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Relationships - Human

• Divorce and Re-marriage (rev. 2008/11/28)

  Divorce, like the separation of Siamese twins, at best allows both individuals a chance to live emotionally and spiritually to a degree that they couldn't while together. Often it allows at least one to live. Sometimes both die and perhaps should not have been separated — but that's a dim proposition either way.

  Divorce happens in the heart. Many married couples have been divorced for years, some know it, some deny it. They need to be remarried.

  The typical marriage vow contains promises Jesus would never make, or at least his Sermon on the Mount would strongly discourage. At length, Jesus warned against taking vows and swearing. Let your "yes" be "yes." Anything beyond that comes from the evil one, who would add hypocrisy onto your other sins.

  This is the big vow: "Till death do us part..." Taken as a hope, that's a good statement. Taken as a commitment, only a tentative statement, knowing that you don't know the future or the whole picture (of yourself, let alone another). Taken as a moral imperative, a potentially deadly statement. How many beaten wives (or murdered husbands) thought they had to stay in the marriage at all costs? How many uncaring spouses have used that promise as a platinum credit card against which they can amass emotional debt at the other person's expense, never considering their own need to change?

  "What God has joined together, let no man tear asunder." Now those are the words of Jesus (in an early English translation). The obvious meaning is that the man—especially the man in a culture where men own their wives as long as they find them useful—should not leave the wife. Don't do it, man. However, other "men" can tear asunder. Other men can destroy a marriage—child abusing fathers, rapists, adulterers, and bad counselors. Let not those men tear apart a marriage.

  Remarriage? Certainly don't consider it without fully owning one's contributions to the failed marriage, even if the major contribution was choosing the wrong person—and the contributions usually extend beyond that.

  The result of divorce, according to Jesus, is worded this way: "If you divorce, you cause your wife to commit adultery." Here is adultery in its most naked form: the moving from one body to another, from a husband to a different man. If the wife cannot have her husband, for one reason or another beyond her control, and if she will have a man (which the words imply), she must go outside her marriage.

  The same is true with husbands who cannot save their marriages. If they cannot have their wife, and will have another woman, they will move to a different body, which is an adulterous situation, although it wasn't at their instigation. There is no sidestepping these words.

  Divorce is messy, and those divorced who seek a new union may be free from guilt but not from the recognition that their choices in life failed them. They are asking for mercy, for a second chance after having declared spousal bankruptcy, whatever the reasons. Remarriage is a likely trajectory of divorce—the words in this passage do not imply that all will be eunuchs.

  If these words of Jesus are mitigated by anything, it is by some other words he spoke—that any man who looks upon a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If we allow (as in other cases) for this to work across the gender lines, this statement puts a mark of adultery on many if not most the people we know, single, married, and remarried. This excruciating standard, like much of the Sermon on the Mount seems to have one goal, and that is to urge us to "Walk humbly, love mercy, and act justly," leaving the final judgments to the all-seeing judge.

• The Greatest Distance in the World (rev. 2008/11/28)

  What's the greatest distance in the world?
  It happens in a room where two people live, each seeing no further than himself, herself.

  What's the shortest distance in the world?
  Wherever you are, I feel for you.

• The Person and the Relationship (rev. 2008/11/30)

  The point of the following meditation is that a bad relationship does not imply that both parties are equally at fault and that, conversely, a good relationship may be more the result of each party taking responsibility for his/her shortcomings than the result of each person being unusually good. By "relationship," I mean intentional, enduring communication between two parties. In particular, the relationships I discuss are between two individuals, whether a teacher-disciple relationship or a male-female relationship.

  It's an illusion that being with a particularly fit person (or group) would necessarily result in a good relationship. Of course, traits such as honesty and magnanimity are important for the best relationships. But a relationship, consisting of two parties, is limited by the the person with the lowest capacity for maintaining the relationship.

  Suppose I begin to associate with an extraordinarily good person. That doesn't make me a good person. For example, I may be attracted to the person because I sense that his or her generosity can compensate for my pettiness—compensate and relieve me of the need to change. Most relationships, both healthy and unhealthy, began at one time with the excitement that the other party had something beautiful or wise or loving to offer. In the unhealthy instances, the merits of the other party were interpreted as assets to be drawn upon, rather than as traits to be complemented. Being with a good or gifted person can lead to a disastrous relationship because eventually the inequality can become a source of resentment, leaving the outwardly good person feeling drained and the needier person feeling deprived.

  Someone might object, stating to the contrary that the stronger individual can carry the relationship, as may happen with the mother devoted to a child with an attachment disorder. True, that. But while those relationships may be purer and more durable than those between two typically well adjusted people, whatever the quality of such a relationship, it would be even greater if both members extended themselves as does the more responsive member, in this case the mother. And in those relationships, there is little room for illusion—the roles are clear. More dangerous are those relationships where inequality both exists and is ignored.

  The test-case for this theory that a relationship with a very good person is not necessarily a good thing is Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Judas was with a good person, but that did not make the relationship good. Jesus spent three years breaking bread with the man who would ultimately betray him. During those three years, I assume, Jesus was honest, fair, and giving. That no doubt helped Jesus be who he was, but it didn't guarantee the relationship's health.

  I invoke the life of Jesus at this point because it corrects the notion that a bad relationship results from two equally transgressive individuals. One way of expressing this notion is by saying that "it takes two to tangle." Another way is by saying that "if handled differently, the outcome would have been better." Sometimes you can refuse to tangle and you can handle things very well, yet end up on a cross—not the fruit of a good relationship. Just because the majority of relational messes are bilateral doesn't mean that they all are, nor does finding a good person guarantee success.

  We want to find the right person to marry and the right groups to join. But those are insufficient ingredients. The mistaken hope in the "other" may be why Jesus said "I am not good." He knew that people would come to him and project onto him the possibility of fulfillment without the need for change. When the young ruler called Jesus "good," Jesus deflected the hopes to a less likely partner for the young ruler: "only God in heaven is good" (and to be with God requires moving your treasure to his kingdom). Being the right person is as important as being with the right person.

  While Jesus played down his sufficiency, his being "good," he never denied his capacity for good relationships. He announced that his relationship with his Father was very good ("I do nothing apart from Him"). And he certainly gave people a chance to better themselves by being with him, so that by the end of the gospels, Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary are interchangeable in their level of commitment to him.

  If being a really decent person (like Jesus) is not sufficient to make a good lasting relationship with just anyone, the good (or stronger) person may at least end the relationship when the bad faith has surfaced. Thus Jesus calls Judas "friend," because that was his desire toward Judas. But Jesus doesn't allow his desire to lead him into denial. Instead, he completes the sentence with "why do you betray me?" And with this question, he concluded the relationship. It didn't matter at that point whether Jesus liked Judas or not. Bad relationships are short lived when we measure the relationship by its own merit, and do not credit it with being as good as its best contributor.

Perceptions

• Note on the End of the World (rev. 2008/12/21)

  The end of the world is already here. It happens on an individual basis. It happens whenever a person dies. It happens in the streets, in the abortion wards, in the places where mothers and fathers and daughters and sons take their own lives, in the cancer wards, in the upscale neighborhoods, in shanties, on the highways, in the everywhere, between the altar and the opium den, the hospital and the battlefield.

  People die, too, while their bodies go on living. It happens when a soul gives up on itself or on others. It happens when a few words destroy a lifetime behind or a lifetime ahead. It happens, not when a person believes a lie, but when a person believes that believing lies is not a bad idea.

  We need help on a truly divine scale with all the humility that the facts bring to bear upon our lives. And, as one of my daughters would add, we (I) need to lighten up.

  revision (minor): 2008/12/21

• Note on the Beginning of the World (orig. 2004/02/10)

  The beginning of the world has not yet come, not for many of us who are not here, who are not yet reading.

  The world begins each day where the earth turns into the light of the sun. The mercies penetrate the cold, dark sky, and the warmth breathes life into the shamed hearts who have happily forgotten who-they-are-not while a little sleep restored them. It is this forgetting-the-lies that cracks the door open for a visit from truth and a new beginning.

  The world begins with a word spoken in love where it is least expected, and with a hug, and with eyes that confer value on those they see. The world, the fabric of life that reaches out for love and with love, begins....

  revision: 2004/02/10

• Why the Abortion Issue will Not Die, and Why Proponents of Each Side Feel So Right (rev. 2008/12/21)

  The abortion question constitutes an exceptional moral crisis. As René Girard pointed out sometime in the nineties, both "sides" believe they are protecting a victim. The debate involves at the same time one being (a woman with rights over her own body) and another being (the embryonic person with an impulse to live). Each being, depending on the point of view, is portrayed as the victim in a culture that has been morally and politically sensitized to victims and victimmage.

  About half the population of the United States believes that any prohibition of abortion victimizes the woman, forcing her to sacrifice her freedom at the request of others (of varying religious and political affiliations). By contrast, about half the population sees the medical business of removing viable fetuses and disposing of them as immoral on the scale of genocide. There are in-between positions but they obfuscate, rather than clarify the nature of this dispute.

  Both groups—Pro-choicer and Pro-lifer—believe they are identifying with and seeking to protect the victim. To the extent the focus is on the ostensible victim, each group has a clear conscience and a moral indignation.

  A moral symmetry (pointed out by Girard) is shared between the activists of both sides. Each can say, "I seek to represent and protect the victim."

  Two aspects of the identified victims are, however, asymmetrical. In terms of verifiable knowledge, the Pro-choice proponents have an advantage, while in terms of inevitable consequences, the Pro-lifer proponents have the advantage. On one side, the advocates of the woman's right to choose have the epistemological advantage: we are sure the woman exists (has intentions, thinks, feels, plans, fears, regrets, and expresses herself), but we debate the extent to which the (often newly) conceived being is fully human. On the other side, the advocates of the right to life have the practical or teleological advantage. In the vast majority of cases, if the woman is denied the right to abort the fetus, she continues to live and make choices; while in almost every case,* the aborted fetus never is offered another experience, never makes a choice.

  If the role of the moral conscience and its indignation has the final say in these matters, the U.S. society (among others) is in deadlock. If there were some shared recognition that either epistemological confidence or teleological consequences should have priority, then the deadlock could be broken by following one of those two guides. But such a shared recognition may not be available, in which case the asymmetrical elements will have no influence in the argument.

  Perhaps we should proclaim a moratorium on abortions until we have resolved the epistemological uncertainties. Once we know that the fetus is or is not human, then we can break the deadlock. The balance would shift one direction or the other. If the fetus is seen as fully human, the woman's freedom will not justify the abortion, howsoever important it may be to compensate the woman in other ways. If the fetus is seen as pre-human, then its value will not be sufficient to challenge the woman and her rights over her body.

  This moratorium would, incidentally, be similar to that called upon by those who want to stop capital punishment for the purpose of preventing the death of the falsely accused. In both cases, a lack of knowledge recommmends a lack of action.

  * I once heard a mother and daughter relating how the daughter had been the result of an unsuccessful abortion, which is why I write "almost every."

  revision (several key sentences): 2008/12/21

• The Closer You Look, What Do You See? (rev. 2008/12/21)

  This is about looking closely at something before accepting or rejecting it.

  Where do our beliefs come from? Simple exposure to a belief or a lifestyle can convert us. A childhood, a set of friends, a stream of t.v. shows — the world we find ourselves in converts us continually. Just because we are converted doesn't mean that we scrutinized a proposition, particularly when we are young. All it means is that we were exposed to something in a way that we found acceptable.

  A lack of volition is illustrated well by victims of child abuse. They are temporarily mastered by their perpetrators' point of view: "I am worthless; it is my fault; it is inescapable." In a happier scenario, we can imagine children who are allowed to remain fairly open, so that as they grow, the get a whiff of something fresh, something better than what they presently believe, and they search out its source, finding something good and sweet that they did not previously know.

  This is more of a prayer than a statement — this entry. May we learn to suspend judgment about things we haven't studied, to attempt to approach everything without prejudice, and to have the excitement of a young learner. For those of us who are jaded, it might take years of deadends to cause us to look for a new way. May those years be short.

  revision (major): 2008/12/21

• The Closer You Look, the More You See (rev. 2008/12/21)

  It is common for people (believers and unbelievers) to talk about the Bible or the Gospels or the letters of Paul as though they have recently read these writings, when, in fact, they have never become conversant with them. I do the same with Marx but do it less every year.

  We live in an age where intolerance is not tolerated, and, for the most part, that is good. Yet, in various circles where I've studied the humanities, I've noted that the Gospels — as the best example — are dismissed out of hand. An out-of-hand dismissal requires no close study — by which I mean, no reading as careful as that which a person might give a love letter. No scrutiny.

  The dismissal raises no questions as to how these Jewish writers who had as one of their Ten Major Commandments the imperative, "you shall not misrepresent the facts in dispute with a neighbor," could morally or mentally manufacture such tales.

  The dismissal discounts the fabric of apparently reported, detailed facts — facts that could come from a daily newspaper. One disciple reportedly coveted the value of the perfume that the woman lovingly poured on Jesus before he died. Another disciple denied his master when his accent gave him away as a Galilean. These are most credible events. And they dance with the incredible claims, being interwoven with perceptions of a person who was both attractive and perplexing, impolitely harsh and extraordinarily kind, born of the good Jewish girl Mary and yet with no earthly father.

  I do not insist that the gospels are true, although I believe that. I do insist that those who tolerate everything except the gospels are not being true to their own lights.

  revision (minor): 2008/12/21

• The Closer You Look, the More Slowly You Speak (rev. 2008/12/21)

  The Gospels are not, in my experience, either as mythological as the aloof skeptics characterize them or as tidy as fundamentalists teach them. And the two points of view feed each other. The skeptic says there are contradictions; the fundamentalist says that's impossible (for the Word of God). From that point forward, the skeptic needs only one contradiction in order to dismiss everything and the fundamentalist needs only one skeptic in order to embrace his/her fundamentalism more tightly.

  The Gospels do not read like any myths of their time; nor do they always make sense. Far more important than factual discrepancies (was there one man or two named Legion?) are the eyewitness details they provide of a given situation, showing some very ordinary, mundane details in a tapestry that grows to something very unusual. The Gospels present the followers as quite ordinary, quite disparate people who all see something extraordinary in their teacher. This mixture of the very human and the — what? — the hard-to-explain is what makes the writings so hard to dismiss.

  The Gospels cause the honest literalist to stumble eventually — the whole story is never told and there are too many statements that criticize the mind for whom all meanings are fixed. They also offer too much historicity, too many big fat factual claims to encourage the purely symbolic reading. They combine "pass the salt" with "I love you" to end up with "you are the salt of the earth."

  And if the Gospels are true — say as true as the average Denver Post newspaper article — then much of what we've learned in school and Sunday school alike, as well as in our homes and clubs, is good for little more than false security. My unquestioning Christian brothers and my dogmatic atheist friends are generally much more comfortable than I.

  revision (minor): 2008/12/21

Poems, Not Mine

• Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Spring and Fall: to a young child

  MARGARET, are you grieving
   Over Goldengrove unleaving?
   Leaves, like the things of man, you
   With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
   Ah! as the heart grows older
   It will come to such sights colder
   By and by, nor spare a sigh
   Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
   And yet you will weep and know why.
   Now no matter, child, the name:
   

  Sorrow's springs are the same.
   Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
   What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
   It is the blight man was born for,
   It is Margaret you mourn for.