Reconciled Living
By Charles Rush
January 22, 2012
2 Cor. 5: 16-20 and John 15: 1-2, 4-5, 9-13, 17
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have a New Yorker cartoon that features a bride and groom on their wedding day under a cupola, next to a large wedding cake that they are both eating. She looks over at her husband and says, “Your piece is bigger than mine”. Après le Romance… And another one that has a husband talking to his wife over morning coffee, “I'm sorry” he says, “I was so busy listening to myself talk, I forgot what I was saying.”
Growing up as a
child in the 60's, we overheard a lot of racket coming from other homes across
our fair land, a lot of kvetching. It was like we were watching egos roll like pinballs in an
arcade, bouncing off each other, sometimes lighting up the room, sometimes just
going tilt. The Brady Bunch may have been the most popular family on TV but
more often our actual homes were more like Archie and Edith with their cocktail
of misunderstanding, defensiveness, hurt, and verbal aggression. It was an era
that celebrated acerbic repartee, like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and
sometimes it made for great comedy, but when I watch it now, I think to myself,
‘we weren't too good at getting our needs met' way back when. Small problem, we
loved those zingers but, don't try this at home, it isn't a very fulfilling way
to live, despite the fact that half the country is doing it.
Nowadays, our
medical professionals are armed with studies that correlate our aggression with
one another to hypertension, stress, anxiety and a host of other symptoms that
shorten our lives, make us physically ill, and generally not happy campers in a
lot of subtle ways. And we also live in a much more sophisticated world, a
world where various spheres around the globe come into indirect contact with
our spheres through six degrees of separation, so that we encounter conflict on
multiple levels.
We are impacted
by what is happening in Greece, filled as that country will be with conflict
over how to restructure their debt, whether or not to continue in the eurozone, and we absorb that conflict.
Or national
conflict, Israel/Iran at the moment. Or military conflict, Afghanistan, right
now where our army and the Afghani army resent each other so much, they are
shooting incidents- and the huge impact that all this has on our soldiers
families as they come home and live their lives.
Embarrassingly,
we have conflict in our children's sports leagues. A friend sent me an article
on the Darien Middle School football team, coached by a couple of over-wound
Dad's, that came in second, and the coach led the team in a trophy burning fire
because 2nd place isn't good enough… At least not
in Darien, Connecticut.
We even have
conflict in our community work, as all of our half dozen leaders on the local
School board will attest. Our citizens these days are not shy about screaming
their points at you in public. We have to deal with conflict on a number of
levels, each and every week, each and every month.
So we are a
little more savvy about managing conflict in our lives
on various levels and it is going to become a more central challenge because
all of these multiple zones impact us more often, more deeply, and you cannot
absorb everyone's foul mood or aggression, and live your own life. If we did,
we could become perpetually hostile.
When the New
Testament zooms out and tries to talk about the big picture, it speaks in terms
of reconciliation. Paul says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto
Himself/Godself.” Or as the Gospel of John puts it,
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Eternal life is not
just endless existence, it is reconciled living. Integrated,
fulfilled life.
St. Paul tells
us we are to be ‘ambassadors of reconciliation' to each other. “Be ye reconciled” he says. In Romans, he summarizes the
spiritual way of living in the world and he says, “Love what is good. Stand
against that which is evil. Do not simply return evil for evil (in a basic form
of revenge) but transcend (or overcome) evil through the Good.” Release the
positive, spiritual presence.
There is a
wonderful scene in the movie “Of Gods and Men”, when some terrorists break into
a Monastery and they want to find the leader of the monastery, so they put a gun
to the head of the first Monk they meet and ask him the Abbot's name and the
Monk replies “Christian” “Brother Christian”. The terrorist starts walking
around the Monastery shouting, “Brother Christian come out wherever you are?”
It is a
wonderful invitation because God is waiting for us all to come out and answer
the call. And if these Christians actually emerged in each and every one of us,
what would they actually look like? What is the Christian Spirit? Personally, it
looks a lot more like Mohandas Gandhi. He was a wee physical man but he
embodied such a charisma of reconciliation that 500 million people in India
called him “Mahatma”, the “Soul Force”. It would look a lot more like Dr. King,
who had to endure personal attack and organized violence, and keep on the
higher principled way, the positive way. We don't have to start huge social
movements like they did to radiate this charisma. We just have to choose the
higher, profounder way of a positive presence.
Perhaps what we
learn from both of them, something we intuit in ourselves, that this higher,
profounder way doesn't come to us naturally. It is a discipline of prayer. We
have to invoke the spirit of reconciliation, make it our intentional aim, and
return to it in a disciplined way for it to become a deeper part of our life.
And it is hard to stay in that mode, just think of your spouse or your best
friend?
I was doing a
wedding homily for Alex Ring last weekend and I had to remind him of the sad
truth that the argument that he had with his fiancé two days before their
wedding is not likely to go away. In fact, something like 66% of all the
substantive arguments you have with your spouse, you be having thirty years
from now, because these arguments are essentially irresolvable. And the moral
is, learn how to fight well. You can disagree and
still be agreeable and constructive. And we can all get better at this.
Psychologists
point out that we are constantly making emotional deposits in the bank accounts
of our loved ones. We should be doing little things that make our loved ones
feel appreciated, that let them know that we care, that let them know they are
important to us. Mistake a lot of young people make, myself included, think
that their spouse only needs a little token every couple weeks or so. Slowly,
you start to realize that this is not a place to skimp- not that wise to put
others on an emotional diet. With a little maturity and thoughtfulness, you get
better at knowing and anticipating what your people need, different than what
they want. You are able to give them what they need. And each time you do this,
you establish a bit more trust.
Again,
psychologists point out that trust is critical for developing real intimacy and
taking our relationships to the deeper levels that we are capable of developing
which bring us the deeper fulfillment and contentment
because we are communicating to each other that what you do impacts me and I
recognize that what I do impacts you. You matter to me and I need to matter to
you. That is quite a bit different from the pinball approach that bounces
through the family seeking to make my needs known and to get them met without
much consideration for anyone else. It is more like one of my grandsons running
through the living room eyes closed with cousins and dogs all over the place.
Eventually, you hit someone else, they cry, you cry,
party over.
What we need to
be communicating to each other, in ways spoken and actions unspoken, is that
you matter to me, I care about what you do and don't do, and your opinion of
what I am doing is important to me. What we need to be doing is building
empathy. Empathy and understanding are not a given with physical proximity
alone. That is why, sometimes, it is hardest to talk to those that are closest
to you. Every parent has this experience with their children in adolescence.
The kids are changing, internally, and they stop communicating with their
parents because they need to develop their independence, but then there comes a
day when they are complaining to you that you don't really understand them and,
of course, you don't.
And what we
start to develop as we get better at empathy is a deeper understanding. So
occasionally, we learn to listen more attentively, and really try to understand
their world from their point of view. We invoke the famous prayer of St.
Francis, “Lord, help me not so much to be understood, as to understand.” Do not
presume. Understand and communicate analysis descriptively rather than jump to
solutions. The virtue of understanding and paying attention gets more important
as you go along.
I've been
watching couples that are slightly older than I am inch towards retirement.
That is a lot trickier than I would have imagined it would be. When we were
younger, we made sacrifices for each other more easily, one of us agreeing to
move to New York for the other one who had a good job offer, the other one
agreeing to live out in New Jersey rather than downtown, back and forth it
goes. That works fairly well when it seems more temporary and inconsequential.
But then, you start thinking about retirement and you have to actually
construct a future vision that works for both of you. It can't really be a
compromise here. This time, you have to have a vision that genuinely works for
both of you.
And there are
so many unspoken expectations that you don't find out about until you are going
through the process. We were looking at properties out rte. 78 and Kate found
one she loved, a little farmette, with a stone house
and another little shop that you could convert into a study or a guest house. I
heard her tell the real estate lady that it was perfect. When I asked why it
was perfect, she told me that I needed some place to go during the day. I was a
little crest fallen but I added to my sheet on the perfect retirement home,
“girlfriend needs space during day” and she was right of course. But I realized
that this is likely to be a really different phase of life when it comes. She
will be different without a vocation and so will I. Our needs will be different
than what I can fully imagine from here.
So there is not
likely any short cut for paying deeper attention, a deeper understanding of our
hopes and our fears… As you start to get your spouse, your good friends better
and better, the more likely you are to be able to start developing situations
that are win/win, fulfilling for you and for them.
Because of
that, it becomes more likely that you will develop synergies with people around
you and begin to tap the resonance of creative cooperation. When you get the
privilege to play an integral role on a winning team on a project whose goal is
intrinsically worthwhile, you find yourself wading into the deeper fulfillment
that human existence is capable of developing. That
reciprocal feeling of inspiration and teamwork. It is one of those
things that humans find intrinsically fulfilling. Creative Cooperation is the ying to the yang of competition. It is what makes
competition so rewarding, that we could only succeed by cooperating better than
our rivals. We did it together… what the Giants are hoping to experience today.
And really,
creative cooperation is our social vision as well whether it is Adam Smith's
invisible hand that produces a harmony when markets are working efficiently or
Marx's eqalitarian hope of ‘each according to his
ability to each according to their need.' It is the hope of a social
integration where we are taking care of each other cooperatively. Jesus taught
us that The Kingdom of God is like a wedding banquet in which everyone has
their place.
Reconciliation
is the direction we are headed when we are living in our positive spiritual
dimension. That is what we can unlock in each other. That is what is fulfilling
and real.
But we keep
getting interrupted by conflict, from the marketplace, from the wider world,
and then there are genuine complications in our families.
I was talking
to someone over the holidays about their childhood beach house. They had 5
siblings that co-owned one house, college tuition time comes around, a couple
of them really need to sell, but no one else can quite afford to buy them out,
so they are working through selling the beach house of thirty years. How do you
do that without hurting people? The memories. What
does it say about the future? Family matters can be very complicated.
What we are
learning is that our job is to return to the positive reconciling spirit whenever we can. It
helps enormously that we begin with a spirit of reconciliation and that we
return to it when we are thrown off by anger, sarcasm, hurt, aggression.
We keep coming
back to it, in some sense, independent of what is on the other side of the
table, just in different ways.
Julie reminded
me this week that when the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land,
Moses gives them a speech in Deuteronomy 23. In that speech, he tells them, “Do
not hate the Egyptians who oppressed you.” [i]It
is a seemingly odd admonition to a people that had been subject to such brutal
subjugation and carried with them the scars to prove it.
So the Rabbi's
have debated the meaning of this passage. One of them explained that as long as
the Israelites were engaged in hate, the matrix of slavery still held some sway
over their spirits and they could not really be free. The Egyptians still
imprisoned them.
Reconciliation
moves us towards healing and freedom, in some sense, some relationships we are
actually able to rehabilitate on a different set of terms and others we never
speak to again. But there comes a point when you realize that the reconciling
spirit is a choice that we make, a direction, a commitment. We need a beacon to
remind us of the way home.
I don't
entirely know what you are going through and nor exactly what kind of
reconciliation is achievable with those that you are at odds with, but I pray
that as you deal with it, you can invoke your stronger, positive spirit that
you may know peace in the midst of conflict and turmoil, comfort in the midst
of anxiety. Amen.