not introduce any meaningful change in their life.

So, I guess I am espousing a notion that is really kind of boorish and even offensive to some people—be crucified with Christ! That sounds like a crazy idea in our modern world. And it is a crazy idea if you take the idea as it is often first presented to us and do not make any effort to interpret it. If you do not interpret the event in terms of your personal experience, you merely are regurgitating dogma and probably indulging in a masochistic orgy of shame, humiliation, and anguish.

But if you interpret this event in personal term, there might well be significant pain from time to time…yes even “shame, humiliation, and agony” for some…but the anguish will be personal, it will be about the accumulated impact of “those thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” that burdens hearts and lives. I am presenting here a version Karl Jung’s interpretation of the crucifixion as an archetype, a cosmic event woven into the warp-and-woof of the human heart. And this archetype emerged in the human heart, and found a notable expression in the crucifixion of Christ, because it is an intrinsically valuable, and even essential, part of the human psyche.

It is very self-indulgent to amuse oneself with the paroxysm of shame and humiliation at Easter and not allow the symbolism to evoke from the hidden regions of the heart. It is in this evocation, or”anamnesis”, that the experience of crucifixion becomes personal and allows individuals to address the issues that stymie them in daily rituals of outdated and maladaptive patterns of behavior. It allows the people of this southwest Arkansas church to remain untouched by the real message of the Cross and facilitates a personal and collective status quo. The cultural bondage in which they are enslaved will not be addressed.

“Mind Your Words”

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Freedom from the past, or anything else for that matter always comes in the very instant you stop thinking about it. (Mike Dooley)

That notion will give you pause. It does me. This is basic, garden-variety Norman Vincent Peale who I used to disparage so readily. But, I now see so clearly how the trajectory of my life has been guided by self-talk, that subtle pattern of speech that we don’t really pay much attention to and do not think as being important. But it is. I think it was Jesus who said, “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Another thoughtful person whose name escapes me said, “Our thoughts become us.”

Technically, this means that if I wake up in the morning and think like Donald Trump, I will become a very wealthy man. Well, I don’t take it that literally but I do believe that if I suddenly had the focus that he does on the financial world, and had his keen insight into its machinations, my financial circumstances would probably improve. But, “Oh me of little faith.” I think it is a little late for that kind of transformation and that is not really where my values lie. But, I do think it is important to pay attention to the thought patterns that we allow to predominate and work on changing those that might be counter-productive.

Two other thoughts on the power of words merit attention. Shakespeare noted, “Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so” and Henry Ford, of all people, said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.”

 

Why Did the Jews Kill Jesus????

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David Letterman used to have a little routine he would do on his show called “Brush with Greatness” in which he would pick a person from his audience who had encountered a luminary at some point in his/her life in some totally casual manner. That person would tell of that chance encounter and then David would hand him/her the “writer’s embellishment” to read which would be a fantasy account in which that encounter made a monumental impact on the life of that luminary. Well, in 1980 on Good Friday I had an encounter with a true luminary, an eventual earth shaker indeed, and here I will share about that encounter and then provide a “writer’s embellishment.”

The year was 1980 and I was teaching social studies at a rural school in Northwest Arkansas. The young governor of our state was dropping by on a campaign swing, recently having started the campaign against Frank White. It was early in the campaign and it was a given that the governor would win re-election in this traditional democratic state against an unheard of opponent.

The handsome young Bill Clinton entered the packed gymnasium with a full entourage. The atmosphere was electric. Governors did not often stop by little rube communities like this and I’m sure this visit was because of some local small-fry dignitary that had pulled in a favor with someone. A question-and-answer session with the student body was to be the main part of the event and so we teachers had prepared our students to ask appropriate and thoughtful questions about the political issues of the day. Mr. Clinton made a few preliminary remarks and then opened the floor to questions from the student body.

Immediately, a gangly young early-teen female already well known as not being the sharpest knife in the drawer stood up and with a shrill, loud voice, shrieked out, “WHY DID THE JEWS KILL JESUS?” Well, the first thing I thought was, “Well, at least she is not a student of mine!” There was a pause, briefly, as everyone was stunned, realizing that the question had nothing to do with the moment even if it was Easter. But the governor did not miss a beat, being the skilled politician that he was. He did not smile, or chuckle in the least, taking the question with complete sincerity and responded with the standard-issue Baptist answer, that Jesus had died, was buried, and rose again for our sins. Please note that he did not answer the question at all, demonstrating that he already had the political skills to advance to higher office.

As he and his entourage left the gymnasium I happened to be in his path and got to shake his hand, making eye contact in the process. At this point I will begin the “Literarylew” writer’s embellishment:

I knew immediately that he and I were friends for life, BFF even before the concept emerged on Facebook. I could just tell that he could “feel my pain.” The encounter lasted only a half second but I knew that I would hear from him soon. Sure enough, that night he called me and said that he really wanted to be friends, to “pal around” from time to time as he could tell that I was really a special guy, even if I was just a scmuck school teacher in a rube Arkansas high school.

So, to make a long story short, beginning then we would get together every now and then and just “hang out.” And when he became President, he secretly used campaign funds to build a heli-port in my backyard and would just drop in a couple of times a year for a visit. As soon as he landed, we would head to my ’69 Chevy pick-up. While I was trying to start the engine, he would use a bungee cord to strap down the hood and then remove the plywood from the window that had been knocked out. We would then head to the local monster truck show, knocking down a six-pack of pbr on the war, tossing the empties out the window with impunity. He explained, with a wink, “Hell, Louie, if they stop us, I can fix it!”

(NOTE: Btw, Clinton lost that gubernatorial election in 1980!)