A four year old, aware of the 9/11 10th anniversary news clips, which his parents chose to handle with discretion rather than denial, asked the inevitable (no, it’s not about sex!):
DAD, DID GOD MAKE THE BAD PEOPLE?
Daddy was momentarily thrown for a loop about how to respond.
He said it was funny that his next thought was one of happiness realizing that this young little mind was processing and thinking and communicating and doing so independently.
Still, because this dad is wise and loves God himself, he tried to cut God a break without neglecting his son’s curiosity: “God may not have anything to do with it [terrorism]. God probably doesn’t control everything.”
That was enough for the child who could then go on loving not blaming God—and maybe think twice about his own responsibility in the workings of God’s creation.
Tragedies are not God-driven but humanly inevitable.
The ancient faithful had a theory of “double causation.” It goes like this...................
YOUR PART:
You can fall off a roof and hurt yourself because you shouldn’t have risked it in the first place, you lost your ordinarily good balance, you took a dare, someone pushed you, or it was the roof’s fault.
The ancients didn’t want to exclude divine activity from any sphere of life at all but were wise to realize that a loving God wouldn’t push you off a roof or will your fall. Hence................................
GOD’S PART:
God stays involved to inspire love and healing in whatever form it may take: a loving stranger who passes by and happens to see you fallen; a medic who treats your body; a loved one who takes time off work to babysit you because you can’t move around much for a while; a church community that prays for you sending healing energy your way, and you know it; and a faith in God who strengthens you from within to forgive yourself, the other, or the roof—and go on.
Showing posts with label Tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tragedy. Show all posts
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
2011.09.11 9/11
Do what you are able and for God’s sake be kind to yourself and all creation. But above all pray, for that is how you will be in touch with your internal arbiter, the soul voice that, at its most naked, conjoins with the transcendent to bring forth goodness and peace.
There is no accounting for tragedy—no need to quantify it, no need to compare it as if every tragedy weren't exactly the same to the human hearts involved, and no need to get even for we can't. There is just a need to name our heart's truth and grieve together.
To share on this day of remembrance I quote from Leo Tolstoi who in 1854 was at the front in the Crimean war. On leave he witnessed a public beheading in Paris that changed his spiritual life forever and brought forth his lasting work War and Peace.
Tolstoi wrote: "During my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I."
Judith Shulevitz writing about the sabbath remembrance in her book Sabbath World ends her fine book with wise and simple words: “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.”
To pray is to stop, remember, and allow Other to transform your heart’s soul. A sabbath community reminds us to stop, pray and remember to strengthen our collective hearts.
There is no accounting for tragedy—no need to quantify it, no need to compare it as if every tragedy weren't exactly the same to the human hearts involved, and no need to get even for we can't. There is just a need to name our heart's truth and grieve together.
To share on this day of remembrance I quote from Leo Tolstoi who in 1854 was at the front in the Crimean war. On leave he witnessed a public beheading in Paris that changed his spiritual life forever and brought forth his lasting work War and Peace.
Tolstoi wrote: "During my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I."
Judith Shulevitz writing about the sabbath remembrance in her book Sabbath World ends her fine book with wise and simple words: “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.”
To pray is to stop, remember, and allow Other to transform your heart’s soul. A sabbath community reminds us to stop, pray and remember to strengthen our collective hearts.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
"August:Osage County" Theater Review/Life Review
We just saw the play “August: Osage County” starring Estelle Parsons at Boston’s Colonial Theater. It was a three act play, lasting three hours with two intermissions which could have been three because of the intensity of the drama.
For those of us who grew up in families like the dysfunctional/addictive one portrayed in the play it was a life review, an opportunity to view from a distance the way we were—and for some still are.
For me it was a panoramic view on a small stage. It brought tears, laughter, honest empathy and hardy applause for the resilience of all the characters who, in spite of being almost destroyed by the ravages of addiction, forge, each in their own way and according to their own personality, a path to freedom— or at least to another chance at freedom giving life.
But this play, written by Tracy Letts, is a classic tragedy showing as much appreciation for the vulnerability of human life as the classic Greek tragedians did. The matriarch takes pills; the patriarch drinks, but the tragic hero is the whole family (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws.) The tragic flaw is lack of boundaries. The individual is subsumed into the chaotic death-dealing dynamic of a system in which the power of the whole nearly obliterates the parts. In family therapy this is called enmeshment. I call it the sprout family (can’t pick up one without picking them all up.)
People caught up in an enmeshed system divorce their minds.
The opposite of enmeshment is estrangement, a way some systems develop to control the many threatening feelings (anger, guilt, fear, sorrow) that naturally arise but are too dangerous to express in response to the disease of addiction. This is as much of a control strategy as enmeshment. It just looks different, more like a bunch of closely related people all in thick rubber suits with slits for the eyes. They don't talk, feel, hear, touch (just brush up against each other if necessary)—and can barely see. But they all feel safe as they go about the business of living together.
People caught up in estranged systems divorce their hearts.
Either way you sob inside.
This is life as apocalypse now. It’s like living life in a mine field with no time or energy for anything but constant watchfulness and mental, emotional and physical tension.
In this play each daughter copes, taking on a role in order to control the chaos. The oldest is the “hero” who tries to achieve some respectability for the whole by doing it right, if not perfectly. The middle daughter is the “clown,” trying to control by distracting attention from the pain, and the youngest daughter is the “lost child” who controls by being passive and self-denying, believing that her quietism alone will control the raucus “caucus.” All roles fail to achieve the desired end.
The central characters (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws) are drawn and rendered with tenderness not sentimentality and a fierce attentiveness to the irony and humor of the situation. But somehow they all care about each other. And in the end their individuality breaks through the armor of the adopted role. Who cares if their choices are functional? Who cares about the outcome at this point? Truth is revealed. They leave one by one.
All this unfolds because of an excellent script, exceptionally gifted actors and an unexpected twist in the parental dynamic that bring both death and new life.
Estelle Parsons plays the “villain” no less trapped in the system than the others but rising above it in spite of her drug-induced haze by telling the truth with a scalpel for a tongue and no compassion. Yet we witness a transformation here too although she ends up as tragedy would have it abandoned, sick, and as wounded as the rest with less chance of escape.
I found redemption, something I think all great art must have, not only in the characters' individual triumphs but in the final collapse of the matriarch who stumbles upstairs to seek refuge in the arms of the outsider, the family housekeeper, the one who stays for the most part outside the melee and so is able to cradle the pathetic matriarch and croon a lullaby.
For those of us who grew up in families like the dysfunctional/addictive one portrayed in the play it was a life review, an opportunity to view from a distance the way we were—and for some still are.
For me it was a panoramic view on a small stage. It brought tears, laughter, honest empathy and hardy applause for the resilience of all the characters who, in spite of being almost destroyed by the ravages of addiction, forge, each in their own way and according to their own personality, a path to freedom— or at least to another chance at freedom giving life.
But this play, written by Tracy Letts, is a classic tragedy showing as much appreciation for the vulnerability of human life as the classic Greek tragedians did. The matriarch takes pills; the patriarch drinks, but the tragic hero is the whole family (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws.) The tragic flaw is lack of boundaries. The individual is subsumed into the chaotic death-dealing dynamic of a system in which the power of the whole nearly obliterates the parts. In family therapy this is called enmeshment. I call it the sprout family (can’t pick up one without picking them all up.)
People caught up in an enmeshed system divorce their minds.
The opposite of enmeshment is estrangement, a way some systems develop to control the many threatening feelings (anger, guilt, fear, sorrow) that naturally arise but are too dangerous to express in response to the disease of addiction. This is as much of a control strategy as enmeshment. It just looks different, more like a bunch of closely related people all in thick rubber suits with slits for the eyes. They don't talk, feel, hear, touch (just brush up against each other if necessary)—and can barely see. But they all feel safe as they go about the business of living together.
People caught up in estranged systems divorce their hearts.
Either way you sob inside.
This is life as apocalypse now. It’s like living life in a mine field with no time or energy for anything but constant watchfulness and mental, emotional and physical tension.
In this play each daughter copes, taking on a role in order to control the chaos. The oldest is the “hero” who tries to achieve some respectability for the whole by doing it right, if not perfectly. The middle daughter is the “clown,” trying to control by distracting attention from the pain, and the youngest daughter is the “lost child” who controls by being passive and self-denying, believing that her quietism alone will control the raucus “caucus.” All roles fail to achieve the desired end.
The central characters (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws) are drawn and rendered with tenderness not sentimentality and a fierce attentiveness to the irony and humor of the situation. But somehow they all care about each other. And in the end their individuality breaks through the armor of the adopted role. Who cares if their choices are functional? Who cares about the outcome at this point? Truth is revealed. They leave one by one.
All this unfolds because of an excellent script, exceptionally gifted actors and an unexpected twist in the parental dynamic that bring both death and new life.
Estelle Parsons plays the “villain” no less trapped in the system than the others but rising above it in spite of her drug-induced haze by telling the truth with a scalpel for a tongue and no compassion. Yet we witness a transformation here too although she ends up as tragedy would have it abandoned, sick, and as wounded as the rest with less chance of escape.
I found redemption, something I think all great art must have, not only in the characters' individual triumphs but in the final collapse of the matriarch who stumbles upstairs to seek refuge in the arms of the outsider, the family housekeeper, the one who stays for the most part outside the melee and so is able to cradle the pathetic matriarch and croon a lullaby.
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