What's In a Name?

“Just tell the Oneida crowd we know how excruciatingly painful it must be to have to hear “Hail to the Redskins!” but are confident they have the moxie and the manhood to deal with it.” — Pat Buchanan

Every once in awhile I deliberately move myself out of my well-traveled paths that lead to the Old Testament prophets, the Gospels, the ancient Greek philosophers, Hume, Kant, Mill, Isaiah Berlin, and Monty Python, and check in with current conservative commentators and pundits like Patrick Buchanan and W. James Antle III. 

Since the books I read, the people I talk to, and the viewpoints I consider tend to reinforce what I already believe it only seems fair that I should listen to the arguments of those whose views I shun. I shun these views because I think the people who hold them are wrong-headed and I would rather spend my time considering ideas that I believe I can use. But I’ve also spent a good deal of my life encouraging students to listen carefully, think diligently, and talk responsibly. There are conversations going on all around me that can test these resolves; it remains for me to practice what I preach. 

If a name offends a minority of people should it be changed? The Washington Bullets changed their name in the 80s when the city was known as the murder capital of the country. The owner, Abe Pollin, didn’t want to reinforce the image of violence that plagued the city in those days. Of course, as soon as the name was changed to the Wizards there were grumblings from conservative Christians about witchcraft and sorcery. The change of name was definitely for the better, but it brought no magic to the team’s win-loss record.  

The Washington Redskins first played as the Boston Braves in 1932. The owner, George Preston Marshall, changed the name to the Boston Redskins in 1933, and when the team moved to Washington, DC in 1937 they kept the name but changed the city. Along with the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Braves, and a handful of college sports teams, these names have drawn criticism for decades. 

In the case of the Redskins, team owners from George Marshall to Jack Kent Cooke have resolutely refused to change the name. Dan Snyder, the current owner, is even more adamant. In a letter to USA Today, May 2013, Snyder said, “NEVER—you can put that in caps.” 

Pat Buchanan, former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and one-time presidential candidate, wrote a column mocking Oneida Indian Nation leader Ray Halbritter, who said in a letter to Snyder, “Native Americans do not want their people to be hurt by such painful epithets.”

Buchanan thought this was both absurd and intolerant on the part of Halbritter and his supporters. He quoted an unnamed source who admired the Native Americans because they fought bravely, stood their ground, and didn’t whine when they were attacked by Europeans bent on taking their lands and killing them off. Naming a football team or any team after Indians, said Buchanan, shows real respect for these proud people. Halbritter should suck it up and realize that we mean no harm—it’s actually a compliment. 

Furthermore, where would the censuring stop? If Halbritter took offense at Snyder’s intransigence what should be done about Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence which called Native Americans “merciless Indian Savages”? 

Should the statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman be pulled down because he wrote to Ulysses S. Grant calling for the extermination of all Indians—men, women, and children? 

Should the face of Teddy Roosevelt be blasted off Mt. Rushmore for disputing Sherman’s opinion that the only good Indian is a dead one? T. R. was more sensitive than that: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

Buchanan’s argument followed a familiar tactic of reversing the charges: if Halbritter accused Snyder of disrespecting Native Americans he himself should show some tolerance and respect. I’m sorry you took offense; I meant no harm. 

W. James Antle III, writing in The National Interest, took a different line. He argued that polls taken over the years do not show a majority of those polled in favor of changing the name. He admitted that institutions should sometimes “change even cherished customs and traditions out of respect for others.” But that would require, he said, “mutual respect, a desire to let other communities keep what is important to them without powerful reasons to the contrary.” There aren’t enough powerful reasons as yet, according to Antle. We must keep the fundamental difference clear between doing what is right and “doing something at the behest of the politically and culturally powerful.”

So who has the power here? The Native Americans’ request to cease and desist with offensive names are overruled because a majority of people polled don’t think it’s important. Yet, if the Native Americans got their way that would be bowing to the whims of the politically and culturally powerful. 

Have some patience, says Antle. Chill out. Perhaps the tide of public opinion will shift in your favor some day. 

More likely, he concludes, the activists will wear everyone down with their incessant complaining, and the important people, the ones who have important things to worry about, will decide it’s not worth the bother.  What a shame that would be, giving in to such pressure. 

Buchanan and Antle and those who buy these specious arguments believe that these matters are too trivial for serious consideration. They cling to their stereotypes, formed in their youth, in which the cowboys and Indians fought across their Sunday TV screens—and the cowboys always won. To admit that Native Americans have the right to be treated like any other self-respecting ethnic, religious, sexual or racial group would be to grant them power which they don’t deserve. After all, we won and they lost. 

It’s a Catch-22: teams adopt these names because they admire the toughness of the Indians in fending off genocide, but if the Indians complain they are wimping out and betraying their noble heritage. The team owners won’t listen to them because they lack power, but if they were to get power they would be uppity. The harmony of the Union demands that such groups be kept in their place.

Let us restate the obvious: people like Buchanan and Antle have the right to speak their minds. They get paid good money to do so. Those who wish to believe them can line up and pay the admission price for the show under the big tent. But times change and so do ideas and values. They may yet realize they were on the wrong side of history, but by then they will be as anachronistic as cowboys-and-Indians westerns. 

Being Justin Bieber

“I don’t know who I am, But you know life is for learning.” — Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

I’ve been thinking about Justin Bieber this week, about him racing his Lamborghini up a street in Miami Beach, about him telling the arresting officer that he had been drinking and smoking weed, about him cursing the cop as he was being patted down for weapons, about him smiling as he was photographed at the jail, about him making bail after eight hours in jail, and about him emerging from the police station into a forest of mics and thickets of reporters and clutches of fans. How fortunate he is, I thought, he has been blessed with a stutter-step out of his routine; he now has time to regard himself. 

The ancient Romans had a shrine to the goddess Fortuna. She was often depicted with a cornucopia spilling out with all good things, or an orb of sovereignty delicately balanced between her thumb and forefinger. Most who worshipped her also knew to fear her because she was fickle and capricious: she would shower gifts on a person and just as cruelly withdraw them to enjoy her subject’s misery.  

Cicero, Roman orator and statesman, invoked her as the symbol of the ceaseless rise and fall of people and empires, and Seneca’s play Agamemnon had a chorus which chants, “Whatever Fortune has raised on high/she lifts but to bring low.”

Seneca and Cicero might kindly advise Justin Bieber to place his trust elsewhere than in the hands of his publicity agent, his lawyers, and his handlers. 

The media, today’s equivalent of Fortuna, raised him up to glory and will now exact its price in blood. There is no pain so deep that CNN and E! cannot make a ratings killing from it. The incident will be examined in excruciating detail, legal experts will be called in, maps will be drawn and bystanders interviewed. The judge will make a statement, the arresting officer will be grilled at length with questions like, “What was going through your mind as Justin Bieber was cussing you out?” And so forth. 

It’s all entertainment, all of it, from the racing to the display of the arrest report to the coverage of Bieber’s release to his inevitable statement afterward. There’s nothing in this whole incident— or any others which may follow — that cannot be commodified, wrung dry for its glitter and grunge, or spun off into auxillary revenue. 

In 1985, Josh Meyrowitz, professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire, published No Sense of Place:The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. The book won an award in 1986 from the National Broadcasting Association for its insights on television’s power to influence our social roles. Meyrowitz wrote that television is the ‘secret exposing’ machine in society that gives us unprecedented views behind the scenes. What once occurred behind doors or beyond carefully guarded physical boundaries is now exposed for all to see. Meyrowitz argued that the roles we play and witness in our lives are now played out to audiences who are not physically present to us in arenas that do not exist in time and space. In other words, electronic media has made actors of all of us and we are always on stage. 

“Truly different behaviors require truly distinct situations,” he says. We react in predictable ways because we associate certain behaviors with certain physical and social situations. But our ability to accept each other in specific roles relies on our unawareness of that person in other roles. For example, a young woman might be uncomfortable undressing in front of a doctor whom she recognizes as a boy who had a crush on her in high school. “By selectively exposing ourselves to events and other people, we control the flow of our actions and emotions,” says Meyrowitz. “Compassion, empathy, and even ethics may be much more situationally bound than we often care to think.” 

The focus of his research was on television’s ability to break down the walls between actors and audiences and to influence the roles we play in our everyday lives. This was in 1985—two years after Sony introduced the first camcorder, a hand-held movie camera that could record film on inexpensive video cassettes. By 1987 JVC had produced a camcorder with broadcast-quality performance. Less than 20 years after the book was published most people carry smartphones that can shoot high-quality stills and video. More than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 80% of it from outside the US. Governments have toppled, politicians have been ousted, marriages dissolved, and cats elevated to cultural icons—all because everything we do can be seen by millions in minutes. 

“All the world’s a stage,’ said Shakespeare, “and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts . . .” 

I can’t help thinking that Justin Bieber, like Kanye West, is a brand rather than a person; that no matter what the occasion or the incident—whether it be carefully scripted or emotionally fraught—it’s all footage for the audience, the beast that must be fed. The fact that both Bieber and West occasionally lash out at the paparazzi only increases the suspicion that they are trapped in a cage of their own making. 

Bieber may not yet be fully aware that his life is not his own, that everything he does is on camera for all the world to see and judge. He is a money-making machine, 24/7, with no time off for good behavior. At times he seems both bewildered and bored, yet he compulsively tweets his most solitary and lonely moments. 

Joshua Meyrowitz thought that what children had formerly learned at a later stage from parents, older siblings, or books, was now available for the taking from television without preparation or preamble. Television had changed our sense of place and space; all backstage behavior was now onstage. Similarly, the ever-present cameras not only give us almost immediate access to situations and their behaviors, but “They give us, instead, new events and new behaviors.”

We don’t know whether to be titillated or embarrassed by behaviors we see on YouTube and television. Through such constant surveillance we are creating situations for ourselves that we have no experience interpreting. But the more awkward the situation the greater the selling point, until we are caught in an escalating rush toward a jaw-dropper such as Miley Cyrus twerking at the VMAs.

Life presents us with countless opportunities to learn, but if we are floating on the surface of our experiences we may not even be conscious of them as anything but a succession of moments. Only as we step back, reflect, and see ourselves can we learn from our changes. It’s a lesson Justin Bieber could learn too, but I’m not hopeful he can see it. 

Exemplary

“Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.” — Michael Dirda, Book by Book

I leapt at this phrase when I first read it in Dirda’s spry little ‘commonplace’ notebook.  It fit my Puritan work ethic and it assuaged the residual guilt that plagues most teachers. This could be the answer to that recurrent nightmare, the one where we are exposed by our students as imposters, pipelines simply carrying the information, subject to any crank that wants to interrupt the flow with a question.
  

Of course, the analogy to the teacher as advertisement is not without its problems. Advertisements are there solely to sell us stuff that we don’t want and certainly don’t need. Advertisements lie—that is their modus operandi—and they are almost always flogging trivial stuff like mouthwash, Doritos, and Lincoln Navigators. Advertisements clog the airwaves, occupy every visible surface, and reduce the wisdom of the world to slogans. Teachers are not advertisements. 

But there’s another way to regard this. Years ago cultural critic and media theorist James W. Carey wrote a seminal essay in which he distinguished two historical views on communication. One was the transmission model in which communication functions to loft messages long distances and exercise power over others from afar. It works well when we text message our friends or fire a missile or take out an ad in the Washington Post. It is at work when we channel the textbook in our classes or lecture without regard for where the shells we lob are landing. 

The other form of communication is ancient; it predates literacy and springs from the impulse to commune with others. It gathers in rather than disseminates, pulls us into a circle of stories around the fire instead of blasting the masses, and works from the inside to the outside. Symbolic, ritualized, it is the way a society defines, maintains, and sustains itself. It is thought embedded in action, the Word made flesh. The message is not simply carried in the shell of the advertisement: it is rather—to ruffle McLuhan’s hair—the message as the medium.

Thus, when we imagine ourselves professing before our classes, do we see ourselves as these exemplary sages who at the very least convey an enthusiasm for the subject that can enthrall even the back rows? Probably not, and rightly so.

The best teachers among us wear the mantle lightly. They seem innocent of it, as unconscious as breathing. When complimented they may be startled or slightly embarrassed or just a bit uncomfortable. This hints at the idea that teaching well is not a technique (from tekhne, ‘art or craft’) applied from the outside but the result over time of allowing our natural curiosity to partner with our desire for communion with others.  When we tell the stories around our particular fires with enthusiasm (from en theos, ‘in god’), we transcend our egos if only for a moment. We lose the weight of being ‘the teacher’ and we truly ‘profess’ what we know and love. 

This “innocence” is not something we can strive for, however. It arrives unannounced, a blessed byproduct of knowledge, love for the subject, familiarity with the process, and experience in handling groups of students.  In those moments we become the embodiment of what we say, a living word. On a cold Monday morning we can be so lucky.

Mysterium Tremendum

 “ . . . Above and beyond our rational being lies hidden the ultimate and highest part of our nature, which can find no satisfaction in the mere allaying of the needs of our sensuous, psychical, or intellectual impulses and cravings. The mystics called it the basis or ground of the soul.” — Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy 

When it comes to the history of religion this element of the non-rational, the awe-ful, the mysterious, is bound into the DNA of the whole experience. Rudolf Otto laid down the premise that religion starts with the apprehension of ‘the mysterium tremendum.’  He describes the experience:

“The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship . . . It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering. It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures.”

I’d venture to say that for most of us who worship on a regular basis the mystery’s gone. We are familiar with the rhythm of the worship service, at times comforting, at other times almost nauseating in its repetition and dullness. Mainstream religious groups, noting the absence of youth and young adults, inject informality into the service, along with music that can get people on their feet, clapping and swaying. What they may lack in depth they make up for in enthusiasm and communal spirit. You’re never alone at such a service.

And yet . . . and yet . . . My mysterium tremendum moments, experiences which Otto says mark real religion through the millennia, are rare enough that I can remember most of them. These are moments that pierce, in remembrance, with feelings and impressions that are almost painful, the sort of pain that makes you grateful to be alive. Without exception they occurred unexpectedly, without preparation or forethought, usually when I was alone, but occasionally in the presence of a few intimate friends. They produced what Otto calls ‘a beatitude beyond compare.’ Almost inexpressible, they gave, as he says, “The Peace that passes understanding, and of which the tongue can only stammer brokenly.”

One took place when I was 17, camping with friends in Yosemite, high above the valley floor and within sight of North Dome. Early in the morning, before the others awoke, I clambered up on a rock the size of a house to watch the dawning. While I felt horizontally alone—my friends were asleep a hundred yards downslope—I seemed vertically caught up to the heavens and enveloped in the vast and gentle acceptance of Nature. My eyes were drawn to the rim of the mountains opposite where the first light of morning would break. I waited, and as I did I thought I saw motion in the air far below me, but it could only be perceived indirectly, in a sidelong glance at the edge of vision. Gradually it took form so that in a few moments it could be seen as a vast cloud of black birds, shifting and swooping, moving together soundlessly. It drew nearer and I could hear a rustle that grew to a sound like the wind and I could make out individual birds among the hundreds and as I got to my feet they rushed overhead, around me and over me, just as the sun burst up and over the mountains and lit them and me with a fiery flame. In a moment they were gone, and I let out my breath and I brushed away the tears as I whooped. 

A second experience was in Winchester Cathedral. I had hitchhiked down from the college I was attending and arrived before noon. The cathedral, wreathed in mist, seemed almost to float. It was larger than I had imagined and yet more delicate somehow. I pulled open a side door and slipped in. I found myself in a vast, open space under a soaring ceiling, everything dominated by the enormous stained-glass window of the West facade. Something about a cathedral raises the spirit and lowers the voice; footsteps echoed and I could hear voices somewhere, but no one was in sight. I walked quietly up the center aisle and knelt in a row of seats below the altar. While prayer with words has always been difficult for me, I have found peace in simply listening with an open heart. The heavens did not open nor did I see angels ascending and descending, but I was on holy ground nevertheless. Cathedrals were designed to impress, instruct, and uplift the thousands who crowded into them for worship and on festival days. Alone within that cool, echoing space I could give myself over to the stone beneath my knees, the fine, close grain of the wood of the chair against which I leaned, the light pouring in from windows high overhead. 

I knelt there as long as I needed to, finally standing only when it seemed there was no more that could be expressed or received. It was a cessation, not a parting. 

A more recent experience took place within a small circle of friends I have known for over twenty years. We gather weekly to study, to pray, to discuss and argue over matters of the spirit and the state of the world. There is nothing we can’t say to each other. Still, it came as a shock when, near the end of our discussion, one of our group leaned forward and said with a smile on her face, “I just want you to know I have cancer.”

In the silence that followed for a few heartbeats my first thought, incongruously, was of thankfulness. “Now it’s out there,” I thought. “We can talk about it. We can go through this with her. This is a beginning we will not regret.” We don’t know what the outcome will be. But it’s fair to say that act of courage freed us all to bear whatever burdens we can together. 

These moments rise above the norm. They are what Otto calls the ‘overplus’ of experience. When we have them they remind us of forces beyond our control and of our smallness in this universe. They will not fit neatly into a rational schema nor can they be fully understood. But they can be accepted when offered. Experience is a kind of knowing that reveals as we retell.


"The Numinous."Created by Barry Casey with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Jesus, One for All

“Praxis will make Jesus alive among us. As a mystery, he is therefore never the exclusive possession of Christians. He is ‘common property.’” — Edward Schillebeeckx, God Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, a name that for people the world over is instantly recognizable as unique, yet for his time was as common as Mohammed is today. Biblical scholars have pointed out that we know very little of the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, that the reports of Matthew and Luke are ‘gospel’ truths, not historical facts, and that he entered the world unnoticed. But of course for his parents, and perhaps for a few friends and relatives, this birth was, like most births, an occasion for joy, tinged with the darkness that waits patiently just beyond the reach of every parent. 

It is ironic that one of the most beloved of Christmas traditions, the “Hallelujah Chorus,” exalts the magnificent titles later bestowed on this little anonymous Jewish boy born under the oppressive rule of the Roman empire: King of Kings and Lord of Lords . . . forever and ever and ever! Matthew pulls in lines from Isaiah about a baby born back in the day who is named Emmanuel, ‘God with us,’ but the angel who appears in Joseph’s dream commands that this child be named Jesus (which is the English equivalent of the Greek transliteration of the Aramaic ‘Yeshua,’ the Latinized version of the Hebrew ‘Yehoshua’) which means ‘Yahweh is salvation.’ Close enough: Matthew’s calling up of ‘Emmanuel’ dovetails nicely with the name ‘Jesus’ in that God moves close to us in the form of the one who saves—Yahweh. 

How do we connect with this child? We usually don’t. Say the name ‘Jesus’ and you most likely see a grown man trudging up and down the roads of Galilee. You just might see a young boy, having slipped the anxious bonds of his parents, stunning the theologians in the temple with his knowledge of scripture. For the most part, though, we jump directly from the manger scene to Jesus’ baptism because the Gospels are silent about those years. 

And yet through countless paintings, sculptures, images, poems, songs, and Christmas cards, we imagine this baby, perhaps one of many born that day called ‘Jesus,’ and we see this one as the Wonderful Counselor, the Prince of Peace, the Redeemer. 

Jesus himself seems almost oblivious to his own identity, caught up as he is in his mission for others. When people ask who he is he sometimes demurs, other times answers obliquely (I and the Father are one), and occasionally, in the presence of his friends, speaks directly—“I am among you as one who serves.” He is a man consumed by his passion for God, yet he grows weary like any man. He constantly threads his way between the messianic and revolutionary hopes of the peasants around him, and the pragmatic realpolitik of the ruling religious parties. The people can see the difference: ‘He speaks with authority, not like the priests,’ and ‘no one speaks like this man.’ “Why do you call me good?” he asks. “Only the Father is good.” And that, says Edward Schillebeeckx, Dominican monk and professor of theology, “can only be said by someone who is so obviously good that he is not even conscious of being good. And precisely that will betray his identity.”

At times I wonder where Jesus can be found in all the Christmas mashup concocted by the religio-commercialized complex. There’s precious little left of him after the season is over, so obscured is he by our frenetic worship of getting. Occasionally, I imagine the terrible scene sketched by Nietzsche in which a madman rushes into the city square with a lantern in midday, crying “God is dead! And we have killed him!” And after I jump down from my own petard before I am blown up by self-righteousness, I glimpse a figure moving steadily through the crowd ahead. I quicken my pace, but I lose him at the corner. I pause, turning in a full circle, eyes straining, but he is gone. Then I see him, standing alone, the crowd swirling past him, and when our eyes meet he smiles. My eyes tear up in the wind and when I clear them he has vanished. No matter: Imagination will suffice when beckoned by hope.

Like the first Christians we understand this better when we read back from the unthinkable resurrection to the birth of Jesus. As Schillebeeckx says, “Human birth, life and death are in fact accessible only in a story, and not in theory or ‘theology.’ “

Mandela's Choice

“. . . no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.” — William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

At one of the campuses where I teach, a student remarked in a symposium that a fellow classmate had just heard of Nelson Mandela’s death. ‘You know who he is, right?” asked my student. “Sure,” came the response, “he’s an actor” — a case of life being confused as art imitating life, as Morgan Freeman played Nelson Mandela in the film, Invictus. 

A great man passes on and the world mourns. Jailed for 27 years as a terrorist by the South African government, Mandela emerged from the notorious prison on Robben Island in 1990—and the world held its breath. He had the power to plunge South Africa into all-out racial warfare, but instead he worked for reconciliation and peace. 

Branded a communist and a terrorist early in his career, Mandela was only taken off the U. S. terror watch list in 2008, long after he received the Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk in 1993, and was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Some perceptions die hard.

His life followed an arc unusual for the type of human rights heroes we think we know. Unlike Gandhi and Martin Luther King he was not assassinated nor was he always a pacifist. They lived in the public eye and died violently; he lived for decades locked up for life and died at home in bed. There is no template for these kinds of heroes. A man plays the hand dealt him as best he can and lives—and dies—aware of forces larger than himself at work.

What must it be like to walk out of a cell to stand before thousands of people for whom you are both symbol and cipher? To look into the eyes of those around the negotiating table and see both fear and admiration? To turn at the end of the day to stand by a window, feeling the warm night air fold around oneself as the curtain brushes your cheek? To see oneself from a distance, a thin stick-figure gesturing in silhouette, the words from one’s mouth flying like a dove from an ark, looking for a place to land?

Through film, biographies, autobiography, stories, articles, photos, we attempt to understand the human being behind the image. It is we who build the image, but we demand authenticity, the real Truth about the man. It’s not even as if we knew for sure that there was a truth to be had, but every story, every interview, every anecdote from Those Who Were There tries to shatter the Image and find the Man. 

We have need of both the image and the man: the image is portable, can be synced across many devices, and can be updated across all platforms. It is a creation not quite ex nihilo, out of nothing, but if it were not there it would be necessary to invent it. The Man is, literally, another story. 

I don’t know that we ever know ourselves completely. Mandela must have searched his soul intently during those 27 years, piecing together an armature upon which he could create a new man, one dedicated to peace. It may have taken him that long to reconcile with this new man, to learn his ways, and to recognize when he weakened and was in need of hope. 

If that is the case, if it might be true that Mandela—and any of us—may be recreated into new beings whose very existence defies the logic of circumstance, then we are in constant discovery of ourselves even in those moments when we choose “the road less travelled by,” — the one that makes all the difference. 

This theory would run up against the familiar spirit that haunts our discourse about the fitness of those who would be our leaders, for example. Thus, a man, midway through life is presumed to be the same person as the impetuous youth who inhaled or drank or otherwise indulged in foolishness. But do we really believe that no one evolves over time, that we are the same yesterday, today, and forever? 

“You’ll become only who you always were.
What the gods give they give at the start,” 

says Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, through “Ricardo Reis,” one of his writing personas. We interpret this view of Fate as laying out a path we are bound to follow no matter what. This is the flip side of another American myth—that of the man or woman who rises, despite the odds, to triumph and glory through sheer will power by any means necessary. Both of these stories lead us into temptation. The first resigns us to passivity: we are already what we shall always be. The second gives us false hope that if we just follow this or that self-help program we will emerge the victors. 

Perhaps our path lies closer to the center—not because having split the difference between the two we are now trapped in the middle—but rather as a genuine third position. 

This position says that we are in a context, a culture, a society, that shapes us through family, education, religion, and social influences, but that does not determine us. Through self-awareness we see our circumstances for what they are: the place we are at in the present, out of all the myriad possibilities within that cultural context. But now that we see where we are we have some choices. They are not infinite but they are choices, and we ignore them at our peril. 

We also recognize that we are inevitably the product of our genetic heritage, yet that too is not definitive of our character. What matters, what opens possibilities for change and renewal, is the awareness that arises through reflection. It may come through a faithful commitment to a spiritual path or it may come through the recognition that we are not alone in this world. However we receive it we now can decide, and it’s the decision that matters. 

We rightly regard Mandela as a hero because he chose to respond to hate with forgiveness. Ironically, the very system that was designed to break him and force him to submit was itself dismantled, piece by piece, in no small measure by the strength of his patience and the power of his character. 

NOTE: I've decided to continue Wretched Success here at Blogspot and to copy these musings to Medium.com. Look for some changes to come in the next few weeks!

And Now For Something Completely Different: Tragic Faith and Gratitude

“Tragedy is real and by its very nature cannot be explained. Spirituality, accordingly, involves finding or giving meaning to that which cannot be explained or justified.” — Robert Solomon, Spirituality for the Skeptic

In the introductory class on philosophy that I teach each year I ask the students to come up with a list of the worst evils that have occurred in all of human history. This year rape was number one, followed by child molestation. Terrorism, mass shootings, violence toward women, and cruelty to animals were also mentioned.

We can learn from their observations. First, nobody mentioned the Holocaust. Second, all the evils were generic; none were the actions of specific persons. Third, allowing for a certain historical inevitability of such crimes, none of these occurred earlier than 2001. And finally, everything, without exception, fit into the ‘moral evil’ category. No hurricanes, typhoons, tornados, earthquakes, avalanches, tsunamis, or fires need apply. That was all stuff for which there is at least a scientific explanation; the real evil was perpetrated by humans upon each other.

That’s a modern sensibility at work. Unlike people of the eighteenth century or earlier, most of us no longer think of natural disasters as punishment for sin nor do we see a connection between God and tsunamis. These things happen, we say. There’s nothing, really, that we can do about it, although some of my students thought the effects of global warming—rising seas, more frequent and more intense storm systems, and wild variations in temperatures for the seasons—could be traced back to human indifference, corruption, and even maleficence.

When bad things happen to people we slip on our metaphysical raincoats to protect us from the depressing downpour and are thankful that two buckets catch all the meaning we’ll ever need. One bucket is labeled ‘natural disasters’ — what used to be called ‘acts of God’ —and the other bucket is simply ‘moral evil’— that which we do out of ignorance, hatred, bad karma, or stupidity.

Yet, while we live in a world that is taut with globalized connections and wired for instantaneous reaction to horrors, our views of evil are provincial and localized. That’s not to say they are trivial or inconsequential, but rather to note the obvious: what happens to us is of the utmost importance, but the significance tapers off rapidly the farther the effect ripples away from ourselves. In another setting, one of the Marx brothers said something like, “comedy is when you step on a banana peel and fall down a manhole; tragedy is when it happens to me.”

We don’t have much place for tragedy these days. Outside of assigning it to certain Shakespearean plays and young lives cut short through car crashes, we’re almost embarrassed to use the word. We have an egalitarian notion that suffering is personal, therefore individual, and that everyone is entitled to their own version of it. Perhaps because we are resolutely bound to respect another’s suffering as entirely their own we are at a loss for comforting words and we fall back on such stiff, managerial phrases as ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

But as Robert Solomon notes in Spirituality for the Skeptic (2002), it is as tragedy that suffering has meaning. “Whether or not life has a meaning—whatever that is taken to mean—we make meaning by way of our commitments . . . It is by making meanings in life that we free ourselves from the meaninglessness of suffering.”

One of the lessons that we learn, sooner or later, is how much that happens to us is simply out of our control. This runs against our pride and our unbounded faith in technological progress. If things break they will be fixed. And if they can’t be fixed someone will pay. Those who are responsible will be held accountable, and the line of responsibility, while sometimes tenuous, can usually be followed back to a person or an organization. Thus, we look for someone to blame before anything else.

Sometimes we do things that result in tragedy through shortsightedness or negligence or laziness. But sometimes, despite our efforts and all our best practices, terrible things happen that we cannot find sufficient reasons for and we certainly can’t explain them. There is no one to blame, no one to sue. Why can’t we just leave it at that?

There are moments in everyone’s life that are beyond explanation. Reason fails us precisely because there are no categories nor words to express what we are experiencing. In those times we simply gasp in dumbstruck awe and then set about cleaning up, restoring what we can. That is where suffering becomes meaningful in the depths of our tragedy.What reason cannot articulate, spirituality can express through a muscular silence.

There’s another position between the arrogance of reason and the resignation of despair—that of tragic faith. I’m not talking about melodrama or narcissism but of a clear-eyed recognition of the limitations of our lives. The human condition is one of beauty and ugliness, nobility and depravity, astonishing courage and shrinking cowardice. That’s us—all of us—without exception. We are tragic figures because we have such greatness in us and yet we fall so far short. As a Christian deeply drawn to an existentialist vision of life I take the centrality of making meaning as part of the action of faith. A tragic faith is not one of despair but of humility and gratitude. To live in hope and in passion is to live with gratitude and good humor. I did not ask to be born, but I’m here! How cool is that?

When we come to the end of our days, says Annie Dillard in one of her books, we take our leave like guests going home from a friend’s house. The natural thing to say to the host is ‘Thank you!’

Dear Readers: This is the last post here at Wretched Success. I'm moving to Medium, a new site for online writers that's been developed by one of the co-founders of Twitter. Please follow this link https://medium.com/p/8d338db0e235.