Purpose or No Purpose, that is the question...

I’ve been pondering and trippin’ on the whole idea of “purpose” lately. Is there any such thing as an ultimate “purpose” for each person’s life? Is this whole idea that everyone has a God given purpose in life that is preordained? Is that whole concept but another arrogant expression of religious faith’s evolution in societies where such luxurious pondering is seen as a “blessing”? Is a mother slowly walking through the desolation of Darfur with a dead or dying infant finding her “purpose”? Come to think of it, perhaps doing everything she can to save her child IS her purpose. And she didn’t come to that intellectual conclusion by studying “A Purpose Driven Life” in the comfort of a living room study group. These people, who want to believe that everything that happens to every individual in this unjust world where folks who have too much count it as God’s “blessings” while too many mother’s watch their babies die of starvation, where self proclaimed Presbyterian watch dog groups guarding their version of “Christian purity” send out slick publications (“The Presbyterian Layman”) theologizing that people are not entitled to health care, what do they say to the mother of the victim of a drive by shooting about the purpose of her dead child’s life?

And then, what does someone, like myself, who finds these concepts of “purpose” shallow, calloused and arrogant say to someone whose life is filled disproportionately with pain and challenge who is looking for some sense in a relatively chaotic life? She asked in the midst of our discussion, “is there such a thing as God’s purpose? How do we know if there is, and what it is?” I tried to answer, and I ended up feeling helpless and foolish, rattling on more about my anger at easy clichés than hearing her cry for hope.

Much of this began as a result of discussion coming out of the midweek “The Message” worship on Tuesday nights. Amy had begun to read Rick Warren’s best selling book, “A Purpose Driven Life”. She read it precisely because it is one of the biggest sellers in US history. We both wanted to know what the big deal was.

At the Tuesday worship she presented her first impressions. Pastor Rick seemed to have an inside scoop on the notion of God’s intended and preordained purpose for every individual long before they/we are born. Worshippers began to share how much this seemed to miss the mark in their own life experiences. One person shared how she had rejected any notion of faith when faith based clichés were thrown at her in attempts to “comfort” her in her grief at the death of her infant child.

At some point someone recalled how the phrase “Sì Dios quiere” or God willing is woven into the cultures of Latin America. It is common to have that phrase attached to the end of a thought or statement. For example, “I will see you Sunday, God willing “Sì Dios quiere.” This is much different than an assumption that it is part of God’s purpose for me to see you on Sunday. One might feel in hind sight, depending on the outcome of the Sunday encounter, that there seemed to be a sense of fulfillment of purpose in that meeting, but no claim could have been made before the event. In fact, Sì Dios quiere implies an understanding that one cannot even predict that the planned encounter would even occur before it actually does.

Something in this phrase does express an attitude that, ultimately, nature, fate, unforeseen dynamics will take their course in spite of our best laid plans. It implies a respect for life connected to things beyond our control, be it the unpredictable flow of nature or our concept of God. It occurred to us that the Latino culture as opposed to the Anglo culture of El Norte is more entwined with indigenous perspectives of being a part of and flowing with nature and environment than the conquest of nature so dominant in notions like Manifest Destiny that destroyed environments, and wiped out whole civilizations.

I recalled and shared in that conversation an experience that I’d had 20 years ago on the side of a mountain on the Big Island of Hawaii. The Island is volcanically active. Sitting as far up the side of Mauna Loa as I was it was easy to visualize the whole island chain as a conveyor belt of newly created earth upon which I sat. As I realized this I looked at the tree at my side and realized that if the explosive mechanism of volcanic creation, which the Hawaiians personify as the goddess Pele, was to go into action at that point all my thoughts about what I should be about in the next 5 years or for that matter my own thoughts about purpose for the next 5 seconds would blow away in the creative process of me and that tree becoming newly created terra firma. I recalled an overwhelming sense of freedom. I was part of a creation that, among so many other things expresses the awesome unfathomable nature of its Creator. And sì Dios quierìa I would either live long enough to realize the futility of my own 5 year planning or I would become an integral part of a new section of the Island of Hawaii.

I still trip. That night after the midweek worship discussion I wrote the following poem:

Purpose driven by whom
does he think he knows
that he claims to know
what is not his to know.
The I AM moves like
the verb that it is being
and flowing like
the hot lava of necessary
destruction of monuments
to stagnant human deficiency.
Pele’s burning flow
melting the blasphemous icons
of understanding some ultimate purpose
that expresses nothing more
and much less
the slinking serpentine slime
of arrogance that there is anything
like an ultimate when
the I AM moves as the I AM moves
escaping the species’ demand
for entitlement to what is already given.
Where is devotion and endless gratitude
in utterances of complete understanding?

Embrace the need to comfort
with presence, not answers.
Discomfort with others’ distress is the implant of oneness and gratitude
that we are a part not apart.
Dust to dust is eternal
And it blows within and beyond
on the breath of God.

For Tereza...

The thrashing in the smothering
madness of terminal political niceness subsides
As a piece of the melting icecap
she floats away from its cold grip
Resigned to an unknown melding
that melts away the icy hardness
Becoming one with the ebb and flow
of what surrounds the island sanctuary
Blowing the breath of life
off its deep blue salty cradle
She is healed.

by John

Empathy and Reason

Empathy vs. objectivity, reason vs. subjectivity, we’ve heard much of this in the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. And I am led to wonder once again, what in the name of self-righteousness this all means

Much of the pre-hearing hype from folks like Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama was concern that Judge Sotomayor’s empathy represented a bias that made her unfit for Supreme Court Judgeship. And I wondered then how these same hypesters reconciled the shift in the Court’s decisions of the last 15 years that have rolled back legal precedents on civil, labor, and consumer rights. During the hearings, former Republican and still current Senator Specter of Pennsylvania spoke of the mountain folks have made of the mole hill, empathy. He pointed out that were it not for empathy in legal interpretations of the constitution, we would still have slavery and Judge Sotomayor would not be sitting before the Committee precisely because she is a Latina Women, wise or otherwise.

Ironically, as the hearings ended, Senator Sessions and others who complained of Sotomayor’s empathetic bias whined because she wouldn’t reveal any biases in answering their biased questions. (I was beginning to expect one of these professed keepers of moral purity and “family values” to ask whether or not she believed one should pay taxes to Caesar).

Several years ago I watched a talk show that trotted out a panel that included a representative of a white supremist organization that subjugated manipulated statistics of their own creation to prove “with reason” the inferiority of “non-whites”. In fact they portrayed themselves as non-racist because they presented their bigotry as being based on “reasoned evidence”. Also on that panel was an African American civil rights veteran, who understandably became impassioned in his response to the “reasoned” nonsense that was oozing forth in cool demeanor from what I reasoned was a soulless shell of pasty arrogance. The response from the wannabe virtual bigot was to point to the emotional displays of the civil rights worker as proof of “non-whites”, inability to deal with “reasoned” truth. It was a vicious and ugly cycle.

A few weeks ago I received a copy of the May/June issue “Theology Matters”, the newsletter mouthpiece of the “Presbyterian Coalition”, a coalition of Presbyterians against homosexuality. Although they are self described as a coalition advocating the theological integrity of the Presbyterian Church USA it is their fear and ignorance of GLBT people that created and sustains this grouping of people who in all likelihood might disagree on everything else. The lead article in this newsletter is titled, “Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles”. In the opening paragraphs of the first subsection titled Executive Summary we get this:

"In recent years, marriage has weakened, with serious negative consequences for society as a whole. Four developments are especially troubling: divorce, illegitimacy, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage. The purpose of this document is to make a substantial new contribution to the public debate over marriage. Too often, the rational case for marriage is not made at all or not made very well. As scholars, we are persuaded that the case for marriage can be made and won at the level of reason."

Note the inclusion of “same-sex marriage” in the paragraph listing developments that have weakened marriage. That inclusion (not the kind of inclusion we are struggling for), we are led to believe, is “reasoned” and “rational” just because this group, that refuses to hear any arguments other than its own, says so.

In an interview on NPR’s radio program Market Place Betsey, Stevenson, Assistant Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, referred to a comment Chief Justice Roberts made in his confirmation hearings: “The role of a Supreme Court Judge is much like the role of a baseball umpire.”

Professor Stevenson referenced a study where computers were used to measure the accuracy of umpires’ calls on balls and strikes. A striking phenomenon was revealed. When pitchers and umpires were of the same race, the pitcher almost always won the game. The opposite was true when the races differed. And likewise in basketball; white refs called more fouls on black players and very often ignored obvious fouls by white players. The opposite was true of black refs.

Justice Roberts’ believes he is as objective as a baseball umpire. He is.

Bias is most dangerous when it is unacknowledged. And religious groups are as adept at hiding unacknowledged bias behind “reasoned” theology as Senators from Alabama are with their reasoned bigotry.

Thank God for wise Latina women.

Think I’m not being reasonable? I never claimed I was!

John