 Bearing Witness --for Linda, anniversary 2017 This was our long path, my love, and these the evidences of our climb: these worn treads and missing lugs, these frayed and mismatched laces, these abraded gaping tears along the lowers of our boots. The granite talus tore our insteps, chipped away the outsoles, peeled the heel counters free to flap, and rolled the toe rands raw. See the mud still caked in the seams, the rags of tundra in the stitching? These are the wounds that came by wedging feet among the boulders high above the alpine slopes. We promised at these heights to see what we came looking for, the moss campion, arctic lupine, gentian, and mountain maven. We have come here now and so bear witness to these fragile denizens resurrected to perdurable beauty. Who could know that there would be for us a love like this, hiding high, waiting on our wounded feet to bear it down in season? 
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 On Rock and Roll Played by Old Men Young and lithe, arms twined above her,
she spins to music spun by old men, gray men, men whose visages look never to have been young. Her high breasts and lean thighs betray their sagging jowls and bellies, her dark, flying tresses mock their thin ashen strands. And yet she smiles with them, to them. Her feet touch lightly across the floor, while they, in unbroken rhythm, low and high, pluck ripe memories.  My initial comments will make most (or least) sense to my fellow Christians, but I hope the gist of them and my final comments introducing the poem will make sense to anyone at all who believes that our love (romantic and otherwise) is meaningful and beautiful, unless we selfishly make it otherwise. Traditional readings of the Songs of Solomon have tended to shy away from the overt sensuality of the poem, at times straining even to acknowledge it at any level as a very human love poem. Instead, finding it uncomfortable yoking the sensual and the spiritual, scholars have "spiritualized" the text to the point of, in my opinion, robbing it of its human vitality. More accurately stated, it has seemed to me that biblical interpreters have robbed the poem of its deeply incarnational message--even as they insist that the poem is, in the end, all about Jesus as the groom and his people as the bride. By doing so, they rob human love, including sexual love, of its incarnational value. What do I mean by "incarnational" value? Simply put (though not at all simple): God's spirit working in us and through us, in the totality of our humanity, that inseparable unity of body, soul, and mind, and in and through our human community (marriage, friendship, a fellowship of believers, etc.). Years ago, one friend said of sex that "God has ordained the marital passion pit." Pit? Why "pit"? A low place? A hole in the ground? What good things happen in pits?! And while I can agree with the theological gist of what my friend said apart from that horrid word, "pit," I do not feel inclined to keep the subject--or the act--so emotionally distant by "elevating" it with such formal language, while also consigning it to whatever sort of pit my friend had in mind. Ugh. I grew up in a social and religious tradition that did not know how to speak of human love, especially sexual love, without great discomfort, as physicality was virtually equated with temptation and sin, the body being the source of the worst temptations and thus the source of the worst evils. I find all of that to be very sad and destructive, and even unspiritual, but I will not attempt here to lay out explanations. Instead, I will ask you to read my poem. Song for the Incarnate down a dark vacancy and dank
I rock legs drawn up head dropped arms taut like hemp rope trussed around knees knowing one thing I fear my dear damn Self the most don’t let me rail revile rage dear against my world I will destroy it oh my darling your deep breasts like twin gazelles your neck nubile ivory tower heart pulse warm your hair a wild paradise pillow of silk river I lie down beside you my left arm cradling your nape my right hand caressing, loveliness oh, calm me from my rage my love my queen incarnadine and drown me draw me in darling deep pools your eyes I breathe your nectar sweet aroma I taste your tongue I love you oh my God love me with her body This poem from my book in progress, ON COLD MORNINGS, begin this new blog series. I will occasionally include some musing on the subject of what I call "the problem of beauty." My thinking often turns to a question: How do we properly acknowledge, appreciate, perhaps even celebrate natural beauty (human and otherwise), without becoming possessive or exploitative? I think it fair to say that we do not have adequate answers to that question; indeed, we so quickly become possessive and exploitative. We see a beautiful mountain or forest, and we begin immediately to dream of grasping some part of it for ourselves or of plundering its resources for profit. Our having does not satisfy, so we imagine having more. Our profits do not satisfy, so we work tirelessly to increase them, in order to fund our expanding possession. I see the "problem of beauty" as relevant to our relationship to Mother Nature generally, but most specifically and acutely relevant to men's relationship to women, and thus, to female beauty. In regards to women, and to female beauty specifically, our testosterone-driven tendency toward exploitation and control seems relentless and rapacious. From one culture to the next, we stagger wildly from brutal suppression, on the one hand, to naked display for entertainment, on the other. Both responses serve an auto-erotic male interest and male empowerment. I do not pretend in these poems to have an answer to my own question or a solution to the problem as I see it. I mean only to explore the issue, hoping, as I do so, neither to hold back in fear nor to exploit.  This is my carving-in-progress, a sun face for my wife Linda. I will update the picture as my book and my carving progress together. On Cold Mornings On cold mornings, while some complain as they sit tucked within their warm offices, I want to play hide and seek in the snow with children until my blue lips are too numb to speak. At church, among stiff bodies standing, I too stand stiffly, recalling how I dance when I pray alone. I hold in my laughter, imagining all of us dancing in long underwear, like saints in robes abandoned to joy. At a funeral, while a pastor lies about the old bastard or the faithful greive madly as if faithless, I feel an urge to curse and mock and dare them to call down holy fire, or tell them as I leave that I’m bored. Only life is intetesting in all the truth and beauty of it. In my prayers, images of women distract me. I ask, Father, how do I love them without sinning yet with joy at your beauty in them, breast, thigh, groin, eye. On any day, wherever I fear my protests like screams may echo, betraying the hollowness of earth and sky and heart, I want to fall weeping, kissing hungrily the neck, the warm supple neck of one who understands all of this, oh Lord, I pray.  Mother Nature Has Beautiful Curves 1 A friend asked me to describe the spiritual experience that comes to me while hiking for miles. Crafting an accurate description of a subjective experience presents an insoluble dilemma, however, precisely because the experience is subjective and, thus, highly susceptible to imaginative embellishment, an unintentional, but artful fabrication. Who would know the difference between what I claim happens to me and what actually happens to me, when I walk for hours? For that matter, does anything actually happen to me, beyond the physiological? Much of my walking, after all, involves merely listening to my own breathing, feeling my tired feet clump against the earth, and looking around. Perhaps dopamine provides an adequate explanation, or endocannabinoids. Long- distance runners experience a coveted euphoria, if they run far enough, when endorphins pour from the pituitary gland into the body’s bloodstream and endocannabinoids (along with other enzymes) flood the brain. Only a few times in my life, however, have I run or hiked long enough to feel, perhaps, a small measure of that “runner’s high.” At my best, I never fared well at long distances. A hard hike of 20 miles, up and down moderate trails, tested me well enough when young, and I have not made that distance in many years. The chemical explanation does not satisfy me, in other words, because it does not account well for my experience. If I understand correctly, I do not have the stamina required for generating that delightful deluge of delicious brain chemicals. Instead, I tire too quickly, grow dizzy, and then nauseous, unless I keep a fairly slow pace. In fact, I might feel a “spiritual” sense of awe, of being overwhelmed by beauty and significance, merely by standing deep in a forest or listening to a stream. That experience deepens, expands, intensifies, with the strain of muscle and lung, but simply being there might do. The imagination has great power, including the power to deceive. Nonetheless, hastily attributing my particular experience to the “psychological” strikes me as medieval, like explaining the absence of a true vacuum in nature with the principle that “Nature abhors a vacuum.” It begs an actual, understandable explanation. No doubt, I do in some psychological sense create my own experience. I bring the physical and mental- emotional elements together, both consciously and unconsciously. My valuation of Nature and natural beauty, my sense of identity and place within Nature, my awareness of myself as a mote within the immeasurable cosmic expanse, my intention to realize the “spiritual,” all stand a priori to my sensory experience. I bring myself along on hikes, in other words. On what grounds, then, can I call my experience “spiritual”? In Cosmos, a passionate Carl Sagan reaches and stumbles rhetorically in his attempt to provide a scientific explanation of everything. Alas. “Nature,” for Sagan, seems very like a conscious and deliberative deity. So much does Sagan’s “Nature” function like a creator god that I wonder why he does not finally say “god,” as the language he uses for description is, indeed, saturated with purpose, value, and awe. To his professional credit, he does not say “god” because science will not let him. He reasons well within the tradition of Darwin (we are products of evolution), Huxley (we are “conscious automata”), Cashmore (we are “bags of chemicals”), and countless others. He sounds profoundly worshipful, but faithfully reminds us that we are each a mere “collection of water, calcium and organic molecules”, a “complex machine” following the dictates of natural law. Does my “spiritual” experience, a very common sort of thing, merely express another advantageous step in human evolution, my “love” for Nature predisposing me to engage in a mutually beneficial relationship with her? Recent efforts by Intelligent Design advocates quickly stumbled into disrepute and near oblivion by confusing the epistemological and methodological boundaries of philosophy, theology, and science. Sagan may have slipped into rhetorical indulgence and presumed moral and aesthetic values that his science alone cannot support, but he understood the one thing he could not finally say, as a scientist: “god.” The Intelligent Design folk left the scientific method behind by making that most treacherous leap, not of faith, but of poor logic (and, I suspect, of over-zealousness). They fell to Earth. I trespass. I have expertise neither in science nor in philosophy or theology. Nonetheless, I humbly submit that after coming so far, we have not come far, in our efforts to bridge the gap or to burn all bridges between a presumed God and Nature as we know her. For my part, I cannot explain; I can only describe. 2 As I hike, a joy overtakes me, and I begin to sense—or imagine—an inextricable unity of raw sensuality and intense spirituality in Nature’s Beauty. As the miles pass, I feel more deeply moved by the beauty that embraces me and more keenly aware of how that beauty penetrates everything, every detail of soil, grass blade, flower, branch, leaf, bird, and sky. We traditionally speak of “Mother Nature,” and some refer to the Earth as “Gaia,” a female, very much in keeping with ancient Earth-Mother mythologies. Those ancient notions carried considerable insight, along with gratitude, regarding the value of our beautiful and fecund Earth. “Mother Nature has beautiful curves,” a friend of mine once said. Indeed, she does. Her beauty ravishes me, and the inrush of joy, through my physical senses, becomes an excruciating “spiritual” joy. Still, I must justify my use of that dubious term. Given the gift of deep pleasure that comes into me, my experience inevitably takes on a moral dimension. I see this moral dynamic as a sine qua non of anything “spiritual.” “How will I respond to the gift?” becomes a profoundly moral question. My imagination runs inevitably to a familiar set of choices. I say “inevitably” because we all face an environmental crisis stemming from choices our predecessors have made, regarding our responses to Nature, our reverence for or irreverence toward her beauty and our use or misuse of her resources. She has ravished us; we have raped her. We have what one author calls “an unchaste” relationship with her, taking more than rightly belongs to us and injuring her in the taking. We see a deep forest or spectacular mountain, a lush island . . . and we want to own it, to possess it selfishly or ravage its resources and move on to the the next. All of Nature’s beauty can so quickly become a distraction, and then a temptation, and then a deadly spiritual poison to the selfish soul. We humans seem not only capable of, but predisposed to doing what makes no evolutionary sense. We destroy our environment pell-mell. The medieval "doctrine of plenitude," as I recall it, intrigues me in this context. It says that God is love, that love must have an object, and that God by His own nature was compelled to create everything that could be created, because everything that could conceivably be loved had to be created in order to be loved. So we have this fabulous Earth, the exquisitely beautiful human body also, and yet we fight to possess her, then exploit and abuse her. I can find all such impulses within myself (I do not, however, understand the failure to see her beauty at all or the failure to feel powerfully moved by her). The very Beauty of Nature that awes us also seduces us. How do we properly—safely—embrace her, then? I stand transfixed along a trail, looking out across the snow-capped peaks and down at a pristine lake bordered by cliffs and spruce, and the moral ambivalence of my own nature rises to meet that inrush of awe and joy. I do not believe that a bag of chemicals or an automaton, no matter how complex, has the capacity to yield such an experience. Appeals to my “survival instinct” fall like wearisome clichés against my ears, as I might too easily dismiss that instinct, and as we humans collectively seem so bound to do. I have no counter-proof to offer. 3 As to the spiritual state that I experience, I believe that this phrase captures it fairly well:
“an inrush of joy.” The beauty of a setting has much to do with it. The Flint Hills of central- eastern Kansas, by my reckoning, are especially beautiful and, in a sense, "seductive" in late autumn and winter. The undulant hills rise and fall with the soft and varied flesh tones of autumn grass. The purple, early morning haze thinly covers the hilltops and folds into the valleys, until the new sun slowly draws away the blanket of fog. And there She lies, alluring, vulnerable, excruciatingly beautiful. And there I am, my mind troubled by few if any discernible thoughts, with a deep longing. I might, in other circumstances, experience this merging of the sensual and spiritual through sorrow, rather than joy, but the process is fundamentally the same—a kenosis, a losing of oneself. As another friend says, the process involves "getting oneself out of the way" and then letting Beauty overwhelm. This experience of immersion, a kind of "drowning” in the sensual, may become a discipline with practice; but is it mere illusion, a psychological trick with a chemical card deck, generating an emotional high? I don't believe so. I disapprove of making too clear a distinction among “physical,” "psychological," "emotional," and "spiritual" experiences. From my Christian perspective, I may say that God, as Father and Creator, has "wired" us physically and psychologically for such enlightening processes. The spiritual encompasses the whole person, not some a-physical, detachable soul. A hike among hills, along a river or beach, or up and down a mountain presents one opportunity, step by step almost, to let go of distractions from work, from church, from home, from whatever exterior and interior tensions beset us. To unfocus and refocus again. To be silent and listen. To wait for the the lover to come alongside. To choose her, and in our choosing, bring new life or old death.  Lookin’ for a Hard Headed Woman 1 Eddie Deathrage looked at the long wood splinters embedded deep under the palm of his right hand. He looked at us. He looked at the fractured stud. He looked at us. He looked at his right hand, curled it into a fist, breaking the splinters into small fragments, and picked up his hammer. Two days later, Eddie missed work. The doctor lanced his swollen, infected hand and spent more than an hour digging and picking splinters out of his flesh. “Eddie, you’re not being tough, you’re being stupid,” one of his workers told him. “You could have lost your hand!” 2 Julie and I stood by the side of the pool, brows knit, glaring threat in each faces. “No way you win this,” I said. She laughed. She rolled her eyes. We both eyed the pool in front of us, the snow on the banks, and the rim of ice at the water’s edge. Across the pool, perhaps ten or twelve meters away, a five-meter waterfall poured bone-crushingly cold water into the pool. We had stripped down as far as decency permitted, while Linda stood ready to issue the go signal. We planted our feet, leaning forward and ready to leap, and Linda dropped her arm. The water felt like cold sledge hammers against our skin and took our breath, but we forced our way through the frigid pool until we passed under the waterfall, slapped the rock behind it, and completed the agonizing return to shore. We will never agree upon who won the race. 3 Half-way back in a line at the Zipper, Linda and our two young boys advanced slowly toward the gatekeeper. Three teenage boys, impatient with the slow pace, peeled away from the queue and went straight to the gate, pushing their way in at the front, despite muttered protests and angry looks. Linda told the boys to stay put, then walked calmly but confidently to the front of the line. She caught the attention of the teenage boys and told them, with an irresistible authority, “Get to the back of the line. Now.” They stared at her, stunned. She glared back. Their mental generators turned slowly, but a small light came on. Squaring their shoulders, they tipped their heads slightly back, forced a comically confident smile, and swaggered to the rear. 4 Andrew’s story follows a common plot line. He did not call his boss a liar, exactly, but exposed his boss’s lies. Integrity, basic human decency, required that he do so. He had challenged his boss in private repeatedly, imploring him, pleading with him, and arguing on behalf of simple honesty. Eventually, the conflict went public. Truth seeps upward, inevitably, finding seams and pathways out of the dark soil of corruption, just as water seeps downward, irresistibly, through the most compacted earth. Andrew lost his job. With nothing in a savings account, two small children, and a wife giving up her part-time work, he sold his house and headed toward another life. 5 At the expense of seeming boastful, I will tell this story about myself. At a basketball game, Chris, a student from the college where I worked, decided to harass the loud, rambunctious male fans from our rival college. As he walked nonchalantly past them toward his own crowd, he turned suddenly and struck one of the opposing fans with both fists, an upward thrust under the ribs, lifting him off the floor and throwing him backward. The fan landed hard on a woman sitting behind him. She had a brace on her left knee, crutches resting beside her, and a tortured grimace on her face. Clearly, many people around me had seen Chris’s assault on another student. I heard muttered protests and a few gasps. No one moved. I moved. “This cannot stand,” I said to myself, and immediately made my way down through the full bleachers, around the playing floor, and over to the tightly packed students from my college. I forced my way through them, pressing up bleacher by bleacher until I stood face-to-face with Chris. He had seen me coming and met my eyes nervously. “You will not leave this gym until you apologize to that student and that woman.” “Okay, I’ll say I’m sorry, but not because you tell me to.” Ignoring the absurdity and impertinence of his response, I moved back down out of the bleachers and planted myself where I could prevent him from leaving. I also alerted the athletic director to call the police. “Hey, I will,” he said, and then, “Thank you for confronting Chris.” I did not ask him why he had not. When the game ended, I made my way immediately across the court and waited for Chris to descend from the bleachers. I beckoned to him with one finger, and said nothing. He followed me dutifully toward the gymnasium entrance, where the opposing male fans had amassed, in order to prevent Chris from escaping. As I approached the crowd of threatening and cursing young men, I realized that Chris had slowed his pace. I turned, walked several paces back to him, and tugged the front of his shirt. “You. Will. Apologize. Now walk.” Pale, sweating, and shaking, Chris followed me into and through the threatening crowd. My students understand why I say to them, “I work hard to be honest, fair, gentle, and compassionate. Do not, do not, ever think that I am ‘nice’.” Yes, I enjoy that story. I do feel some pride there, but carry a conviction, born of success and failures alike, that the world too much suffers cowards. 6 Linda saw the boy fall. So did his mother and a few others who stood at the top of the
waterfall. It appeared that the boy attempted to cross the top of the waterfall by jumping from stone to stone. As he fell, his left boot caught between two crossed logs jutting up out of the pool below. His position left him hanging inside the waterfall, a five-meter torrent of ice cold water. Hanging upside down, the boy could not free his head and breathe. Linda quickly scaled the rocks beside the waterfall, shimmied over to the logs, and climbed high enough to reach the boy and lift his head out of the rushing water. Every time she pulled his head from the waterfall, the boy screamed, “Oh god oh god it’s so cold. Am I dying?” The exertion left Linda exhausted, so until help arrived, she had no choice but to lower the boy’s head back into the water, rest her left arm, then free his head again, so that he could breathe. He and she repeated this routine until the rest of us reached the scene. The next morning . . . well, you can imagine. The physical strength and force of effort that this brief crisis demanded of Linda left her aching to the bone, with muscle strains from neck to feet. I had fallen in love with Linda initially, for a number of reasons, her fearless integrity being one of them. I fell in love with her again that day.  The Voices I Hear Your Voice Whether cultural mores or religious rules allow us to hug, or merely to shake hands, or compel us to avoid touching altogether, let me say I love you while close enough to see clearly the color of your eyes. I do not so much grow tired of talking with you by voice chat, text, or email; I merely grow frustrated at not having that most wonderful option: speaking to you in person, friend facing friend. I want you close to me, near enough to hear your voice without the thinning, sharpening effect of electronics. Your voice comes as a joy to me, a deep solace, nonetheless, no matter how it comes, even when by the silent progress of a text message across my screen. Over time, even over great distance, I learn your voice and hear your voice among the patterns of your texting. My Voice I used to say, “I inherited a boot for a tongue; please forgive me if I step clumsily or kick you accidentally.” My forthright wife has assured me, however, through years of hearing me stumble, that I have learned; my words do not so often outpace my brain or trample someone’s heart. Indeed, I have worked hard to refine my voice, to soften my footfall, so to speak, and more skillfully choreograph the dance of words among my best intentions, my reasoning, and my passion. All of this assumes that I do, in fact, have a voice, not merely a speaking voice, as nearly everyone has, but a voice that carries some power, for better or worse, as, in fact, everyone has. But does everyone have a voice that carries some power? Can anyone, anyone at all, speak with power, or speak effectively to power? I will come back to those questions. My Father’s Voice My father could not hear my voice. I stood always at the intersection of his poor hearing and his selective listening. Most of the time, I stood silently there, as speaking seemed rarely to correlate with being heard. Indeed, it seemed most often that speaking on my own behalf meant not being heard. I might sit next to him and speak directly to his ear, and he, with face contorted by annoyed frustration, might say to my mother sitting across the room, “I can’t hear. What is he trying to say?” In a soft voice, she would repeat my words to him. At other times, astonishingly, he would hear a near whisper from me and accuse me of saying something inappropriate. “I know what I heard!,” he would shout, my denials only fueling his anger. Governments function this way, do they not? Especially those governments bent on silencing dissent. Voices Speaking Truth to Power We need voices speaking truth about Power, about corrupt leaders, institutions, corporations, and governments. Even more, however, we need voices speaking truth to Power. Truth about Power and truth to Power are not the same. I speak truth to Power if the Power poses a threat to me, that is, if I risk something substantial by facing that threat and speaking a dangerous truth into the ear of Power. On a small scale, I have spoken truth to Power and lost a job and my health as consequence. Soon after losing my job, my doctors handed me a twofold diagnosis: viral infection of my central nervous system and multiple sclerosis (MS). They suggested that the stress from that year of conflict contributed to the onset of both diseases, as intense stress suppresses the immune system. While I would rather experience again the year of physical hell that came with the viral infection than face again the stress of fighting with corrupt leaders, I have no regrets. You might recall the words of Cassius, from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf But that he sees the Romans are but sheep. He were no lion were not Romans hinds. The Voice of Love Let me paraphrase St. Paul: If I do not have love, I have nothing. If I do not have love, I am nothing. Given the absolute prominence that Paul gives to love, I think it fair to paraphrase him further
by saying that without love, there is nothing—no Goodness, no Truth, no Beauty. We practice “speaking the truth in love,” as he says, or we speak with no good purpose and to no good effect, even if we do indeed speak truth to Power. In saying this, I fear being misunderstood by those who equate “love” with all things sweet, nice, pleasant, and easy. I do not make that equation. Indeed, love compels us to speak truth to Power, to risk our welfare, our health, even our lives. In other words, love may compel us into battle. And then love compels us to forgive the wrongs committed against us. I do not mean to neglect the personal face of love, that compellingly beautiful, joyful, healing, and empowering embrace, literal or figurative, between beloved and beloved, that face-to-face, eye-to-eye respect, compassion, and affection. Indeed, I mean to focus on that most of all. Let me say it concisely: Wherever Power, however great or small, stands in the way of that embrace, speak out. Fight for that. Risk your life for that.  Hadduck's Rules of Order for Committee Several years ago, reflecting upon my experience in academia as a member of various committees, sharing table with administrators, faculty, staff, and students, I began to take notes. I noted the commonalities, or at least typicalities, among committees, no matter their purpose or membership. Wanting to be as kind as possible, I will suggest that the brilliantly democratic idea of committee probably originated very far back in human history, under a tree, with a man, a woman, and a loquacious reptile. Had Shakespeare penned in modern parlance a note on the dynamics of committee, Mark Anthony might have said, "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of passive-aggression." Before we consider the rules, we should first observe a general principle: The art of committee lies in the interplay of three things: 1. talking incessantly about change; 2. avoiding decisions that create change; and 3. blaming someone else for failure. Nota Bene: Chronically tired people behave like drunk people--they make poor decisions. Thus, a room full of tired committee members is like a room full of drunk people, but less fun. Research bears this out. Of course, I depend heavily here upon research, as this pertains primarily to academic committees. Nonetheless, I have wished that church and club committees (and boards of all sorts) would likewise embrace such rules as these. Rules for Committee
Tristi Nota: I served on committee once with a fellow who made this confession: “I get on as many committees as possible because I do not want anything to happen without my influence.” Devil, dunce, or zealot? I don’t know, but pitiable.  Your Existence Is Beautiful My mother turned 90 recently. She tells me that she does not feel old, until she tries to
get up from her chair. She feels briefly old then, while rocking back and forth to build momentum. I love her quick mind, her sense of humor, her firm convictions, her sea-deep compassion. With her thin white hair done up in a perm, she barely tops 60 inches now, but she rises in my imagination as a woman of great stature. I recall her nearly blind grandfather at 98. I stood next to him, as he sat in his wheelchair. Given my height at 12 years old, I know that I must have looked down toward him; yet I cannot correct the image in my memory. I looked up at him, in awe, as he spoke my name, remembered much about me, and took my hand in his. The handshake dates back 25 centuries or more, a gesture of peace, indicating that neither man carried a weapon: “My hand to you, sir. I do not intend to kill you at the moment.” What troubled circumstances made that gesture necessary? Fortunately, we attend our typical meet-and-greets without fear, but we still offer the hand as a sign of amicable civility and sincerity. I prefer another gesture, borrowed from another culture, and also with an ancient history. Apparently the namaste means nothing more nowadays than a handshake for some, a simple, polite gesture of recognition. The hands pressed palm to palm in front of the chest, the slight bow, have a lovely ancient meaning, nonetheless. “I bow to the divine in you.” You are young? Then be beautiful, as you are; be strong, as you are; be young, as you are. You are old? Then be beautiful, as you are; be strong, as you are; be young at heart, as you are. Your existence is beautiful.  A Golden Compass Point "Punishing the other person is self-punishment. That is true in every circumstance.” Thich Nhat Hahn So says the current and ancient wisdom, which I will not dispute. I hear it often and interpret it as a call to empathy: understand the pain you will cause others by imagining that pain as your own. Hahn’s wisdom closely mirrors formulations of the golden rule from Hillel and from Islam. Confucius states it this way: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to you.” Jesus gives it a twist: “Do for others what you want them to do for you.” Commentors correctly note that the one formulation prefers a quietude, or passivity (in response to a presumed injury or a self-centered desire), while the other suggests a premeditated act of generosity (in response to an awareness of one’s own desire or need). Whether stated as a call to self-restraint or to self-initiative, the golden rule presupposes our fundamental connectedness; I and others share a common humanity, with common needs and desires. I cannot focus properly on myself without seeing the other within me; I cannot focus properly on others without seeing myself in them. A few years ago, a newly enrolled college student died from an overdose of opiods. Some said, “She killed herself.” Finding that phrasing inappropriatetly judgmental, others said, “She died of suicide.” The first implies that she ought not to have done that; the second implies that she could not help it. To some, the first feels inhumane; to others, the second feels dehumanizing. I hear this variation of the golden rule often: “When you hurt someone else, you hurt yourself.” That particular rendering leaves me feeling a bit off balance, actually. Perhaps I lack empathy or imagination on this point, but the “hurting others means hurting yourself” formulation does not satisfy me. Bluntly put, it sounds selfish, merely, as if the only reason not to hurt another is not to hurt myself. I don’t hear the appeal to our deep connectedness. I don’t hear a call to focus on anyone but myself. Does it follow, in other words, that if I discover a way to hurt you without hurting myself, then all is well with me (if not with you)? I prefer to say it this way: When I hurt myself, I hurt others. If I love you, I wil not hurt myself, not if I can help it. That more clearly reminds me of our connectedness, our common humanity, our shared desires, our mutual needs. It more clearly reminds me that I am not the center of the universe, and not really even the center of my world. I do not have a world. We have a world. And I love you. Keep me reminded of that, please, if you love me, as I believe that will help me help myself. We Do Not Drown For my friend, Ahmed Aq In time, if willing, we learn that emotional pain need not overcome peace of mind and
heart. The pain of loss or injustice, the longing, the disorienting, even the raging at times, need not be more than a storm circling round our still-calm Self. Acceptance of loss or injustice, on the other hand, does not mean a stoical dispassion or indifference. We may achieve such self-fortified, anaesthetized serenity, but in doing so, we die morally. We live; therefore, we suffer. We love; therefore, we hurt. Acceptance embraces the full experience, and thus even our pain and our expressions of pain. In other words, when we remain at peace, pain does not swirl within us as something detached from our inner Self at peace. Rather, we experience pain straight through to the heart of the heart of us; and yet we are at once the turbulent storm and the stable center, the wind and the stillness. Indeed, when we accept the full experience of loss or injustice, we fight or we self- restrain; we push forward or we wait; we cry out or we keep silent. We do whatever love and justice demand of us. From our tranquility, we create the storm. From within our quietude, we move ourselves. Still, and still, we keep our peace. In loving, we act, even fight, and yet remain at peace. We discover the unity of immanence and transcendence. We accept immersion--but we do not drown. |
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