Reflections on Facing our Failures and Ignorance.

I have been sharing some of my struggles with facing particular failures to communicate my love.  When I am able to forgive myself for being just a normal flawed human being, I experience a wonderful peace and a moment of sensing the unconditional love of God. This frees me to be real. Matt in our Sunday School class experiences that in his journey through AA. Ever since my conversion at thirty from agnosticism to Jesus as a source of grace for my spiritual journey, I’ve suspected that AA is closer to the early church experience than today’s Christian religions.

I do not agree completely with any denomination, but I may change in my few years left, because it is a spiritual journey with stages of spiritual growth all along the way.  I don’t think anyone dies as a perfect human being, but I think we may make it to our personal best. And personal best probably varies greatly between us. This is why we CANNOT judge, because we don’t KNOW the hand anyone is dealt or how a particular life has affected them. We can be against what they do, but we can not write them off as stupid or evil. They may be smart at practical things, but not have the type of mind it takes to see the big picture, to understand those different from them, or worry about a future they have not yet witnessed. Some people may be very logical and not in touch with their own feelings, so they  unwittingly tramp on ours.  And if we tend to live in feeling mode, we may think they are being intentionally cruel.  Ignorance is not the same as stupidity. And we are all ignorant.

Even those of us that consider ourselves intelligent and have minds that can make connections and visualize possibilities are ignorant. Most of us can not fix car engines or make our own clothes, unless that is what our parents emphasized and taught us.

Our politics are controlled by our personal way of being in the world at birth unless our significant others as children were different from us and remain our mentors. With enough LOVING challenges by those whose love we trust, we CAN change, but it’s part of our personal journey and may only happen late in life.

We can only influence those different from us with enough love that it can overcome their fear of change. That usually takes a one-on-one loving close relationship.

I got scholarships to several prestigious colleges. I chose Rice University for practical reasons. Everyone was on a full scholarship there, but at that time it was predominantly a school for scientists and engineers. I hated it! (Except that there were four boys for every girl, and I had gone to an all-girls high school!) I married out with some poor grades. I returned to college in my thirties, majoring in psychology which had changed a great deal by then, and I graduated summa cum laude.  (God is in the timing.) My actual knowledge is mostly in what I am naturally good at. That is such a tiny percentage of all possible knowledge that my ignorance is humongously greater than my knowledge. This was also true for Einstein!  It’s true for everyone though each generation adds to knowledge. (Not necessarily to wisdom!)

We are all ignorant. Some are considered smart and some intelligent. These are different and we need both. When we consider people stupid and show it and make them feel that way, there is no hope of sharing our different gifts across the gap.

Language is a big part of the problem. And I don’t mean the language of different countries.

I used to argue with my psychology professors about the point of creating/using language that was unique to our field. If psychology was a hope for understanding ourselves and each other, it was counterproductive to make it “technical” and limited to professionals in the field.

One of the kindest, most delightful people I ever knew grew up poor and got pregnant and dropped out of school at 15. She was competent and talented in both practical things and things of visual beauty in life.  But after she joined a small Episcopalian church of intellectuals, she would often be sad, because much of the language used in Sunday School was unfamiliar to her. It made her feel stupid, so she didn’t ask what words meant. Often “intellectuals” speak their own language and consider anyone who doesn’t understand it as “stupid.” This woman was not only NOT stupid, she was a person in touch with her feelings who had been poor growing up and she became the “heart” of that church starting clothing drives for the poor and a church flower garden and often fixing delicious dinners for the whole church.

Some of the “saints‘ among us may not understand our language, won’t benefit from our ability to recognize dangers and the solutions to future problems.

As “intellectuals” we may care about immigrants who don’t speak our language, but not recognize how we are alienating our own people with our versions of everyday English.

Our problems are much more complex than just this issue, but I think this is the one we don’t recognize.