Tag Archives: Boundaries

Stunning and Profound Wisdom on Boundaries From Paul Tillich

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Paul Tillich is one of the great “finds” of mine in the 20th century, shaping the course of my life henceforth.  I think he is the most important theologian I’ve ever come across and one of the most important thinkers. Being raised in Nazi Germany, he could not help but have learned a lot about boundaries and the easier path for him would have been to succumb to the inertia of his culture and become a Nazi; absolutism and certainty always solves the “messiness” of what could eventually become a mature faith!  But somewhere along the course of his young life, he found a “contrary” vein of thought in his heart which led him to follow the path of a German contemporary of his, Hannah Arendt and employ Shakespeare’s “pauser reason.” He found that boundaries had value but only if one could find the equally valuable respect for the “no boundary” dimension of life. This wisdom allowed him to write among many other things, “The Courage to Be” which is such a powerful book on the importance of “be-ing” a human and not simply become flotsam-and-jetsom in the current of contemporary thought. Here is an excerpt….

The American book, “On the Boundary” tells about several boundaries that are common to all and at the same time to my own personal destiny: about the boundaries between country and city, between feudalism and civil service, between bourgeoisie and bohemian, between church and society, between religion and culture, theology and philosophy — and lastly, quite personally, between two continents. (He had moved to the United States to escape the Nazis.)

The existence on the boundary, the boundary situation, is full of tension and movement. It is in reality not a stance, but a crossing and returning, a re-returning and a re-recrossing, a to-and-fro, the goal of which is to create a third area beyond the bordered ones, something on which one can stand for a time without being enclosed in a fixed border. The situation of the boundary is not yet what one could call peace; and yet it is the passage that each individual must and that peoples must go through to arrive at peace.  For peace means standing in the overarching thing that is being sought in the crossing and the crossing back over the boundary. Only someone who has a share in both sides of a boundary line can serve what overarches it and thus serve peace, not someone who feels secure in the momentary quiet of a fixed border.  Peace appears where in personal and political life an old boundary has lost its importance and with that its power to foment strife, even if it continues in place as the boundary for some partition.  Peace is not a tensionless juxtaposition; it is unity in something more comprehensive, in which the opposition of living powers and the conflicts between old and new are not lacking,  but in which they do not break out destructively, but rather are constrained in the peace of what overarches them.

If the crossing and crossing back over the boundary is the way to peace, then the fear of what lies on the other side, and the wish that is born from that to be rid of it, is the root of discord and war.

When fate has taken one to the boundary of one’s being and has made one aware of oneself, one is faced with the decision of falling back on what one is or of crossing beyond oneself.  All persons are led to the boundary of their being now and then.  They see the other beyond themselves, which appears as a possibility for themselves, and awakens in them the fear of the possible.  They see their own boundedness in the mirror of the other, and are frightened. (W. H. Auden, “And Truth met him, and held out her hand; but he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.”)

Tillich’s explanation of the subtlety of boundaries reveals how conflict arises among human beings, and technically the whole of creation. He is very astute, and very “Rumi” to recognize the value of an “overarching framework” as being the solution to what can otherwise be an interminal and even lethal conflict. Rumi, a 13th century Persian told us, “Beyond the notion of right doing and the wrong doing there is a field; I will meet you there.”  The “field” is the “overarching” Presence that Tillich had in mind.

A More “Aesthetic” and Poetic Approach to Judgement

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Today I’d like to approach the “judgement of God” more aesthetically.  Though I emphasized yesterday the metaphorical approach I had in mind, I want to further gloss the term over…if even possible… with a bit of poetic finesse. W.H. Auden wrote, “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into being alive.” Auden captured the starkness of those moments when reality stuns us, stripping us of the adornments of our personality of which we have become so comfortable.

Emily Dickinson, with her cryptic and even severe style, put it more starkly:

He fumbles at your Soul
As Players at the Keys —
Before they drop full Music on —
He stuns you by Degrees —

Prepares your brittle Nature
For the Ethereal Blow
By fainter Hammers — further heard —
Then nearer — Then so — slow —

Your Breath — has time to straighten —
Your Brain — to bubble Cool —
Deals One — imperial Thunderbolt —
That scalps your naked soul —

When Winds hold Forests in their Paws —
The Universe — is still —

Mercifully, as I’ve noted before, most of us get this “wisdom” gently over the years…if at all.  I like the way William Butler Yeats put it, “Throughout all the lying days of my youth, I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun.  Now may I wither into the Truth.”

Boundaries is the subject matter here.  I might quip, “We can’t live with ‘em, we can’t live without ‘em.”  By that I mean part of us resists restraint but fortunately we are hard wired to appreciate the “reining in” of our deep-seated desire to be unrestrained.  Proverbs 16:32 captures this inner conflict beautifully, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.”

The “Wounded Healer” and Its Pitfalls

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A couple of friends today introduced me to the work of a “wounded healer” that I had not run across, Marsha Linehan.  Linehan is a noted mental health professional, a professor of psychology, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington who suffered severe mental health issues of her own earlier in her life.  Her turn around was the result of a mystical religious experience which, to cynics can admittedly be credited to “mental illness.”  I am not one of those critics.

The “wounded healer” is one who is not a detached “caring soul” who is offering an aloof “care” to someone who is suffering.  The “wounded healer” is one who has, and is, suffering her/himself and does not draw the distinction between “me and thee” that the aloof, detached care givers offer.  To those who are ensconced in the aloof, detached comfort zone…their mind and heart teeming with clinical lore…this patient or client is a “thing”.  Absent is the awareness of the relationship, the consciousness and experience that “there go I but by the grace of God.”  The wounded healer has seen, experienced, and owned his/her pain and can offer an empathy that those without that woundedness can offer.

However, the pitfall of the wounded healer is the inability to set boundaries.  If that person cannot recognize that even with that powerful empathy there is not simultaneously a distinction between “me and thee” he he/she will be sucked into a morass of self-indulgence in which he/she and the patient is done great harm.  You might want to check out the following link:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201112/linehan-and-jung-wounded-healers

 

“Defining Yellow”…and Our Political Mess

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Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, has offered wisdom to this moment in United States history.  He notes that regardless of how high we build the walls, that which lies beyond artificial structures will still be present and a “danger” to the illusory safety found within. W. H. Auden offered a hint at the dark side of life within walls that are too tight, declaring, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”  (Yes, all walls and boundaries are “artificial.”)

Boundary issues arise from the simple phenomenon of definition.  The definition of anything includes the exclusion of “everything else” so that a particular “thing” can be given attention, can have an identity.  For example, a blogging friend of mine has entitled her blog, “Defining Yellow.”  This young woman appears to understand that even a simple phenomenon as a color requires the ability to distinguish it from the rest of the color spectrum.  From the “ancient” memory of my own youth, I want to cry out, “Why hell, yellow cannot be defined! It simply is and attempting to define it is crazy!”  But yellow would not exist without the “supporting cast,” of the rest of the color spectrum which our conscious mind is able to shut out. To illustrate, imagine that everything in the world was yellow.  If that were the case, then yellow would not “exist”; for, the very word, “exist” means to “stand out” from a context.  (The word “exist” comes from the Latin terms “ex” and “stere,” “ex” meaning to stand out of and “stere” that which means, “pure.”)  If everything in our world was yellow, we would not be able to recognize yellow as it would be taken for granted.

Murakami explained the subtle peril of definition in this historical political moment we live in:

…no matter how high a wall we build to keep intruders out, no matter how strictly we exclude outsiders, no matter how much we rewrite history to suit us, we just end up damaging and hurting ourselves… just as all people have shadows, every society and nation, too, has shadows, (and) if there are bright, shining aspects, there will definitely be a counterbalancing dark side. If there’s a positive, there will surely be a negative on the reverse side…at times we tend to avert our eyes from the shadow, those negative parts. Or else try to forcibly eliminate those aspects. Because people want to avoid, as much as possible, looking at their own dark sides, their negative qualities. But in order for a statue to appear solid and three-dimensional, you need to have shadows. Do away with shadows and all you end up with is a flat illusion. Light that doesn’t generate shadows is not true light. You have to patiently learn to live together with your shadow and carefully observe the darkness that resides within you. Sometimes in a dark tunnel you have to confront your own dark side.

NOTE:  See “Defining Yellow” blog at—https://definingyellow.com/

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

Boundaries, Boundaries, Boundaries!

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WHAT ARE YEARS by Marianne Moore

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, —
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

I have referenced and explored this poem before in this venue, but I wish to delve deeply into the heart of the matter this time.  She dives into the meat of her message with “he who sees deep and is glad” to introduce the notion of furrowing into the marrow of life which, borrowing from the title of an Adrienne Rich poem I like to describe as, “Diving into the Wreck.”  For the “deep,” i.e. the “marrow” will always be murky, dark, wet, confusing, and frightening until we get accustomed to it.  But in so doing we are “acceding to mortality” which is to say we are becoming human which culture has offered us a myriad variety of ways to avoid.  But as we embrace our mortality, recognize that death is our ultimate fate…a veritable imprisonment…we can then rise “upon ourselves as the sea in a chasm, struggling to be free and unable to be, in its surrendering find our continuing.”

I have been to the ocean many times and the vivid image of the ocean crashing into those chasms, powerfully and noisily, and then surrendering into calm is so gripping.  And only in this catastrophe do the waves, in surrender, find their “continuing.”

This poem is a beautiful picture of the infinite energy that we are coming to grips with the world of finitude.  Our first impulse is to rail against the limits that we find, even death, but Moore had discovered that in accepting the circumstance of human life she found empowerment. And then there is the powerful observation, “They who feel strongly behave.”  I have seen so many who feel so very strongly that they cannot behave and succumb to a haphazard life which often includes addiction.  I know one young man, for example, who can give expression to his artistic skills only when confined to prison walls and is spending his early adulthood and soon-to-be middle ages in and out of prison.  When there he has found the answer to the famous movie line of Jim Carrey, “SOMEBODY stop me.”

“Satisfaction is a lowly thing.  How pure a thing is joy.”  Moore recognized the pyrrhic victory of immediate gratification.  C.S. Lewis described sin as, “Preference for immediate satisfaction over a ‘believed-in’ pattern of glory.”  The dilemma of modern life…so vividly illustrated in the United States currently…is an obsessive “preference for immediate satisfaction” over the interest of the long-term welfare of the country…and the species.

Spirit Battles Form

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My wife and I had an interesting discussion this morning about soul.  She was not raised with a definite spiritual tradition like myself and so she often brings a different perspective to “god talk” such as terms like “soul.” As a result of this discussion, another dimension of the soul became apparent to me.  The soul is not a static phenomenon but is dynamic, vibrantly dynamic as it lies at the very core of our being.  The soul is something we are born with and the fact that others would utilize some other term does not bother me in the least.  The soul is “the Christ child” which we are at birth…and even before…which the Chinese describe as “chi.”  This burst of energy that we were, and still are, was flung into being by what in my spiritual tradition is called “the Word.”  It is will, it is “elan vital,” and in some fashion is energy and at birth this “germ of being” that we were, vibrating with the energy that it was/we were, began its task of seeking expression in this world of form.

But the soul-quest, which Carl Jung described as our vocation, is a perilous venture for obstacles are present each step of the way for the duration of our life.  We could even say “Satan” immediately puts barricades up in our way to keep us from unfolding as this “Word” had intended for us.  And our life, being inherently a spiritual enterprise, is the story of the unfolding of this energy (I might say “Spirit of God”), seeking full expression and battling each step of the way the barricades that are necessarily before us.  For, with these “barricades” that the world of form puts before us, we are deterred from staying totally Spirit in which we would never enter the human race.  Though we might have human form, we would be some version of a blob of protoplasm.

And others unfold beyond this “blob,” but are still spiritually driven beyond the pale.  Their neurological “god spot” is over heated.  Those who suffer from this spiritual malady are often addictive personalities and are plagued with the desire to “Break on Through to the Other Side” as Jim Morrison of the Doors put it.  Unmitigated, this drive will accomplish what it did for Morrison who died of an over dose as a result of his psycho-pharmocological attempt to “break on through to the other side.”  This is spirituality run amok, which upon closer scrutiny is merely the ego’s co-opting of the soul’s quest for expression, turning the spiritual hunger into an unmitigated black hole.

But still another example of the ego’s intrusion into our spiritual development (one could even describe it also as a Satanic intervention) is to settle for some static level of development and at some point in the process of unfolding find certainty too intoxicating.  When we sip of this delightful elixir, at some point it becomes too intoxicating and our spirituality will be arrested, sometimes even fatally.  At that point we shut down the dynamic life process and when Life or, to use W. H. Auden’s term “Truth” presents itself, we “cling in panic to our tall beliefs and shrink away like an ill-treated child.”  This is the temptation that fundamentalist Christianity taunted me with.

Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but Donald Trump is relevant to this argument.  He, like all human beings have a soul.  We can see it in his frenetic, desperate quest for power which is ultimately merely a quest for love.  But early on, and certainly in his “terrible two’s” the world of form was not sufficiently present to teach him about limits.  He then became stuck in narcissistic splendor and then the family and environment in which he lived never set adequate limits for him when it was still possible.  By his mid-teens when he was kicked out of a boarding school, he demonstrated that he was not going to submit to the world of form.  What this meant is that the energy that he was/is, that soul-level energy, was closed in upon itself and, to borrow wisdom from my youth, “The person who lives by himself and for himself will be spoiled by the company he keeps.”  In other words, his soul became bound in the anguish of incomplete development but with his wealth and circumstance he was able to bully his way through life to the point that he will shortly be the President of the United States.  Once again, the “world of form” has not set limits for him, have not resolutely told him, “No, Donald.”  Now he is in the position to wreak havoc on our country and the world.  (And here I do not have the time to explore how this developmental phenomenon as relevant to those who put him in power and continue to not hold him responsible for his word and deed, also relevant to our entire culture.)

Thoughts about the Election 2016

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This election yesterday which will bring Donald Trump to the Presidency of my country in January has taught me so much, not just about my country but about myself.  This is because I now pay attention much better, not only to what happens “out there” in my world but what happens “in here” in my subjective experience.  No longer do I have the luxury of merely coasting by on my convenient set of preconceptions.

The American people have clearly voted for a more conservative direction in our country, politically and culturally.  Their insistence on a return to conservative values was so emphatic that they were even willing to vote for a candidate that most of them did not like, many of whom even found it embarrassing to vote for him.  And I feel passionately that a conservative presence in any culture is needed; but it is sad that the Republican Party could not come up with a candidate who represented their values and didn’t bring Trump’s unsavory qualities to the table.

Furthermore, this election was an affirmation about a certain way of looking at the world, a worldview with very certain and rigid boundaries best illustrated with Trump’s brazen declaration to “build a wall” to keep out the Mexicans and even to make Mexico pay for it.  This “building of walls” is a metaphor for the whole emphasis of the Trumpian message to “Make American Great Again,” meaning to turn back the clock to the time when boundaries were very definite and “everybody” knew their place.  Yes, “Negroes”, women, homosexuals, foreigners of all stripes, and all expressions of diversity were frowned upon or persecuted.

When the basic assumptions that formulate the template through which we view the world are threatened, it is a very human response to want to revert to what has worked in the past to diminish or eliminate this threat.  This is true on an individual and a collective level.  But sometimes this need for the security of the “tried and true” of yesteryear can become too great and we will succumb to the temptation of making,  “for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”  (W. H. Auden)  Life is inherently dynamic and with the dynamic flow of this spiritual process there is always some risk involved.  Without willingness to take risks, to change, we have retreated to a sterile and moribund world which leaves us bereft of spirit, existing only as the walking dead.

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I share here a beautiful poem about death that a friend of mine posted on Facebook today.  It is stunningly beautiful and captures my sentiments that I have about death but also about life.  For, even in life we are all “one flesh” in some sense for that we are part of the fabric of the human species and even of the cosmos, “star dust” as Carl Sagan put it.  Yes, we live in time and space and must never lose our sense of identity and know that we are separate and distinct even as we simultaneously we realize that in some sense, “Oh, no we are not!”  I like his use of “Christ” as a symbol of the Unity of All Things, certainly stemming from the Pauline notion that “by Him all things cohere.”

 

Death Is Nothing At All – Poem by Henry Scott Holland
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before only better, infinitely happier and forever we will all be one together with Christ.
Henry Scott Holland

Human Belonging and Connection: Addendum

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One of my readers sent me two responses to my earlier blog about “Belonging and Human Connection” which I want to share.

The first is a poem which reminds me of a young lad I noticed a couple of years ago when sub-teaching in elementary school. He was about seven or eight and by appearance alone was very “troubled.” And then during recess he wondered aimlessly around the playground clutching a large teddy bear. He never said a word or had an interaction with anyone. He just roamed like a zombie.

THE CROWDLESS MAN
By Michael Leunig

See him wandering alone,
The crowdless man,
He has no group,
He has no tribe,
He carries his identity in his pocket.
His pocket has a hole in it,
His story has a hole in it,
His tragedy is not a tune you can hum.
His suffering and sacrifice,
They have no handles;
His persecution has no logo,
No shrine, no yardstick.
His joy has no credentials,
His observations have no fixed address;
There are no awards whatsoever.
His gaze and yearning are way outside the loop,
His pilgrimage has lots of holes in it.
See him wandering alone.
Beaming to himself.
The second contribution from this reader is about creating welcoming space for others by extending our boundaries to those who might otherwise be excluded:

One way of measuring whether our love is genuine, however, is to examine how far we’ve extended the boundaries that determine whom we are willing to be in relationship with. When these borders reach out as far as they can go, there will be no one left outside, there will be no one cursed. There will be no more strangers. Everyone will be welcome.

Reflect for a minute on what it feels like to be welcomed. The word means, simply, ‘come and be well’ in my presence. It’s a fundamental human experience, and a very crucial one. When I am welcomed, I feel good. I can be myself. I relax and feel unself-conscious, energized, happy. On the other hand, when I am not welcomed, I doubt myself, turn inward, shrivel up. I feel excluded, not accepted, and not acceptable. This is painful. If it happens often enough, I will question my own self-worth.

Hospitality means creating welcoming space for the other. Henri J. Nouwen notes that the Dutch word for hospitality, gastvrijheid, means ‘the freedom of the guest.’ It entails creating not just physical room but emotional spaciousness where the stranger can enter and be himself or herself, where the stranger can become ally instead of threat, friend instead of enemy.

[…] That precious experience — when contemplated, cherished, and celebrated — enables me in turn to welcome others: I begin to be less fearful of the other; I start to see the stranger as gift. I become willing to create space in myself to invite the other in, and I open myself to the possibility of being changed by the presence of the other.

I invite the reader to sit with any of the wonderful hospitality stories found in the traditions of all the great religions. Mull them over; ask God for insight into them. Then ask for courage to take small steps in expanding your own circle of hospitality. These might be as tentative as smiling at the stranger in line with you at the grocery store, as deliberate as hosting a get-together for all the strangers in your apartment building, or as dramatic as volunteering to foster an unaccompanied refugee child in your own home. It might not cost you much, or it might mean going out on a limb: Can you imagine yourself during Thanksgiving dinner speaking up to your brother-in-law in defense of the undocumented, pointing out that, really, everyone is kin to us, and everyone has a human right to live where they can support their own family?

(Marilyn Lacey, R.S.M., is the founder and executive director of Mercy Beyond Borders, a non-profit organization which partners with displaced women and children overseas to alleviate their extreme poverty. Sr. Lacey is a California native, and has been a Sister of Mercy since 1966. This piece is excerpted from her book This Flowing Toward Me: A Story of God Arriving in Strangers.
– See more at: http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=1034#sthash.McJ3H2UK.dpuf)

Belonging and Human Connection

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It was morning recess in the 2nd grade in Magnet Cove, Arkansas and the “BMOC” of our class of 32 announced to the boys, “Alright, everyone with high top boots come with me and let’s chase girls!” Oh I was so proud as I was sporting a brand new pair of high top boots and could join the chase in this customary recess activity in the fall of 1960. It was delightful to realize that I “met criteria” and belonged and I’ll never forget that moment, certainly revealing that “belonging” issues have always been present with me.

Making connection with fellow humankind and “belonging” is a basic human need and we are hardwired to do so, allowing us to form tribes that are the basic unit of human culture. And to establish “belongingness” various “criteria” are always announced, sometimes overtly by decree but more importantly in subtle manners as it is the “subtleties” that really constitute the bedrock of tribal unity. These “subtleties” are the premises which are not questioned, and for the sake of tribal coherence should not be. But the converse of this group dynamic is also present—someone must be excluded as otherwise the group identity would not have any meaning, its “identity” would be tenuous at best. This group dynamic is not “bad” it is just how we function, it is just being “human.” And the same process of identity formation takes place on the individual level, with certain things being accepted as part of our identity and others excluded and often projected “out there.”

But focusing now on group dynamics, the goal for a group is that it will be composed of individuals mature enough to recognize that in the passing of time some of its defining parameters can be relaxed and some persons who have been excluded can then be included. At least the focus of the group’s psychic energy will not be merely on boundaries that constitute its self-definition but on some purpose beyond itself which reflects respect of and value for the world at large. If the focus is merely on what sets a group apart, the group will eventually become a self-enclosed fortress whose only purpose is to perpetuate its mythology. When this happens, the group will find itself at odds with the world “out there” and will often be quite proud of this. This is often found in sectarian religion.