Never Break Relationship

Scott Schaeffer-Duffy knows a thing or two about talking to people about difficult topics. 

As co-founder of the of the Sts. Francis and Thérèse Catholic Worker in Worchester, MA, he publically promotes the consistent ethic of life--a moral framework which ties all issues of life and killing together.  As a result, he takes a stand against abortion, war, the death penalty, poverty and violence of all kinds. 

It is a very Christian idea with deep roots all the way back to Jesus and the Ancient Israelite prophets.  Nevertheless, it is an idea which faces no shortage of resistance.  The odds are high that something he says on some issue is going to be a hot button issue for someone.  It puts him on both sides of the culture wars but at home on neither side.  Emotions can get high, and many red faced people have shouted all manner of insults at him. 

He gave some advice at a Catholic Worker gathering many years ago that has left a profound impression on me:  Never break relationship; stay in dialogue.

This includes--perhaps especially so--the people who are rigidly entrenched and refusing to dialogue in a respectful manner.

The longer I continue in ministry, the more I see the wisdom in that.

I asked in an earlier post if it is okay to be intolerant of intolerance.  The first question to ask is:  Am I getting an accurate read on the other person?  If I sit back and say those people are just intolerant, how do I know whether or not that is actually true?   It could just be my perception of them or what I have been told (or manipulated) to believe about them.  I am never going to understand them well from a distance.  Never break relationship; stay in dialogue.

What is the best way to help facilitate a change?  Assuming I do believe they are mistaken, shunning them is not likely to have much of an impact.  After all, shunning is the first step on the path to dehumanizing and objectifying someone, opening the door to justify later abuse.  I need to see their humanity as God's image and never lose sight of that in my dealings with them--for my sake as well as theirs.  I hope they see my humanity as God's image, too.  Once that happens, we will be in a much better place to truly listen to each other and consider what each other is saying.  Never break relationship; stay in dialogue.
 
Language is important.  Let's not whitewash:  Intolerant of intolerance is exactly that--intolerance.  I may not like intolerance, but saying I am intolerant of it is a red flag on my own spiritual development.  Reacting to their intolerance with an equal and opposite display of intolerance on my part puts them in the driver's set--they end up setting the tone for my behavior.  Never break relationship, stay in dialogue.

I keep coming back to the importance of combining contemplation with action, a theme we have explored a lot in this blog lately.  Mystics have been saying this for centuries, including Richard Rohr and Thomas Merton.  Scott Schaeffer-Duffy's words resonate here greatly. 

It may be a very fine thing to take the action of protesting the behavior of some folks that I find to be intolerant.  My conscience and faith formed in the Gospel may drive me to that action.  However, I also have a duty to combine that with contemplation. In other words I have to be constantly meditating, praying, being in dialogue with others and reading about the subject to make abundantly sure I am not simply wrong or driven by my own agenda.  Knowing how well the ego can hide behind layers of pride, jealousy, fear, real wounds and false humility, I have to be on an ever-watchful vigil.  The exercise of self-reflection never ends.

I have to bring a prayerful, loving, humble stance to my social action because there is no other way to ensure I am not just replacing one prejudice or intolerance with another.  Even that is not foolproof, but it is the best way we have to check and balance our own runaway ego--it is a way to stay rooted in our own faith and values and not just mindlessly react.  Then our actions inform and influence our contemplation in an endless interplay.

Without contemplation, we become what we hate.

Case in point:  A man grows up in an excessively controlling family.  Boundaries are not respected and privacy is not a part of family culture, despite his discomfort and perhaps his protests.  He crawls into an emotional shell only to be regularly prodded, guilted and manipulated out of that.  After coming out of that environment, he declares--consciously or subconsciously--never to let anyone else control him ever again.  His instincts are on high alert to resist any hint at control.  He becomes so engrossed with resisting external control, however, that it becomes very difficult to be in relationship with him.  To be a guest in his house, you have to follow his all-too-rigid rules and endless protocol.  Walking on eggshells is an ever-present reality around him.

While I would never deny him his right to set his own boundaries and preferences for his home, he fails to see that he has actually become like his family of origin.  Like his parents who were not responsive to him as a child, his baggage is so all-engrossing that he cannot be responsive to the needs of his guests and friends--they have to bend to his wishes (even the point of compromising themselves), but he has little flexibility to do likewise.  There is a fine line between his right to protect his boundaries and his tendency to achieve that by imposing increasingly restrictive rules on the people around him.  People are in a compromising position around him, just like he was in a compromising position growing up.

The mechanism he used for breaking away from his family's control is . . . control.  It is the stuff of Greek tragedy, but it makes sense--control is what he knows.  In this way, we come to see our enemies like unto ourselves.  They trigger us because they are more like us than we ever care to imagine.  The seeds for compassion are sown.

This man is not an isolated example--he represents all of us.  We become what we hate, says my uncle.   It is not a question of "if" this may happen but "when" and "how."  Hindus call it karma.  Psychologists call it projection.  Ancient Greeks referred to it as tragedy.  Newtonian physicists talk of actions having equal and opposite reactions.  Jesus told us to love our enemies and hinted that we may find ourselves in them somehow. 

Action without contemplation puts us on due course to become just like our enemies, even when it may seem like we are working to be the complete opposite. 

All too often in history, a government is overthrown for its miscarriage of justice only to be replaced with another regime as evil as the previous one, despite the seemingly good intentions of those struggling for change.  The exceptions are those who are intentional about reconciliation and mature contemplation.  Otherwise, you hurt those who have hurt you, hate those who have hated you and limit those who have limited you.  The subsequent generation would not see justice but only oppression and then their resistance starts.

The Gospel offers an alternative:  Love your enemies. Bless those who persecute you. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who mistreat you. 

In other words:  Stop the madness from continuing in a never-ending chain reaction of violence.

No matter how justifiable it may seem, I have got to always stay in relationship and dialogue with those with whom I disagree.  Through faith, I maintain my center despite the storms going on around me.  My dialogue with them--as well as my internal self-reflection--helps ensure that I am not creating a rigid fundamentalism of my own but rather a stance of being rooted in faith while also responsive to the world around me.

There is a depressingly endless array of injustices in this world.  We cannot sit paralyzed, unwilling to take action out of our own self-doubt or sense of humility.  All we can do is take action with a firm commitment to continual self-evaluation and education in prayer, discussion, study and personal growth--and always keep the doors of possibility open with those with whom we disagree so that their methods of exclusion do not become our methods of exclusion.  Never break relationship; stay in dialogue.

Family Matters

Holiday political arguments can be the stuff of legend. 

My family is nothing unusual in this regard.

The way it would often end, however, has left an impression on me years later even though many of these folks have since passed on and the family has grown and drifted as the generations have accumulated.

On one side of my family, there are people with a wide range of political views and an even wider range of opinions about how vocal we ought to be about them.  There are right-wingers and peace activists, middle-of-the-roaders and apolitical folks.  Some like to debate while others avoid it at all costs.  

Our Christmas gatherings have seen their share of knock-down-drag-out debates and no-holds-barred arguments. 

It could begin with outright intentional baiting or perhaps an innocent-sounding comment that flares up.  It continues as participants engage each other with a mix of both curiosity and repulsion--do you really think or believe this way?  It peaks with blame and hostility.

 

Despite all that, when we have gathered our coats, presents and plates of cookies and are headed for the door, something on the order of a Christmas miracle happens.

 

We usually come back to that place where we say out loud that we are still glad we get together.  Even if we see each other only once or twice a year, it does matter--we are still family and gathering is important.  Some of us would rarely opt to spend time together otherwise, yet there is something about family that speaks to a bond.  We witness to that bond by showing up.  Perhaps all we can do is agree to disagree.

(It might have been even better to start the arguments with these affirmations, but I digress.)

Christianity teaches that all humans are one family as children of the one God.  We certainly share the same world and its resources.  Like my relatives, we ought to do something to keep the dialogue open.  It matters that we are in relationship. 

 

Agreeing to disagree is much more powerful than our society usually regards it.  It is not a blow off--there is respect; there is acknowledgement; there is a proposed way of sitting with those differences.  It creates space to pause and re-center ourselves.  It may not be perfect, but it is a step.

We wish each other "Merry Christmas," "Safe travels" and perhaps most importantly, "See you next year."

 

Let Go, Let God

God uses failure to bring us to brokenness,

to force us back to a posture of dependence.

--Seth Barnes

 

***

Have you ever had an experience with people so difficult that it actually becomes easy?

You meet each other; you start talking.  You get to a point where you realize you cannot connect to them through any mechanism you may normally use.  You cannot find any natural points of congruency.  Perhaps you are driven to the brink of frustration.  Nothing you do works to find common ground or reconcile differences.  You realize: I am not going to change them, and they are not going to change me.

You simply run out of options and then something amazing happens:

You throw your proverbial hands up in the air and simply let go.

You let go of all your needs--your expectations, your demands, your codependent dynamics, your impulse to steer the relationship to go in a certain direction.  

You resign yourself to let it be whatever it is going to be.  Perhaps in a half-comical way, you simply accept each other as you are, because you just know you are so completely and totally different.

In other words, you get out of God's way.

Wise people say the ego needs to fail in exactly this way.  It is like hitting rock bottom and knowing in your bones that you are at the end of your supply chain.  It is the desperate plea of the Psalmist who realizes that s/he is ultimately powerless and dependent on God alone.  That stance of complete and total reliance on God--rather than our own power--is the place of spiritual communion with God. 

You can say that we live the Christian life on our knees.

Two egos can lock horns and fight almost endlessly.  When someone is depleted, they may pause--but after a rest, they invariably resume locking horns.  This can go on for years, and each party will convince itself of the value of his/her position and the necessity of standing ground in this fashion.  After all, wars are rarely won when one side becomes convinced of the other's rightness. Wars are more about exterminating and exhausting the other but never about change-of-heart.

Grace appears--through epiphany or sheer exhaustion--when this method absolutely and totally fails in a way that is abundantly clear.

It can be excruciating.  You are pushed to your limits.  So much of what you have invested in has failed miserably.

It can also be tremendously freeing.  Your pride was never a part of your true self anyway.

What seems at first like a contradiction is that this very attitude of completely letting go actually forms the foundation for the best kind of relationship--both with yourself and with the other.  It seems like a paradox, but it actually makes good sense.  It is a profound platform for love and affection to flow--the complete absurdity of the relationship has allowed you to shirk all your baggage about relationships, which then allows something miraculous to happen:  You discover a healthy place of self-differentiation--I do not need you to change in order for me to be okay with myself.

You do not experience any affirmation from them in any way that you normally rely on.  As a result, you stand on your own feet in your own shoes simply because there is no crutch available to you.  An amazing paradox:  Living on your knees allows you to stand your ground.

An authentic relationship becomes possible because you let go of your demands on the other person as well as any fantasy about who you or they might be.  You can instead receive the authentic truth of who they are.  This also means accepting the authentic truth of who you are, rather than seeing yourself through the blurred lens of your baggage.  You no longer feel compelled to avoid whatever it is inside of you that is uncomfortable--wounds that are unhealed.

This is one of the many grace-filled ways that the "enemy"--or the stranger, the lost, the misunderstood, the forgotten, the marginalized, the relationship sparring partner--becomes a key to finding ourselves.  This includes anyone in an oppositional position.  No one is excluded in God's Kingdom, because to exclude anyone is to put a barrier to your own self and the work you need to do on your spiritual walk.

***

Then—and only then—once a relationship is established where you truly respect the person as they are right now, of course, there is a place for giving each other constructive feedback.  There is a time to be a prophetic witness.  But that feedback comes out of genuine respect.  It does not come from yelling at each other based on what we think we know about each other but rather from the genuine care and concern that comes from the lived experience of a relationship.  It does not come from an agenda rooted in fears or being manipulated by our own triggers, nor does it come from painting people into categories with broad brush strokes.

It is a wonderful exercise then to apply this to all relationships--do not put any demands or pressure on each other.  Accept each other becomes your primary stance to anyone.  Sometimes it is easiest to do this with the people who are furthest removed.  Then begins the journey back home with this new revelation--bringing this same mode of healthy self-differentiation, lack of attachment to an agenda, acceptance of each other and calming of our triggers that we have experienced with strangers--back home to coworkers, neighbors, friends and ultimately our family and spouse.  This path back home, in this light, gets harder and harder the closer to "home" you get--because the closer relationships--and their inherent baggage--are much deeper.

***

This post applies to all relationships, but it might be interesting to think of how it relates to the quest for Christian unity.  Many say that quest for Christian unity has stalled.  We have reached the limits in many cases of what academics can resolve and what hierarchical structures can accommodate.  We know that arguments and wars do not work, and few ecumenists want to return to that method of solving theological differences.  Academic debates today are far kinder and more polite than ever.  In fact, the average church goer might be surprised to find out how well representatives from different denominations get along in this process. 

The real challenge for today, I believe, is learning to be okay and accept each other in our differences.  People are afraid to give up their debates and arguments about each other. We stick our necks out, but only so much.  Whether we are academics, clergy or any other member of a church denominations, what would it means for us to ask ourselves:  Before entering a debate with anyone, how can we begin that dialogue on our knees?  Have we gone through the personal conversion necessary before attempting to broker anyone else's conversion?  Accepting each other--and all that it implies--is not the end of the journey but rather a new beginning.