Let me begin with a story I’ll frequently share with clients.
The Old Monk and the Cobra
Somewhere in the Indian subcontinent, there’s a village. Beside the village is a small mountain, and on top of it is a shrine. The people of the town, who climb the rugged path for their spiritual exercises, regularly visit the shrine, which has been maintained for many years by an elderly monk.
But one day, he began to notice that fewer and fewer people from the village were making the journey up to his shrine. So he inquired of one of the pilgrims why this might be. He was told, “I’ll tell you why. Near the beginning of the path up, there’s a Cobra, who’s been biting people as they pass by – so many are now afraid to make the trip.”
So, the old monk decided to take matters into his own hands. He makes his way down the mountain path to where the cobra resides. “Brother Cobra (says the monk), I understand you’ve been biting people.” “That is true,” responds Brother Cobra. “Well, this is unacceptable,” (says the old monk). “The people need to be free to use this path without fear of a poisonous Cobra bite. So I’m telling you to stop biting people.” “OK,” responds Brother Cobra, with his head bowed.
The old monk returns up the mountain path to his shrine, and eventually, the people of the village return to their pattern of traversing the path to their shrine.
Then, one day, the old monk decides he’ll go down to visit Brother Cobra. What he finds is his old friend battered, bruised, and broken. “What’s this!” exclaimed the old monk. The cobra replied, “Ever since you told me to stop biting folks, they’ve made my life hell. The young boys whirl me around by my tail, bashing my head onto stones and tree trunks. Others throw rocks at me, kick me, step on me – I would rather die than suffer all this!”
The old monk replied, “But Brother Cobra, When I told you to stop biting people. I didn’t tell you to stop hissing.” 1
ooOOoo
In recent Newsletters, I’ve noted my family heritage of pacifism. But I want to make a distinction that this often has little to do with niceness. That’s why I enjoy this story.
The Curse of Niceness (Passivity)
As a mother (or a father), you wouldn’t point out the carry-out boy at the grocery store and say, “Now, isn’t he a nice young man? That’s the type you want to marry.” You’d maybe want to hire him for customer service, but not for a life partner. 2
Niceness is often a cover for passivity. Remember Alfred E. Newman’s motto of Mad Magazine fame: “What, me worry?” Passivity is primarily the opposite of taking responsibility. (I’ve been a marriage/relationship counselor for almost half a century.)
I recall some years ago, back in the early “Men’s Movement” days, the poet Robert Bly telling us that an essential phrase for men was the resourcefulness (and courage) to say, “Hey, wait a minute!” Women, recently, have become more adroit with that phrase, which frequently leads to terror (or rage) in men.3
Men and women who don’t sometimes know to hiss, more easily get abused in relationships. Or they more easily become abusers. 4
So then, what is Pacifism?
Pacifism is very different. Passivity is a “do nothing” strategy—letting our base human nature (the Amygdala part of the brain) run the show. William Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies (1954) was popular when I was young. It posited a society of boys ruled by their base natures and the savage chaos that emerged.
Some call it the “Law of the Jungle” – where the ‘natural world’ can act from an inherent balance, which seems to work. The ‘law of the human jungle’ is the survival of the fittest – which appears to work in the ‘natural’ world. Still, in the human world, it gives over to a “law of projection” where whatever we don’t want to deal with, we “project” onto others, and then we can more easily dehumanize (or ‘kill’) any ‘other.’ This is why humans can so quickly go to war. In the human world, “sports” are favored to submit (or sublimate) this chaos to social “rules,” whereby the inner desire to compete is both honored and tempered. In the Roman Circus, sometimes gladiators (and Christians) ended up being eaten by the lions – to the satisfaction of both rulers and the crowds.
In evolving history, pacifism became the social and personal energy to ‘tame the hungry beast’ within – hence an energy for “peace” to counter the energy for “war.” It was based on an evolving assumption that all humanity was equal and sacred and that the seemingly natural desire to dominate or lord it over others has become the root of much social (and political) evil.5
Although its history is varied and often a moving target, Pacifism is a lot of personal work. It takes courage and the willingness to be vulnerable, to stand up for those who can’t, and to teach and encourage those who can.6
“I didn’t tell you not to hiss.”
Now you can see why I love this story of the old Monk and the Cobra.
Learning the difference between biting and hissing is vital to a civil culture. There are many places in our world where you can be killed (or at least locked up) for just hissing. We must protect those who get bitten and those who can hiss (often independent of whether we agree with them).
It’s a matter of balance – a balance that seems even more precarious in our time. The future of our democratic culture and our ability to be a beacon of stability in a chaotic world seem to lie in the balance, especially these days.
We need both wise old monks and wisely trained cobras.
I hope my words can be helpful.
Pay Attention
Footnotes
1. I don’t recall where or from whom I first heard this story, but I’ve enjoyed telling it myself for many years.
2 My creative imagination carries this note a step further: The daughter thinks a moment and asks her mother, “Is that why you married Dad?” “Well, yes,” replies the mother. To which the daughter then responds, “And is that why you now hate him?” Nice young men can become passive husbands → which often leads to angry wives (and vice versa).
3 At this point, I’ll (not joking) share a man’s initial imagination: “I think I’d rather shove salt in a Siberian salt mine.” Yet, when a man is willing to respond positively to a woman’s “Hey, wait a minute,” he’ll often find, to his surprise, himself in a positive and creative experience. Amazing!
5 While writing this Newsletter, I saw the movie “Origin” (US 2023), based on the New York Times bestseller Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents. It was an audience multi handkerchief powerful movie, and ending with unusually great audience applause.
6 I have written earlier in these Newsletter pages about my mother, bringing to our smallish Iowa town the work of the American Field Service. It began in 1915 as wartime battlefield volunteer ambulance drivers – then eventually asked, “Whatever can we do to prevent these wars from ever happening again?” From this grew a great intercultural student exchange program with the motto: “Walk together, talk together, all you peoples of the earth, and we shall have peace.” (I became a High School AFS exchange student in Germany in 1958.)
This is one of those “my father taught me” statements. And that’s how I speak of it whenever I teach it to my clients. Truth be told, I don’t recall either him or my mother specifically speaking those particular words – yet I can honestly state their very presence spoke them every moment of their lives. And so I enshrine them as MFTMs.
I’ve noted in past Newsletter pages that my parents were lifelong pacifists. And if they were alive now, I’d want to spend hours asking how they got that way (as children, we don’t think to ask those questions).
And I recall a woman I dated many years ago insisting her children refrain from ever using the word “hate” – including about themselves. I remember thinking I had never heard that spoken – yet I had always known it.[1]
An Ancient Division
So then, how do we deal with the question of good and evil? That is anything that separates us from one another. In the Genesis narrative, when Eve and Adam ate the apple, they gained “the knowledge of good and evil,” which before that was only known by God. As a result, they lost the blessed life of Paradise and were cast out to struggle in the desert, yearning for a future “Kingdom.” Catholics call it ‘original sin’ – for them, an institutionalized birthright.
An Ancient Rhythm / Pattern
I remember reading straight through the Old Testament Book of Psalms some years ago and finding a particular rhythm. First (or primarily), there was a litany of ‘troubles’ – or what we might even call ‘reality.’ Then followed a (briefer) assertion that (no matter what) God was in charge. And it was left at that! I’ve long known that in monastic communities, a primary daily worship form is the recitation of the Book Psalms (called ‘praying the Psalms’). Only in my elder years does it make sense that this is training in the same pattern: Despise nothing, Honor everything. DNHE
In the Christian world, this month, we are entering the season of Lent – known as a ‘penitential’ season. Its purpose is to prepare us for Easter. Desert → Glory, Penance → Resurrection. The same pattern: – as if the Almighty will use anything and everything to bring us into his unifying Friendship – and our community/communion with each other. Other spiritual traditions are even better than ours at opening this to the entire ‘universe’ – which has its source in God—the same pattern.
I’ve also been delighted to find it in many or all other spiritual traditions.
The Question of Evil
Some will assert that Evil is just an illusion. But to assert that is to cruelly deny the reality of suffering for so many. Rather, we are bidden to ‘go to’ the suffering, the oppressed. Do not despise them or even their oppression. Rather ‘reach through’ to them. Maybe help change the world on their behalf. Yet Evil is ultimately a mystery, a spiritual mystery – we cannot explain it away, nor does God (as if it is a part of his knowledge of Creation). Logically impossible, Spiritually real. Counter it with another mystery – the mystery of Goodness. Logically impossible[2] (or at least suspect), Spiritually real.
My own spiritual narrative must include Holy Week. It must include the sacrifice of the Son of God. The (symbol of) cross, even when portrayed as empty, has no power without what took place on it.[3]
I recall some years ago (2006) when a man murdered several Amish school girls in Pennsylvania – the first response of that community was to go immediately to give comfort to the mother of the assassin. That’s a tremendous spiritual maturity! DN
Reconciliation or ‘Family Values’
One great benefit of Despise Nothing, Honor Everything is its relationship to the eternal worldly and spirit-level work of reconciliation – the bringing together that which has been broken.
Often in my younger years, from my parents, I would hear of the Fellowship of Reconciliation – an international organization formed in 1914 in response to the horrors of war and continues to this day as the oldest interfaith peace organization of its kind.[4]
There was a time when religious bodies were more energized toward peace and justice, significant world issues. My Methodist background was rich in energy for world peace (especially in the 1930s, my parents’ formative years). The patterns of peacemaking (DNHE) were alive and active.
But then, sometime after the end of WWII, something else was taking over – American religion discovered “Family Values” as a primary ‘marketing tool.’ At that time, I was cutting my political and pacifist eye teeth on anti-VietNam resistance. Having ‘lost’ that war, Americans did two things. 1) We demonized our military personnel, and 2) we became capitalists (viz the ‘prosperity gospel’). And then, within another decade or two, churches became reconciliationally irrelevant. Today, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and government representatives seem only adept at demonizing each other. Family values have become demonization tools – they divide rather than unite us. We have become a nation of gated communities and ghettos. Marketing “family values,” especially for the sake of religious identity, inevitably divides people. Churches can love sin because it makes other folks “bad.”
And we’re back to “despising” others – projecting evil – the same as avoiding personal responsibility, which co-opts any foundation of unity. When we love to divide (demonize), we reap what we sow. It has become the hallmark of our age.
Maybe I’ve gone too far here – but the more I mature, the more I see it’s the same that the Almighy One leans in to teach us. He is Love, which despises nothing, honors everything (since He created everything, even loving everybody.
Now that is hard to swallow. But its a way of life that works.[5]
Pay Attention
Footnotes
[1] Actually, I personally come quite close when having to deal with telemarketers.
[2] As early psychology postulated.
[3] Argue with me if you will, you may be right, but I’m also not wrong. DNHE
[4] Its members share a vision of a world where conflicts are resolved through nonviolent means, where systems that foster fear and hatred are dismantled, and where justice is sought as a basis for peace. You may want to take a current look at its magazine https://wagingnonviolence.org/ & https://forusa.org/news/
[5] What a curiosity that in this particular year – 2024 – Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday are the exact same day. – right there smack dab in the very middle of the February calendar page. Oh my!
Last year, as every year, ended with a narrative about the Holy Birth of a Prince of Peace. Born in innocence and vulnerability
Now, The Seer, as the Elder Year – is ready to let go, move on, and perhaps find some rest. He leans his furrowed forehead onto the Mighty Tree of Life. His third eye, which has already seen so much, maybe too much, now prays forth for a vision, into those roots deep in the earth, asking, “What now?”
Good and evil intermingle into an illusory knotted ball. I’m told the average American kid each day spends 40 minutes outside and 4 hours inside on a device each day. How can he or she ever mature into a world, that in order to survive together, some things need to be fed, some things need to be broken? – and how to discern the difference.
Our view of the Tree can now be altered (“remastered”) in a thousand ways by an “application.” Most of us have such a resident or at least a downloadable app available, often for ‘free.’
But the actual Tree, the one ‘Nature’ can provide, has a corresponding shadow beneath it. If we could but see its root system, it has the same shape and substance hidden beneath the surface. Each, of necessity, feeds and nourishes the other. And the ancient seer knows this prayer for his successor must now penetrate deep.
_ _ _ _ _ _
One of the ‘secrets’ of my profession (or a couple of them), is that when disease or chaos inhabits the outer (larger) world around us, we can (or must) then ‘go down inside’ for guidance and healing. My own initiation has been to seek and follow an innate inner spirit.[1]
And the obverse is also true – when we are ill or broken inside, we can look outside for healing. This may be Nature, a healer, a community, or a particular healing individual.[2]
The upshot is that we cannot do it alone. We need each other, we need community, internal and external. And for various reasons, circumstances, and various personalities, those communities are both horizontal and vertical. My own life work involves healing brokenness in both arenas and directions.
We are given Now, Here, and Time
A spiritual perspective and our secular calendars give us a gift of Time. There was a before, and there will be a hereafter – both of which we can know only a little, except maybe to say they are “in God’s hands.” But between our own birth and death, we are given Now and Here, the Gift of Time. We have a time and a place to Do Something to make a difference – with a Purpose, and within Company for support.
And in response to the question “What now?” – we are simply given Now.
Like the old Seer, to perceive the larger picture, for him Now was time to let go.
Maybe the best news of it being the NEW YEAR 2024, is that for us,
It’s not too late – There’s Still Time
And we’re still Here.
Out of COVID emerged a particular Zoom community that used, from A New Zealand Prayer Book (Anglican), a Night Prayer version of an old Benediction (an Ethic of being sent out)
Good friends,
Go forth into the world in peace;
be of good courage;
Render to no one evil for evil.
Hold fast that which is good;
strengthen the fainthearted;
help the afflicted;
honor and respect the dignity of everyone;
and rejoice in the power of the Spirit
In us,
and beyond us all.
Amen
Now, we can better know who we are and why we are here. (Maybe even for the first time.)
Even from my youth, that forceful solo Bass air from the midst of G F Handel’s Messiah is seared into the musical memory chambers of my brain, including the frantic energy of the orchestra with its stirring lead-in.
Yet it has never made its way to become one of the memes of the Holiday season – as this year in particular, I think it should.
From the beginning of December, the Advent hymns sung in church, and the Christmas holiday choral music of extensive holiday concerts – this year especially, I have been struck by the ancient idea that when the Almighty chose to ‘save the world,’ he did so by way of an infant born to a lowly Galilean girl, and in a place where there was “no room” for Mary & Joseph, except in a back yard. The first ‘visitors’ were ‘lowly shepherds’ – and only after a short time did three Kings on camels appear from somewhere in “the East.”
This sacred narrative ostensibly was of the arrival of a “long-awaited Prince of Peace.”
And so, the narrative memes of Christmas represent innocence, poverty, and the manifestation of the ‘holy vulnerability’ of the humble. Yet in the background is the maniacal King Herod, who necessitates Joseph’s fleeing to Egypt with his young wife, the child, and a donkey – a very long desert walk of many days. In the meantime, the narrative tells us Herod had 200 children slaughtered in his attempt to destroy the usurper child. (In the Christian liturgical calendar, The Feast of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, the ‘first Christian martyrs,’ takes place only three days after Christmas Day.) Even Christmas has, from its beginning, a very dark side.
And all this on the same soil that today suffers the ‘vain’ slaughter, especially of children and women.The “furious rage” of each side trumps even the villainous “slaughter of innocents.”[1]
And so pens the ancient author of the second Psalm as to what happens when there is no respect for any higher order.
My pacifist heritage
These past months, I have developed an increased respect for my pacifist parents and the rich heritage they passed on to me. My father was early very active in the World Peace (pacifist) movement within the Methodist Church of that time (the 1930s). And my mother came from the same background, well before they met and married (1939). Being a pacifist may look easy – it’s not. Going to war can be much easier. All you have to do is access your primal anger, and with your basal ganglia (the ‘lizard brain’), the rest comes ‘naturally.’
And I know they each sang Handel’s Messiah because I inherited the leather-bound vocal scores of each, my mother’s, with her maiden name.
Our country is suffering a parallel division. The older folks remember the promise that came with the establishment of the nation Israel (1948), but many of our young see instead through the eyes of the oppressor and the oppressed. And both have missed the leadership of our own country, which used to have that gift of conjunctio oppositorum, managing the conjunction of opposites, which is the lifeblood of a democracy.
And so to the Birthday of the Prince of Peace – God’s gift to the world.
I’m not a ‘right to life’ aficionado. That’s become a political phenomenon, with the luxury of specific good and evil – winners and losers. Way too easy and comfortable! I want to be a warrior-for-real-life person.[2] Much the opposite of people with easy ideological answers.
So what is this Christmas?
So what is Christmas in a world so much at war, a world of intense conflict and murdered children? And who is this Christ Child (that the powers that be, aka King Herod, wanted to kill)? – and eventually succeed. What sense can we make of it? What can we do? Where can we stand? What can it all mean?
My first answer is to stand in the middle. Perhaps with one leg in each warring camp (a specific physiological vulnerability!). For some, it can be that dead or liminal space between what we have lost or left behind and (maybe hopefully) what is yet to come. A barren, inhospitable desert before any promised land. Or perhaps a threshold or vestibule, an entryway to a new reality – a ‘third thing’ that gathers all things together (which some folks call “The Kingdom.”)
Nonetheless, it’s a place of promise, vulnerability, and the hope of countless generations – including our own.
I commend it to you.
Pay Attention
Footnotes
[1] The root meaning of the word War is ‘to confuse, to perplex, to bring into confusion’ (Wikipedia). And there must be ‘rules’ – which in our day have been weakened and easily ignored. The Israel/Hamas conflict is not a war but is based, especially in the repeated language of the Israeli leadership, on “total destruction.” (Perhaps they inherited that from the similar MO of the German Nazis in the Holocaust – who cared not a whit for any ‘rules’ about innocent parties.) In contrast, it seems to me the MO of Hamas is rather retributive anger (rage), which can initially have the same energy and similar tactics but is not the same thing. Any “peace process” must synchronize these two non-synchronous origins of conflict with an elusive ‘third thing.’ At the moment, all they have in common is the land itself (which we sometimes enigmatically still call “the Holy Land.”)
I know; I’m a marriage counselor.
[2] Nikos Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek (one of my favorite reads), at one point asks his young protégé, Basil, “Why do children die?… Why does anybody die?” The latter responds, ”I don’t know.” To which Zorba angrily answers,” Then what’s the use of all your damn books?” Basil responds, “They tell me – about the agony of people who can’t answer questions like yours.” The true pacifist fully embodies that agony.
Or, another Zorba quote: “Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble” [Sort of maybe like a real marriage.]
Let me begin with an illustration. Let’s say I ask a particular person (person A) this question: “How are you feeling today?” And he answers, “I’m feeling depressed.” That’s a level one question – a data-level question, and he gives me a data-level answer – “depressed.” Now I ask him a second, meta-level or meaning-level question – “How do you feel about feeling depressed? “ And he answers – ”depressed.” An honest question and a simple answer.
Now I’ll ask another person the same level one question – “How are you feeling today?” And he honestly answered me – “depressed.” then I asked him the second level or meaning level question. “How do you feel about being depressed? ” He answers, “It’s OK, I’ll get over it.”
The base reality is the same (fixed), but the meaning-level reality can differ. That’s why I call it “the two levels of reality.”
What do you want that to mean?
Sometimes, when I’m with a client, and they’re giving me a data-level description of their situation, I’ll ask them, “Now, what do you want that to mean (for you)?” And their response is often a glassy-eyed silence. They have no idea what I’ve just said. And so I’ll give them a brief description like the one above. Then I’ll say something like, “The data level is often something we really can’t change. It’s simply “what is.” But the second level, the “meaning level,” is an area where we frequently can change. Often, in therapy, we may not be able to do much about what is, but therapy’s secret is changing the second level, the meaning of what is.
Where we have choices
A recent client told me about a recurring pattern in his life where things always seem negative. That was the what is of his life. I asked him where it may have come from. He recalled that his father frequently said, “You will never amount to much of anything.” Then I asked him, “What do you want that to mean?” I led him through several examples or possibilities in response to my question. And I said, “This is where you do have choices ” – and gave him many examples, hoping to awaken a new optional reality of level two life.
And, what I find remarkable is that often, with meaning-level choices, even our experience of “what is” life can change.
Can this pattern Reverse Engineer?
This was a new question for me – which only arose while writing the first half of this article. Let me now draw your attention to the current Middle East ‘troubles’ now called the Israel/Hamas War.
The Defense (and Lesson) of Israel
Almost immediately after the horrors of October 7, our president spoke of “the right of Israel to defend itself.” This was a translation of an international “Permission” for Israel to defend itself. A second but weaker level of that “right/permission” was a plea to at least abide by the Rules of War (cf International Humanitarian Law) and spare ‘damage’ to civilians, especially women, children, and older people. But still, you can go ahead and eradicate (kill) the enemy, the evil Hamas. Israel’s apparent Plan A
Israel’s right to defense is a second-level phenomenon. It’s a ‘meaning’ that emerges from being the victim of an attack. In brain theory,[1] the primitive (“Reptilian Brain”) is triggered, and vengeance is desired, allowed, and briefly satisfied.[2]
Israel’s roots in the Old Testament code of laws contain the legal concept “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” In a sense, the punishment should match the crime. The one who has inflicted the injury should suffer the same damage. Our icon of Justice (the blind woman holding the scales) contains the same “balance.” Justice should be based on balance rather than retribution (the primitive brain).[3]
But their earlier Nazi torturers taught them a lower order – “ten eyes for an eye, and ten teeth for a tooth.” For many years, I’ve noticed that modern Israel embodies some of this identical sense of retributive superiority over balanced justice – especially regarding their Palestinian neighbors.[4]
We Americans have a common heritage and pattern. When we (mostly European whites) came to this land, already inhabited and well-managed by the ‘Native Americans,’ we invented “Manifest Destiny,” by which we had a ‘right’ to take the land and its riches for ourselves. And in so doing, it was natural to see and treat (and decimate) the Native American as a lower class of humanity. So, with Israel. In 1948, when the United Nations carved out of Palestine a “Homeland for the Jewish People,” – the Native Palestinians were pushed aside to second-class status and “reservation” living. And so, of course (as any undergraduate psychology student can understand), Hamas was birthed. With its primitive brain mentality, they invaded Israel, triggering the latter’s heritage of primitive brain mentality – and a long-simmering powder keg is ignited.
And so, just recently, Israel just bombed and killed many many innocents in Gaza, but justified it as necessary to take out one particular Hamas leader. I recall, in the Vietnam War, an American officer of high rank said (with a straight face), “It was necessary to save (a Vietnam village) by destroying it” (along with its population).
We need to stand with and for the Palestinians, along with standing with and for Israel. Divided, we will eventually all fall. Any other considered outcome is for sure a foolish fantasy.
It seems there is a spiritual law in the universe that says, “How we treat those who are ‘other’ to us determines how we will survive ourselves.”[5] Both Israel and we, Americans, are in great danger. We have lost or forgotten that moral base. And we are each in danger of a great collapse.
So again, if we can take an honest look at our base heritage/reality (together), our level one reality, and see ourselves honestly, then we can rise above it (together) and discern a ‘meaning-level’ reality that will save and enhance our lives and our gifts for the greater world and its future.
Perhaps it’s as simple (and also complicated) as that. Our posterity, our children and grandchildren cry out for it and deserve it – from us.[6]
Pay Attention
Footnotes
[1] Using Paul MacLean’s “Triune Brain” model from the 1960’s.
[2] The higher two levels of MacLean’s Triune Brain are the Mammalian Brain, or Limbic System, where emotional wisdom is experienced and matured – and the third level, the Homo Sapiens Brain, or Neo Cortex, where intellectual functioning, conscious thought, and self-awareness emerge. Hence, it is said that as human beings, we are ‘meaning-making’ creatures above all.
[3] My cultural heritage is Judaeo-Christian. So the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…” justice was intended to be a guiding ethic for legislators and judges, curtailing the behavior of personal vengeance. And as a Christian (frequently tempted to believe our system is even superior to Judaism), we have Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-42), upping the ante, “You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye…but I tell you, do not resist an evil person…turn the other cheek also…” – taking vengeance out of the equation entirely. Oops!
[4] Well, maybe only ‘‘six eyes’ – but still way beyond the primary moral ethic.
[5] I had the great fortune just recently to see the Metropolitan Opera’s (live simulcast to local theaters) performance of “Dead Man Walking” – which so poignantly portrayed the true story journey to redemption by a man on death row, Joseph De Rocher, and a Catholic Nun, Sister Helen Prejean. Now, I better understand the deeper meaning of ‘balanced’ justice. It’s redemptive justice – where even Love can now enter the calculation. It’s a high order! But by some grace, possible.
[6] Maybe a bit grandiose there, Bill – but still valid.
Afterword
As I mentioned, the first half of this article has been in my head and practice for several years – and I have no memory of where or by whom it came.
But then, it’s as if what I had written was daring me to carry it farther – into territory incognita (unknown, or at least undeveloped). With the Israel/Hamas debacle roaring past us daily, I realized I did want to explore it at a deeper level and hopefully add to the larger dialogue of “what the hell is going on, and what can we learn and do about it?” And as I professionally wrestle with the ‘things’ of human nature, I know that easy answers are usually inadequate and possibly wrong. So, this is my contribution to the dialogue. And though I stand behind them, I’m aware some of this is not fully polished in logic.
As for the deluge of footnotes, many of you readers know it’s just how I think, so I indulge. Hopefully, they’re helpful.
And as to any charges of antisemitism, that is not the case. Judaism is part of my cultural and spiritual heritage, as is Christianity. Both are beautiful, and both have done a lot of mischief. So be it. As with other spiritual communities as well, they are communities of the human heart. Deo Gratias.
