2015.10.11 Go! Set A Watchman

Our world today is in love with pre-everything: pre-order, pre-promote, pre-empt, pre-crastinate ( do today what could wait until tomorrow, or the next day:) , pre-vail, everything but pre-vent. This impulse is geared to satisfy our control needs and also is for our good. It is a bit anxious! Still, we’ve developed a pre-habit: do everything ahead of time and instantly. Is this a wise or thoughtful life strategy? I do it too, and wonder.

Some time ago I read the pre-views of  Harper Lee’s first novel, Go Set a Watchman. This was the book Lee wanted to write, and did in the 1950s. It’s about Jean Louise Finch, a young woman, ablaze with civil rights fervor, whose homecoming to the deep South is bittersweet at best. Lee’s editor told her it would be a better book if she rewrote it to emphasize the child called Scout’s perspective and voice and center the drama on Scout's father, Atticus Finch, who in the 1930s South defended a black man against charges of raping a white woman—and won the hearts of his children and all readers.  The editor was right. Lee wrote a better book, To Kill a Mockingbird, a bestseller still and a film classic.

Lee’s first novel would pale in comparison to Mockingbird, so it was laid to rest. You see, no one ever wanted Scout to grow up. And no one ever wanted her Daddy, Atticus Finch, to be anything but a hero who looked like Gregory Peck and did not let racial prejudice get in the way of his legal responsibility—or his parenting.  (Atticus and Scout in the movie)

 
When Watchman came out in 2015, having been discovered by a friend of the 88-year-old Harper Lee, a scurry of negative commentary burst forth. Many critics thought that Lee had been duped by a greedy publisher to publish an inferior book just for money. Nothing could ever live up to Mockingbird. But I wondered. Harper Lee, after all, thought Watchman “a pretty decent effort.”  Harper Lee wrote both books.

I re-read Mockingbird and snatched up Watchman. I was looking for Scout and Atticus, Maycomb County, Calpurnia, and all the sweet feelings I remembered from Mockingbird. I was also looking for Scout as Jean Louise Finch at twenty-six and her father Atticus as an aging white southern gentleman.

Initially, the title caught my attention. It is biblical. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah (21:6) wrote an oracle, pronouncing judgment on Babylon, Israel’s captor. The prophet was told by the Lord: “Go, set a watchman, let him announce what he sees.” The watcher saw signs of Babylon's destruction and hope for an end to the suffering of Israel in captivity and exile. (Historically, Babylon, ancient superpower, fell in 539 BCE.) No good will come of all this enmity by which people suffer—says the Lord.

When Jean Louise Finch returned to her “sweet home Alabama” from New York City, her eyes were opened in the way emergent adulthood permits. “I need a watchman to lead me around and declare what he seeth every hour on the hour .  .  .  to tell me that this is what a man says and this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference, I need a watchman to go forth and proclaim to them all that twenty-six years is too long to play a joke on anybody, no matter how funny it is.” (p. 222)

I liked Watchman as much as I liked Mockingbird. I disagree with critics who have declared that the beloved image of Atticus Finch suddenly turned racist and bigoted. One angry reader even wrote, “Harper Lee, WTF?” Idols do smash. A good friend and writer wouldn’t read Watchman fearing it would kill Mockingbird’s charm—and her joy. I told her Atticus and Scout were still there—alive and well and true— in Watchman where they originated.

Atticus was present as the mannered southern gentleman with the measured demeanor he always was, living in the context that formed him. He was not racist. Racism involves emotions and awareness. He simply lived in a clearly structured culture he did not think was wrong, simply real. He defended a Negro because he knew that man was innocent. (Incidentally and by comparison, the drama of the trial which was so prominent in Mockingbird was passingly mentioned in Watchman.) Still, in both Atticus did not bow to cultural prejudices of his time, but kept his integrity as an attorney. His young daughter loved his courage—and learned from it.

And Scout was present with the same audacity she had as a child and in many hilarious scenes from her adolescent years. Imagine concocting a detailed plan for suicide over an imagined teen pregnancy for which death was the only logical punishment! Then darn near carrying it out.

Atticus and Jean Louise Finch battled out their differences, just as a father and daughter (or son) do when they experience growing up and being apart and then struggling to get back together again. Jean Louise was furious, precisely and ironically, because her father had NOT told her the “truth”: that whites were superior. And now she didn’t fit in at all. Why had he not married again, a “nice dim-witted Southern lady who would have raised me right.” Atticus, “desperately trying,” defended his position as a  Jeffersonian Democrat against his daughter’s newly-minted civil rights activism. 

Jean Louise defended her politics as fiercely as I did, once I discovered them and realized that my father couldn’t stomach FDR and Democrats, scorned those Catholic bishops who dressed in red dresses like satan, and had never even heard of my then hero, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, theologian and medical missionary in Africa. Scandal! I wanted Dad to be the way I’d set him up to be in my adoring child-heart. I don’t think I ever called him a son of a bitch, as Jean Louise called Atticus, but then I wasn’t writing a novel. Nor would my father have said, “That’ll be enough,” as Atticus did. Both fathers would say, and did, “Well, I love you.” Both daughters would come round to it.

To kill a mockingbird is a sin, because all they do is sing their hearts out, making music for us all day long. Watchers? They guide you waking and guard you sleeping—like a maturing conscience, or God.

2015.10.04 Go With the Flow—Or Against it.

Have you ever been scorned for going against the flow, doing or saying something different from the ways things are going or the way everyone else is behaving? I’m sure most of us have had such an experience.

Yesterday we attended a workshop: Now and At The Hour Of Our Death: Medical Decision Making At The End Of Life. It was led by Episcopal Deacon, Daphne Noyes, and Christine Gryglik, R.N.  I am grateful for the huge packet of resources I came away with. Death is no easy project! There’s lots to do to make sure your dying is, well, sort of in control.

More deeply I’m grateful to feel accompanied by a laughing and loving faith community, all of whom will die. Me too. Just to know you’re not alone is enough to face death with dignity and carry no assumptions about anything,  no matter how many plans you make………..  Oh yes.

When we left I felt disgruntled and irritated and as if I already knew and had done most of this stuff— all sure signs that I was plain scared and pretending not to be. Denial in tow, however, we headed straight to CVS to get flu shots and updates on the latest pneumonia vaccine. It helped. I even wanted a lolly pop to reward my bold effort to grab life for all its worth, which is considerable.

Thanks to the science of physics, about which I know very little,  I know that occasionally something completely random and unpredictable happens to make the word “inevitable” near obsolete.  It make us sit up and take notice. It is when a whirlwind suddenly gets whirled in a new direction—a brief moment when things do swirl back against the flow.

Current popular wisdom consistently advises: Go WITH the flow. I’m lousy at that. I wonder if God makes counter swirls?

The teenager’s room won’t pick itself up, so you do it yourself, out of despairing smoldering rage. It takes less energy than nagging without results. Same thing applies to trying to get someone to stop destroying their life with an addiction. A counter swirl happens when the teen does it herself, without complaint, without being asked and then keeps on doing it week after week. It happens when the addict chooses abstinence, from whatever the substance or behavior of choice is, and can’t tell you precisely how that choice was made. Usually they can cite numbers of factors, none of them governing the exact moment of turning against the expected flow.

Some people call such Mystery moments the grace of God, or a miracle. That’s what my mother called my birth after three miscarriages. I went with the God part and rejected miracle status.

Such events seem to reverse the law of physics which says that energy ever seeks lower levels flowing from more ordered states to disorder, dispersing over time. It’s called entropy and comes form the Greek en (inside) + trope (transformation).

Transformation, ironically, is a powerful and positive word in the field of theology. In the Bible, and other religious scriptures, God is seen as a creative force, a restorer of order, a reverser of entropy from within chaos, often not in ways we can predict. The Christian idea of Resurrection, the transformation of death into new life, is one such example. I rather like it.

Inner transformation, change of heart, is what faithful people seek and pray for, as in the transformation of the inner chaos of addictive disease, mental illness, climate change, patterns of social violence such as we are experiencing right now in America with arbitrary gun violence and deaths of innocent citizens in the absence of laws that would regulate gun purchase and restrict gun use to hunting and sport. Faithful people pray AND write their congressional representatives asking them to craft such legislation.

Things are spinning out of control. Who will dare to initiate a counter spin? Who will dare to spin the current political paralysis in a new direction?  Who will defiantly thrive? It will take sacrifice.

Think of the image of a whirlwind. Meteorologically, a whirlwind is a complex chaotic system suggesting not pure chaos but rather the turbulent emergence of complexity at the edge of chaos. 

Now think of the story of Job in the Bible. It is a story of Job's suffering, supposedly at the hand of God, but clearly having nothing to do with the sufferer’s integrity, faith or character. Job begs God for answers about his suffering and gets none. He spins in a unidirectional whirlwind of moral, spiritual, emotional, and physical pain—unconsoled and with no answers about his plight and God’s refusal to address his grievance.

And yet………..Job does get something. He gets a strong vision and very strong spiritual experience of the divine presence which speaks to him right out of a whirlwind. In his vision, God escorts Job throughout all Creation, wonder by stunning wonder. Job is awestruck, both by the breadth of the vision, by how little he knows, and by the intimacy of the divine Presence at his side. Job is spun in a new direction and is invited to go on with his life in spite of all his losses. To put it in a mundane way, Job gets an entirely new perspective on life and is freed from his OCD panic. We do not know how or why, just what.

Job’s story is symbolic, yet it is so true to most earthly experience that it feels literal, historic. Job’s story is not just about suffering. It tells us, as does Jesus’s story, that there is a God who speaks out of whirlwinds and makes counter swirls.   

Oh Godde, I know you don’t dole out death and illness, but I’m putting in my request anyway for more good years of life—specifically I want my eyesight, most of my hearing, and most of my mind—oh and my fingers to type with.  Intervene with a counter swirl if  you want to. Thanks for listening. Amen.

2015.09.27 Papal Voice in Congress

I swear, a little pinwheel popped up spinning from the small white invisible zucchetto on my impious one-time Presbyterian head when I heard the unitive words Pope Francis spoke to our country and our Congress.

We in religions, and we in all other fields of endeavor, so need the voice of a big fat old religious visionary with an impish grin and a conspiratorial wink who advocates the Golden Rule as the chief guideline for church and world politics. The pope's words were unquestionably grounded in humanitarian-spiritual values which sustain viable life on earth: peace, justice, love, generosity, hospitality, respect, open-hearted mutuality, discernment, wisdom—and Love. His actions, ie. dining with the homeless, rather than attending the elegant banquet in his honor, followed his words. with action.

Pope Francis I addressed the assembled U.S. Congress on Thursday September 24th. He began by expressing his thanks and his joy at being in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” He ended with: "God Bless America!" I was all ears, all heart in hope—hooked. This was the first time ever a pope has addressed our government assembled, and, thanks to 21st century sophisticated communications, the word got out!  He stood out, all dressed in white as he was. The sight was almost laughably symbolic. Seeing and listening brought back to me my old Catholic yearnings.

When I was a teen I set out to explore religion, curious to see if there was anything more out there besides skyscraper pulpits with men in them—preaching and praying as if they owned the whole spiritual territory. Okay, I know it was in the 50s, but I was restless with the status quo, believed firmly in a God who cared for me and everyone everywhere, and felt sure my behind would atrophy from sitting in a hard wooden pew every week—receiving, receiving and receiving—words, words, words. Even Holy Communion was passed out to us as we sat in the pew. God made me a body, a body I longed to move!

Looking for movement of some kind I went to a Catholic Mass. Behold! People moved their bodies—stand, bow, bend one knee, kneel, move their arms swiftly across their bodies more times than I could count, walk up the aisle to get bread popped into their open mouths. The only thing these RC’s didn’t do was participate orally in what was going on, because it was in a language only the priest knew. (Still, many of them murmured their own Mass prayers, using strings of beads to guide the process.)  This worship was still passive/receptive, but at least they moved!  AND they worshiped a woman named Mary who stood up front— in a statue and bad art but clearly female. 

The Catholics had stuff I wanted, stuff that involved my body, which I had learned was important because Jesus Christ had one. I took instructions to become Roman Catholic and found out they also had all the answers, which I deemed baloney. I uncovered some basic rules I knew would imprison my bodily freedom more than any of those awful girdles we used to wear.

In order to breathe, move my body in worship, keep asking questions, and, in time, be ordained priest, I joined the Episcopal Church. It had all the embodiment I needed, as well as hope for women to be up front as flesh and blood, not just as immobile, obedient, holy statues. I’ve happily been an Episcopalian for 55 years and an Episcopal priest for 27 years. I can breathe, speak, and question without fear, thanks to its flexible authority system. It gives my spirituality sanctuary.

RC’s do not have a flexible authority system, yet I heard this pope, definitely RC, calling for us to engage in dialogue, pray, and wonder out loud together about new approaches to life-threatening problems, such as poverty, climate change, unequal distribution of wealth, unfettered capitalism, territorial possessiveness, and paralyzing political polarization. His language was not harsh. He did not come to chastise, but to bless and to encourage. You can do better; you can be better when you accord your neighbor the same dignity, treatment, and respect you would like for yourself. 

Just the other day our dear Jewish neighbor said: “Look, all those little flowers are growing up right through the brick and concrete of your stoop. I know it’s because holy people live here.” (She was referring to me and my husband, both Episcopal priests.)

I said, “All people are holy.”  That conviction comes from my own early spiritual experience and from what the Episcopal Church/ Anglo-Catholicism gave me: a sacramental theology by which I know that all the created order is in the image of God and reflects divinity.

She retorted: “Lots of people don’t seem holy to me.”

“Well, often it’s thickly disguised!”  We LOL’ed, as they say. 

I haven’t forgotten my wannabe Catholic phase. With this pope’s presence and unitive message and style, his soft tone, authentic feelings, especially about suffering and children, and the bipartisan language he used, I felt it again—not the impulse to become Roman Catholic, but to know again the basic unity underlying all Creation, the goodness intended for us all, the common good of all living things for which we work and pray together, the true meaning of catholicity.

There are many reviews of the Pope’s speech and many have noticed he is not exactly offering to alter teachings that continue to imprison women’s bodies— and souls. Nor does he speak much about the abuse scandal. Yet and still, his approach values dialogue and open-mindedness, and non-dual thinking. There is no righteous over against unrighteous, immigrant and non-immigrant—no polarization of such moral values into absolute closed categories. Life is more fluid than that, and life requires room for transformation at all levels. I think this Pope is laying some groundwork for such transformation even in his own religion.

Applause went back and forth on both sides of the Congress. Imagine bipartisan applause in this Congress, and for the same speaker!  Who could argue with the Golden Rule?  There is a reason why it is called golden. It has the highest value—spiritual not monetary, please—and it's multi-faith.

But the Pope’s visit was more than just a prophetic analysis of the United States or a call to action, it was symbolic. The papal office carries heft, both historically and morally. The visit tells a new story. It means we must listen up. What I heard is that how we treat each other matters more than anything else. Are we decent? Do we listen with care to ourselves and to others? Do we resent our neighbors, near and far? Do we hoard wealth? Do we act from fear more often than from compassion? Do we listen to our own and others' stories? Because every individual has a story which matters intimately to him or her, and each story is a building block in the common good.

Author Brian Doyle writes: "I don't have any words that carry real weight. All I can do is tell you about it and somehow that's a prayer too, you know what I mean? Every story matters more than we know, or we ever will know—but at least we know that."

It was a nice coincidence, if such it was, that the Pope addressed the U.S. Congress the day after the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur.  Yom Kippur is the end day of a time devoted to teshuva: self-examination, turning around, an effort to  realign your self with God. The Word, according to the Hebrew Bible's Deuteronomy, is not up in the heavens or out over the sea, but very close to you, "in your mouth and in your heart to do it." 

To quote Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who blogs as The Velveteen Rabbi: “Without change, there is stasis, and stasis is death. Yom Kippur comes to remind us that our habits of body, heart, mind, and soul become calcified and constricting. That each year we miss the mark in our habitual ways, and each year we have the opportunity to break free from those habits and become someone new.”

Jews can become immobilized by the need to have a better past, the Rabbi writes. I wonder if we Americans struggle with the need always to have a better future?  And I wonder if all religions struggle with the need to be divine favorites, the best way, the only true path? All such needs can be compulsive and constrictive—girdles again!

The Pope praised the American capacity to dream bold dreams—a gift. We have been successful with many dreams, but have we turned our successes away from hopes and dreams and into an ethic of domination, an identity of privilege, and overweening pride of place?

Should we desire to change, do teshuva, we can. After all, we have a papal blessing. 

2015.09.20 Introverts In An Extroverted Culture

You might find us in corners of large rooms at huge social events or cocktail parties. We huddle together and talk with one or two others as if no one else was there, which is what we wish. 

Some people think we introverts are snobs, or antisocial. We’re not, though we may be shy. I can be shy, somber, silent and serious—as well as humorous and impish. My mother, the extrovert, called me “sourpuss”. She was right. I thought of her as trivial, exaggeratedly fluffy, phony, and wearing one of those smiley faces—all the time. We didn’t always get along.  See what I mean?

 


Nevertheless, the world is full of introverted types—about half of us as a matter of fact.

Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, defined us as types/temperaments who derive basic life energy from within. Extroverts get energy from interaction with people, lots of them—too many for me! Introverts like connection, which is not the same as interaction. We aren’t too noisy about things. We love deeply, have big hearts, and good humor, and, contrary to appearances, we love people, just not too many at once. Often we are smart, even wise. Not all of us are monastics, although the best things happen in our hearts and minds when we are in our “cells”— silent and in solitude. We love silent retreats.

Some fish actually do know when it's overcrowded. We jump back and forth, in and out.

Unfortunately, American culture is one in which forced extroversion is the ideal. Being outgoing and super-extroverted is the way to be popular, to get jobs, get into colleges, collect friends, be successful, get ordained. The more people around, the better it is for extroverts. (Though I’ve learned to manage, coffee hour after church is my least favorite time—except for the cupcakes if they’re there:)  

The book Quiet by Susan Cain details a full picture and deep understanding of introversion, its wonders and its difficulties, both socially and individually. She tells stories, including her own, of how hard it can be to try to keep up among the effervescent, sunny and buoyant. Dale Carnegie was an introvert who designed his courses to help himself and other introverts navigate the social scene. Such an introverted thing to do, and make money on it, too. There are many more stories like his in this fine book. Even better........Karl Jung said that, although introverts will essentially always be introverts, as we age we pick up more qualities of extroversion. So I'm a blend now.

The same is true for extroverts. That's why my dearly beloved husband tells me to stop talking so much and leave him alone with his meditations.  OMG...Love conquers all differences.

 

Hi Dad. You were 104 on your August 25th birthday. Happy Birthday, Dad. I think you were an introvert and I wish you were still alive. 

Mahatma Gandhi, one of the world’s greatest agents for liberation and spiritual transformation on a large scale, was an introvert—politician no less. He wrote this manifesto.

MANIFESTO FOR INTROVERTS

There’s a word for “people who are in their heads to much”: thinkers.

Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.

The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.

Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later.

But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.

One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.

It’s OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.

“Quiet leadership” is not an oxymoron.

Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”?