B
Binney
Guest
I have been reading the Transforming Suffering A compilation of reflections on finding peace in troubled times
In it Prioress Mary Collins writes about overcoming violence. This is particularly good to read at this time.
Several years ago, a woman friend of mine who was an art teacher in a boys’ prep school observed in midterm that the young men she taught in junior high and high school were resistant to working with art materials other than pencil pen and ink. She began musing on what was going on among them, for this behavior was unknown in her previous teaching experience. The boys disliked handling clay, wood working tools, paper mache, and other art media that made messes. They did not like dirty hands. Slowly her judgment formed. Their resistance was a resistance to learning and dealing with the unknown properties of things. Why?
She thought of reasons. Perhaps it was because they were in the first generation in which childhood play had been primarily with electronic toys and not with sandboxes and cardboard boxes and mud. Perhaps it was because the intelligence that mattered in their schooling was rational, discursive, linear intelligence, where insight was best communicated through ink on paper. In any case, because she was a good art teacher, she found ways to engage her students in handling clay and wood blocks. She thought their learning how real things like mud and sand work-what they can and cannot do might have some long-term bearing on their future reverence for reality. Her musings left me thinking about the developmental consequences of welcoming or resisting “the properties of things.”
Our culture does not welcome the notions that limits are inherent in every created thing. We have transformed the eighteenth-century political notion of inalienable rights into an unfettered right to whatever goods will give us pleasure and self-satisfaction. Like the adolescent sons of our culture, we are not interested in discovering the messy truths about the properties of things and learning to work with their reality. We are taught to be self-centered, self-assertive, self-protective. Whatever does not serve personal ego-ambition, contribute to our immediate pleasure, or enhance our comfort is liable to be devalued or subjected to the violence of our mishandling.
Rather than enduring the suffering inherent in facing limits, our unredeemed or unelightened selves press on, violently imposing our wills on resisting realities, defying the odds. Everywhere around us we see humans refusing to accept the givenness of limited oil reserves, limited fresh water, limited longevity, limited fertility, or territorial limits. We see human communities refusing to accept the existence of other human communities with aspirations distinct from theirs. Whether at the macroscale of global reality or the microscale of local human community, our resistance to the reality of limits cause us suffering, and that suffering evokes violence and abuse.
How can we break this cycle of human frustration, suffer ing, and violence? One of the inspired New Testament writers says about Jesus, “He learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8-9). Neither obedience nor suffering is humanly attractive, but the text ought not be ignored because it presents a challenge. The writer’s instruction on the connection among suffering, obedience, and salvation goes even further: “Having been perfected [through the suffering that leads to obedience], he [Jesus] became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
I suggest that the key to understanding this teaching is understanding obedience as attentiveness to the reality of things, attentiveness to the properties of things, acceptance of limits in the created order of things. Jesus taught, prayed, and went about doing good. Some responded to his revelation of the mystery of God; many more resisted. Jesus accepted their reality as humans, their limited openness to new possibilities, and Jesus wept over his inability to move them- he wept more than once, so the Gospel reports. Despite his suffering, he did not impose his will on them or use violence against them. His suffering was real. But he responded to his situation with respect for the mystery of human freedom and the mystery of divine grace. He faced a violent death, but he did not contribute to the violence. He was obedient to the reality of limits—his and ours. In this is our way to the salvation that he is.
Prioress Mary Collins
In it Prioress Mary Collins writes about overcoming violence. This is particularly good to read at this time.
Several years ago, a woman friend of mine who was an art teacher in a boys’ prep school observed in midterm that the young men she taught in junior high and high school were resistant to working with art materials other than pencil pen and ink. She began musing on what was going on among them, for this behavior was unknown in her previous teaching experience. The boys disliked handling clay, wood working tools, paper mache, and other art media that made messes. They did not like dirty hands. Slowly her judgment formed. Their resistance was a resistance to learning and dealing with the unknown properties of things. Why?
She thought of reasons. Perhaps it was because they were in the first generation in which childhood play had been primarily with electronic toys and not with sandboxes and cardboard boxes and mud. Perhaps it was because the intelligence that mattered in their schooling was rational, discursive, linear intelligence, where insight was best communicated through ink on paper. In any case, because she was a good art teacher, she found ways to engage her students in handling clay and wood blocks. She thought their learning how real things like mud and sand work-what they can and cannot do might have some long-term bearing on their future reverence for reality. Her musings left me thinking about the developmental consequences of welcoming or resisting “the properties of things.”
Our culture does not welcome the notions that limits are inherent in every created thing. We have transformed the eighteenth-century political notion of inalienable rights into an unfettered right to whatever goods will give us pleasure and self-satisfaction. Like the adolescent sons of our culture, we are not interested in discovering the messy truths about the properties of things and learning to work with their reality. We are taught to be self-centered, self-assertive, self-protective. Whatever does not serve personal ego-ambition, contribute to our immediate pleasure, or enhance our comfort is liable to be devalued or subjected to the violence of our mishandling.
Rather than enduring the suffering inherent in facing limits, our unredeemed or unelightened selves press on, violently imposing our wills on resisting realities, defying the odds. Everywhere around us we see humans refusing to accept the givenness of limited oil reserves, limited fresh water, limited longevity, limited fertility, or territorial limits. We see human communities refusing to accept the existence of other human communities with aspirations distinct from theirs. Whether at the macroscale of global reality or the microscale of local human community, our resistance to the reality of limits cause us suffering, and that suffering evokes violence and abuse.
How can we break this cycle of human frustration, suffer ing, and violence? One of the inspired New Testament writers says about Jesus, “He learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8-9). Neither obedience nor suffering is humanly attractive, but the text ought not be ignored because it presents a challenge. The writer’s instruction on the connection among suffering, obedience, and salvation goes even further: “Having been perfected [through the suffering that leads to obedience], he [Jesus] became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
I suggest that the key to understanding this teaching is understanding obedience as attentiveness to the reality of things, attentiveness to the properties of things, acceptance of limits in the created order of things. Jesus taught, prayed, and went about doing good. Some responded to his revelation of the mystery of God; many more resisted. Jesus accepted their reality as humans, their limited openness to new possibilities, and Jesus wept over his inability to move them- he wept more than once, so the Gospel reports. Despite his suffering, he did not impose his will on them or use violence against them. His suffering was real. But he responded to his situation with respect for the mystery of human freedom and the mystery of divine grace. He faced a violent death, but he did not contribute to the violence. He was obedient to the reality of limits—his and ours. In this is our way to the salvation that he is.
Prioress Mary Collins