Marilyn Sewell tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2008-04-02://2 2009-07-02T02:03:50Z Movable Type 4.1 Don't Cry for Me, Argentina! tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.126 2009-07-02T00:30:20Z 2009-07-02T02:03:50Z Marilyn Sewell South Carolina doesn't know what to do with its governor.  Gov. Mark Sanford disappeared into the ether for several days, and apparently no one--not his staff and not his family--knew where he was.  When queried, his staff said that he "was hiking the Appalachian Trail."  When he finally appeared, he admitted that he had been in Argentina visiting his mistress, Maria Belen Capur. 

Since then he has made a number of puzzling statements.  He has said, variously, that

--his Argentine mistress is his "soul mate."

--he wants to patch up his marriage.

--Christian friends have advised him, concerning Capur, "the first step is, you shoot her.  You put a bullet through her head."  (Apparently he didn't quote them literally.)

--he has in the past asked permission from his wife, Jenny, to visit Chapur.

--he has had dalliances with other women, but never had sex with them.

--he wants to continue to be governor.

Many of the leading S.C. Republicans and at least 6 newspapers are calling for his resignation.  But there is no law in the state that would require a governor to stand down unless the governor is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."  The state constitution says nothing about resigning if you find your "soul mate" and fall off the deep end. 

So what happened to Sanford, and what should he do?  Let me take a crack at it.

Gov. Sanford was interviewed by Stephen Colbert, who called him "the most boring man I've ever met."  Now Stephen must have met lots of really boring people, so this statement is interesting.  What makes people boring?  (Because no person who is genuinely alive to the world is boring.)  Well, as my gestalt therapist/trainer used to say, "Boredom is keeping the lid on."  I think Sanford his been doing just that.

So I want to suggest that perhaps the scenario went something like this.  Sanford has for years been going to meetings where people pose and posture.  He withdraws from this.  He has seen lobbyists wheel and deal, and big money win the day most of the time.  He grows cynical.  He and his wife--well, she has been involved with the children.  Perhaps she and Mark have grown apart during the years he has been in public office.  Maybe they no longer make love, or have any erotic connection.  Maybe what they have is an arrangement, a practical arrangement, but not a speck of passion.  So he withdraws from her, as well.  He has four sons--they don't know him well, for he isn't home much.  He begins to feel that his life has no integrity, no meaning.  Everything seems flat and tasteless.  He endures this condition for months, then years.  He thinks he will never be vital and alive again, as he once was. There was a time when he had dreams, when life seemed full of possibility, but now he plods ahead, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, day after day.

Then Mark Sanford meets Chapur.  They have a few drinks.  She smiles.  She listens.  She touches his hand.  Both his body and his emotions respond, and he is swept into a new world, a world where the flesh is tied to spirit, and he feels regenerated.  The life force that he thought was gone forever has returned, in spades.  He knows only that he has to be with Chapur.  Nothing else matters. 

He is married, he has children.  So he knows he shouldn't have sex with Chapur.  And at first he doesn't.  And then he does.  The strange thing is, it's not the sex so much that matters.  It's the woman.  She is his life now.  He continues to see her, because he must. 

But wait a minute!  Each time he leaves Chapur in Argentina or in New York, where she flies to be with him, and returns to South Carolina, he enters the Old World again, the world of the Dead.  He knows what is required.  He goes through the motions.  But his colleagues find him distracted, unfocused.  His aides shepherd him through, but he is increasingly ineffective as a leader.  Colbert finds him truly boring.  He is actually not there at all during the interview.  He is in Argentina. 

So what is he to do? I think he should choose life.  I'm not sure if Chapur is that new life, or just represents it, but he has been dead, and he has a taste of what it means to be alive, and he should follow that leading.  Relationships cannot stay the same when any one of the couple changes--so his wife may change, or they may decide to part.  If they part, it is important that the four sons have both a mother and a father in their lives.  But giving them a father who is dead to the world is not giving them a father at all.  If he does not love their mother, the children will know it even before the parents themselves know it, so exquisitely tuned are they to the emotional life of the household. 

Right now Sanford is torn and confused.  He has to choose.  He may think that his choice is between two women, but this is not the case.  His choice is life, or not-life.  He can be governor--that is, he is able to govern, however poorly.  The question is whether or not he really wants to be governor.  Does this job lead to more life, and that more abundant, as the scripture says?  Or is it cutting off his life and killing his spirit? 

So the choice is not between women, or countries, or jobs, really.  The choice is what gives life and what diminishes it.  Only Mark Sanford knows.  I hope he chooses well.   


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]]> Let Us Notice tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.125 2009-06-23T23:25:41Z 2009-06-24T00:29:32Z Marilyn Sewell Everybody's hurting--economically, I mean.  Or at least, they think they are.  Rich people, poor people, and all the people in between.  And cities and states are slashing their budgets drastically, as well.  But let's stop kidding ourselves: who is really taking the hit?  It's, as per usual, the most vulnerable in our society.  The cuts come in education and in services to poor people.  Health care for indigent families gets sliced, and college loans for young people who want to better themselves.

I read in the newspaper that in tight times, the call for cosmetic surgery is down.  It appears that 25 percent fewer people since 2007 want to have their fat siphoned off with liposuction.  Twenty-one percent fewer want their stomachs "tucked."  Breast augmentation is still, well, relatively big, with a loss of only 11 percent. 

So one woman is complaining because she can't really afford that blepharoplasty (that would be "eyelid surgery") this year, while another woman is wondering how she's going to feed her children that evening, if she pays the electric bill. 

Imagine this: a group of people are on a luxury liner cruising the ocean, and they suddenly see a small craft, sinking in rough water, the family on board calling for help.  Would the liner just cruise past, with the passengers complaining about the minor jostling of the rough sea--or would they do everything possible to save the family?

Or suppose a well-to-do family went on a picnic, and on their grassy path, they came upon children who had not eaten all that day and who were asking for food.  Would not they open their bulging picnic basket and share their food with these children?

Sometimes I think those of us who have plenty simply suffer from lack of imagination.  We somehow have the idea that we deserve what we have.  Who deserves anything at all?  We live through grace and the work of many others.  Or another way of looking at it--who does not deserve?  Who does not deserve food and shelter?  Which human beings do not deserve this?

People say, "I work hard!"  I say I know people who work twice as hard and don't make enough to live on.  People say, "Poor people are just lazy," and I think of the young Hispanic man who is busing their table at the restaurant, or the maid from Puerto Rico who is cleaning their toilet in the hotel, and who will take the bus home late at night to a small rented house where eight others live. 

Perhaps compassion comes down to nothing more than specifics.  Numbers, statistics--how boring!  So let us leave the abstract and be present with the real.  Let us notice the hole in the shoe, the fly on the wound, the limp in the walk, the shout in the night.  Let us notice, and care.

 


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]]> You Can't Go Home Again tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.124 2009-06-18T04:23:06Z 2009-06-18T06:01:46Z Marilyn Sewell This past week I spent several days in Homer, the little N. Louisiana town where I grew up.  I went there to attend my 50th high school reunion, and once I got used to the idea that I actually graduated that long ago, I began looking forward to the event.

Almost as soon as I arrived at the afternoon gathering which opened the festivities, I learned that 11 of my 48 classmates were dead, 2 from suicide.  Then I talked with another classmate to whom I was particularly close, and I asked about his older brother.  He spoke in hushed tones: "Oh, he's been dead for 30 years.  He killed himself."  Welcome to Reality Reunion.  I wondered if this percentage of losses was normal, or if we were particularly prone to death--at least the men in our class, for 10 of the deceased were men.

My classmates were grown-ups.  They were (mostly) not playing games or being shy or competing.  They were just who they are, and glad to be there with one another.  The beauty queens were still pretty, if a bit thicker at the waist.  Some of us nerds had blossomed into more attractive adults.  People mainly had stayed married, many to hometown friends.  One woman I knew well had had a stroke and needed to remain seated.  Another who had been my college roommate had had a double mastectomy and had almost died a couple of years ago from a blood clot racing to her heart.  The top student in our class looked great--he had become a doctor, board certified in two specialties.  But his wife barely made it to the reunion.  She was suffering from a neurological disease which almost killed her last year, he said.  She looked pale and drawn.  He reminded me that in high school he and I "had been competitive."

Maybe we had.  I didn't remember it that way.  And now, what did it matter?  My classmates and I laughed and talked, lost in memories,  There was nostalgia and real joy, and yet all the talk seemed somehow laced with a nervous hum.  We were all standing on the edge of time, and we knew it.

The slights were recalled: the time I was left out of the pallet party, the way I always sat on the end when our group went to the movie, the fact that I never, never had a date, not even to the prom.  It didn't matter.  Many dreams had been dashed, mine and theirs, sooner or later.  We had all suffered, and we would all suffer still more.  And each of us would die.  We had each had our little triumphs, our moments of joy.  Each had taken a.different path, some more exalted than others, and yet each had in common, this keen sense of mortality. We came together for this brief time, we touched, and all was forgiven. 

So you can't go home again.  There's no margin in doing so, for that home is frozen in time, is merely memory, and no longer exists, as soon as you step out of that page of your life.  You bring this new self, your changed self, back into that remembered time, and you smile.  You wish you had known then what you know now: we're all afraid that we're not enough.  In those trying high school years, each of us needed a little bit of kindness, some affirmation.  We still do.  It's never too late.       


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]]> Speak the Truth, in Love tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.123 2009-06-09T16:28:54Z 2009-06-09T20:36:37Z Marilyn Sewell In institutional affairs, as well as in affairs of the heart, we do well to "speak the truth, in love."  This promise was part of the covenant which ministers typically make when they are installed in a church.  It is not an easy covenant to keep.  Leaders of all kinds of institutions tend to think that fudging the truth from time to time will keep the institution stable and whole; they tend to believe that transparency is just threatening.  Well, truth-telling is messy, yes, but necessary--necessary for the integrity of an institution, and necessary for its long-term viability and strength. And it must be done in love.  That's the clincher. 

Romantic partners also tend to shy away from truth-telling.  We will hold back our true feelings, even deny these feelings altogether, in the name of holding onto the "togetherness"--or at least the peace of the household.  But this denial of our own emotional reality never works.  As one friend once reminded me, "The unconscious always wins."  So we push those hurt feelings under, over and over again, and then all of a sudden we lash out--or worse than that, we just decide we don't want to be with this person any longer.  We may not even know why.  For some reason, we just don't like ourselves when we are with this partner. 

In affairs of state, the same principle holds: speak the truth, with respect and compassion.  President Obama beautifully illustrated how this might be done in his speech in Cairo, on June 4.  In a world in which posing and posturing are the order of the day, resulting in seemingly endless hostilities and shameful human loss, Obama simply said: "So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity.  This cycle of suspicion and discord must end. I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world . . . ."

Obama doesn't skirt the specifics: the Arab world heard about extremism, about nuclear arms programs, about a poor record in human rights.  On the other hand, Obama spoke with equal passion about the suffering of the Palestinians due to the Israeli occupation, about the injustice of Israeli settlements in the occupied territory.  He quoted from the Holy Koran (a holy scripture rarely heard by U.S. citizens): "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth."  He went on to say that he will try "to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us . . . ."

Obama is showing the world--and most especially his own country--what leadership is all about.  He may not be able to heal the ages-old rift between Palestinians and Jews--which after all, goes back all the way to Jacob and Esau--but the truth of his words moved people all over the world, ordinary people who understand on a very viseral level that violence multiplies upon itself and that peace makes possible lives of hope and prosperity, for us and for our children and for our children's children.

Courage is required to speak the truth, whether it's in regard to institutions, or intimate relationships, or foreign affairs.  There are always those who are ready to condemn, or to take advantage of any weakness shown.  But the fact is that there is health in the truth, and people are drawn to health when it is given as an alternative.  Honesty has a way of opening up possibility, because a clean field emerges where previously obfuscation made everything blurry and confusing. 

Yes, truth-telling takes courage, but when it's done for the right reason and when it's done in love, it leads to new life.  Ways open that have been shut.  Dreams that never could be imagined suddenly appear. Nothing seems impossible.


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]]> Slouching Towards Ethics tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.122 2009-06-03T23:45:59Z 2009-06-04T00:50:56Z Students in the current graduating class of M.B.A. students at Harvard are being asked to sign on the dotted line--no, not for a fancy job that will bring in six figures--they are being asked by their peers to sign the... Marilyn Sewell Students in the current graduating class of M.B.A. students at Harvard are being asked to sign on the dotted line--no, not for a fancy job that will bring in six figures--they are being asked by their peers to sign the "M.B.A. Oath," a pledge to act responsibly and ethically and to refrain from advancing their "own narrow ambitions" at the expense of other people.  Seems simple enough.  Doctors have to sign a pledge saying that they will try to heal people.  Judges have to pledge that they will uphold the Constitution.  Ministers promise a variety of things, often including the exceedingly difficult one, "to speak the truth to power."  But only a scant 20% of the Harvard M.B.A. class was willing to sign. 

The headline in the NY Times (5/30, p. B4) reads "A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality," and the writer seems to be impressed that all these young business people are signing such a vow.  I'm wondering about the other 80%--are they not planning to act responsibly and ethically?  Are they planning to advance their own narrow ambitions, in spite of who gets hurt?  If so, could we have the names of the non-signers?  They'll probably be investing our retirement funds in a few short years.

When I read this article, I was reminded of a graduating law student, a member of First Unitarian Church, who told me some years ago that he had asked his fellow graduates to sign a pledge reading: "Before I take any job, I will ask myself whether or not this job contributes to the greater good."  Note that the pledge doesn't ask anyone to refuse a job that doesn't contribute to the good, but merely to "ask myself" the question.  As I remember, seven law students agreed to sign.

So what's going on?  Change is rearing its difficult head, and it's going to take a while before ethical behavior becomes the norm in business, if it ever does.  But this is a new leaning in the right direction.  The norm can shift.  People will become ashamed of shoddy behavior  when enough of their compatriots clearly disapprove of such behavior instead of admiring it, if it makes a buck.

This is not to say that all business people are unethical and money-hungry--not at all.  And when I see a business like Neil Kelly or New Seasons and watch the values they operate by, I take hope for the future.  It's just that they seem to be the exception and not the rule. 

Bruce Kogut, director of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Company Center for Leadership and Ethics, says that students are beginning to think about how they earn their income, not just how much.  (What a concept!)  He says,"They see inequities and the role of business of address them."  I ask you, how could business students at a school this sophisticated not understand the role of business in addressing economic inequities?  Adam Smith understood something about the relationship of capitalism to community and the larger good--don't Harvard M.B.A. students read Smith, like in the first semester of B school?

The fact is, though, it doesn't matter what you read, or what your teachers say, if the cultural ethic is all about greed.  People will do what other people do, almost always.  Those who don't, surprise us with their integrity. Change will come with leadership and education around these issues, and when the norm becomes service, these grads will want to serve.

Sleazy business practice will then become like smoking--you'll have to leave the group and sneak around out back to do it.  I can hardly wait.

 


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]]> The Ahab Syndrome: Embitterment as Mental Illness tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.121 2009-05-28T01:09:28Z 2009-05-28T03:09:56Z Marilyn Sewell You know somebody like this.  I'm talking about a person who is consumed with anger about having been treated unjustly.  A  person who can think of little else but how to wreak revenge on the person or persons who caused his pain.  A person who talks about this injustice incessantly, and who can't seem to get on with his life.  Now psychiatrists have named this quality and are saying that it is a bona fide mental illness--it is known as "embitterment."  It could also be called "the Ahab Syndrome" for Melville's Captain Ahab, who was willing to sacrifice his ship and his men to capture the white whale that had taken his leg. 

Dr. Michael Linden, the psychiatrist who named this behavior, says that people suffering from the syndrome are generally good people who have worked hard at something--such as a job or a relationship--and then suffer some unexpected loss.  They get fired.  Or the wife runs away with their best friend.  They turn into helpless victims and stay mired in their hate and aggression.  Linden says that these people rarely come in for treatment, because they feel that the problem is outside, in the world, not inside themselves.  "They are almost treatment-resistant," he says.  "Revenge is not a treatment."  (La/Times-Washington Post, 5/26)

The same day that I read the Post article reprinted in the Oregonian, I read another piece: it was the horrific story of a mother who picked up her two children, a daughter 7 and a son 4, from their father for a weekend parenting visit, and then forced the children off the Sellwood Bridge, apparently an act of revenge against her estranged husband.  (Oregonian, 5/27)  The little girl was saved only by the quick action of a stranger who heard the children scream.  The man, David Haag, went out in his boat, found the children in the water, and dived in after them. Haag said he thought the girl had been holding onto her little brother, for they were right together in the water.  But he could not save the boy, who was already dead.

I look at the picture of the mom on the front page of the paper--her name is Amanda Jo. She has long dark hair, disheveled now; a dazed look on her face, she looks almost like a child herself.  What could she have been thinking, to push her two babies off a bridge?  What could she have been feeling?

This mom had lost a custody battle for her children--this was the second time she had lost custody of a child, for this past February, the court ordered an older son, by a different man, to stay in the sole custody of his father.  I can only imagine that she might have felt helpless and hopeless.  And because she could not control the courts or her husband or her own out-of-control life, she exercised influence over others by hurting the children.  She had become truly mentally ill.  Her act was akin to the man who loses a job and then goes in and shoots up the office.  Or the man who shot people in a Nashville church because his estranged wife used to go there.  I've been treated unfairly, they say.  And somebody has to pay.

It should be said, however, that even though few people will kill to justify themselves, most of us have sucked on this bitter rag of revenge.  At some time or other, we will have been treated unfairly--by another person, by society, or just by the universe in general.  And this typically makes us very, very angry.  Generally time takes care of our bitter feelings, and we move on to more productive activity.  We forget.  We may even forgive.  We understand that justice is not something we can expect or demand, in this world. 

Speaking of justice, now--what would justice be for this woman?  What would you say, if you were on the jury?  What crime is more horrible than killing one's own children?  What demons are at work within this woman?  Are they different from the ones at work in you and in me? 

I have no answers to these questions.  I am struck with the horror of the crime.  I wonder at the reaches of human pain, about the genesis of evil.   I acknowledge the darkness in myself and in all of us.


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]]> Learning to Love tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.120 2009-05-21T00:43:27Z 2009-05-21T16:14:34Z Marilyn Sewell In my last reflection I commented on David Brooks' recent review (5/14) of Josua Wolf Shenk's essay "What Makes Us Happy," found in the current issue (June 2009) of the Atlantic.  Brooks says that the researcher, George Vaillant, discovered through his longitudinal study of the lives of Harvard men that "the only thing that really matters in life are (sic) your relationships to other people."  Brooks muses about Vaillant's life, a life lacking in warm relationship and intimacy, and concludes, "Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so."

I just read Shenk's article and found it fascinating.  It was one of those on which I used a magic marker copiously.  Shenk gives summaries of various case studies throughout the article, and he also from time to time reports interesting conclusions which Vaillant came to during his intensive study.  A few of these are the following:

". . . a glimpse of any one moment in a life can be deeply misleading.  A man at 20 who appears the model of altruism may turn out to be a kind of emotional prodigy--or he may be ducking . . . <a> kind of engagement with reality. . . ; on the other extreme, a man at 20 who appears impossibly wounded may turn out to be gestating toward maturity."

". . . mature adaptations are a real-life alchemy, a way of turning the dross of emotional crises, pain, and deprivation into the gold of human connection, accomplishment, and creativity."

He sites the seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically: employing mature adaptations, education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight.

But at no place was Vaillant more powerful and articulate, says Shenk, than when he describes the significance of love and intimacy in our lives.  Vaillant was asked in an interview in March 2008, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?"  Vaillant responded: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

Perhaps Vaillant was so keenly aware of the importance of relationship because his life has always been fraught with such difficulty in that arena.  So how is it that someone can know so much and yet find it so difficult to put into practice what he clearly understands?  Vaillant answers this question in a profound and moving statement in his book Adaptation to Life. Speaking of his male subjects not from a scientific, but more from a philosophical or even theological perspective, he writes: "Their lives were too human for science, too beautiful for numbers, too sad for diagnosis and too immortal for bound journals."

So yes, the process of learning to be fully human, the process of learning to love openly and deeply, is in the final analysis, a mystery.  We don't understand why we do what we do, or why we fail sometimes to become what we most earnestly desire to become. 

However, in my last reflection I did promise you an answer, and an answer I will give.  Love is the most powerful force that exists, and love can be taught.  It is best taught in the first 18 months of a child's life, and if a child is separated from mother during those years for any reason, or if a child is abused, or if a child is with parents who cannot for whatever reason nurture the child, then learning love later in life will prove difficult.  But except in the most profound cases of deprivation, it will not prove impossible. 

People who need to learn about love can do so by being with people who know how to love, in community and in intimate places in their lives.  Often helpers are needed--skilled psychotherapists for sure, spiritual advisors, massage therapists, yoga teachers, etc., etc.  A loving community is essential.  In the best of all worlds, the love-deprived person will be able at some point to enter into a long-term, intimate relationship with someone who is good at loving and who will love the person exactly as he or she is. 

Is there any guarantee?  In this world, there never is.  We just don't know.  But we can do our best to increase the odds.  We can love, and we can reach out for love.  In the end, we'll find that Vaillant is right--it's all that matters. 


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]]> What Is the Secret of Happiness? tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.119 2009-05-14T16:04:58Z 2009-05-14T17:09:47Z Marilyn Sewell I was fascinated by David Brooks' editorial (NYTimes 5/12, A23) on an article entitled "What Makes Us Happy?" by Joshua Wolf Shenk, to be published in this next issue of the Atlantic.  In short, the article (now available on line) describes a longitudinal study done by one George Vaillant over a 42-year period on a group of 268 of the most promising young men of the Harvard class of 1942.  Among them were John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee. 

These young men were the creme de la creme: they were intelligent, sophisticated, advantaged in every way.  They had been selected from the rest of the entering class because they were considered the most well adjusted.  Since they were college sophomores, they have been visited by researchers regularly and studied in every aspect of their living.  The results are known as the Grant Study, and they are summarized in Shenk's article, which I have not as yet had a chance to read--but eagerly await.

Judging from their privileged beginnings, one might expect that these men would grow into highly successful, happy individuals.  The life stories, however, show quite a different outcome.  Brooks points out that one third of the men ended up suffering at least one bout of mental illness.  Many would be plagued with alcoholism.  A few, understandably, could never admit that they were gay, until they were of an advanced age. Brooks is struck, he says, by "the baffling variety of their lives."  What causes us to make certain decisions, to follow life-giving as opposed to destuctive paths?  And a man who seems to do well in one phase of his life might just fall apart in the next phase.  Why?

The study apparently produced some correlations.  Correlations don't prove, but they do suggest.  The men by and large did better as they aged.  Those who suffered from depression were much more likely to be dead by their early 60's.  But it's George Valliant's final conclusion that is the most profound and the most instructive to us all.  In a video he says, "Happiness is love.  Full Stop."

Ironically enough, love always seemed to elude Valliant himself, Brooks reports.  When he was 10, his father, who seemed successful and content, shot himself beside the family pool.  The mother removed the children from the house, and Valliant never saw the house again.  There was no memorial service.  Valliant married three times, returning then to his second wife.  For long periods he was estranged from his children.

Brooks concludes, poignantly, "Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so."

Yes, this is true.  But I have a response to this statement.  Stay tuned for my next reflection.


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]]> Religion as a Bridge to Reconciliation tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.118 2009-05-07T00:39:35Z 2009-05-07T01:39:54Z Marilyn Sewell During Archbishop TuTu's recent visit to Portland, some of us were asked to participate in panel discussions on several related topics.  I was asked to be on a panel entitled "Religion as a Bridge to Reconciliation."  The following is part of what I said in my introductory remarks:

The word religion comes from the prefix re, meaning back and the Latin ligare, which means "to bind" or "to bind back" or "to reconnect."  One might say that the function of religion is to repair the illusion of our separation.  Religion should play a natural, a logical role in reconciliation--to bind us together in common values of love, compassion, justice, and forgiveness.

Unfortunately, religion--and I can speak with real authority only of the Christian religion, which is my own--religion most often seems to do the opposite: it serves to separate and to divide.  Christianity has such a bad reputation that the very use of the word in the common vernacular connotes "one who is rigid in belief," and people who are not religious are wary of those who are, for these unconverted individuals--those unwashed in the blood, so to speak--too often have been targets for conversion and have not been respected as the persons, theological and otherwise, that they are.

Of course, all religious people are not Fundamentalists by any means, but even so, when any group of people begin to say, "My way is the way, my path is the only path," the result is division and acrimony.

In fact, religion then becomes no different in this way from any other ideology, whethers an idealogy of communism or capitalism or racism or deconstructionist thinking.  One who becomes an ideologist, or a true believer, begins to exist in a closed system.  Whatever fits into this chosen system is labeled "true" and whatever does not is labeled "false."  The curiosity, spontaneity, and growth of such an individual become limited.

Because each of us is troubled by a multitude of interior forces we do not and will not ever totally understand, it is our nature to look for a system which explains our angst and which makes us feel safe within the walls of that system.  We do not see that system as arbitrary, as created by humans who are terrified of our own inevitable demise, and so we reify those structures--that is, we come to believe that there is a concrete reality there.  Therefore, we cling to these beliefs as to life itself, and whatever threatens them must be challenged--or perhaps stemped out, eliminated.

Given this very human and very pervasive problem with religion, one can see why religion often fails to be a sturdy instrument of reconciliation.  At the same time, we know that there have been instances when it has been.  I'm thinking of enlightened leaders who have internalized the radical way of being that seems to be at the heart of all major religions--the radical way of love, compassion, peace.  Violence and retribution have no part to play.  I'm thinking, for example, for Martin Luther King, Jr., who taught non-violence in the Civil Rights movement; or Gandhi, who practiced satyagraha, or passive resistance, to free his people from British rule; or a more recent example, the Amish, who forgave the man who gunned down their children in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse a few years ago, because these gentle people could do no other: forgiveness is their way of being.

So if we mean by religion, a spiritual commitment to love and compassion and non-violence--if we mean by religion, a radical change of being in which the individual or community understands that we are all one and that love and forgiveness are central to their being, then yes, religion is the essence of reconciliation and a path to that difficult state.

But if we mean by religion--which we generally do--an institutionalized set of beliefs, then, no, just the opposite.  For religion in that sense divides people into the righteous and the unrighteous, the saved and the unsaved, the good and the evil.  And of course if we have made "the other" evil, then the righteous must have control over the evil ones.  We righteous ones can then project all of our shadow side onto these evil ones, and then Christians can smile as we say things to gays and lesbians like, "I hate the sin, but love the sinner," or say to those of another faith tradition, "If you haven't accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you're going to hell."  Not to mention the generations of wars between believers of various faiths throughout the world, throughout all time.  Make the people of a different tribe or race or religion "other," and they are much easier to kill.

So is religion a path to reconciliation?  Not until its practititioners mature as religious beings.  Not until its institutions become more devoted to the heart-lessons of their prophets than to the divisive theology of their true believers.


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]]> The Root of All Evil tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.117 2009-04-30T03:11:01Z 2009-04-30T04:36:45Z Marilyn Sewell Let us be clear: the Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil--it says that the love of money is the root of all evil.  Money is merely a means of exchange.  I give my time and energy to some pursuit, and I am given money in return, so that I can exchange it for what I need to sustain myself and others.  It's a mere convenience.  Without money, we would be spending much of our time trading and bartering. 

As societies grew more sophisticated, more complex economic systems evolved.  These systems are based on conceptual models, and they espouse certain values.  This country's system of capitalism assumes that (1) competition is good and yields the best products at the lowest price for the consumer; and (2) when it becomes out of balance in one way or another, the system will "right" itself by market forces.  It is self-regulating, and ultimately serves the greater good. 

All this sounds dandy--except that it just doesn't work quite that way.  The system doesn't take into account (1) the endless and impossible demand for "growth" and "products" (as in GNP), which overtaxes our natural resources; (2) the cost of production to the earth and to living creatures (these costs are dismissed as "externalities"); (3) the needs of those people who fall through the cracks when the market doesn't need them any more; (4) and finally, what this system does to the character and integrity of people and their relationships in a given culture.  It is perhaps this number four that is the least mentioned, but that is perhaps the most pervasive and the most dangerous, for it infects almost every element of our living.

Consider the following:

1.  Drug companies spend more money on gifts and stipends to doctors than they spend on research or consumer advertising.  They give free drug samples, free food, free medical refresher courses, and they pay doctors handsome stipends for marketing lectures.

2.  The popular culture offers very little of value, and yet billions upon billions are spent on producing artistically degraded films, derivative music, and escape literature.  Meantime, serious poets and independent filmmakers, artists and musicians who have much to offer, languish without support.

3.  We are inundated with advertising of all kinds, all day every day.  Billboards ruin our cityscapes and countrysides; radio and television ads can hardly be avoided.  There is no escape.

4.  News shows are really entertainment now, with very little hard news or enlightening analysis--"if it bleeds, it leads."  Their job is not to thrive, but simply to survive.  So how are citizens truly informed in what is supposed to be a democracy?

5. We have been told since the '50's that we need more (of everything from  beautiful hair to bigger houses), and we can't get off the cycle of getting and spending.  There is never enough.

6.  Our best and brightest students, we are told, have been majoring in "finance" for years and years now, and their goal is to get a lot of money--quickly.

I could go on . . . and so could you, but we both get the picture.  How did we get stuck with a system that seems to bring out the worst in so many of our people, that sets people apart instead of bringing them together, that is laying waste to the earth? 

You tell me--I don't know.  But I do know this: the first step in change is awareness.  We have accepted the assumptions of this economic system far too long, and we are sick of heart and sick of character.  We need to stop.  (Well, maybe the economic downturn pushed us to this step.)  We need to re-imagine how we want to live together and how we might more equitably share the resources of the earth. 

As President Obama said today in his press conference, "These changes won't be done in the first 100 days, or in the first year.  But one day we will look back, and we will say, yes, this is when we started, this was when the great change began."

How do you want to live?  Begin to imagine it.  Then begin to go there, as fully as you are able.  We don't have a moment to waste. 


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]]> What's Worth Dying For? tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.116 2009-04-23T02:28:26Z 2009-04-23T04:25:55Z Carolyn Burleigh This morning David Kellerman, 41, Acting CFO of mortgage giant Freddie Mac, was found dead, an apparent suicide.  Freddie Mac has been harshly criticized for financing risky loans that are now defaulting.  The company was also under fire for planning to pay more than $210,000,000 in bonuses to their executives, to give them incentives to stay.  Kellerman, who had taken over when the former CEO had been relieved of his duties, was responsible for 500 employees and was working on the current financial report at the time of his death.  He leaves behind a wife and a five-year-old daughter, Grace.

Why did Kellerman kill himself?  Was it the many points of pressure?  Was in shame, for being involved in what he knew were slight-of-hand loan deals?  Was it some illegal act that is yet to be uncovered?  There will be an investigation.  There will be follow-up articles.  But we may never know the truth.  He himself may not have fully understood the demons which pushed him to take his life.

But the question before us is: what's worth dying for?  Making a mistake--even a big one--is not worth dying for.  Doing something that you are ashamed of--that's not worth dying for, either.  Trying to live up to others' expectations and failing--that's not worth dying for, either.

What is worth dying for?  To save the life of another, perhaps.  To make justice.  To go against the powers that be, when the powers are corrupt and evil.  These are things worth dying for.  We remember those who have done so: the firemen of 9/11; soldiers who lay down their lives for their comrades or for their country; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Archbishop Romero; journalists who are murdered for writing the truth about crooked political leaders.

But suicide?  No.  It is always, always, always possible to start over when you make a mistake, or when you do wrong.  Forgiveness is always an option.  If it were not, which one of us could keep going, with our more or less constantly besmirched lives?  We all "fall short of the glory of God," as my saintly grandmother used to say.  We can say, "I was wrong.  I'm sorry."  And we can start over.  Every day, in fact.

The one who commits suicide just "wants out," because the pain is so great, and that person cannot see an end to the suffering.  Many of us feel that intensity of pain at one time or another.  But depression can be cured, pain will end, and life turns round.  Dear reader, if you're ever considering suicide, remember that. 

It is sad beyond words when a little five-year-old is left without a father--and answerless questions that will last a lifetime.  Suicide colors so many lives, and for so long: a wife left alone; fellow workers asking, "Why?"; friends blaming themselves and saying, "I should have called . . . ." 

 Sometimes it takes courage just to keep going, just to get up every morning and face the day.  But there is no honorable alternative, for it's not just your own life--you belong to all of us.  We are all diminished when any one person takes his life.

We are irrevocably connected, the one with the other.  Stay with us, brother.  Hang in there, sister.  Together, we can find a way through anything. 


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]]> A Place Where Somebody Cares tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.115 2009-04-16T17:51:49Z 2009-04-16T18:42:50Z Marilyn Sewell A group of anti-faith folks are conducting a campaign--you may have seen the motto plastered on signs or flashing on TV: IMAGINE NO RELIGION.  When I saw this phrase, I actually thought it was a pro-religion group, asking people to imagine the loss we would feel if there were no religion.  But apparently the intent is just the opposite: they believe that the world would be a much better place without religion.

This sentiment fits perfectly the message of a number of best-selling books which have crowded the bookstores in recent years: Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, in which he says that belief in a personal god is delusional and "when many people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion"; Sam Harris's The End of Faith, in which he points out the remarkable insight that the Inquisition was a bad thing; and then Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, in which he disses not only St. Augustine (OK, so Augustine had a problem with sex), but also the Dalai Lama, St. Francis, and Gandhi. 

Who are these people, anyway, who write with such vigor and authority about God?  Are they theologians, who have studied for long years?  Are they philosophers?  Are they ministers or priests, who know the territory from the inside, by practice?  Actually, Dawkins is a science writer.  Hitchens is . . . a clever iconoclast.  and Sam Harris dropped out of Stanford, where he was majoring in English and 11 years later went back there to earn a B.A. in philosophy.  They are not exactly Tillichian.  They are all over-the-top angry, and they all point out the worst excesses of religion--without bothering to point out the worst excesses of science, of political ideology, and of secular leaders.  News flash: people are imperfect.  As my grandmother used to say, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."  "All" would be inclusive of religious people.

But let me tell you a real story about real people.  A Methodist minister told me that a few weeks ago, a woman came to his church one Sunday, looking for help.  She was in an abusive relationship, and she was frightened, with nowhere to turn.  After the service, the minister talked with her, and got her the support she needed, from the appropriate agency.  This woman was a stranger, not a Methodist, not a church-goer at all.  Why did she choose to go to this church, then?  As she said, "My assumption was that there would be somebody there who cared."

Yes, religion is imperfect, because human beings are imperfect.  We can take a message of love and new life from a prophet and turn it into a message of hate and death.  But that doesn't negate the original message, nor does that negate the institutions that try to embody that message.  It doesn't negate believers, people of faith like myself, who fail so often to do the good, and yet who, the next day, brush ourselves off and try to do better.

Imagine no religion?  Imagine not having a place to go where you can assume that somebody cares.  Imagine that.

 


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]]> Even the Least of These tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.114 2009-04-09T16:19:00Z 2009-04-09T17:03:32Z Marilyn Sewell California has just passed a ballot initiative protecting farm animals from abuse.  Is this just another one of those crazy California things that people living with unfailingly good weather come up with?  Or should the rest of the nation take heed of what surely is to come: rights for animals.

Peter Singer, professor at Princeton, was the first to bring the plight of animals to national attention.  He wrote an article for the New York Review of Books in 1972, and then published a book called Animal Liberation in 1975.  Do we have obligations to living creatures that are further down the phyla than we humans?  Singer said yes.  When I initially read his book, I thought it was way overstated.  Now I don't think so.  I've been changed by Singer and his followers.  I don't buy eggs from chicken "farms" that keep these creatures confined in cages so small that their feet curve in permanent closure around the wire.  I stopped eating veal at all, once I discovered how veal is created.

Well, just how far should I go with all of this, I ask myself.  Should I stop eating meat, for example.  Some people choose to be vegans and  do not eat any animal-produced products, such as milk or eggs.  At this point, I am neither a vegan or a vegetarian.  I love meat--though I confess that, like many others, I eat less meat all the time, and eat little red meat.

I confess something else: if I had to kill an animal in order to get its flesh for food, I would almost certainly be a vegetarian.  I hate killing anything--even ants.  I encourage them to run, when I come after them in my kitchen: "Hurry, you little rascals, you can do it!  Go back to the woods, or wherever you came from!"  I think I hate to kill creatures of any kind because I have such a reverence for life itself.  I know I can't create a wondrous, magnificent little creature such as an ant--how dare I kill it?

Another experience has changed me--the care and protection of Molly, my cat.  Let me be clear: I do not think of Molly as "one of my family."  She is not "my baby," she is not the same as "my child."  And I become very impatient with people who anthropomorphize their pets in this manner.  Losing a pet is not the same as losing a child.  Period.

But of course we pet owners become very attached to our pets, and they to us.  Animals are sentient creatures--we love them, and they simply adore us.  Unconditional love--hard to not return it.  But the larger question is--what is our responsiblity to any creature that is in our care?  Molly is an innocent creature and cannot care for herself when she is seriously ill--so I must see that she is cared for properly.  My question would come, I suppose, when the vet wants to do a procedure that costs $2,000 on a cat that is nearing the end of its life.  (Molly isn't there yet, thank goodness.)  When is enough, enough?

One day I might become a vegetarian.  Who knows?  We are all evolving.  Some day in the far distance future, people may look back on our flesh-eating ways the same way we look back on slavery now.  They may say, "How could they have done that?"  And they may be right.


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]]> Where Are We Going So Fast, and Why? tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.113 2009-04-02T16:02:48Z 2009-04-02T19:12:20Z The headline in the NY Times this morning tells us that China is planning to become the leading producer of hybrid and all-electric cars within the next three years.  And don't think they can't do it.  Five thoustand auto engineers and 5,000... Marilyn Sewell The headline in the NY Times this morning tells us that China is planning to become the leading producer of hybrid and all-electric cars within the next three years.  And don't think they can't do it.  Five thoustand auto engineers and 5,000 battery engineers are living in a high-tech ghetto of 15 yellow 18-story apartment buildings in Shenzhen, and they are busily working to accomplish this goal for their country.  They earn less than $600 a month, and that includes benefits.

China is offering hefty subsidies for buyers, and they would like to raise their annual production rate to 500,000 hybrid or all-electric cars and buses by the end of 2011.  The U.S. has its own comparable program, of course, and the Department of Energy will get $25 billion to develop electric-powered cars and improve battery technology, plus another $2 billion for battery development.

China says that its intention--besides creating jobs and exports--is to fight urban pollution and reduce its dependence on foreign oil.  The problem is that the electricity that runs cars has to be produced somehow--a fact which electric car enthusiasts often seem to overlook--and China gets the bulk of its electricity from coal, the dirtiest source of energy for our planet. 

And then there was the news in March, coming from India: Tata Motors is launching its Nano, a small car that will cost only $2,200 in the U.S., for the cheapest model.  It is being touted as the "new way"--the smaller and cheaper form of transportation for the masses.  They plan to begin selling the cars this July, and will market an eco-friendly version which uses compressed air as fuel, as well as an electric version.  Tata is planning for an initial production target of 250,000 units a year.  Millions of Indians who never thought they could own a car will now have a chance of doing so. 

I have to ask a simple question: when emissions from the automobile are quickly ruining the planet, why are we human creatures going to produce automobiles of any kind for everyone on earth?  Shouldn't we instead be working very hard to create alternative models of transportation?  Shouldn't we be learning how to live and work in a more circumscribed area?

On top of the not-inconsequential problem of global warming, there is the on-going slaughter on our highways, which nobody seems particularly worried about.  Each year 43,000 people die on our roads.  You know some of them.  And 3,000,000 more are injured.  Chances are that you, at one time or another, have been among them.  Some of these injuries are devastating.  In India, 90,000 people are killed every year on the roads.  I hesitate to think what will happen when hundreds of thousands of little Nanos are added to the mix.

When will we understand that the problem is not (1) how to live the same way we've always lived, but more cheaply, and it's not (2) encouraging everyone in the world to follow the American Dream.  Our problem is to actually change the way we're living.  And the U.S. has the responsiblity to lead in this effort, for we have been leading in the wrong direction for our planet, for far too long.

Why, oh why, are we behaving like lemmings rushing to the sea?  What will it take to wake us up? 


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]]> "Dear M": Answer to an Anonymous Letter tag:marilyns.nexcess.net,2009://2.112 2009-03-26T17:03:15Z 2009-03-26T18:32:02Z Marilyn Sewell I recently received an anonymous letter.  Now no leader is immune to these things, and I've gotten a few in my day.  Generally they are nasty and often incoherent ravings which I don't bother reading.  This one was decidedly different.  This one was a cry for help.  But since I don't know who sent it, I can't respond.  I know only what she has told me about herself in a 3-page letter. 

M is a person not unlike many of you reading this blog.  She says she has a good sense of humor.  She is a single woman from a middle-class, two-parent family who has worked hard to create a good life for herself.  She has struggled successfully with health problems and problems of self-esteem for the past 10 years and has learned  to cope, in her words, "without self-medicating (food/alcohol/drugs)."

M successfully bought and sold her first house, making a tidy profit.  She re-educated herself about U.S. history from the working people's point of view and found her life's passion as an activist. She opened the first fair-trade shop in her area and created a peace movement in her hometown.  Having previously lived in Portland for a short time, she decided to move here and dedicate herself "to creating a just and equitable society with the good people  in the City of Roses."

But job hunting in Portland has been daunting.  After a life of successful employment, she can find nothing.  When she wrote the letter, she was less than two weeks from being kicked out of her rented room and needing to live in her van.  She needs money for food, medical care, and transportation.  She is asking herself the question, "How is it that an able-bodied person with good work skills and a positive mental and spiritual outlook . . . who comes from a solid middle-class family with loving and supportive parents be standing on an economic cliff, just waiting to be pushed off?"

Dear M--

Had you come to me for counseling, I would have given you a cup of tea.  We would have sat quietly together, and I would have listened.  I would have tried to get to know you not only by your words, but by your facial expressions, by the quality of your voice.  I would have tried to be fully present with you during our time together.  I might have said some of the following things:

I'm so sorry that you are in such a state of fear and pain.  You may feel alone in all of this, but so many people in our church and in Portland and all over the country are facing similar frightening circumstances.  You may feel alone also, because you're new to our city--but  there are many compassionate people who care, and some of them may be found in our church.  Come to the church and visit with one of the ministers, or a lay minister.

Please do not blame yourself for the situation you're facing--it's all too easy for an unemployed person to think that there's something wrong with them.  That's just not true.  Our unemployment rate is in the double-digits in this state--and those stats don't include all those who have given up looking for work and all those who are under-employed.  You've had problems with self-esteem in the past, and these same demons may reappear while you're going through this vulnerable period.  Keep telling yourself that you are not the problem.

In your letter you say that this economic crisis is proof that the current economic model is not viable.  I couldn't agree more.  We are trying to "bail out" a system that is corrupt and finally imploded upon itself.  We are going to have to reimagine how we want to be together as a people, and we're going to have to create an economic model that is inclusive of the well-being of all, not just the wealthy.  With your understanding of class and your commitment to change, you will be a part of creating that new future.

As to how we got in this fix--and it is a world-wide phenomenon, of course--the short answer is "sin."  Too many people were willing to look away from what they knew to be true, because they were being enriched by a system that had no integrity, that was bound to fail.  Government and business ane functionally interchangeable, and one might even say that the main purpose of government in this country is to protect and support big business.  Until the people say "no more!" shameful economic inequity will continue,  I hope that the bankers and money brokers and government officials who turned a blind eye to our economic disaster-in-the-making understand that real human beings like you--millions of them--are suffering terribly because of their selfishness and lack of responsibility.

The last question in your letter is "When will it end?"  I wish I could prophesy, and tell you.  But no one can, because the situation we are facing is unprecedented.  Thus far, we have been throwing old solutions at a new problem--kind of like treating AIDS with lots and lots of penicillin. 

I will tell you this--it will end, though, because human beings eventually figure stuff out.  All of us have to be a part of the new age that is coming.  In the meantime, find a community.  Know that you are not alone.  Know that you a good person.  Know that the future will open once again for you, as it has in the past.  

Bless you, my dear, wherever you are.  Though I don't know you, know that I'm thinking of you.

Marilyn 

 

 


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