If Only This Could Be Said

Comfort, Comfort, Speak Peace...Self Pity as a Virtue

Dedicated to my friend, Bill, at Bilgrimage

The Desperate Man (Self-Portrait) -Le Désespéré
by Gustave Courbet

 

When I saw it the painting caught my eye…maybe out of empathy. I know the look in his eyes because I have felt it.

Even more interesting was the article it was heading, entitled On Self-Pity

The article had some very wise words that seemed to fly in the face of 'american individualism" and expecting everyone to 'pull themselves up by their own bootstraps'. Self-pite, especially our own is designed into the fabric of humanity:

"FAR FROM MEANING OUR OWN SUFFERING DOESN'T MATTER...it’s rather the case that all SUFFERING MATTERS and can unite the afflicted into a giant collective, who might – when they have time to look up from their own sorrows – FEEL PITY FOR ONE ANOTHER.

So next time you are tempted to feel sorry for yourself…go ahead and do it; it can make you a better human being.

More people need to learn this lesson lest we turn into a nation of sociopaths, which seems the way we are heading. And there you have it...pity for me, pity for those who have lost the feeling of pity, and pity for their potential victims.

h/t to Bilgrimage who knows this lesson well.  His story could have turned into one of dysfunctional self-pity with all the suffering he must endure, but instead he is one of the most empathetic individuals and a prophet, a voice  in the image of a Jerimiah, speaking for all the downtrodden and misuded and abused.  Yes sometimes he would like to go hide away in a cave; and he is vunerable enough to admit it to those around him, giving us a chance to comfort him.

h/t to Owen White for the article.

 

Of Arrows and Holes and Other Bizarre Products of 'Natural Theology"

Extending a comment I made over at Bilgrimage about the nature of sexuality, relationships and complementarianism.

Making Hay and Holiness

I have been reading letters written by my father describing the summer ritual called 'haying'. Even after he left home as a young man, like a bird driven by instinct at the changes in the light, he would make the return to his home, the farm where he was born to cut, gather and bind the hay that would feed the cows over the long cold Northern Michigan winters.

My father was an artist, a poet, a writer, a musician, a composer; but he was also a worker in the field: tilling. Planting, harvesting. I don't think he would have drawn any distinction in what he did in the field, the studio. The concert hall or whatever flat surface passed for a writing desk.

Every human action is incarnational. Every human action can be holy...or not.
Everything that proceeds from our body, mind and spirit makes us holy...or not.

We need to heed the words of Christ about what proceeds from each of us is the is what makes us holy...not the place we park our bodies on Sunday mornings, not who we allow to sit next to us-and who we don't.
And at the risk of being accused of blasphemy, it's not even what or Whom we consume.
I happen to think Christ was very clear that its not what goes in or what deprive others of consuming that makes us holy.

And can we also drop the 'pretentious' and obfuscating words 'by their fruits you shall know them'?

Plain speaking it's whatever you DO or SAY.
People speak of 'fruits' as something that might be a banana or an apple or a poisonous berry...gotta watch it develop and maybe need some high-faulting botanist to actually classify it.

It's not that complicated.
Christ's words rarely are.
I think it's kind of humorous that people claim he spoke in parables to make his lessons and teachings clear; I think he told those for people who didn't want the simple answer, the simple word.
It was usually the thick headed or equivocators that had to be hit over the head with a bigger blunt instrument that got a parable.

'Who is my neighbor?'
Really? That from a man well educated in the Law, the Torah?

Bet he had today's equivalent of a gay person or another person he thought NIMBY and had justified a loophole to himself, but would never admit to it.

POEM
Twilight: After Haying

Yes, long shadows go out
from the bales; and yes, the soul
must part from the body:
what else could it do?

The men sprawl near the baler,
too tired to leave the field.
They talk and smoke,
and the tips of their cigarettes
blaze like small roses
in the night air. (It arrived
and settled among them
before they were aware.)

The moon comes
to count the bales,
and the dispossessed--
Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will
--sings from the dusty stubble.

These things happen. . .the soul's bliss
and suffering are bound together
like the grasses. . .

The last, sweet exhalations
of timothy and vetch
go out with the song of the bird;
the ravaged field
grows wet with dew.

- Jane Kenyon

 

 

Photo: Original by me, AnnikaIsabella   

From  "Slouching toward Kalamazoo" Series.

All Rights Reserved.

Power of Words, Spoken and Not Yet Spoken

 

 

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Always Our Brother's Keeper

If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted to man.
He is still his brother’s keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying that there is no God.

Czeslaw Milosz

Photo:Thematic And Dramatic Self-Portraiture By Noell S. Oszvald