Category Archives: Caring across differences
Can We Love All?
Congressman John Lewis (1940–2020) describes his Christian faith as the foundation of his commitment to nonviolence:
I believe in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. I accepted it not simply as a technique or as a tactic, but as a way of life, a way of living. We have to arrive at the point, as believers in the Christian faith, that in every human being there is a spark of divinity. Every human personality is something sacred, something special. We don’t have a right, as another person or as a nation, to destroy that spark of divinity, that spark of humanity, that is made and created in the image of God.
I saw Sheriff Clark in Selma, or Bull Connor in Birmingham, or George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, as victims of the system. We were not out to destroy these men. We were out to destroy a vicious and evil system. [1]
Theologian Walter Wink (1935–2012) recalls a tense moment in Selma in which a reminder to love their enemies shocked the conscience of the crowd and forged a nonviolent path forward:
King so imbued this understanding of nonviolence into his followers that it became the ethos of the entire civil rights movement. One evening … the large crowd of black and white activists standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church was electrified by the sudden arrival of a black funeral home operator from Montgomery. He reported that a group of black students demonstrating near the capitol just that afternoon had been surrounded by police on horseback, all escape barred, and cynically commanded to disperse or take the consequences. Then the mounted police waded into the students and beat them at will. Police prevented ambulances from reaching the injured for two hours….
The crowd outside the church seethed with rage. Cries went up, “Let’s march!” Behind us, across the street, stood, rank on rank, the Alabama State Troopers and the local police forces of Sheriff Jim Clark. The situation was explosive. A young black minister stepped to the microphone and said, “It’s time we sang a song.” He opened with the line, “Do you love Martin King?” to which those who knew the song responded, “Certainly, Lord!”… Right through the chain of command of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he went, the crowd each time echoing, warming to the song, “Certainly, certainly, certainly Lord!” Without warning he sang out, “Do you love Jim Clark?”—the Sheriff?! “Cer … certainly, Lord” came the stunned, halting reply. “Do you love Jim Clark?” “Certainly, Lord”—it was stronger this time. “Do you love Jim Clark?” Now the point had sunk in, as surely as Amos’ in chapters 1 and 2: “Certainly, certainly, certainly Lord!”
Rev. James Bevel then took the mike. We are not just fighting for our rights, he said, but for the good of the whole society. “It’s not enough to defeat Jim Clark—do you hear me Jim?—we want you converted. We cannot win by hating our oppressors. We have to love them into changing.”
The Broken Body of Christ
OUCH!
The Power of the Cross
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and purpose.
Christ sends us to proclaim the gospel simply, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
Jesus died and rose for all, but many want a savior who is about power for this world, this life.
The power of the cross is the resurrection, which shows us that this life is not all there is.
The power of the cross is that it is the ultimate expression of unconditional love for us imperfect, unfinished people.
The power of the cross can free us to die to our self-centeredness, our self-righteousness, our false sense of superiority, our judgmental spirit, our delusion of infallibility. These are the mindsets that twist our belief that we belong to the people of God into the blinding sin of pride. The power of the love of God expressed in dying on the cross can free us from our blind spots of pride, so we can become peacemakers.
The Broken Body by Eileen
Reflecting on the Body
You, the hand, I, the foot
Christ, the head, perhaps the heart
Someone else, the hidden part,
I let the scriptures
Flood my mind with images.
Then suddenly one image
Is so harshly real,
I gasp aloud.
I see a person staggering
And stumbling toward me,
Arms flailing, head jerking
Back and forth in spasms,
Body parts all pulling
Different ways.
This then – reality
Christ’s earthly body now.
Forgive us! Eileen
OUCH!
The Dance of Gender Differences
Christianity was created by men, the bible was written by men, religion has been controlled completely until very recently by men. Women and men most often are born with different traits (not always.) God created us different so we would bond across those differences, which working together could make each other and the world a better place. The Working Together in a dance is the goal…..different strengths are needed for different challenges and times. To have balance there needs to be freedom to take turns leading in the dance. The spiritual journey changes us throughout our life. At 87 I’ve recognized how I have changed my view of everything, including God and Jesus and other religions, over my journey. Jesus fleshes out the spiritual journey in a way I personally can learn from, so he’s my “go to” guy. But I figure I will probably still be seeing new aspects of our life journeys on my death bed! No person or religion has all the truth, nothing but the truth, even with the help of God (which would make us equal to God!) Once we recognize that we are all one and that God is Love by any name, we can trust the spirit within. Then we can roll with the changes in this life. It is a school for learning to Love…our own unfinished, so flawed , selves and thus even the enemy who is unfinished like us but in different aspects. We actually NEED each other to help us become whole.
Same Song…Hoping if I Sing it Enough It Will be Heard and Understood
We are born innocent, but unfinished. We are born totally needy. Our spiritual journey is from need to being able to love an other or others more than ourselves. That was the WAY of Jesus. You can see him grow in understanding and in capacity for love in the Scriptures. His potential was to be perfect in love. We are born with different potentials….not necessarily going to be the same or perfect, but just fulfilling our personal potential for love. My experience has been that my last years have been a time of recognizing my journey from need to love and recognizing how slow it has been and that since I’m still here, I must still need to grow in my capacity for loving others more than myself. And the reality is that people who are different from us are harder to love up close than in theory. And they are having the same challenge!
One of the keys to loving is recognizing we didn’t get a choice about our unfinished personality or upbringing and neither did others. We may disagree strongly and work to bring about our view of a better world, but we cannot judge people as stupid or evil., they are playing the hand they were dealt the best they know how and judging them makes it impossible to ever learn how to work together using a balance of our natural inborn strengths..
Old Age Has Its Wisdom, but Younger Generations Start Off with a Lot of What We’ve Learned: We Can All Learn from Each Other
Idealists are in danger of never being satisfied, which in one way is a good thing since we fight to make the world a better place for all, but it plays havoc with marriages. If you are an idealist without an awareness of the down side, listen up! ONLY with a relationship with a power wiser than you (GOD/ALLAH/BUDDHA/ YOUR GREAT-GRANDMOTHER) will you recognize when you are thinking about ‘trading up” that it may mean you will just have to start over (and possibly over and over, etc.) to recognize that you are unrealistic about life and relationships. Believe me, watch for signals of this, in case that higher power is trying to give you a much shorter way to “growing both wiser and more able to love.” The search for the perfect person is futile. There is no such thing, including yourself. Life is a journey with both challenges and grace (if we are open to it) to become the more loving person we were created to be. (This doesn’t mean you put up with abuse.) God is alive and well and still doing the Jesus thing if we are aware of it. That can make a huge difference in the journey to becoming the best (imperfect) person we were created to be.
NEW INSIGHT
Recently my eyes were opened to the reality that someone who is tuned into the journey of grace going on in both their own life and in their generation can know in their forties what it’s taken us in our eighties a lot longer to learn! I may know some things from those years of learning that they don’t, but they are way ahead of where I was at their age. Yes, we may have gained some wisdom on our life’s journey that even a spiritual and wise forty-year-old may not have yet. But they started from a different place than us old guys did. If they were open to wisdom that our generation and some after us has learned, they are wiser at forty than we were and may not be far behind us where we are even now. Listen to them and put what you’ve learned together with what they know. Both ages have a lot to give to each other.
Hospitality of the Heart
Richard Rohr understands justice as loving solidarity with those who suffer:
“We must not separate ourselves from the suffering of the world. When we’re close to those in pain, their need evokes love in us. Very few of us have the largess, the magnanimity to just decide to be loving. Someone has to ask it of us. We have to place ourselves in situations with people who are not like us, outside our systems of success and security, so we can read life from another perspective. The needs we witness will pull us toward love, toward generosity and compassion.
I think the icon of the cross does this on a spiritual level. The bleeding body pulls us into itself and into bleeding humanity, too. I experience this pull when watching the news, witnessing the suffering of people all over the world. I realize much of the broadcast is superficial and even biased, but it takes me out of the protective bubble of my little hermitage where I can live far too peacefully and comfortably. It makes me more aware that right now there is a woman in Syria or Ukraine carrying her baby and running for her life. I must take that in and be in solidarity with her in whatever ways I can, witnessing what she is going through: the anxiety, the pain, the fear. That’s what teaches us how to love. That is the pain we must allow to transform us and inspire us to act somehow.
All of us are called to the work of justice, which will look different for many people. My primary work is to send prayer and love toward those who are hurting. I do believe consciousness is the deepest level of reality. I also use my voice, through my teaching and writing, to awaken others to the reality of suffering and injustice in the world.”
Understanding and Cooperation vs Rejection and Conflict
People are born different from one another. If you have several children, the odds are you recognize how very different we are when we arrive. It’s human to think our own “difference” is best. That’s part of being different, we understand and value our strength more than those that seem the opposite. The reality is that for every strength there is a corresponding weakness. To survive most of us develop minimal skills in our weaker areas. It isn’t easy and if we can, we’ll avoid things that require us to use those skills. Now, at eighty-five, I’ve realized that we are challenged sometime around the fourth quarter of our lives to develop in our weakest area. That requires a temporary loss of our greatest strength and most cherished ways of being, thinking, praying, and relating. It’s so scary that we may dig in and resist this part of the process of becoming whole. It’s a dying to self and it’s part of our spiritual journey.
If you have become aware of the growth and changes in the journey of Jesus, it helps to know that even he went through the challenges of changing his understanding of his mission and even’s God’s love. And he too struggled with it. The times of his journey were compacted, but once you look for it, it’s plain to see and a powerful challenge for us.
Many of Scripture’s dominant characters, even brothers, were obviously different and some let that difference become the root of division and evil.
One of the biggest gaps in understanding, empathy, and appreciation for those different is between theory and possibility people and the world they see and know people. That’s a major challenge in a democracy.
Another gap is between those that respond to life out of logic and those that respond from feeling values. Which is often a classic challenge in marriage.
The theory/logic people have a lot to offer, but their combination tends to exhibit a sense of superiority. A political example was Adlai Stevenson who lost in his run for president. A classic comment about him was, “He looks at people like they are side dishes he didn’t order.”
The theory people live with their noses in books of history and science and often see new ways of understanding them and making improvements. The practical people can take those theories and make them happen. It should be a perfect pairing of gifts differing.
Except it’s like the tower of Babel, because they don’t speak the same language.
Theoretical thinkers never use a one syllable word when they know a five-syllable word for the same thing. To the practical people they may as well be speaking a foreign language. This intimidates instead of communicating. It makes the “let’s just do it” people feel stupid and they shut down and turn off.
The reality is that EVERYONE is ignorant in a million more areas than they are knowledgeable. Ignorance is not stupidity. And book knowledge will never become reality without the people who can make it happen. If we work at it, we can communicate across our different areas of knowledge.
My Architect husband was very visual and practical. He wasn’t a wordsmith or a theory person. He created many very good-looking practical buildings. He spent time in offices asking the workers what would make their work easier and more efficient, in warehouses studying assembly lines, working with different denominations to design churches to suit their worship style. He cared about getting the most legal parking spaces on the lots. He battled to get small Mennonite Schools without electricity safe enough to meet fire codes. He came home from Architectural Symposiums frustrated over the new buzz words. When he wanted to get results from the American Institute of Architecture office, he got me to write the letters because I could speak their language. The “elite” Architects tend to design works of art and speak the jargon that goes with it.
In Architecture, the blueprint communicates the details of the concept to the builder, carpenter, electrician, etc. But when my husband wanted me to appreciate the details of his blueprints, I got headaches. So, I took a class in Blueprint Reading at the local vocational school. I made the best grades in class and did learn to interpret blueprints, but I couldn’t have made the leap to the actual site work. I’m a theory person who lives in my head and barely notices things around me.
When I began to study and then work with the MBTI, my husband appeared to be patiently listening to my long and enthusiastic monologues on personality types. But after several years, when we were asked to give presentations on type together, it turned out that he had been counting ceiling tiles, windows, and square feet while nodding thoughtfully during my expounding.
But, when we were challenged to get it together, we slogged our way through psychological jargon and their realities until he could express our differences with concrete examples. Since his personality type is much more predominant than mine, he was able to communicate effectively with many more people than I was.
Since he and I were the exact opposite to the extreme in every area that the MBTI measures, we made a good laboratory for understanding across the differences. But it wasn’t easy. I think our five children who are very different from one another profited from our differences, but it took understanding the differences for us to recognize that the way we each expressed love was different, so we often weren’t getting the messages.
My degree is in Psychology and I’ve accumulated enough credits in Pastoral Theology to qualify for a job that required a masters in that. My interest from the combination has been on how differences in inborn personality traits effect marriages, teaching and learning style combinations, spirituality, and business management.
Now at eighty-five, I’ve begun to focus on the many ways personality (not intelligence) creates misunderstanding and alienation in politics. I’ve recognized how important it is now that we begin to see our differences as gifts that could be working together, not dividing us.
This topic has become my theme song. The more I consider it, the more important it seems to be for our times.
Control or Love
John Roedel
Me: Hey God. God: Hello, My love. Me: The world is completely out of control. God: I know. It’s such an adventure, right? Me: No! It’s like being on a runaway train! I need to feel like I am in control of my life. God: You want to be in control? Me: Yes! God: You are living on a spinning wet rock of a planet that resides next to a constantly exploding fireball in the middle of an ever-expanding universe that is filled with mysteries beyond your wildest imagination. Me: Um, okay…. God: And on this planet that you are hurtling through the great expanse in – you are coexisting with billions of other people who have free-will and their own experiences that shape their perspectives and beliefs. Me: Yeah…? God: And while all this is going on your soul is residing in a physical body that is such a miracle of delicate engineering that at any given moment could produce its last heartbeat. Me: Right… God: What is it about your existence that you think you have any control of? Me: Um… God: Come on – you know the answer to this. What can you control? Me: How kind I am to people? God: Yep and one other thing. Me: What’s that? God: How kind you are to yourself. Aside from that – most of everything else is a bit outside of your design. Me: That’s a bit terrifying… God: All great adventures are!
***************************************************************************************************************
Eileen Norman
Puts things in perspective, but doesn’t take away the call to learn how to love and to love effectively…..not safely from a distance, but up close and personal where we can’t ignore the nitty gritty that’s hard to love. Loving at a comfortable distance is pretending. Loving requires hearing and understanding others’ reality. It doesn’t change your own, it expands it.
More and more I realize how ignorant every single one of us is. And all put together from Einstein and the rest of us, there is more that we don’t know than our combined understanding about anything from the cosmos to our own mind and body. Nobody knows enough to feel superior. Our ignorance is to the millionth squared more than our knowledge and understanding!
I have learned more about loving from my grandchild with disabilities than anywhere else in my 85 years. And to me loving is the ultimate goal of life. And Jesus grew in understanding that took him from “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” To: “Love your enemy as I have loved you.”
“Pride goes before the fall.” Sadly, it seems we are all having to learn that the hard way.
It’s Not Either/Or. It’s Not Them or Us. It’s We.
The Zealots and the Pharisees
Richard Rohr expands upon the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Third Core Principle: “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Oppositional energy only creates more of the same.”
There seem to be two typical ways to avoid conversion or transformation, two diversionary tactics that we use to avoid holding pain: fight and flight.
“Fight” is what I’ll call the way of Simon the Zealot. It describes people who want to change, fix, control, and reform other people and events. The zealot always looks for the political sinner, the unjust one, the oppressor, the bad person over there. Zealots consider themselves righteous when attacking them (whoever they are at a given time), hating them, even killing them. When they do, they believe they are “doing a holy duty for God” (John 16:2).
Zealots often have good conclusions, but their tactics and motives can be filled with ego, power, control, and the same righteousness they hate in others. They want to do something to avoid holding pain until it transforms them. Such people present Christianity as “a cult of innocence” as opposed to a movement for solidarity.
As long as they are the problem (whoever they are), and we keep our focus on changing them and correcting them, then we can sit in a reasonably comfortable position. But it’s a position that the saints call pax perniciosa, a dangerous and false peace. It feels like peace, but instead is the false peace of avoidance, denial, and projection. The Peace of the Crucified comes from holding the tension.
This brings us to flight, the second diversionary tactic. This is the common path of the “Pharisee,” the uninformed, and the falsely innocent. Such people deny pain altogether and refuse to carry the shadow side of anything in themselves or in their chosen groups. They allow no uncertainty nor ambiguity as they scapegoat and project their own wounded side somewhere else! There will be no problems. It is a form of narcotic, and at times probably necessary to get some people through the day.
Both fight and flight people are subject to hypocrisy, projection, or just plain illusion: “We are right; you are wrong. The world is divided into black and white, and we alone know who is good and who is bad.”
“Resurrected” people are the ones who have found a better way by prayerfully bearing witness against injustice and evil—while also agreeing compassionately to hold their own complicity in that same evil. It is not over there—it is here. It is our problem, not theirs. The Risen Christ, not accidentally, still carries the wounds in his hands and side. The question becomes: How can I know the greater truth, work through the anger, and still be a life-giving presence?
That is the Third Way beyond fight or flight, which in a certain sense includes both. It’s fighting in a new way from a God-centered place within, and fleeing from the quick, egocentric response. Only God can hold such an act together within us.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 