Tag: power

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Wie haben sie das geschafft?

Wie haben sie das geschafft: sich zu behaupten, für sich zu sorgen, für sich zu kämpfen, ohne ein Schwein zu werden, dem die anderen egal sind?

Bernhard Schlink, Die Enkelin

Translation: ‘How did they manage to assert themselves, to take care of themselves, to fight for themselves, without becoming a pig who doesn’t care about the others?’

Having just witnessed yet another grave abuse of power by a figure in authority who should have known better than to act in the way they did, i.e., without any apparent care for those they were hurting, Schlink’s question is a pertinent one for me.

It is when noting the traces of little tokens of the deep humanity among the inmates of Ravensbrück concentration camp that the protagonist of Schlink’s novel asks how they managed not to lose their humanity even in an extreme situation like that.

It is our ongoing challenge that – whatever the hurt, whatever the abuse – we manage to assert ourselves, take care of ourselves, fight for ourselves, without losing our own humanity in the process.

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Power, originality, independence – and ostracisation

Many a contemporary man … gives up his power, originality, and independence, because of fearing exile if he does not. He renounces his power and conforms under the great threat and peril of ostracism.

Rollo May, Existential Psychotherapy

Unless, of course, one doesn’t – only to find oneself duly ostracised. The wisdom of May’s statement should not be missed despite its gendered language – a product of the time.

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Your gift

Some of the deepest longing in you is the voice of your gift. … The only way to honour the unmerited presence of the gift in your life is to attend to the gift; this is also a most difficult path to walk. … The gift alone knows where its path leads. It calls you to courage and humility. If you hear its voice in your heart, you simply have to follow it. … People who truly follow their gift find that it can often strip their lives and yet invest them with a sense of enrichment and fulfilment that nothing else could bring.

John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

This whole passage is stimulating and deeply insightful, but I was most struck by the concept of the gift stripping our lives if we follow it. Following one’s gift might involve being an uncompromising, prophetic voice in an environment where such a voice is not welcome – which is probably true for most environments. Martin Luther King Jr comes to mind, whose gift stripped his life in that it led to fierce, violent, and in his case ultimately deadly opposition.

I suppose it can be a deep honour for one’s life to be stripped, an honour that those who respond to someone’s exercise of their gift in power-abusing, coercive, violent ways unwittingly and ironically award them.

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Lovers as artists – and the inner landscape of beauty

Here are some passages from Krista Tippett’s book Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, passages that struck, inspired, challenged me.

Krista Tippett, Becoming WiseIn connection with the Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, she mentions his belief in ‘the possibility of creating our own inner landscapes of beauty, to keep us vital in the midst of bleak and dangerous surroundings and experiences’, a need that, as many of us know only too well, may arise at any time.

Talking about the work of philosopher and L’Arche founder Jean Vanier, she quotes his vitally important vision ‘to educate people to relate, to listen, to help people to become themselves’ rather than, as is so often the case, to subject them to a preconceived agenda, whatever that may be.

And she quotes john a. powell, Professor of Law and Professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies, who notes that:

people are looking for community, right now, though we don’t have confidence in love. We have much more confidence in anger and hate. We believe anger is powerful. We believe hate is powerful. And we believe love is wimpy. And so if we’re engaged in the world, we believe it’s much better to sort of organize around anger and hate.

Lovers, by contrast, as Tippett herself points out are artists who are ‘reaching out to enemies, embracing complexity, creativity, and risk’.

Lastly, here are some words from geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon, also taken from Tippett’s book, words whose truth I have come to know in my own experience:

once you enter into this way of, I would call it companionship, walking with the suffering person who has come into your life and whom you have not rejected, your heart progressively gets educated by them. They teach you a new way of being.

We have to be educated by the other. My heart cannot be educated by myself. It can only come out of a relationship with others. And if we accept being educated by others, to let them explain to us what happens to them, and to let yourself be immersed in their world so that they can get into our world, then you begin to share something very deep.

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A source of life and service

In her poem ‘The Lord’s Prayer from Guatemala’ (1979), also published in Threatened with Resurrection/Amenazado de resurrección, Julia Esquivel envisages that:

churches abandon their structures of power and domination
and become instead a source of life and service
for all humankind.

…

For yours is the kingdom
belonging to no usurper,
yours is the power
belonging to no structure or organization,
and yours is the glory,
for you are the only God and Father
forever and ever, AMEN.

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Multitasking and the divided self

Multitasking is the drive to be more than we are, to control more than we do, to extend our power and our effectiveness. Such practice yields a divided self, with full attention given to nothing.

This again is from Walter Brueggemann’s Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to a Culture of Now. ‘Full attention given to nothing’ – as a teacher I’d say this is one of the most debilitating faults of our 24/7 society.

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