What if we started with love and acceptance?

WHAT IF WE STARTED WITH LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE?

The time is the late 1980s. The place is a non-descript university teacher lounge. Two people are discussing a developmental theory. Not unusual, in a university psychology setting, but upon closer look, the younger graduate student, Carol Gilligan, is challenging a tenured and senior professor Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg. She is not only challenging the proposed hypothesis of the thesis but also the structure and design of the study itself. 

While you may not remember hearing about Dr. Kohlberg in any of your introductory psychology or education classes, you may remember studying and discussing the 'Heinz dilemma.' 

In this ethical dilemma, Heinz has to make a decision either to save his wife, who has cancer, by stealing the lifesaving drugs from the pharmacist or to abide by the law and in so doing, watch his wife die. Gilligan's first criticism is that Kohlberg only chose to interview 72 males, 'belonging to the upper and middle class.' (1) 

She wondered if a different demographic, perhaps female, marginalized, or underrepresented students would answer the question differently.

Her second criticism centered on the premise of moral development itself. Was the pinnacle of moral development, as Kohlberg understood it, 'individuals as separate, relationships as hierarchical or contractual' (2) actually how we lived or wanted to live?

In her groundbreaking 1982 book 'In a Different Voice,' Dr. Gilligan answered those questions and crafted a development of ethics that she termed 'Ethics of Care.'

I thought of Dr. Gilligan this morning as our Sunday School class continued to read 'Barking to the Choir,' by Father Gregory Boyle, S.J. As a reminder, the conversation is my interpretation not a verbatim of the contents. 

It is easy to read Fr Boyle's narrative. His humor and conversational narrative deftly capture not only the day-to-day operations but also the residents and students of Homeboy Industries. We find ourselves sharing space with others in his office who have come to visit, chat, cry, or scold. We listen in as he comforts mourners with compassion, listening to anger with kindness and hope. 

What seems less easy is to place Fr. Boyle's passion in the larger context of our society's response to those who break the law, those who repeatedly engage in criminal behavior, and those who defiantly resist society's best efforts at reform. 

I imagine Dr. Gilligan asking: who is protected by the law, and who gains by removing those who challenge the existing status quo rather than dismantling a system created to support the privileged. 

These are complex problems of abandonment, large-scale systemic racism, and generational disenfranchisement. To suggest there are only two options; i.e., supporting law and order or reform is a false dichotomy. 

A couple of minutes before our class ended, a participant posed a question. 'What if Fr Boyle's offer of love and acceptance were not the last hope for those having gone through every option our criminal justice system offered, what if we started with love and acceptance?' 

What indeed. 

1. http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-gilligan-and-kohlberg-controversy/

2. https://uwethicsofcare.gws.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Reiter-S.-A.-1996.pdf

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34467028-barking-to-the-choir

https://homeboyindustries.org/

Peanut butter

 Standing in the peanut butter aisle in the commissary (grocery store for landlubbers) Mark stopped the grocery cart. ‘You have to listen to this song,’ pointing to the loudspeaker. It is 1997, we had just been stationed at Sigonella, Sicily and Mark has started listening to country and western music on his commute.  Clint Black had just released this song, ‘ Love is something that you do.’ I am not a fan of country and western music; full disclosure, I pull my hearing aids out which, in effect, leaves me in a blissful silence. But Mark had his hands on the cart, so I listened. By the end of the song we were both wiping our eyes and again promising that love is something that we do. 

I thought of this song following our Sunday school discussion of Amy Jill Levine’s 5th chapter in her book ‘Difficult Words of Jesus.’ Something about ‘outer darkness and weeping and nashing of teeth.’ 

A reminder the conversation is as remembered not verbatim. 

There was acknowledgment that Dante’s graphic descriptions of the different levels of hell, to a large extent, probably shaped our imagination of heaven and hell more than theological references. Followed by a historical exploration of hell as a geographical location, moving into parable narratives pointing to final judgment. 

Others explored the possibility that losing the traditional language for reference points (up and down) might allow us to be focused in the here and now. 

How are we helping others now, find food, find shelter and rest?

As a mental health clinician I am curious about how the behaviors people engage in function for them. If I hear the references of heaven and view from a clinician’s ear, I wonder how these words, the phrases, these warnings, function for people of faith. 

Can we really not be counted on to do the right things without threats of damnation? Do we really need the warnings and threats of ‘weeping and nashing of teeth’ to act with integrity, kindness and love? 

What really motivates humans? 

Dr David Cooperrider, the founder of Appreciative Inquiry, Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve, has some ideas. One of the principles of Appreciative Inquiry is that awe is the strongest motivator for change. 

Awe. 

Not threats, not shaming, not damnation. 

Which reminded me of Clint Black song. Remembering what worked, and do it over and over again. 

Magnifiers

 Did you ever play with magnifiers when you were a kid?         

    My granddad had a really heavy one with a bent metal frame and chipped glass. The summer we came back from Germany in 1974, my granddad, together with my father and young brother built our home in Fishcamp, CA. If the town's name rings a bell, it may be because you drove through it on your way to Yosemite National Park. My teenage brother would take our German shepherd 'Uli,' sling a guitar on his back, and take off on his motorcycle riding through the Yosemite forest backcountry. One day I'll write a whole blog on my brother, but today's post is about the magnifier. 

Sometimes I would keep my grandmother company while they worked on the house. She, seated in her plastic folding chair within shouting range from Granddad, would occasionally encourage him with 'looks good, Charlie!' One of my jobs was to help Grandmother keep Grandad organized and that meant returning tools or things I had taken back to the workbench. I frequently kept the magnifier with me. Not necessarily because I was a budding botanist but because I was working on metaphors. 

And the magnifier had become a metaphor for me. 

Who you are can be represented differently depending on who holds the lens. 

As a child, I grew up sitting on a pew listening to my Dad weave a story of grace every Sunday. Some were learning the love of God, I was listening to the magic of words. And crafting tortuous poetry in journals no one ever wanted to read. 

When I saw my granddad's magnifier I recognized a truth. What is one thing for someone, can become something else for another person. And I thought of the magnifier when we talked about Amy Jill Levine's 3rd chapter of 'Difficult Teachings of Jesus.' A reminder the class conversation is as I remember, not verbatim.

'Whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave to all.' 

No one wanted to start the conversation. How do you have language about something when the language itself is problematic? And by problematic I mean, how does white privilege speak about slavery as knowledgable with intent to teach a point? I can't. 

Maybe we are to seek leadership from the position and in relationship with someone marginalized. Posing the question, 'What would leadership from the margin look like?' A class member offered a reflection, ‘Marxist critique would suggest that this is only maintaining the corrupt capitalist structure.' (Don't you wish someone used the phrase Marxist critique in your class?) Maybe being in relationship with those on the margins isn't to explore leadership skills but to challenge the premise those margins are built on. 

Why didn't the writer of Mark's gospel speak to the atrocities of slavery?  

About their relationships to positional power? 

To those denied access to their humanity? 

And that made me think of my granddad's magnifier. 

There are social and religious constructs that distort our true selves. Social and religious norms stunt, harm, and deny life to those without access to health care, education, to living in relationships with those they love as who they know themselves to be. 

Last week CMT removed a blatantly racist and hateful music video following criticism after the video was released. It is heart wrenching to know there was a submission process/committee that approved the music video, thought it had a receptive audience and would be a financial success.  

My challenge to the gospel writer holds true for us today.                     

What are we doing to speak to the atrocities of slavery?

What are our relationships to positional power?

To those denied access to their humanity?

A few thoughts.

I think living with difficult questions, with status quo shaking questions, and with quiet soul-searching questions is a place to begin. These are taken from D. Thomas Shanks, with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. I am going to live with these questions for a while. 

Did I practice any virtues (e.g., integrity, honesty, compassion)?

Did I do more good than harm?

Did I treat others with dignity and respect?

Was I fair and just?

Was my community better because I was in it? Was I better because I was in my community?

May we learn to live with difficult questions and act in ways that bring life to all.

 

Family reunions? Or not.

Did you grow up attending family reunions?

I remember hearing about people connecting with 2nd and 3rd cousins, creating memories with great-grandparents surrounded by all the newborn babies, and T-shirts with family names printed on the back. 

I really wanted a T-shirt! 

Growing up and living in Germany for 12 years didn’t lend itself to ‘keeping up with the family.’ So when our daughter and son-in-law surprised us with T-shirts (with our name!) for a family trip, I was incredibly excited! 

Thoughts about family reunions, family traits, and heritage, including family estrangement and separation came to mind following our recent Sunday School class where we continue with the 2nd chapter of Amy Jill Levine’s book “Difficult Words of Jesus, A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Questions”. A reminder the participant statements are my recollection, not verbatim.

The phrase that captured most of our attention centered around ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.’   We noted the shock value, the disruption of the status quo, and the dismantling of traditional family ties that seem to be emblematic of Jesus’ teaching. We explored the idea that in choosing a relationship with God (however you understand creation), we are choosing new identities, and in that newness is transformation.

Amy Jill describes the political milieu during the time the gospel of Mark was being written, ‘In 64 CE, the emperor Nero (not one of the empire’s better efforts) scapegoated Jesus’s followers in Rome for the fire that destroyed much of the city. He rounded up Jesus’s followers and executed them in public, whether burning them as human torches or forcing them to fight wild beasts. These faithful followers, perhaps inspired by the stories of the Maccabean martyrs, the Jews put to death by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the mid-second century BCE, had to make that horrible choice: death or apostasy.’ And then she posits this brilliant question, 

‘What allows people to face such hatred?’ 

She responds, ‘Those earlier Jewish martyrs believed in resurrection and they believed in justice. They knew that somehow the God of Israel would reward their fidelity and call to account those who were torturing them.’  

And that made me think of family reunions.

Having spent a great chunk of my academic and professional work life in seminaries and faith communities, I think those following God via Jesus’ example have a love/hate relationship with their ‘older’ family members, i.e., the Hebrew texts and varied practices of the Jewish faith. (Ask me about the Reconstructionist Rabbi who was part of our doctoral program!) How do we make decisions about which traditions to follow, which theological insights to adopt, and which faith statements to include in our current liturgy?

When do we wear the family T-shirt and when do we create a new design?

The phrase that has stayed with me is Amy Jill’s question, ‘What allows people to face such hatred?’ Is it our expectation of retribution? Do we, from a historical theological perspective, expect God to reward the just and punish the evil? Do we hope that Rob Bell’s book ‘Love Wins’ is more than a book title, that it is not only a possibility but a theological expectation?

Throughout our marriage (don’t ask me to count how many- math!) we have created, adopted and sometimes thrown out, responses to a paraphrased version of Amy Jill’s question, ‘What allows us to face —-?’  What is it that allows us to respond with kindness, with hope, with love? 

I’m thinking about creating some new family T-shirts. 

Living with questions

                     

                   

What questions are you asking people today?

What questions are you asking of yourself? 

A particular question was the topic of a recent Sunday School class in which we explored the first chapter in Amy Jill Levine's book 'Difficult Words of Jesus.'  Dr. Levine starts with the first chapter by quoting Mark, 

"The Gospel of Mark recounts a short anecdote about a rich man who meets Jesus on the road. Running up to him and kneeling before him, the fellow asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17)

The following conversations are as I remembered, not verbatim. Comments about equitable (or in many cases, inequitable) wealth distribution, exploring theories of redemption, and grace sprinkled the lively conversation. As verbal engagement seemed to draw to a quiet close, one participant offered an astute observation. 'The question posed to Jesus didn't seem difficult, and Jesus' answer seems pretty self-explanatory.' 

And that observation made me think.

Maybe the rich man didn't ask the question that was really on his mind or heart. 

During our last active duty military tour, we were stationed in Port Hueneme California, where I worked at the Family Service Center on base with the Domestic Abuse Program. A mantra the seasoned clinicians had at that time was, 

'the first story is rarely the most accurate story.' 

It wasn't that the clinicians didn't believe the clients, it was that they believed the client's story to be a trauma narrative rather than an accurate description of events. I was reminded of this experience when I thought about the young man's conversation with Jesus. I wonder what his follow on questions might have been.

As a mental health counselor I frequently experience clients writing one thing on their intake paperwork and consequently spending most of our sessions eventually processing something quite different. First questions, or a first statement often function as an introduction to the client, to their narrative. It takes holding that observation while continuing to explore, be curious, and continue to listen which can lead to deeper awareness and insight for both the clinician and the counselor. 

When I listen to the young man I hear these questions:

Is my wealth enough?

Is my adherence to law enough?

Am I enough?

A further class observation was that Jesus' engagement with this young man is one of the rare times that an interpretation of Jesus's emotional stance is described. Amy Jill Levine states, 

"Looking at the man, Jesus “loved him” (10:21)."

 

I want us to hold those two thoughts in tandem.

 

A young man is asking, 'Am I enough?' and Jesus is described as 'loving him.' 

 

The heartbreak for me in this text isn't the young man asking existential questions. It is the young man walking away when offered love. 

 

When you are offering love to someone and they balk, ignore, or walk away, what do you do? Continue to act in loving ways. Continue to offer acceptance? I am not talking about a lack of boundaries or unhealthy attachment, but rather an intentional choice to continue to act on our values.

 

When you are offered love, do you balk, ignore the gesture or walk away, convinced your partner was only thinking of themselves or didn't mean the peace offering?

 

While not restricted to parent-child relationships, Patty Wipler, writing for the HandinHand parenting blog, describes the term 'stay listening.' 

 

"Your goal is to see what lets your child continue with emotional release, 

full and uninhibited, and to learn what slows her down or stops her."

 

I see this modeled in the conversation with the young man and Jesus. Jesus drew on the Socratic method to explore, be curious, to 'stay listening.'

 

A final thought. 

 

May you offer those you meet and are in a relationship with love. The curious, the exploring, and the 'stay listening' love, and may you welcome the curious, the exploring, and the 'stay lasting,' love when offered. 

 

 

https://www.handinhandparenting.org/2013/08/what-to-say-during-staylistening/

Levine, Amy-Jill. The Difficult Words of Jesus (p. 1). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition. 

 

A cursory look at the row of magazines while checking out at the grocery store recently depict a common theme. 

                                                

                                      WEDDINGS      

                      

Best colors and locations for a wedding, ideas for bachelorette parties and honeymoon planning. The pictures are beautiful; the couple and their friends are happy and the locations are sigh worthy. 

Grocery store magazine racks should have a fantasy or sci fi section. Divorce rates, while declining in 2021, are still around 44% of those people getting married. 

Should engaged couples have a marriage counselor and a divorce lawyer on their gift registry?

This spring I taught the Marriage and Family Counseling class for our Graduate Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Lipscomb University. One of our in-class assignments was to write marriage vows.  Either to remember what you may have written, or to create ideas for the future. The students quietly filled their pages. After exploring how we create dreams with words and phrases, the students asked what I would say after 44 years of marriage. 

I wrote these words on the white board.

                                                                  'I'll try again'

When Mark and I married we had the beautifully crafted promise, the carefully selected witty and thoughtful phrasing. 

And the phrase that I've promised again and again throughout those years, is that I'll try again. 

I'll try again to watch my words. I'll try again to forgive. I'll try again to love. 

    

                                        What is your promise? To yourself and those you love?

                                    May today be filled with moments of promise.

Some dates are easy to remember. 

Like the first time, my husband said

he loved me. 

We were sitting at the bottom of Yosemite Falls, his voice was sure, clear and not expecting an answer as if his statement was enough for the moment.

There are a lifetime of other moments when time expands sideways and your heart whispers to you, 'remember this.' 

January 4, 2019, is such a date. We moved my parents into an independent living facility. In the two months since:

• They moved into an assisted living care level
• They sent their beloved dachshund  Peanut to live with another family
• They call me 2 or 3 times a day (I have phone records...)
• Dad fell and was subsequentially admitted as a Hospice patient (he's doing better, thank you)
• They move into a Memory Care facility next week

So many dates, too many events that need their own space, but these moments must share with all of the other pulls on my time and attention. 

While I write my daily list to do for my parents:
       wash their clothes (run Dad's through hot water twice)
       grocery shop (smooth Peanut Butter ONLY)
       pay their bills, address change of address cards,
       negotiate their requests (demands?) to the facility staff,
I am listening to the radio conversations in the background:                              
       the loss of death to mudslides,
       the threat of loss of homes because of fire,
       the refusal to respect all rights for every human

       and I find the weight of my circumstances shift.


The shift is not from perhaps a first world problem to a pang of white guilt. There are plenty of times when that awareness is appropriate and neccessary. This, however, is a shift from isolation,  from feeling overwhelmed by the big and small decisions you face when caring for others, to experiencing the connectedness of being a member of the larger human race. The broader perspective does not diminish my worry, sadness and or overwhelming tiredness, but places my experiences next to those I see in my counseling practice, those I teach, those I supervise, those I parent, those I love.

The shift welcomes me into the world's embrace as it whispers to me, 'remember these moments.'

This shift reminds me of what is perhaps even more sweet to me than my husband telling me he loved me  44 years ago, which is his recent comment to me, 'you don't have to do this alone.' 

This is what I want to remember as I experience these dates, we can share them with those we love.

I hope you have friends and family you can share both these big important dates and the ones that no one will remember past the event.