Tag Archives: Jesus

Being “Right” is a Pyrrhic Victory

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I’ve had a life-long battle with “being right.” It is certainly not unrelated to having been born and bred in “right-wing” social, political, and religious culture in the deep South of the United States where “rules” predominate. And it is always “rules” that makes one “right,” or allows him to think that he is. I think very early on I had a heart like most people but then I was offered a bargain, “Hey, you forgo that tumult in your heart where emotion and reason are doing battle, give in to reason and let it reign, and you will have the consolation of being ‘right.”’ So I spent the first two decades of my life assiduously striving to live according to the rules, failing to see just how closely this life-style approximated that of the Pharisees who Jesus upbraided so often. Since then, the “ruled” life has slowly given way to the burgeoning power of emotion, a process that received a boost in my mid-thirties when I discovered poetry. Now, nearly three decades later there is some indication that this warfare is getting closer to resolution as emotion and intellect are working much more in tandem than ever before. Now instead of using my intellect to rigidly carve up the world…and myself…I use this gift to seek common ground with others believing that there is a Unity that underlies this world of multiplicity.

And having those two dimensions of the heart working in tandem should be our goal. When “flesh and mind are delivered from mistrust” (Auden), we are witnessing something akin to the Spirit of God being present though the “Spirit of God” certainly needs more discussion than I choose to give it now. Reason, without the balance of emotion (or heart) is just an effort to stay in control, to tyrannize one’s own self and simultaneously try to tyrannize those around him. Therefore, Goethe was astute when he noted, “They call it Reason, using Light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

Now occasionally the old demon of “being right” will surface again. Recently it teased me briefly and then I took the bait slipped into the “being right” mode. It was a veritable black hole for a while until I managed to right myself and escape its clutches. For, there is no end to “being right”. We have the Taliban as one example of this but we have similar expressions of the same dark force present in our own country. And, yes it got me recently. It will always be a temptation for it is so wonderful to “know” that you are right and to “set someone straight.”

I offered a snippet of Auden’s observation about this matter earlier. Now I will share the context:

If…like your father before you, come
Where thought accuses and feeling mocks,
Believe your pain: praise the scorching rocks
For their desiccation of your lust,
Thank the bitter treatment of the tide
For its dissolution of your pride,
That the whirlwind may arrange your will
And the deluge release it to find
The spring in the desert, the fruitful
Island in the sea, where flesh and mind
Are delivered from mistrust.
(W. H. Auden “The Sea and the Mirror)

 

Rumi on the “Faculty of Judgment”

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Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there

Rumi was addressing what the philosophers call the “faculty of judgment”, that human ability to carve the world up into categories so that he can have the illusion of controlling it. And, I think Rumi knew this cognitive apparatus was an essential part of being a human and actually allowed him to create his world. But Rumi saw that it was necessary to not be confined by this conceptual prison and had learned that it was possible to occasionally lay aside this whirligig and meet someone out “there.”

To approach the matter clinically, Rumi was speaking of “object-separateness.” He saw that the whole of the world, and especially other humans, lay beyond the grasp of our thoughts about them. He knew that we tend to “live in the small bright circle of our consciousness beyond which lies the darkness,” the “darkness” being a boundary that we must venture into if we are to ever go “out there” and meet someone. And this is essentially a spiritual enterprise.

In this brief poem, Rumi addressed one particular bifurcation of the world that we are familiar with, that compulsive need to label some people “right” and some people “wrong.” (And, what a coincidence that I so often happen to fall into the “right” category????) Certainly, “right” and “wrong” are valid labels in this world and Rumi knew that. What he was saying is that we don’t need to wield the distinction like a weapon and can, on occasion, give it a rest, perhaps offering someone who we first want to label ‘wrong” a little bit of grace. The best example I can think Jesus offering forgiveness to the Samaritan woman at the well when he was legally required to condemn her and stone her to death.

Rumi knew there was a karmic law that is written in the universe—when one has a compulsive need to be right, he will create wrong.

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?

 

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!)

Grace, Hope, and “The Peace of Wild Things”

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I have met several Indian friends in the blog-o-sphere the past two years and feel a real kinship with them. And, this kinship corresponds with an “Eastern” direction in my spiritual life as I see boundaries as less distinct than I was taught in my youth. I illustrated this several weeks ago with an anecdote I learned decades ago when someone pointed out that in one Eastern language, instead of saying, “I see the book over there” their language puts it like this, “The book is seen.” The separateness from the world is less pronounced. The world is less objectified…in some sense.

One of these Indian friends and I have had several very rewarding exchanges about the nature of reality, the nature of “spirituality”, and the role that culture plays in shaping our view of these things, and our view of all things. He, like me, sees the ugliness in the world…in my country, yes…but also in his own country. I get the impression that at times he finds it very troubling like I do. When I have these feelings, I will often deliberately miss-apply one of the scriptures, the shortest verse in the bible, and will tell myself, “This is why the Bible says, ‘Jesus wept.’” For, the writer of this “shortest verse in the bible” said Jesus was on a mountain, overlooking a city when he said these words. Using my “literary” license, I feel Jesus was weeping in realizing how unnecessary it was that mankind lives in the self-imposed spiritual squalor and I think that any of us who looks at the human situation with a heart, including his/her own situation, certainly wants to cry on occasion. I know I do.

But this friend this morning pointed out something which again caught my attention. Perhaps I fawn too much over his culture and it’s lesser emphasis of object separateness for he noted emphatically, “Forget culture shit. Culture is the same everywhere.” And I realized that yes, even in that culture of his with its different “object-relationship” paradigm, there is still the human tendency to absolutize to his/her worldview and to take it to be the only way of being in the world. And the minute people make this mistake poison is introduced and/or perpetuated in the world. This is the human predicament in a nut shell right there. We just can’t get around that obstinacy and it is that obstinacy that creates the profound problems that we are facing. I see it currently in my country’s recurring political pissing contests which I most recently illustrated with the internecine squabbling in the extremists of the Republican Party. But everywhere in the world, we just can’t “get over ourselves”.

Now, suddenly I realize I’m broaching too much despair! I try to not go there too often. When too much grim besets me, I am learning to counter this despair with focus on the beauty that always abounds in my life if I will deign to look for it and pay attention to it. And when I focus there for a moment, if I practice meditation, I will offer a prayer of thanks and find my Center again. This exercise helps me to appropriate and honor grace.

And the notion of grace brings to mind a powerful moment about a year ago when I was helping a dear friend exit this world after a long, ugly battle with that bitch cancer. KW and I had always talked about spiritual matters in the 25 years we had known each other so this was not merely a “death-bed” concern of his. On a particular day, he posed the question to me, “What is grace?” Well, I didn’t miss a beat and employed what I so often employ, a bit of poetry that I have gleaned over the years. And on that occasion I quoted an excerpt from a marvelous poem by Wendell Berry entitled, “The Peace of Wild Things.” KW was touched, and so was I, as I felt I had offered a “word fitly spoken” even if it was someone else’s words. Here is that profound wisdom from Berry:

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
Rests in his beauty in the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come unto the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come unto the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

“The sky is falling, the sky is falling,” said Chicken Little

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Chicken Little’s famous lamentation has surfaced again in the form of the Mayan apocalypse scheduled for today. And this lunacy has been going on for thousands of years. (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/owen-egerton/11-other-times-the-world-_b_2332564.html)

Well, sooner or later, one of these ne’er-do’wells is going to be right as, according to physicists, the world is going to end at some point. And, there are certainly lunatics around today who could cause this to happen more immediately, given their crazed belief in Ultimate Truth, and a willingness to destroy the world to bring this Truth about…or at least wreak havoc on those of us who do not believe as they do.

Ultimately, we are all fearful of death and that is what this hysteria is about. We are going to die and it is a scary proposition that our ego cannot brook. We cannot accept our simple mortality and thus invent crazy belief systems to cling to so that this fear can be assuaged. And even tenable belief systems are often interpreted in such a way that they too are merely an escape from reality. And then we have these crazy episodic notions of how this end will come about so abruptly.

I like the approach that Jesus offered to the subject of mortality. To paraphrase, he said, “Yes, you are going to die. So, go ahead and die so that you can live.” And he did not attempt to camouflage our mortality but emphasized the presence of an Ultimate Reality that is always with us and to which we will return upon our death. And his teachings…and the teachings of the Christian tradition…contend that this Ultimate Reality can find expression in our contemporary mortal life if we are willing to undergo death now in a spiritual sense.

T.S. Eliot in his brilliant Four Quartets noted the importance of this symbolic death in our life and added, “And the time of death is every moment.” Or, to put in in Pauline terms, “I die daily.” Each day of our life there are little moments to die in the sense of humbling ourselves, accepting the limitations of reality and our limited grasp on reality, and making room for others and for the world at large. And, yes there are heroic individuals who often face death in a more literal sense. And at some point we will all face death in a literal sense and our ability to accept it at that moment will not be unrelated to how we have accepted the process of death in our day to day life, how we have accepted the bruises that our ego has been subjected to by “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

(A FACETIOUS CONCLUSION—It is tempting to start to daily proclaim myself that “the end is nigh, the end is nigh” as I just might be right at some point! Then wouldn’t that be so gratifying? Everyone would stand back in awe, saying, “Hey, Literary Lew got it right.”)

 

Obama’s “Clinging” to Guns and Religion

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President Obama was caught on tape in the 2008 campaign speaking dismissively of those who “cling to guns and religion.” Now that was an impolitic moment for him but I agree that often people do “cling” to things, including guns and religion. I do not think he would disparage anyone for liking guns and certainly not religion. But he recognized that when people “cling” to things…or shall we stay “stuff”…it often impairs their ability to make rational decisions.

“Clinging” often belies an impoverished identity which makes an individual to compulsively place value on “stuff” (including ideas and beliefs) as a way to assuage a gnawing emptiness on the inside.

But how can “clinging” to faith be a problem; or, certainly “clinging” even to Jesus? I think a meaningful faith is very intense and passionate but if it goes beyond the pale, it poses problems and there are always warning signs. For example:

a) If your faith creates an urge to kill people who believe differently than you, I think there is a problem.

b) If your faith creates a need in your heart to intimidate, browbeat, and shame others (certainly children) into believing the way you do, there is a problem.

c) If your faith creates in your heart the belief that you have “got it right” and that everyone should believe just as you do, you have a problem.

d) If your faith creates in you an emphasis on correcting the ills of the world, while totally neglecting the ills of your own heart (which are always wreaking havoc on those nearest and dearest to you), then you have a problem.

Now these are four rules that I’ve created off the top of my head. There could be many more. Violation of these rules almost always comes from a passionate intensity which outruns the Shakespearean “pauser reason”. This is “clinging” to religion rather than having a simple faith which permeates the whole of your being and radiates out to others in your life. This is often an obsessive-compulsive disorder in full sway or even an addiction. This is at best an ersatz religion.

 

Gratitude and Forgiveness

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Oprah Winfrey had a thoughtful blog posted this morning in the Huffington Post, making observations re gratitude and forgiveness.

She described the “power of gratitude” that she had discovered in her life and noted how the practice of daily expressions of gratitude can produce a “shift in your way of being in the world.” I too made this discovery a couple of years ago, discovering that the ritual of gratitude can be a powerful tool in coping with the vicissitudes of daily life. When things are not going well…or when they are…I try to just focus from time to time during the day on the many things in my life for which I can be grateful.

She listed forgiveness as the “other fundamental building block” in her life, describing it as “releasing all grudges, need for revenge or attachment to what woulda-shoulda (and I would add ‘coulda’) been.” And this is very tough. For I know that I hang onto grudges, disappointments, and shame that lies decades behind me. But I just can’t let them go.

I think it is very easy to grasp the concept of God’s forgiveness and to “accept” that forgiveness as a concept. But it is another matter to delve deeply into the heart and allow Forgiveness to permeate one’s being. This error is related to the human tendency of keeping God “way out there and far off” and not allowing Him to dwell within which is what Jesus meant when he reminded us, “The kingdom is within.” Discovering this “kingdom within” is a spiritual enterprise and it is not furthered by mere regurgitation of biblical bromides, regarding of how noble and inspiring they may be. And once again I must confess, when I’ve resolved this dilemma, I’ll let you know!

Below is the posting from Oprah:
Five days ago, I asked that you open yourself to the power of gratitude. If you took me up on that offer, you should already be feeling a slight shift in your way of being in the world. Looking out for five things to be grateful for changes the way you see your whole day — and eventually your life. It’s a major cornerstone of living a happy and fulfilled life.

The other fundamental building block I know for sure is forgiveness: releasing all grudges, need for revenge or attachment to what woulda-shoulda been.

My favorite definition — if you’ve watched “The Oprah Show” or read O magazine, you’ve heard me say it repeatedly — is that forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. That was said by an expert many years ago on the show.

When I first heard it, I literally I got goose bumps. The message that came through so clearly and stayed with me is this: Forgive, so you can truly live.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you condone the behavior or, in any way, make a wrong right. It just means you give yourself permission to release from your past — and step forward with the mud of resentment cleared from your wings. Fly!

Is there someone you need to forgive? Let that be the best gift you give yourself this year. It’s the gift for all seasons.

 

Failure is More Important than Success (Politically Speaking)

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I have empathized with Mitt Romney (and with the GOP) in the recent electoral defeat. I can’t help but feel sorry for Romney even though I liked him less and less as the election campaign progressed. But, he was and is still a human being and I know this defeat is excruciatingly painful for him.

I hope he will find the courage…and Grace…to learn from this experience. And I mean “learn” as a human being as “human being-ness” is more important than politics. Romney has a soul as do we all are and his time on this earth is for the purpose of refining this soul and allowing its Source to find the fullest expression. I hope that he can use this loss…this “failure”… for that purpose.

Here is one of my favorite poems by Eugene Mayo about the experience of loss, presented as “failure”:

Failure is more important than success
Because it brings intelligence
To light the bony
Structure of the universe.

When we “fail”…when we fall on our asses…we have an opportunity to learn from the experience. “Intelligence” has an opportunity to flash into our heart and life. This “intelligence” is not merely cognitive but is intrinsically spiritual and from it great wisdom can flow and everyone can benefit.

Jacques Lacan once noted that nothing of any value comes into this world without loss. He was utilizing object-relations theory to develop the notion that Jesus had in mind when He advised that we find our life only when we lose it.

But it is painful. And that is what the image of the Cross is about.

Death Panels and our Fear of Death

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Bill Keller in the New York Times wrote an article on October 7 entitled, “How to Die.” He was explaining the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying, a protocol that some British physicians are using to help terminally ill patients address their imminent demise. Yes, this brings to mind the infamous “death panels” of our dear friend Sarah Palin. But it is nothing of the sort. It is merely a protocol that physicians can gently and professionally use, if deemed appropriate, for patients who have no treatment options remaining and are in great pain. “It is not hastening death. It is giving choices,” declared Keller.

This approach seems so much more humane than does out hysteria-driven, death-denying obfuscation. Our culture needs to grow up and realize that death is an essential part of life and that it is simply going to happen; and that living in fierce denial of it only makes the parting more difficult. And, this denial system that we have created about death only makes it more difficult to live life fully in the first place while we are young and healthy. It was decades ago that Irvin Yalom declared that as long as we live in fear of death we are fearful of life also. You can’t live until you die! Hmm. Sounds a lot like something Jesus once said, doesn’t it?

Ernest Becker wrote a stunning book about this subject about three decades ago, The Denial of Death. He gave a brilliant portrayal of history as mankind’s efforts to deny his mortality, to pretend that he was going to live forever, and to interpret spiritual teachings and mythology to mean that he would live after death in some corporeal fashion.

The core issue is the ego. It is the ego who cannot fathom that it is such a contrivance, a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Some therapists and spiritual teachers have made a career out of this death issue, announcing in so many words, “Come to me and let me help you die.” Their belief is that once the individual is freed from the clutches of the ego…Karl Jung called this a “death”… he/she will no longer be ravaged by the fear of death.