Addendum on Loving One's Enemies

Another take I’ve heard on loving one’s enemy [see my previous post] is to recognize, as Carl Jung suggested, that what you see out in the world as “enemy” is a projection of your own shadow: those thoughts, feelings, and impulses that we deny having within ourselves. One way to recognize our shadow is to take note of what triggers us in other people and begin a gentle inquiry into that; work on bringing what is hidden into the light so it can be integrated in a healthy way. This is valuable inner work. Yet it’s also true that there are objective, external enemies who are not solely projections of disowned aspects of our selves. This may seem like an obvious recognition, but I frequently see people advising others to “embrace your inner [fill in a despicable name],” as a cure-all -- as if reality is primarily subjective. No. Reality is messy, complex, inner, outer, personal, collective, perceivable and beyond perceivable. Overprioritizing the internal and minimizing the external—especially when faced with collective, global anguish—is a form of spiritual bypassing.

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Brother David Steindl-Rast’s suggestion, from his Gratefulness.org site, invites a more spacious, expansive approach to seeing one’s enemy that might free us from hyperfocusing on an individual or on a current moment: “In cultivating compassion, it may help to visualize your enemies as the children they once were (and somehow remain.)” I found assistance in doing by reading a book about our leader that discussed the difficulties of his childhood – growing up in a loveless home, neglected, bullied, driven by pathological agendas – emotionally and spiritually stunted through no fault of his own. My reactivity starts to soften up as I receive this perspective. The enemy we see today is the result of what has occurred before, in the larger picture that spans decades and generations. Further, what is happening today has less to do with any individual “enemy” than with a long accumulation of sociohistorical and cultural enactments that are reaching a critical tipping point, with our current leadership arising more as symptom than cause. And like boats in a cresting river, we are all caught up in this together. 

One compassionate choice we can make at this moment, for friend, enemy, and stranger, is to peacefully (I hope!) remove unhealthy and abusive leaders from the roles they presently occupy, then continue the long work of healing, tending, binding together, sustaining…

Ponderings on Well-Wishing and Loving One's Enemies

 

Readers, behold --Todd Norman Guess's post from Facebook:

"Just a reminder for anyone who thinks it's appropriate to pray for the recovery of one with such vast amount of blood on his hands...

..Jesus, Pope Peter, Apostle Paul and King David all disagree. They quite clearly and boldly condemned such folks to hell and prayed for God to bring the hammer down.

Saints and sages of other major world wisdom traditions wielded such paradox as well.

Yes, even Divine love is big enough to discern when such things are appropriate.

Don't equate the wide variety of cruel condemnations of false Christians with the timeless voice of 'Lord, please deliver us!' "

I came upon Todd’s above post at a moment of witnessing my reactivity to the news that an oppressor is ill, and I am grateful for his thoughts here. Because frankly, I am not wishing our leader well. The same goes for the spiritual circles that I’m a part of – when we’re honest, we admit that our wishes and prayers have been more in the line of David, as he sings in Psalm 10: 

“Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—let them be caught in the schemes they have devised… their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression; under their tongues are mischief and iniquity… they lurk in secret that they may seize the poor… they stoop, they crouch, and the helpless fall by their might… Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed.”

David was a warrior, writing in lament for the beaten-down. His prayer is the voice of traumatized humanity, uttered in times of peril, grave injustice, and anxiety, denouncing oppression and cruelty, crying out for help. One of the wonderful things about the inclusion of books like Psalms, Proverbs, and Lamentations in the scriptures is that it embraces honest dialogue with God – shouts of anger, cries from the heart, beseechings, groans of grief. The implication is that when it comes to prayer, our naked sincerity has far more value than our edited, disingenuous blessings and well-wishes.

And needless to say: there is a world of difference between fundamentalist or disdainful, self-righteous prayer in which hurricanes, fires, & other disasters are welcomed as God’s punishment raining down on sinners and heathens – versus the cry of the poor who beg and deplore God for relief and for liberation from evildoers and those who mistreat widows, orphans, foreigners – the oppressed.

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In speaking truth to power, prophets frequently offer litanies of woes, as in Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 – “Woe to you rich! For you have already received your comforts … Woe to you who are full! For you will hunger.” Yet just a few verses later comes the direction to “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” This is the grand challenge. How are we to “love” those people, systems, principalities, and powers that abuse us? Church prayers for wretched or misguided rulers sometimes implore God to open their eyes to suffering and change their hearts: (in essence: prayers for a miracle). Then there is the request of Jesus on the cross: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Part of its beauty is that it is not Jesus (or, by analogy, us) volunteering to do the forgiving. It is an appeal for God to do so. In this, Jesus mercifully acknowledges human limitations. When an enemy’s injustice and abuse are ongoing and accumulating, most of us find it impossible to forgive. It is simply beyond our capacity. And thus it’s odious to cast shame on anxious, struggling people (as I’ve observed in social media this past week) for not wishing their enemy well … or for hoping that cruel, ignoble leaders are “caught in the schemes they have devised.” But – but: I might begin to grasp the truth of “they [the ‘enemy’] know not what they do.” This is not to absolve an oppressor of accountability, but to recognize that there can be great blockages to sensing the harm one is doing. Simultaneously, I can humbly accept the awareness of what I cannot do, at least not presently: forgive. This, paradoxically, is the trailhead toward authentic forgiveness.

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But back to “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” I know many people who ask: how are we, really, to accomplish this? I think the question springs from a misunderstanding of how the word “love” is used in the gospels, especially in the koan-like parables and quotes of Jesus. Here, “love” is not intended to mean “adore, be attracted to or feel affection for.” Obviously it is impossible to have such feelings for one's enemies (though yes, relationships involving abuse can be a tangle of love and enmity...) Gospel love is more action and choice than sentiment or emotion. As author and retired Methodist minister Ted Loder says, “Love is primarily what we do, not what we feel.” The same goes for prayer.

When we make well-discerned choices to contribute to the greater good through our actions, small or large – to see the larger picture and do the right thing – this, I suspect, is how the Spirit prays and acts through us. Loves though us. When we turn our active attention to caring, providing, lifting and laying down burdens, uncovering wounds, healing, sustaining, listening, planting, tending, feeding …. We become a part of a mysterious movement toward restoration, even if we never see its fruition or know if, when, or how our actions had an effect. In a more interdependent and wide-hearted world, everyone benefits, even our “enemy.”  In fostering such a world, says the gospel of Matthew, we become children of the One Who Is, who “makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain down upon the just and the unjust” (Mt 5:45). We love and pray for our enemy by participating in the Mercy that sustains all creation, all people – be they friends, enemies, or strangers.

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I’ve taken the time to write out something that may be obvious to some readers because I keep coming across people (of various spiritualities) who wonder and ask, “how are we supposed to love our enemy, really?” I think it’s mostly been a confusion about the use of the word “love” in the gospels. And writing helps me to clarify things – (at least for myself, lol, though I wish I had the gift of concision)--MW.

Note: There is now an addendum to this post. 

Big Graces

Sometimes we must thank the Lord/ess for big but unacknowledged graces. This text was shared from imnotrightinthehead.com on social media -- I just added some line breaks.



So glad I don't have
a thigh gap

Almost dropped my phone
in the toilet

But my legs were like
nah, girl, we got you.

Rhopaphoria

The painted lady butterfly

Last night there was a steady rain, almost sounded like sleet on the roof, lasting many hours. I always revel in this sound – it’s that sense of feeling cozy and sheltered in a warm house while it storms outside. It’s akin to chrysalism, i.e., “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.” (Defined in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows).This morning was brightly lit and somewhat breezy. At some point I noticed what I first thought were leaves caught in a current of wind, flecks of bronze and gold flying by my window. I paid them no mind initially, then it came to me, the sleepyhead: this is March. This is not the season of autumn leaves. Perhaps they were sparrows—LBJs (little brown jobs), as a birder friend calls them?

Peering again, I see it’s a stream of butterflies – the ones known as painted ladies. Riding on the gusts like confetti, like petals tossed away from some cosmic bloom, effervescent, glittering and bejeweling the wind. A butterfly migration!

My heart lights up in this sweetest of spring storms.

What name might we give to the caught-in-a-breeze-of-butterflies sensation? I propose a combination of Rhopalocera, the taxonomic division within Lepidoptera designating butterflies, and euphoria: 

Rhopaphoria.

Empathy, The Respiration of Love with Suffering

I attended the latter part of a workshop last Saturday led by Jacob Munhoz, psychotherapist and centering prayer practitioner. The title was “Contemplative Spirituality as a Path Toward Healing and Wholeness.” Weeks prior to the workshop, I had heard that he might discuss how a meditative practice could facilitate healing from trauma. I have long wondered about this after seeing folks well-versed in trauma therapies taking very cautious approaches to meditation – sometimes even warning against it, particularly in cases of complex trauma, and opting for somatic therapies (which, I agree, can benefit us all. Here is a sample somatic approach to releasing trauma). I have also met survivors who have had negative—or at least disconcerting—experiences with meditative practice. One woman confessed to me that she could not do centering prayer because the prospect of even ten minutes of relative stillness was terrifying. She feared what would be revealed within the stillness. Another friend initially loved meditation, but came to the conclusion that she was slipping into some kind of dissociative state – the protective maneuver she learned while being subjected to severe abuse as a child. While this state felt “good” to her, she felt it might just take her backwards – keep her stuck in a mode of bypass rather than moving forward into genuine healing.

Because centering prayer is a very gentle practice, it is unlikely to cause an overwhelming amount of unconscious material to burst into awareness (as some more intensive practices can). But part of the centering prayer’s “divine therapy,” to use Fr. Thomas Keating’s terminology, is the “unloading of the unconscious”—that is, the arising of previously unconscious emotional material into consciousness, often experienced as an unusual mix of feelings or images that may bear no relationship to the practitioner’s current mood or circumstances. This unloading is part of what enables healing: we become “unblocked” as the obstacles to grace and love—toxins embedded in our psychic tissues—come to the surface and are released.

And yet, a heavy bout of unloading can be rough. I had one of my most vivid, intense nightmares several days into an otherwise gloriously peaceful 10-day silent retreat—and in my adult life, I generally don’t have nightmares. I confided to a co-retreatant that the dream I’d had was so horrible, with images of violence that would make me close my eyes or “turn the channel” (on TV) if I were to see them in my waking life. He pointed out that the much of the news (and even entertainment) we’re exposed to every day is – of course – just that horrible. But being on retreat and going into such deep inward relaxation allowed an inner “de-freezing” to occur, fostering a releasing of material that I generally become numb to so that I can go about my day-to-day life without becoming overwhelmed.

That makes some sense.

But it also gives me pause. Is numbness my default? Have I – have we – become too desensitized to the pain of the human condition? Do I over-consume—media, movies, books, information—in a way that has calloused over my spirit? How does one keep the heart of flesh from becoming a heart of stone?

There are those who live with the conundrum on the other end of this spectrum: They are highly sensitive to the pain of the human condition and may be prone to becoming overwhelmed by the injustices in the world. They have a deep capacity for compassion but may become immobilized if they are blown away when encountering suffering.

And maybe the majority of folks reside somewhere between these poles – or perhaps bounce back and forth between them. (My personal suspicion is that numbness, be it comfortable or uncomfortable, is where a good portion of us in this country live). Whatever the case may be: How might one learn to live fully and engage compassionately in a world full of suffering without becoming overwhelmed by it?

Like a tongue testing the soreness beneath a tooth, it’s one of those perennial questions I keep returning to.

The final experiential exercise in Jacob Munhoz’s workshop spoke to this question. He called it “Learning to Live in the Axial Moment.”

(I want to preface this by saying that he told people it was okay if they didn’t want to engage in this exercise—to give ourselves permission to sit it out if it felt like too much.)

First he showed a slide, a photograph of a small brown-skinned girl standing alone on a beach. Her wet hair curled tightly around her face. She was crying hard, her mouth agape in an expression of terror and sorrow. We were allowed some time to just take this image in and sit with the feelings that emerged.

I was surprised to feel the tears come to my eyes. The moment somehow cut through the unconscious emotional buffer I tend to put up against these realities. This girl was likely a refugee, I thought, now orphaned and alone in a strange country.

Jacob then gave this direction: “Imagine that you step into their circle of suffering with one foot while your other foot is grounded in love which transcends suffering, grounded in the openhearted state, grounded in Presence.”

(For me, this “openhearted state” is where I go to in contemplative prayer: a spacious place of naked sincerity, the undefended place, wordlessly grateful and humbly present before the Mystery that I have come to call God. I float there, gently caught up in what feels like a warm, inexplicable current of love.)

Next, we practice the “axial moment:”

1 – “Leaning in to the suffering, touch it with love and connect with the person who is suffering by breathing in their suffering.” (Included on a worksheet, there were questions accompanying each part of the moment, e.g.: “What sensations do I feel within my body? What impulses am I feeling arising within me? How am I experiencing energy moving within my body? What images are arising? What emotions are arising?” Etc.)

2 – “Leaning out into the more spacious place that transcends suffering, breathe out the person’s suffering into love.”

3 – “Still leaning back, breathe love in.”

4 – “Lean forward again into the person’s suffering and breathe love out into their suffering.”

5 – “Repeat.”

This exercise reminded me a lot of the Buddhist practice of Tonglen – at least what I have learned of it from reading Pema Chodron. What I appreciate in Jacob’s rendering of it is the initial grounding of “one foot” in openhearted loving presence. From that stance, you breathe in the other’s suffering. Tilting back into openhearted presence, you exhale the suffering into the larger current of love. Then you breathe in love before again leaning into the place of suffering and exhaling the love there.

I see this as an exercise – and perhaps even a form of prayer – that offers a model and an experiential “how to” on engaging empathetically without becoming overwhelmed by the weight of suffering. The implication is that empathy requires “feeling with” – actually taking on (breathing in) of some of the burden—quite the opposite of numbness. But continuing to return to the openhearted space of loving Presence gives us a sustenance that restores us, prevents overwhelm or burnout—and provides medicine that we can take back to the place of suffering.

Praying / practicing this way is, I think, a deep form of petitional prayer. Not because it’s going to magically end the world’s suffering or solve all problems, but because it exercises and strengthens one’s capacity to step into suffering from a space of presence, humility (groundedness), and love.

It is the capacity we need now in our dying, crying world.

(By the way, I chatted with Jacob for a few brief minutes after the workshop. I told him about the folks I know who have qualms about contemplative practices for survivors of severe trauma and asked for his opinion on this issue. He agreed that caution is warranted. For survivors who are new to meditation, he would suggest starting with very brief sits, perhaps five minutes, and gradually lengthening them. They would also benefit from working with a skilled therapist who also has an ongoing contemplative practice.)

A Fat Tuesday Haiku

       









Heads up, my Mardi
Gras munchers. Midnight means no
more microwave s'mores.

The Value of Hiddenness in Intention-Setting

When setting an intention or goal, one of the conventional tidbits of wisdom seems to be: Find something or someone to which you can hold yourself accountable. Thus, at the new year when folks are making resolutions, they make public announcements about what they plan to do. If it's weight loss--to use a common example--maybe you join a group that requires you to check in at set intervals to report on progress or set backs--and receive feedback and encouragement from others. Group support, we are told, provides strength that helps to carry us through various resistances.

Maybe, for some intentions, this equation works. But for me it has often backfired. I might start out with determination, make lists of small reachable changes that lead up to the goal, find a circle of people on a similar path of intention to check in with, share successes and frustrations, reach some preliminary targets... only to be felled by some surprisingly strong wave of resistance. Or a series of small defiant choices that eventually shifts my trajectory so that I end up, at best, back where I began. My plan turns into a treadmill and feeds into a cynicism about setting other intentions. And thus the resistance is reinforced: "Why bother? I won't really get anywhere with this..."

Part of this may be that I have a primarily introverted temperament. It's just not my inclination to check in with others about where I am on a self-initiated project. (I'll admit that certain kinds of deadlines have value. But I wrestle with them mightily, and that's a lot of energy that would have been better applied to the project itself.)

Some intentions are best kept hidden, protected and shielded within the cave of the heart -- especially at the outset. Think of what happens when you light a new candle. The fresh wick cannot instantly hold a strong, sustained flame. The new fire is so small and tender. It needs protection from even the briefest of breezes. It must be hidden from too much air and held close until it can burn on its own.

Some intentions, especially those involving repeated acts of creativity, need to remain secret in their initial stages. Don't tell people about the song, the painting, the story that's still forming. Explaining and sharing too early is like exposing the tiny new flame to a breeze. Or, to use another metaphor--like exposing a fresh sprout to too much rain. The energy that goes into sharing what "is to be" can dissipate what is just starting to take hold.

This has a certain resonance with my primary contemplative practice, encapsulated in Matthew 6:6--"When you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. Then your Father who sees what is in secret will cause your life to blossom."

I will go into my room, into the cave of my heart, where I can open in deep sincerity and radical vulnerability to the mystery I know as God. My heart trusts that God will cause the prayer, the intention, the yearning, to blossom into a fruit that I cannot now taste or see.

At some point, the flame remains strong in the breeze, and the sprout blooms into nourishment that is to be shared with others. But it needs to begin in a sheltered place, in a hidden room where it is tenderly held between you and the divine, or between you and whatever name your muse prefers.