‘I wonder sometimes if the teacher is not the real student and beneficiary’ (George Steiner)
This has to be my favourite quote on the book of Revelation, or rather the interpretation of Revelation:
… though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.
Who could have said this but G. K. Chesterton (in Orthodoxy), who, as a rhetorician, is impossible to beat.
… as soon as you have high levels of fear, the risk of scapegoating becomes very real.
Once again Helena Kennedy, in Third Way Jan./Feb. 2013
If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
This is one of the statements that I most associate with Richard Rohr; and it is one that he must have said dozens of times. And so it also appears in Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, where he adds:
If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter. Indeed, there are bitter people everywhere, inside and outside of the church. As they go through life, the hurts, disappointments, betrayals, abandonments, the burden of their own sinfulness and brokenness all pile up, and they do not know where to put it.
If there isn’t some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it, and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down. The natural movement of the ego is to protect itself so as not to be hurt again.
Biblical revelation is about transforming history and individuals so that we don’t just keep handing the pain onto the next generation. … Exporting our unresolved hurt is almost the underlying story line of human history, so you see why people still need healthy spirituality and healthy religion.
I think Rohr is right. How we deal with our hurts, disappointments, betrayals etc. makes all the difference, not only in how we experience and treat others, but also in how we experience life itself. Bitterness, cynicism and distrust are so dangerous because they are so destructive. They can seriously hurt and even destroy others, but that’s not all: in the end, they can destroy us, too.
The challenge, then, is not to close down but to accept and integrate our hurts, disappointments and betrayals, which of course hurt the more the less expected they are. The challenge is to transform our pain and not transmit it, to let ourselves be hurt without hitting back. A true challenge indeed, but the realisation that this is the only healthy way forward is perhaps the first step. Compassion for those who hurt us and a commitment to non-violence in all walks of life make all the difference, for ourselves in the first place but also, in the long run, for those we encounter.
As a footnote on my previous post, I should say that Kennedy’s statement appeals to me because it connects with the Christian apophatic tradition, which is precisely a tradition of not knowing. Richard Rohr (in Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality) defines this as ‘the very concept of faith, the freedom not to know’, and notes that
it is amazing how religion has turned this biblical idea of faith around to mean its exact opposite: into a tradition of certain knowing, presumed predictability and complete assurance about whom God likes and whom God does not like.
… feeling uncertain is sometimes the most fruitful way of being.
Helena Kennedy, in Third Way Jan./Feb. 2013
(And yes, I’m a bit behind in my reading of this magazine.)
Interesting thoughts on feminism in public and in private:
As a feminist, I’ve always felt that feminism is most crucial in private. In public, there are always people (men and women) to reason and defend the place of women. The discourse is clear, potent and largely active. We’re moving forwards, change is occurring. I do feel that.
The private sphere is where I most need feminism’s ideas. It’s here that we ask ourselves deep and secret questions. Interrogate our hopes, ambitions and desires, find out who we’re trying to please, hold up the current shape of ourselves against the images that formed us.
Josie Rourke, ‘The Right to Be Uncertain’, in Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach (eds), Fifty Shades of Feminism
Karl Möller 