Paradoxes Continued

In my last blog post I responded to a high school chum's question and I spoke to an issue of paradoxes. I mentioned and gave an example of one relative to the USA, that was, the paradox of "one and many."   Within this paradoxical frame "one" is equated to "United" and "many" is equated to "States."  Another paradox that relates well to our country is "unity and diversity."  We are the United States of America  composed of various and diverse people from very many backgrounds yet and still we are "one nation ("unity") under God, indivisible ("unity"), with liberty and justice FOR ALL ("diversity")."  Everyone is under the umbrella not just 1% or 2% but 100%.

Even God as He is understood by Judeo-Christians like myself is a unified whole (God) and yet very diverse (Father, Son, & Holy Spirit).  Not being familiar enough with other belief systems I don't want to venture into their teachings and beliefs to make the paradox understood from their perspective. However, one of you readers may know how God as He is known by them lives within the paradoxes of "unity and diversity" and "one and many."

Then yesterday morning I was reading my Daily Meditation which was based on the gospel passage to be read for the day (Roman Catholic Churches): "This poor widow put in more than all the other contributors." (Mark 12:43 - New American Bible 1991 - Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington DC)  

In the meditation ("the Word among us: The Spirit of Catholic Living", 2012, Word Among Us Press, St Augustine, FL) was written the following:

"Blessed Mother Teresa understood this type of love, because she saw it every day on the streets of Calcutta. She once observed: 'I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.'  Like the widows in today's readings (I Kings 17:10-16 & Mark 12:38-44), Mother Teresa encountered those who, despite having barely enough to live on, loved God and neighbor so deeply that they willingly shared the little they had with those who had even less."

Is she telling us that like the "runner's high" there is a "lover's high" much different than the transitory romantic lover's high?  Is it that endorphins at some point kick-in for the person extending his/her love in this manner?

Mother Teresa is quoted as observing that "I have found the paradox..."  It is important for me to grapple with this notion of "the paradox."  Not "a paradox" but "the paradox."

The Morning After

I received an email overnight from a high school chum that read as follows:

I will toss you this question.

With the 'Browning' of America I don't think we will ever see
another Republican President.

Given the fact that these are people who use public programs..how are we going to sustain
those programs??

What follows is my response (please excuse the "email-ness" of the writing): 

I tell my conservative friends that I describe myself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal and they tell me it's paradoxical.  I tell them so is the USA paradoxical and maybe so is all of life.

Think of the "one and the many" .... We are the United (one) States (many) of America

So, stop overbuilding a military industrial complex that kills everything and everyone 100 times over...... Stop being a constant war economy..... And "just because we can does not mean we should"..... I was in England right after 9/11 for 6 months as you may recall..... We had the whole world (almost) in empathy with us but we squandered that support because  we had the "shock and awe" POTUS W Bush and the losers in Vietnam Nam in control of the military/defense and then we invade Iraq...... We took trillions of our $$$ and threw it away just as the nine supporters of R/R took their millions ....  Could not that $$$ have done so much more for our country and our people than it did ..... I say yes resoundingly yes..... But no the Beast has to be fed and POTUS Ike warned this...........  People far smarter than me have done the math and the math says we could have done so so so  much good for every state and all the people making the Public better and giving them more $$$ and opportunity to support the Private

Next I think we need to stop trying to create a utopia or heaven on earth whether it's religious fundamentalism (all religions) again we're humans (one) and various religious systems (many) and it is the radicals who want to rule and create their utopia/heaven on earth...... or rationalism as in atheism, objectivism, rule by intellect & rationality, science as life etc each of which believes in the extreme that "they" can create "heaven on earth" or utopia........  balderdash.......

Stop this income inequality which has more to do with luck/ good fortune than anything else and luck/randomness is never given its honor......  These billionaires entrepreneurs CEOs etc think that each  has achieved their "greatness" because they "did it the old fashion way, they earned it" and therefore are entitled to as much $$$$$$ as they can get away with getting/taking and furthermore they are so great that what they think matters more and is more valuable than what a commoner like me thinks on any and every topic.......  They are arrogant........ They because of their $$$$ and status have more value than a commoner like me.....  Their opinions have added value.......

 What they need to acknowledge is that their success has multiple causality including their hard work, their sacrifices, the Public - infrastructure as well as everything "we the people" have commonly contributed laws, courts, safety, etc -, randomness (good fortune, luck, the grace of God).  Then like the military industrial Beast how much $$$$ do they need to live this lifetime or say their 100 years on earth?  Do they need enough to live 100 x 100 years? While at the same time believing their employees deserve minimum wage and less than a 40 week and should sign-up for food stamps etc. as in Wal-Mart.....  Makes no sense to me.  I do not believe in the "just world" hypothesis that bad things happen to those who deserve it while good things happen to those who deserve it as well........  No way you convince me that my dad mom and I got what we deserved with dad's early and premature death...... To me it was a "random act of unkindness" and Carol did not survive her cancer ordeal because we are good and deserve it, this was a "random act of kindness" or "the grace of God"......

My desire was for this short extemporaneous response to be a partial answer......  read my previous blogposts for more detail.

Hedges and Me #14

"The desire for empowerment is enticing.  It is difficult to accept our ordinariness.  We look for escape routes to avoid the pitfalls of life, the hurts and rejections.  We want to be absolved of our responsibility for our neighbors and community.  We want to replace it with the primacy of self.  This desire fosters a dangerous kind of individualism.  It allows us to rise on the backs of those we have been told should be manipulated for our gain.  Those who suffer, those who fail, in this creed, do so because they are not good enough.  The moral life becomes the life of achievement." (page 161, "Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America," 2005) 

This creed is sweeping the nation in the form of novelist Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" as depicted in her work "Atlas Shrugged."  It is embodied or personified in the 2012 Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan who subscribes to Rand's teachings.  It and he are emblematic of "America's most pervasive idolatry ... the idolatry of the self." 

"It is the tragedy of secular belief, index the tragedy of all man-made attempts at utopia, to place unbridled and total faith in the intellect.  It is the worst form of self-devouring idolatry.  As we realize that our attempts to achieve perfection are failing we become more afraid and more fanatic.  Fear, in the end, drives us until we live lives dominated by fear." (p. 165)

I have chosen in my later years to embrace my ordinariness or as my pen name indicates my commoner status.  I am an ordinary person, a simple person, and a decent person.

"The strange fragments of our lives can only be comprehended when we accept our insecurities and uncertainties, when we accept that we will never know what life is about or what it is supposed to mean, when we accept that we are ordinary.  We must do the best we can, not for ourselves, the commandments teach us, but for those around us.

The quality of our life, of all life, is determined by what we give and what we sacrifice.  We live, the commandments tell us, not by exalting our life but by being willing to lose it." (p. 176)  This is the antithesis of Ayn Rand's celebration of selfishness and her objectivism philosophy.  

Hedges and Me #13

Today is Sunday and for me it is the Sabbath.  Here are some of Hedges' thoughts in re: the 4th Commandment:

"Honoring the Sabbath is one of the most important of the commandments.  It occupies a third of the text of the commandments.  Our restless lives cry out for the peace of the Sabbath.  The Sabbath is the culmination of our life, the moment when we pay homage to forces of creation.

In the commandments the word "holy" is applied to only one word, the "Sabbath."  The Sabbath is not about being in a particular place at a particular time.  It is about honoring relationships.. It is not about being male or female, husband or wife, children or parents, at least not exclusively; it is about the power of love to transform us.  To ignore the Sabbath is to deny the source of life.

The Sabbath is the battle for transcendence, for freedom from the pull of "needs."  It is the battle for life.  It is the battle to defeat that which destroys love, the idolatry of desire, the hard and concrete cases of injustice, all that belittles the worth of other human beings.

The Sabbath is not about rules.  These are imposed by institutions which seek conformity and control."

The word "had" came to mind when I was reading this chapter on honoring the Sabbath.  I "had" to go to church.  Going to church became a habit and one I conformed to throughout my childhood and into early adulthood.  Guilt was a prime mover of my behavior as was the fear of God if I did not.  More importantly perhaps to my "honoring the Sabbath" was a Sunday ritual of going with my mom to Uncle John and Aunt Leone's house for dinner and togetherness.  Many of my fondest memories occurred during these get-togethers.  Around age 16 I stopped wanting to "have" to go to Uncle John's every Sunday although my mom almost always wanted to go I began to go less often.  I wanted to be with my peers who had become more important to me in many ways.  Yet the times I went were very enjoyable and fulfilling, I just couldn't see beyond MY SELF.

Hedges would assert that going to Uncle John's for Sunday dinner was probably as pleasing to God as attending church if not more so because when we went to Uncle John's we were "...honoring relationships."   He might even think that my selfish desires to be with my peers during my late adolescence was pretty spot on too although my motives were not about honoring the Sabbath.

Our children honor the Sabbath in many different ways with some including going to church and some not.  However, they each, I believe, find some "peace" in "their restless" (busy) lives and "honor relationships."  I believe they "honor the Sabbath" by their behaviors.

Hedges & Me #12

"We are joined together, Augustine wrote, as a community by our love of the same object.  Human love, he wrote, is always directed toward either God or the self.  There are no other choices.  The other loves we have in life, the love of status, the love of possessions, the love of power, are always the love of self.  We have , Augustine argued, two choices in life.  We can embrace the City of God, where we struggle to love to the exclusion of self, a love that forces us to negate ourselves and our security to conserve, preserve and protect others, or we can embrace the City of Man where unbridled self-interest makes us all enemies.  In the City of God, where we make hard and sometimes painful sacrifices for others, we become part of a whole.  In the City of Man, where we live only for advancement of the self, we become part of a mob.  The commandments when followed, keep us in the City of God.  When violated they exile us to the City of Man." (page 42 - "Losing Moses on the Freeway")

So Hedges asserts it is way easier to put forth a love of self whereas to "...conserve, preserve and protect others" is the "road less traveled" because it is so much more demanding and challenging.  And then pair Hedges' thinking above with George Lakoff's thinking:

"Conservative radicals — not moderates — have a different idea of democracy: They define democracy as providing the liberty to seek your own interests without any responsibility for the interests or well being of others, and without others helping you. They consider illegitimate all the things citizens do for the citizens of our country as a whole. And under Romney-Ryan, all of that would be eliminated.

The moral difference is clear: Do we have both personal and social responsibility, or just personal responsibility? Are we in this together, or are we on our own? The conservatives say we are, and should be, on our own. Are we the United States or the Separate States — or millions of isolated individuals who don’t care about anybody else?"  (from the The Little Blue Blog of October 15, 2012.)

I see the "conservative radicals" leading us toward the City of Man pretending to do otherwise.  Am I off base with this "seeing?"

Hedges and Me #11

"The commandments do not protect us from evil.  They protect us from committing evil.  The commandments are designed to check our darker impulses, warning us that pandering to impulses can have terrible consequences.  'If you would enter life,' the gospel of Matthew reads, keep the commandments'" (Matthew 19:17).  

This segment comes from his prologue to his book "Losing Moses on the Freeway." (2005)  He sees the commandments for what they are supposed to do, i.e., "...protect us from committing evil."  And to that end I resonate with an image of God, hands covering his face, looking down upon us with great sadness.  Hedges points to a character in the ten-part series call The Decalogue directed by "...the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski."  Hedges notes, "In eight of the films there was a brief appearance by a young man, solemn and silent.  Kieslowski said he did not know who he was.  Perhaps he was an angel or Christ.  Perhaps he represented the divine presence who observed with profound sadness the tragedy and folly we humans commit against others and ourselves.
'He's not very pleased with us,' the director said.

The commandments call us to reject and defy powerful forces that can rule our lives and to live instead for others, even if this costs us status and prestige and wealth.

The commandments show us how to avoid being enslaved, how to save us from ourselves.  They lead us to love, the essence of life."

Hedges and Me #10

Number ten (#10) was my high school football jersey number that is presently being worn by a grandson of my "adopted" sociological father in my childhood home town.  So it's fitting that I begin sharing here from a "new" Chris Hedges book "Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America." (2005)

In the preface Hedges states:
"When our lives are shattered by tragedy, suffering, and pain, or when we express or feel the ethereal and overwhelming power of love, we confront the mystery of good and evil.  Voices across time and cultures have struggled to transmit and pay homage to this mystery, what it means for our lives and our place in the cosmos.  No human being, no nation, no religion, has been chosen by God to be the sole interpreter of mystery.  All cultures struggle to give words to the experience of the transcendent.  This is the most powerful testament to the reality of God.  It is a reminder that all of us find God not in what we know, but in what we cannot comprehend and cannot see." (p. 4)

Over this past weekend, our youngest daughter's best friend and her family were on a "family outing" in their home state of Utah.  Her daughter of 15 was killed -- "a parent's worst nightmare" -- in tragic circumstances while "playing" with her siblings.  The family is Mormon in their religious practice.  I know little about the religion although in the conservative wing of my Catholic religion their "religion" is considered a "cult" and not a religion.  I know the bible is not the hallmark work of their religion but rather the Book of Mormon. I do know the tenets I have some familiarity with are stranger than fiction but so are I suppose the tenets of Catholicism to many people.

What is at issue here is that they are confronting in this tragedy "...the mystery of good and evil."   And they are doing it through the "...voices" of their Mormon religion.  And I think Hedges would agree that doing so "... is a reminder that all of us find God not in what we know, but in what we cannot comprehend and cannot see."