"terror is easier to face than confusion", he said

i’ve been reading the analysis of dick cheney’s speech to the AEI last week. wondering at the horror of the torture committed in afghanistan, abu ghraib and guantanamo. at the attempts to justify it, deny it.

and feeling powerless despair. we call it inhumane. but it was humans who did it. authourised it. legal-eased it. and there seems nothing but silence with which to respond. wordless in the face of images indicting us with just how far we humans will go to prove our might, our power, our authority, our triumph over the will of another. and as we rob the other of their dignity, strip it, beat it, break it, we lose our own…

i think of my infant nephew and feel the conflict of welcoming him into this world. for there is goodness and beauty but there is so much else besides. so many whose lives are marked by sadness, pain, suffering, horror. for whom this place is hell. i see the images of naked men, hooded, taunted by dogs, leashed, bound, and i think of this tiny boy starting out on his journey and wonder at what he will make of this world. wondering at what his life will be for… and if we can only tell him and his sister that we are present to a kingdom of beauty if we look the other way….

i think of the persisting scandal in the british parliament threatening to topple a government and i think of the abuse of so many at the hands of the irish church, of mass rape and mutilation of girls in Africa, which ilke enhanced interrogation appears to threaten no one. i can’t help but wonder that the expenses scandal is but distraction. and matters more to people because it came out of their pocket but does not affect their conscience. it’s perhaps not ethic that drives us but (love of) money. ethic should not be found on a sliding scale but this seems disproportionately scandalous… perhaps we choose our outrage by what we are willing to face. by what we are willing to pay attention to.

and in truth i fear all this is little more than a distraction from other things more personal that are pressing in unexpectedly and rubbing at wounds i thought i’d moved past. i feel the all too familiar claustrophobia setting in and i’ve been struggling not to resort to counting the hours ’til i can run. retreat to safer soil and be away from the triggers currently setting off tiny explosions of grief. it’s not funny how the total degradation of strangers never cuts quite as sharp as the mere slights of others against us. even the words and actions we choose to see as slights, whether intended as such or not. and usually not.

but it feels upsetting to feel oneself regressing and in need of retreat. especially when surrounded by lovely, beautiful people. and then grace comes in and i don’t know what to do with it either. feeling close to the brink, with it all caught up in my chest, trying to mask the twist of feelings keeping me from breathing easy…

i got to be at tuesday group last night. the unexpected chance to see mo and lynn’s soft smiles was balm. we sat and read tobit chapters 3 and 4. tobit and sarah both pray to YHWH to have their lives taken from them, believing it better to be dead than bear the insults of others. both pushed to the brink by scorn and shame. and like them, i pray. in tears. because sometimes tears are the best prayers we have next to silence. i pray perhaps not for death, but for release from shame and anger and hurt.

when i touch the tiny wooden cross at my throat, i think, this is what we do… and i am no different than the rest…

LB

the showing up

this wonderful TED talk by elizabeth gilbert reminded me of so many people i know.

there is a embryonic thought in my mind that this is exactly why we should seek the “authentic”, the “small”… there’s something running through this idea that what might be divine or transcendent is revealed when we are at our most human, not trying to tell of G-D, but tell of ourselves. and in doing so, that which could or might see beyond how we understand the world, that which is outside of us, speaks in, through or around us… is revealed.

in other words, we can err as humans, and if we are willing to let that constant state of error be out in the world, others might see even in our stumbling, the alternative, get a glimpse of what i’m calling at the moment, the G-D’s eye view. i’ve been thinking about tich naht hanh’s phrase that conflict happens because we do not understand one another. perhaps then i am wondering, if i best understand what i call G-D as the unknowable eye or ear or heart which is above or beneath or in the middle of all situations and experiences, outside time and space is that which sees into the heart of all the players and thus understands what causes things and what we all really feel.

if only you could see you through my eyes, with my heart, with my mind, and soul, and i, yours. but we can’t. that’s not the deal we got given as humans.

so our job is maybe, yes, to just keep turning up and tell how we experience life as honestly as we can, and attempt to understand one another. to see in all our erring what it is we have in common. and listen to the other voice that weaves around our ongoing conversation. that which brings both mystery and clarity.

it’s all about best guesses when you don’t have an all seeing eye. to claim otherwise is to claim to be G-D.

LB