A
little later I saw a sight that put me in a completely different mood. It was a
long line of Canada geese. I reckon that there were about four adults at the
front and back and eight or more goslings in between. They lifted my spirits as
they always do. It was something about the care and protection of seeing them
swimming along in their line. There were no rowers about here either. I took a
picture of this delightful scene and posted it on facebook. It got some lovely
responses, including a couple of others who also posted pictures of identical
scenes.
As
anyone who knows me will testify I have a deep love of Canada Geese. I first
fell in love with them when I was a student minister and observed them over a
two year cycle as I walked around the lake at Platt Fields Park, in Fallowfield
Manchester. They helped at times as I struggled with myself and the training.
Particularly the long walk I would take before my weekly driving lesson. They
seemed to ease my anxiety and self doubt. These beautiful birds took me out of myself,
they lifted my spirits, enabled me to connect to my animal heart and to to a
reality far greater than my solitary self.
They
brought to mind that great poem by the wonderful Mary Oliver “Wild Geese”
“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
This poem and perhaps “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry are to be the words that sing in my heart whenever I find myself despairing at the world or despairing at myself, which I do from time to time. Don’t we all.
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
As I was thinking about my time as a student minister, the lessons I had learnt and forgotten - I am not talking about theology here, more about life. Some of those lessons I had failed to heed or sadly forgotten, how many mistakes do I keep on repeating in my life? God only knows. I digress - As I was thinking another memory came to haunt me. It was a postcard on the principal Anne Peart’s door that read “I have learnt so much from my mistakes, that I think I am going to make a few more.” I remember at the time how much I liked it. It helped me overcome the fear of imperfection. It encouraged me to give things a go and not to worry if I made mistakes as I would learn from the lessons. Over the years I have learnt many lessons, but not always. Some lessons keep on repeating themselves. I keep on forgetting the lessons. I keep on making the same or similar mistakes. This is all well and good if the cost for these errors is a price I pay alone, but alas it is not. Others get hurt too and is their suffering worth the lesson? I do not think so. To believe that would make me sound like Donald Rumsfeld and his notion of “collateral damage”, which is newspeak for the destruction of innocents in order to achieve a perceived goal. A different take on dangerous and often destructive philosophy of the “Ends Justifying the Means”.
These
days I take a wider view of the lessons learnt from mistakes; I understand and
accept the guilt caused by the damage done by those oh so very human mistakes; mistakes
we all make. That said I no longer set out to make more, Instead I pledge to
try and learn the lessons once and for all and not repeat it again. Or at least
I aspire to do so, we shall see hey.
There
is nothing in and of itself wrong with feeling guilt for our shortcomings in
life. It an error to beat ourselves up for these human frailities, but we ought
never wish away a sense of guilt, well not entirely. Like all other feelings it
is there for a good reason, it’s a gauge as to whatever we are doing, whether
we should or not. It also connects us with our fellow creatures. In many ways
that voice of conscience, deep in the core of our being may well be that which
is of God within us all. It would serve us well to pay attention to it.
Guilt has its positive
aspects, it can be a kind of barometer to keep us aiming for our highest
ideals, something we always fall short of. That said there are other seemingly
similar feelings to guilt that are very negative and unhelpful. Such feelings come
from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with our human being,
it comes from a sense of shame. This is unhealthy and unhelpful, for no matter
how well you do or what you do you will always feel bad about your very human
being, if you carry with you a sense of shame.
Guilty feelings come in many forms, helpful and unhelpful. To feel
remorseful after saying or doing the wrong thing, is healthy. It compels us to
do what we can to put things right. That said if this feeling lingers even
after putting right what was wrong, if we dwell and beat ourselves up for
unskilful action or word then this form of guilt is coming from another place,
from this sense that fundamentally there is something wrong with us. This is
shame which dresses up like guilt, but is very different indeed.
I suspect that the key is where the guilt comes from. Does it come as a
result of our actions, thoughts and or words or is it a feeling that comes from
some other place and almost dictates our thoughts, feelings, words and actions
and regardless of these things we just feel bad.
Where does this feeling of being wrong come from? Why does it control so
many of our lives?
Now in our culture some put it down to our Judea Christian heritage, the
core of our culture, even in these secular times. Often folks who grew up in deeply
religious homes will argue about who feels the most guilt. Now although the
Judeo-Christian tradition seems to be seeped in guilt, the bible both the
Hebrew scriptures and the Gospels make no reference to guilt as it is commonly
understood. As Mark Belletini points out in “Nothing Gold Can Stay: The Colours
of Grief”
“…I confess to being surprised that the word guilt itself, as in the feeling of guilt, is not found any place in
either the Jewish or the Christian testaments. Not once. The few times the
English word can be found in more antique translations, it refers only to the
kind of “guilty” that courts speak about, which is not a feeling so much as a
legal category.
I am convinced that families of origin, cultural and ethnic patterns,
and categorical realities play a far greater role in how much guilt we feel
than does religion. I certainly have
known folks raised without religion of any kind – including the “shopping mall
spirituality” created by cultus consumerism – who have struggled with guilt as
much as anyone raised in a particular denomination of religion, Western or
Eastern.”
Guilt when it is appropriate is a good thing. It connects us to one
another and to life, it keeps us humble and therefore human and saves us from
the dangers of destructive hubris. Guilt caused form our shortcomings is a
function of conscience. This feeling at the core our humanity that needs
developing not suppressing. This is key to my understanding of my faith as a
Unitarian, this concept of living revelation that is an aspect of my humanity,
if I can tap into it and allow it to lead me. In so doing my senses open and I
begin to see this same spark in others too. You see in opening myself to the
divine spark within me I open myself to that same spark in everyone and
everything. This is key to my understanding of religion, my attempts to live my
life in the company of others and through which I attempt to shape an ideal
that I strive for, but suspect I will never attain. I always fall short of this
ideal, in this sense I sin (from sinare which
meant to fall short of the mark). This though is not original sin, it is
actually more original blessing. I feel guilt, appropriate guilt, because I
fall short of the mark. Something I’ve been feeling this week. This sense of guilt
is a healthy human quality and it helps to strive to do better.
Shame is something else. Shame is destructive and it keeps us separate
from ourselves and one another. Shame is not formed from our actions or
inactions, but from some other place in our being. It’s that place that people
have tapped into throughout human history. Yes religion has used this, the
classic example being the concept of Original
Sin, but then so has the secular world. Advertising is the classic example,
by tapping into this sense that there is something wrong with us we buy a thing
or lifestyle that we believe will make us acceptable and or whole. How many
people suffer from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with
them?
When I look at myself in the eye these days what I see is a man who gets
things wrong from time to time and I feel appropriate guilt for this. By the
way I get it terribly wrong at times. I wish I didn’t as I know it causes harm.
This sense of guilt is healthy and good. The danger is if it becomes crippling
shame.
When you look at yourself in the eye, what do you see? Do you a decent
person who makes mistakes? Or do you see someone who is fundamentally wrong to
the core.
It matters you know, it really does. For it will affect how you interact
with the world and how the world interacts with you and that really matters. It really does.
I’m going to end with a little more Mary Oliver. These words that came
up as a facebook memory last Sunday, the day I saw the line of Canada Geese
have been saving me all week:
The Poet with His Face in His Hands
Mary
Oliver
You want to cry aloud for
your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.
So if you’re going to do
it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the
forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a
cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be
disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the
water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment