· Do the work of understanding yourself and others
· Learn to see the oneness of humanity/all living beings
Who am I, and who are you?
Tell me what you’re going through.
I’ll be glad to listen to all your stories.
I’ve been here and you’ve been there,
But it seems we’re both nowhere.
Shall we laugh or shed a tear for our lost glory?
I’m the wind and you’re the rain.
I’m the sky and you’re the sea now.
Who knows how or why we came.
We are leaves upon the same old tree.
--lyrics from Leaves Upon the Same Old Tree (from my junior high music textbook, author unknown)
“In this world I have learned that what you pay attention to, what you nurture, generally flourishes.” --Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell
Everyone wants to be loved in his/her entirety, don’t they? Flaws and all? One of my most treasured moments came on a day when I was feeling kind of low. After recounting a string of my faults, I looked at my husband and said something to the effect that I was glad that he loved me in spite of these defects. He looked me squarely in the face and said, “Honey, there is nothing I love you in spite of, only things I love you because of.” Whoa!! I don’t even love myself that way. This was an amazing gift. It is a gift that we can give to every person and, just as importantly, to ourselves.
Does this mean that my husband loves those actions which I perform in weakness—does he love the “bad things” I do? I don’t think so. I think it means that he loves me, and that is largely because he has taken the time to understand who I am and what my underlying experience is at a given moment.
The Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hahn writes in Being Peace about this very practice—called samadhi—of focusing our attention on a problem in order to gain insight. While he acknowledges how difficult it is to love the “unlovable” person, he stresses that Buddhists have a moral responsibility to seek the cause of this person’s “present state of being.” He says:
The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love; love is another name for understanding.
Let’s use an example that is quite possibly the most difficult of choices—Adolf Hitler, responsible for leading a nation to the mass murder of approximately 11 million people (3 times of the population of Oregon) including almost 6 million Jews and 20% of the population of Poland. This is to say nothing of what was done to the living. How is anyone to love such a man?
His rise is well documented, and his reign was the umbrella for some of the most sick and perverse atrocities I have ever heard of. But let me tell you a little about Hitler before he became a “monster.” Adolf was born in Austria to a man who was 51 years old at the time of Adolf’s birth. As a child he was brutally beaten by his father, in addition to being held to increasingly higher expectations of achievement. In primary school, Adolf was able to meet those expectations, but when he entered secondary school he was no longer able to maintain his high marks. His father was cruel and threatening in his attempts to get Adolf to achieve at a higher level. At last realizing that he could never make his father proud, Adolf gave up on academia and pursued his interest in art. This infuriated his father with whom he never had a reconciliation. His father died when he was 13 years old. From that point on, Adolf had no other male roll model except briefly in a history teacher, who was a German nationalist and a stark opponent of socialism.
Adolf was rejected by his father fundamentally. He was later rejected by his school peers because he did not work hard, and after that he was rejected as an artist, which was his great pursuit. At last Adolf joined the German army and found that his zealous attempts to prove himself resulted in his first real taste of success. However, after he was temporarily blinded and recovering in a hospital, Germany surrendered thus ending Adolf’s chance to continue in his first successful career. During the period following the war Adolf began to associate the end of the war with Jews and Marxism. A great many Jews were Marxists because this movement promised them an equality that they had lived without in Europe. In Adolf’s mind Jews and Marxists were weak and preventing Germany from being a wealthy and stable nation (reminiscent of his history teachers nationalism?) and Adolf from having his own opportunities for success. When the socialist party was overthrown, Adolf turned informant against his fellow soldiers and for the first time was accepted for his political views which were at this time both anti-socialist and anti-Semitic. Within that venue of hatred Adolf found not only opportunity for achievement, but more importantly a long desired acceptance and appreciation.
When I try to understand Hitler in the context of his whole life, I still find no excuses for his heinous crimes. How could I? Yet despite this fact, I do begin to find a small spark of empathy—empathy for the child who was savagely beaten, the child whose life was about fulfilling the desires of another, a young man who had to discover what being a good man means without having anyone to model it for him. I see the young man who dreamed of being a great artist, who saw himself as a great artist in the making, and saw that dream dashed. I see the beginnings of acceptance and how good that must have felt to a young man who was time and time again rejected.
Every human being deserves love. In Hitler we see what comes when we fail to give it. This portrait is repeated on a smaller scale in those we meet everyday. We hear about it in the news; and in some cases we know intimately the horror that arises from those we have failed to love and proved we could pass judgment on. I have heard too often that these poor souls are sick, diseased, or “genetically predisposed.” This is all well and good when you live in a culture that thinks everything can be solved with a prescription medication. Give them an anti-psychotic, an anti-depressant. It certainly takes the burden of responsibility from people, from me. But like so much that is wrong with the world we live in—a world where people fly planes into buildings, children carry guns into their schools and shoot their classmates, and even birth has become a violent act—we have lost focus on eliminating causes and conditions and instead place all our hopes in treating that which has already become a problem.
The social ills of our time are conditions of detachment, conditions that arise because love has not secured the attachment of one person to another. Imagine what the historic landscape of this most recent century would look like if at some point Adolf Hitler had received the love and acceptance he deserved. No Hitler can be found in a world where a baby is brought gently into being, nurtured and loved by his parents, picked up when he cries, fed when he is hungry, encouraged in his ability, esteemed in his efforts, and accepted for what he is, a human being made in the image of God.
In Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus says:
You have heard that is was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love you enemies and pray from those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
And in John 13:34-5 Jesus said:
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
In these two passages and in many others, Christians are called to reflect both God’s love and Christ’s love into the world. Where this love is replaced with judgment, fundamentalism rises up to secure our attachment to hatred, longing, desire, and power over others. This trajectory cannot be changed unless we are willing to change how we see and understand ourselves and others.
In the pursuit of loving well it seems that we must be willing to be transformed and continue being transformed until God’s face is plainly seen in our own. In a state of openness we have the eyes to see ourselves truly--our glory and our imperfection. That openness is the doorway to understanding ourselves, and forgiveness is born out of that understanding. In forgiving ourselves we are at last released from the chains of self-centeredness and shame. In forgiving others we are released from the equally strong bonds of self-righteousness. We simultaneously take back power over ourselves and our choices and relinquish power over others. This realization of cosmic/divine equality, even if only understood by one person, enables love to enter the world.
In the book If Grace Is True, Quaker authors Phillip Gulley and James Mulholland write:
A theology of love is grounded in the realization that God loves our enemies as much as God loves us. And we are all created in the image of this God. We are all precious in God’s sight. We are all children of God. This, more than any other idea, changes how we perceive others. It requires us to call every man and every woman by the names that make murder nearly impossible—brother and sister.When I can apply this “theology of love,” this practice of samadhi, to Adolf Hitler, how can I not apply this to myself? When I can apply this love to myself, how can I not apply it to you? I would like to say that I am the perfect example of this type of patient understanding, but I am not. My mirror reflecting God’s love is still very bespeckled. I am a work in progress. Still, I have noticed the profound changes that have occurred in my life by simply cultivating this one attribute called by so many names—understanding, compassion, empathy and love.
So may it be with us all that we open ourselves to change, share God’s grace which is love of all beings, and practice that understanding which funnels this grace into our greatly troubled and beautiful world.
Tiff
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