(this title comes from a quote from a homily; in context, it made very little sense, and out of context, even less. however, I decided to run with it anyway)
In a way, our society is constructed around the idea that people will tell you exactly what you need to know, in a direct and clear way, at the exact moment (or close enough) that they learn it themselves. Or anyway, they’ll tell you what they think you need to know. Or ought to know. Or what they really just want to tell you.
Hence the cell phone metaphor. Each of us is expected to be ‘plugged in’ at all times, ready to answer that call in the middle of a homily from our friend (or whoever) telling us about their remarkable discovery of a new flavor of pie. Or even the call from our friend telling us that their beloved pet rabbit has died, or that the radiator exploded and your apartment has burned down. One might be tempted to use this as a model for service: always ready to listen to and help another, with a minimal surcharge for text-messages from the United States.
But is that really true? I think maybe the point about turning off the cell phone is a good one. How can you attend to what you’re doing if you’re interrupted? What if you were having dinner with a friend, or praying, or reading an inspiring blogpost? What does it mean to be broken away, even momentarily, from what you were doing? How does it make your friend feel, or affect your relationship with God, or your own personal growth? There’s something to be said for service being focused on the moment rather than on the possible.
While it’s true that you might have wanted to know right away that your apartment has been reduced to ashes, there’s something to be said for the idea that in order to serve anyone properly – perhaps most especially yourself – you need to make sure you’re not always ‘on,’ not always ‘plugged in;’ that you don’t try to be everything to everyone, and end up being much less than you could have been. Maybe you shouldn’t have to make excuses for using your cell phone as a portable answering machine instead of picking up your calls.
Obviously, as someone whose cell phone is almost never turned on, I’m not exactly unbiased here.
Sometimes I think that maybe our culture of instant messaging about anything and everything has created unrealistic expectations about human communication. Do we expect people to tell us everything, to tell us directly and immediately, to put everything in words? Would we be upset if our friend’s rabbit died and it took her a month to say anything to us; would we be upset because we know she could have said something right away, but instead decided not to dial our number? Does it mean she doesn’t trust us, or care about us, or believe that we could help?
I have to admit, I would probably be pretty upset. Because I have this idea in my head that because she can tell me right away, she will, and she should. But it’s a bit unfair, isn’t it? So much of deep communication is done without words, so much is said by silence…why shouldn’t I hunt down my friend when she’s unplugged and find out what’s going on? Why shouldn’t I make plans with her and sit and watch her, try and find out why she hasn’t been phoning, if there’s even a reason? Why shouldn't I keep calling and leaving messages, though not maniacally?: when she's ready to stop wanting space, she'll not have forgotten about them. So I know that even though I’d be a bit miffed that she didn’t tell me (especially if I’ve found out later), I hope I'd also understand that there are things people need time to say, or need to say without saying.
In this vein, if I’ve turned off my cell phone, I should answer my messages and call back; if someone doesn’t return my calls, I should try contacting them another way, and possibly give them some space; if I’ve been dodging their calls in order not to tell them something, I should probably meet them for lunch and see what comes out. I should absolutely give them a reason for why I’ve smashed my cell phone into little pieces with a sledgehammer so that no one can ever call me again. All of that is what service is: it is turning off your cell phone, but not ignoring your messages; it is fulfilling your responsibilities, not putting them off or hiding from them; it is the receptivity to others’ needs, both what they need you to give them and what they need to give you, and not smashing up any possibility of their reaching out to you.
This concept of service leads up to many things I think I should say. I haven’t exactly kept up with posting meaningful or relevant blogposts recently: sorry about that. I haven’t exactly been answering people’s e-mails asking how I am or what’s up in general: sorry about that. I haven’t exactly been going to daily prayer and weekly Masses: sorry about that. It has been pointed out to me that not explaining my behavior, behavior which amounts to avoiding practically all meaningful social interaction, is not “the Christian thing to do:” sorry about that.
Oh wait, sorry, I have to go: my cell phone is buzzing. I must’ve forgot to turn the damn thing off.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
In [?] I Trust
Trust is a very important part of our lives, both as Church and as individuals. But what does it mean to trust, to be trustworthy? The final prayer in the Divine Mercy chaplet is “Jesus, I trust in you.” Trust, therefore, demands to be explored.
The interesting thing about trust is that it’s both a verb and a noun – an action and a thing – and that it is both of these at the same time, as well as being a description.
To trust is to have certainty that a person, in some respect, will act or behave in a certain way. It is certainty that the person is who you think they are, and that they will be that person. When someone tells a secret to someone else, they are trusting that person to do certain things in response, they are trusting that their secret will be received in a way that respects its integrity and dignity. ‘I trust you to understand,’ ‘I trust you to know that the secret is important to me,’ ‘I trust you to feel a certain way about it, a way that encompasses its nature,’ ‘I trust you to accept the secret as a knowledge that belongs to you though not an experience that belongs to you, to take it into account and not pretend that you never heard it, but also not to try and make it your own.’ These expectancy constructs are all based on trust as a certainty about another person. There can be trust, in the active sense, regardless of whether or not that certainty is well-founded: it is an action performed by only one person, the one who has decided to trust and reveal.
This kind of trust is also a noun, a state of being or affairs. When the trust is not betrayed – when the other person accepts that trust – something exists between you, a relationship based on mutual respect for the bond that trust creates. I think that relationship is important for both people, the one who is accepting the responsibility as well as the one who is reaching out to them in trust, when the person reaching out has also taken responsibility for themselves.
Genuine trust, I believe, always carries that kind of self-responsibility, because it acknowledges that in that decision is a risk that can be borne only by the person taking it. I choose to trust you, and in so doing I acknowledge myself to be the kind of person who does trust you, who believes in you, and who accepts that what I reveal belongs to me, is my own, and is my own to share or to conceal. Real trust is the greatest form of self-responsibility that there can be, as is the real acceptance of that trust by someone to whom the secret does not belong, but who chooses to be trust-worthy in the sharing of it.
Trust, of course, does not only have to do with secrets; trust can also be a form of dependence. ‘I trust you to catch me when I fall,’ to take an example from the clichéd trust-building exercises used in marriage counseling and group formation classes. ‘I trust you not to walk me off a cliff if you’ve volunteered to substitute for my guide dog today.’ ‘I trust you to help me in the way that you can, the appropriate way, and no other.’ ‘Jesus, I trust in you that you will love me and, at the final end, make everything right.’
Where would we be, as people and as Church, without this dependence on one another? Surely not a living metaphysical and real entity; surely not human; surely not truthful. Because we all depend on others in a myriad of ways, as we are supposed to. I don’t think this is unhealthy. I think that denying this essential part of our human lives constitutes a dangerous and destructive falsehood that denies the nature of what we are: that we are created to trust and depend, to be trustworthy and dependable. On whom can I depend but God? The best answer, I would hope, is ‘other people.’
Trust also always involves a vulnerability on the part of the person who trusts. They have, after all, given a great deal of power to another person in the hope that that person will not abuse that power, will not choose to violate that vulnerability. Which brings up what may just be the most important thing about trust: trust is hope. There is no trust without hope – it just isn’t possible. It is a choosing to believe in goodness, in kindness, in the humanity that God has created us to be. It is a hope in love, in one’s own and another’s strength. It is a hope in another person. Where could there be healing without hope? Without love, dependence, trust? These things are all woven together in a life that looks forward to and expects the resurrection, in a life that sees the promise of that resurrection here among us. Now is the kingdom, now is the day.
It makes me sad that disclosure of and healing from one’s secrets can be related to an interaction with another person that is devoid of mutual responsibility, expectation, investment and hope, rather turned in on itself where the act of speech, and not the relationship it inevitably demands, is grasped as the sole means of healing and self-responsibility. You might as well be talking into your web-cam. I personally would not want to think another person opened up their life to me as if I were a mirror to be used only for their own need to speak. I would feel devalued as a person, I would feel like I am being used, because in that action my own humanity, my own ability to be responsible with another person’s trust, is being devalued and denied. Trust is intimacy. Without intimacy there is no hope, no love. Without trust, life is not possible.
I sometimes think that this necessary intimacy is precisely what we have denied our priests (using ‘we’ for the moment to refer to the institutional Roman Catholic Church). We confess to them as if they were some sort of forgiveness-dispensing machine: just put in your quarter and receive healing. But is that really such a great idea, to forget that they are a person and not just standing in the place of Christ? Maybe that forgetting causes more harm than we know. Our priests are not allowed to marry. Our priests are expected to keep up one-way relationships with their parishioners where their own needs are suppressed, or at least never expressed, because of course a priest should not need anyone in his church or contribute something of himself to an intimacy between them. Our priests live alone. I don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s right, that we should limit or deny a priest this necessary element of vitality and humanity. It just seems like that kind of trust, that one-way expectation, does not account for who they are, and it’s a sacrifice that no one should have to make. It must be a heavy burden, that trust, knowing that you can never trust that person in turn – not really, because the expectation is that you will not attempt to do so. It makes me sad that anyone should have to live like that, especially our priests who represent Christ on earth, the epitome of that perfect love, hope and trust.
Now, this is not to say that unhealthy relationships cannot develop around the sharing of secrets or dependence or hope. Hope can be unrealistic, reflecting a denial of reality and an attempt to make another person carry to heavy a burden for you. It can be a way of shifting your self-responsibility onto another person and expecting them to fix things for you. It can be a gateway to inappropriate intimacy. An attempt to control another person. An attempt to avoid risk, ironically, by assuming that risk is eliminated by a relationship with another person. But that isn’t trust: that’s co-dependency. And the interesting thing about co-dependency is that in order for it to actually occur as a noun and as a verb, more than one person has to be involved in it. If your would-be co-dependent does not respond by allowing that relationship to unfold, you’re not actually co-dependent: you’re being stupid maybe, cowardly, afraid, manipulative and selfish, uncaring of another, but you are not co-dependent. All that there is is a false trust that mistakes hope for reality, certainty for the absolute, and dependence for unlimited and unbounded care.
That is not trust. But nor is it to be entirely condemned, either. We are, after all, human, fallible, weak, desperate and needy. There’s no sense in denying it, and trying to do so probably just creates the kind of psychological damage that makes people like Martin Luther despair of God because they themselves are not perfect, but flawed.
The fundamental difference between trust and co-dependence, I think, is something like that in trust the thing in question (secret, dependence, or whatever) is implicitly acknowledged, and that trust happens perhaps because of it but does not become it. Once the thing becomes imbedded in a relationship and forgotten, becomes a dynamic, becomes the intimacy…the secret becomes the relationship, rather than the relationship being alongside, within and around the thing, which remains always itself, for what it is. A mutual choice by two persons, belonging to one and entrusted to another, the responsibility of one person and not the responsibility and burden of the relationship.
That’s all I have to say about that. (which actually turned out to be quite a lot).
Oh, and therefore, I don’t think that it’s some sort of unhealthy trust if you feel hurt when it’s betrayed. After all, what person does not feel hurt by the ending of a relationship, by finding out that that relationship no longer exists, by hitting your head on the floor when you are not caught, be seeing that the thing you have hoped for has not come to pass? Hurt is healthy, because it reflects the true value of all these things, and so a sense of loss and pain when trust is broken can only be human, healthy and authentic as well.
The interesting thing about trust is that it’s both a verb and a noun – an action and a thing – and that it is both of these at the same time, as well as being a description.
To trust is to have certainty that a person, in some respect, will act or behave in a certain way. It is certainty that the person is who you think they are, and that they will be that person. When someone tells a secret to someone else, they are trusting that person to do certain things in response, they are trusting that their secret will be received in a way that respects its integrity and dignity. ‘I trust you to understand,’ ‘I trust you to know that the secret is important to me,’ ‘I trust you to feel a certain way about it, a way that encompasses its nature,’ ‘I trust you to accept the secret as a knowledge that belongs to you though not an experience that belongs to you, to take it into account and not pretend that you never heard it, but also not to try and make it your own.’ These expectancy constructs are all based on trust as a certainty about another person. There can be trust, in the active sense, regardless of whether or not that certainty is well-founded: it is an action performed by only one person, the one who has decided to trust and reveal.
This kind of trust is also a noun, a state of being or affairs. When the trust is not betrayed – when the other person accepts that trust – something exists between you, a relationship based on mutual respect for the bond that trust creates. I think that relationship is important for both people, the one who is accepting the responsibility as well as the one who is reaching out to them in trust, when the person reaching out has also taken responsibility for themselves.
Genuine trust, I believe, always carries that kind of self-responsibility, because it acknowledges that in that decision is a risk that can be borne only by the person taking it. I choose to trust you, and in so doing I acknowledge myself to be the kind of person who does trust you, who believes in you, and who accepts that what I reveal belongs to me, is my own, and is my own to share or to conceal. Real trust is the greatest form of self-responsibility that there can be, as is the real acceptance of that trust by someone to whom the secret does not belong, but who chooses to be trust-worthy in the sharing of it.
Trust, of course, does not only have to do with secrets; trust can also be a form of dependence. ‘I trust you to catch me when I fall,’ to take an example from the clichéd trust-building exercises used in marriage counseling and group formation classes. ‘I trust you not to walk me off a cliff if you’ve volunteered to substitute for my guide dog today.’ ‘I trust you to help me in the way that you can, the appropriate way, and no other.’ ‘Jesus, I trust in you that you will love me and, at the final end, make everything right.’
Where would we be, as people and as Church, without this dependence on one another? Surely not a living metaphysical and real entity; surely not human; surely not truthful. Because we all depend on others in a myriad of ways, as we are supposed to. I don’t think this is unhealthy. I think that denying this essential part of our human lives constitutes a dangerous and destructive falsehood that denies the nature of what we are: that we are created to trust and depend, to be trustworthy and dependable. On whom can I depend but God? The best answer, I would hope, is ‘other people.’
Trust also always involves a vulnerability on the part of the person who trusts. They have, after all, given a great deal of power to another person in the hope that that person will not abuse that power, will not choose to violate that vulnerability. Which brings up what may just be the most important thing about trust: trust is hope. There is no trust without hope – it just isn’t possible. It is a choosing to believe in goodness, in kindness, in the humanity that God has created us to be. It is a hope in love, in one’s own and another’s strength. It is a hope in another person. Where could there be healing without hope? Without love, dependence, trust? These things are all woven together in a life that looks forward to and expects the resurrection, in a life that sees the promise of that resurrection here among us. Now is the kingdom, now is the day.
It makes me sad that disclosure of and healing from one’s secrets can be related to an interaction with another person that is devoid of mutual responsibility, expectation, investment and hope, rather turned in on itself where the act of speech, and not the relationship it inevitably demands, is grasped as the sole means of healing and self-responsibility. You might as well be talking into your web-cam. I personally would not want to think another person opened up their life to me as if I were a mirror to be used only for their own need to speak. I would feel devalued as a person, I would feel like I am being used, because in that action my own humanity, my own ability to be responsible with another person’s trust, is being devalued and denied. Trust is intimacy. Without intimacy there is no hope, no love. Without trust, life is not possible.
I sometimes think that this necessary intimacy is precisely what we have denied our priests (using ‘we’ for the moment to refer to the institutional Roman Catholic Church). We confess to them as if they were some sort of forgiveness-dispensing machine: just put in your quarter and receive healing. But is that really such a great idea, to forget that they are a person and not just standing in the place of Christ? Maybe that forgetting causes more harm than we know. Our priests are not allowed to marry. Our priests are expected to keep up one-way relationships with their parishioners where their own needs are suppressed, or at least never expressed, because of course a priest should not need anyone in his church or contribute something of himself to an intimacy between them. Our priests live alone. I don’t think it’s fair, and I don’t think it’s right, that we should limit or deny a priest this necessary element of vitality and humanity. It just seems like that kind of trust, that one-way expectation, does not account for who they are, and it’s a sacrifice that no one should have to make. It must be a heavy burden, that trust, knowing that you can never trust that person in turn – not really, because the expectation is that you will not attempt to do so. It makes me sad that anyone should have to live like that, especially our priests who represent Christ on earth, the epitome of that perfect love, hope and trust.
Now, this is not to say that unhealthy relationships cannot develop around the sharing of secrets or dependence or hope. Hope can be unrealistic, reflecting a denial of reality and an attempt to make another person carry to heavy a burden for you. It can be a way of shifting your self-responsibility onto another person and expecting them to fix things for you. It can be a gateway to inappropriate intimacy. An attempt to control another person. An attempt to avoid risk, ironically, by assuming that risk is eliminated by a relationship with another person. But that isn’t trust: that’s co-dependency. And the interesting thing about co-dependency is that in order for it to actually occur as a noun and as a verb, more than one person has to be involved in it. If your would-be co-dependent does not respond by allowing that relationship to unfold, you’re not actually co-dependent: you’re being stupid maybe, cowardly, afraid, manipulative and selfish, uncaring of another, but you are not co-dependent. All that there is is a false trust that mistakes hope for reality, certainty for the absolute, and dependence for unlimited and unbounded care.
That is not trust. But nor is it to be entirely condemned, either. We are, after all, human, fallible, weak, desperate and needy. There’s no sense in denying it, and trying to do so probably just creates the kind of psychological damage that makes people like Martin Luther despair of God because they themselves are not perfect, but flawed.
The fundamental difference between trust and co-dependence, I think, is something like that in trust the thing in question (secret, dependence, or whatever) is implicitly acknowledged, and that trust happens perhaps because of it but does not become it. Once the thing becomes imbedded in a relationship and forgotten, becomes a dynamic, becomes the intimacy…the secret becomes the relationship, rather than the relationship being alongside, within and around the thing, which remains always itself, for what it is. A mutual choice by two persons, belonging to one and entrusted to another, the responsibility of one person and not the responsibility and burden of the relationship.
That’s all I have to say about that. (which actually turned out to be quite a lot).
Oh, and therefore, I don’t think that it’s some sort of unhealthy trust if you feel hurt when it’s betrayed. After all, what person does not feel hurt by the ending of a relationship, by finding out that that relationship no longer exists, by hitting your head on the floor when you are not caught, be seeing that the thing you have hoped for has not come to pass? Hurt is healthy, because it reflects the true value of all these things, and so a sense of loss and pain when trust is broken can only be human, healthy and authentic as well.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Here In This Place
So, by now I'm sure everyone out there in cyberspace who cares about these things has heard the news about Ep. Lahey. I personally seem to be taking this rather hard because, for a variety of reasons, it hits close to home.
I think that what makes it worse is his role in the reconciliation process with survivors of child sexual abuse in his own diocese. It does take a great deal of courage to open up at all about such intimate issues -- not only what happened (though that is of course a part of it), but the ways in which it has affected and affects your life. What makes childhood abuse so difficult is that it does not really allow for a sense of the past...there is no real moment when you can look behind yourself and say 'it's over,' 'it's behind me.' Instead, it becomes an element of the present, of one's reality and lived experience of the world. It shapes everything around you so that it can never be left behind, not really. You carry it with you every day, in so many ways...a constant companion. These are the things it’s perhaps most difficult to talk about, because it involves opening up your private world, trying to express something that, at the end of the day, can't really be put into words. It involves the acknowledgment to another person of your vulnerability. It is very important that the people you choose to reveal these things to is able to listen, and to feel and express compassion, not so much for what has gone before but for the shape of your present, for the sheer challenge of trying to live a life where you've passed through it even while knowing that this passage can never be complete. It involves realizing that the journey itself is full of danger and that the constant evolution of your healing means you are never really in the same place more than once...that you may need to say it more than once, more than an hundred times, because each time you are not exactly the same person who is saying it, not saying exactly the same thing.
Because it takes a great amount of courage, trust is very important. A lot of the time, I think, it is not obvious why people choose to confide in those they do: a vague feeling, knowledge that the person has previous experience dealing with this sort of emotional fragility, sheer timing in that they're the only person around when it happens to explode out of you. In this case, it is fairly obvious why Ep. Lahey was chosen as someone to trust. His position in the Church makes him an ideal person, both because he represents the institution that allowed the harm to go on in the first place and because, well, we inherently trust our priests, do we not? We tell them our secrets, we come to them to find God, we entrust our children to them, because the lives they have chosen to lead reflect an undeniable goodness, service, and sanctity. It is a sad day when we can no longer look at our clergy without doubt, without concern, without a shadow of suspicion. Hopefully, that day will never come for most of us.
Trust is so important that it forms, I think, an integral part of the reconciliation process...reconciliation with yourself about the truth of your life, if nothing else. That trust makes it possible to see beyond, to hold onto the goodness of another person and know that you are not, after all, completely alone. The people involved in this particular case trusted Ep. Lahey and felt that his compassion and understanding played a crucial role in their ability to constructively confront their experiences. To not be alone in the public proclamation of it. To feel that, through all the shame, confusion, anger and hurt there was someone there whom they could trust and who might even, perhaps, help them to forgive.
So, obviously, finding out that the person you trust is involved at all in the same kind of hurt you’ve been entrusting them with is devastating. Because if the people who profess to care –- and even really do care -– do the same thing that they’ve listened to you talk about, who is there left? Who is there left to trust? I think it carves a new wound on top of an old one, making it even harder to really feel that you’re not alone. That’s what makes this case so particularly bad.
What should have happened is that Ep. Lahey never became involved in this case in the first place. What should have happened is something like this: Dear Holy Father, the diocese under my jurisdiction is about to enter into the process of reconciliation with child survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of our own priests. I request to be relieved of my Episcopal post immediately and to retire from the clerical profession. The grave reason necessitating this action is that, as it turns out, I have also been engaging in child sexual abuse. It would show a complete lack of regard for the souls entrusted to my care if I were to risk wounding them in such a horrible way. I am not requesting to be moved to another diocese not embroiled in a clerical sex-scandal; this would, of course, be terrible, repeating as it does the past sins of the institutional Church. Please accept my resignation immediately. Also, this event has spurred me to realize the implications and harm my actions can cause to other human beings. I’m thinking of turning myself over to the police, perhaps allowing them to catch more people involved in the trafficking of child pornography. Sincerely, your faithful servant.
But, of course, this didn’t happen. I sincerely hope that Ep. Lahey is able to find the courage to repent of what he has done. And it does, I think, take a great deal of courage to truly repent for one’s actions –- all the courage of your life. It means seeing, really seeing, what you have done for what it is, allowing yourself to feel all the deep pain of it, allowing the devastation to penetrate your soul, accepting the hurt and responsibility without any equivocation, any denial, any attempt at proving innocent. That willingness to suffer, that willingness to see yourself as you truly are, is the real measure of a life. And it’s something we all of us will have to face when we stand before God in judgment. I pray that we all find the courage to immerse ourselves in repentance so that we can all accept God’s forgiveness. God can forgive anything, but embracing that mercy means first accepting in all of its horror what we have done. We are all sinners, none of us more than another –- not really. None of us deserve or merit forgiveness. But, through God’s freely given grace, it is poured out upon all of us. The choice of our lives, I think, comes on the final day, and the task of our lives is to love and trust God enough that we can brave the horrible sorrow that accepting forgiveness will mean, trusting that God’s love for us will save us even from that, even from ourselves. So I pray for Ep. Lahey, just as much as for any of us, that he will find that courage and strength. Maybe facing the consequences of his actions in this life will help him to do that...though human justice can never look into the mystery of the human heart, it can help a person to see, to see as clearly as it’s possible to see in a dark glass, that they have sinned, and that they need forgiveness. So God can save them with a Mercy that knows no measure, and a Love that knows no end.
But I ramble.
The point is, I feel really, really sad and weepy and vulnerable about this, because I know what it’s like to have someone you’ve trusted with your most painful secrets break that trust by committing the same offense. To whom can I turn but God? But, of course, God is not all I need in this life –- God can’t really hug me or hand me Kleenexes. I need other people. Which is another reason I feel so bad. Because I, like the people of Antigonish, need to find the strength and courage to forgive, the strength and courage to trust again, to really put it aside and hand it over to God, and not live my life inside anger and vengeance and all that it means to not forgive. It is difficult, and I’m not sure that it can ever be fully accomplished until the end, when I come face to face with the true depth of my own sinfulness, which I can never fully appreciate behind the cloud of this life. Like everyone else, I need the final resurrection to be whole. But forgiveness now is necessary, as necessary as possible, because that too prepares you to accept the love of God, to understand the depth and meaning of mercy, that it is beyond anything that can be expected or comprehended or deserved. That only in God are all things possible.
We pray to the Lord: for the sake of your Son, have mercy Lord.
May everyone, all of us in need of your mercy to escape the darkness of hell, be lead into new light, and see your face.
I think that what makes it worse is his role in the reconciliation process with survivors of child sexual abuse in his own diocese. It does take a great deal of courage to open up at all about such intimate issues -- not only what happened (though that is of course a part of it), but the ways in which it has affected and affects your life. What makes childhood abuse so difficult is that it does not really allow for a sense of the past...there is no real moment when you can look behind yourself and say 'it's over,' 'it's behind me.' Instead, it becomes an element of the present, of one's reality and lived experience of the world. It shapes everything around you so that it can never be left behind, not really. You carry it with you every day, in so many ways...a constant companion. These are the things it’s perhaps most difficult to talk about, because it involves opening up your private world, trying to express something that, at the end of the day, can't really be put into words. It involves the acknowledgment to another person of your vulnerability. It is very important that the people you choose to reveal these things to is able to listen, and to feel and express compassion, not so much for what has gone before but for the shape of your present, for the sheer challenge of trying to live a life where you've passed through it even while knowing that this passage can never be complete. It involves realizing that the journey itself is full of danger and that the constant evolution of your healing means you are never really in the same place more than once...that you may need to say it more than once, more than an hundred times, because each time you are not exactly the same person who is saying it, not saying exactly the same thing.
Because it takes a great amount of courage, trust is very important. A lot of the time, I think, it is not obvious why people choose to confide in those they do: a vague feeling, knowledge that the person has previous experience dealing with this sort of emotional fragility, sheer timing in that they're the only person around when it happens to explode out of you. In this case, it is fairly obvious why Ep. Lahey was chosen as someone to trust. His position in the Church makes him an ideal person, both because he represents the institution that allowed the harm to go on in the first place and because, well, we inherently trust our priests, do we not? We tell them our secrets, we come to them to find God, we entrust our children to them, because the lives they have chosen to lead reflect an undeniable goodness, service, and sanctity. It is a sad day when we can no longer look at our clergy without doubt, without concern, without a shadow of suspicion. Hopefully, that day will never come for most of us.
Trust is so important that it forms, I think, an integral part of the reconciliation process...reconciliation with yourself about the truth of your life, if nothing else. That trust makes it possible to see beyond, to hold onto the goodness of another person and know that you are not, after all, completely alone. The people involved in this particular case trusted Ep. Lahey and felt that his compassion and understanding played a crucial role in their ability to constructively confront their experiences. To not be alone in the public proclamation of it. To feel that, through all the shame, confusion, anger and hurt there was someone there whom they could trust and who might even, perhaps, help them to forgive.
So, obviously, finding out that the person you trust is involved at all in the same kind of hurt you’ve been entrusting them with is devastating. Because if the people who profess to care –- and even really do care -– do the same thing that they’ve listened to you talk about, who is there left? Who is there left to trust? I think it carves a new wound on top of an old one, making it even harder to really feel that you’re not alone. That’s what makes this case so particularly bad.
What should have happened is that Ep. Lahey never became involved in this case in the first place. What should have happened is something like this: Dear Holy Father, the diocese under my jurisdiction is about to enter into the process of reconciliation with child survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of our own priests. I request to be relieved of my Episcopal post immediately and to retire from the clerical profession. The grave reason necessitating this action is that, as it turns out, I have also been engaging in child sexual abuse. It would show a complete lack of regard for the souls entrusted to my care if I were to risk wounding them in such a horrible way. I am not requesting to be moved to another diocese not embroiled in a clerical sex-scandal; this would, of course, be terrible, repeating as it does the past sins of the institutional Church. Please accept my resignation immediately. Also, this event has spurred me to realize the implications and harm my actions can cause to other human beings. I’m thinking of turning myself over to the police, perhaps allowing them to catch more people involved in the trafficking of child pornography. Sincerely, your faithful servant.
But, of course, this didn’t happen. I sincerely hope that Ep. Lahey is able to find the courage to repent of what he has done. And it does, I think, take a great deal of courage to truly repent for one’s actions –- all the courage of your life. It means seeing, really seeing, what you have done for what it is, allowing yourself to feel all the deep pain of it, allowing the devastation to penetrate your soul, accepting the hurt and responsibility without any equivocation, any denial, any attempt at proving innocent. That willingness to suffer, that willingness to see yourself as you truly are, is the real measure of a life. And it’s something we all of us will have to face when we stand before God in judgment. I pray that we all find the courage to immerse ourselves in repentance so that we can all accept God’s forgiveness. God can forgive anything, but embracing that mercy means first accepting in all of its horror what we have done. We are all sinners, none of us more than another –- not really. None of us deserve or merit forgiveness. But, through God’s freely given grace, it is poured out upon all of us. The choice of our lives, I think, comes on the final day, and the task of our lives is to love and trust God enough that we can brave the horrible sorrow that accepting forgiveness will mean, trusting that God’s love for us will save us even from that, even from ourselves. So I pray for Ep. Lahey, just as much as for any of us, that he will find that courage and strength. Maybe facing the consequences of his actions in this life will help him to do that...though human justice can never look into the mystery of the human heart, it can help a person to see, to see as clearly as it’s possible to see in a dark glass, that they have sinned, and that they need forgiveness. So God can save them with a Mercy that knows no measure, and a Love that knows no end.
But I ramble.
The point is, I feel really, really sad and weepy and vulnerable about this, because I know what it’s like to have someone you’ve trusted with your most painful secrets break that trust by committing the same offense. To whom can I turn but God? But, of course, God is not all I need in this life –- God can’t really hug me or hand me Kleenexes. I need other people. Which is another reason I feel so bad. Because I, like the people of Antigonish, need to find the strength and courage to forgive, the strength and courage to trust again, to really put it aside and hand it over to God, and not live my life inside anger and vengeance and all that it means to not forgive. It is difficult, and I’m not sure that it can ever be fully accomplished until the end, when I come face to face with the true depth of my own sinfulness, which I can never fully appreciate behind the cloud of this life. Like everyone else, I need the final resurrection to be whole. But forgiveness now is necessary, as necessary as possible, because that too prepares you to accept the love of God, to understand the depth and meaning of mercy, that it is beyond anything that can be expected or comprehended or deserved. That only in God are all things possible.
We pray to the Lord: for the sake of your Son, have mercy Lord.
May everyone, all of us in need of your mercy to escape the darkness of hell, be lead into new light, and see your face.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Things To Think About
These are the lyrics of a song written by Francis Patric O'Brien in 2002, "In a Time of Pain"
In a time of pain when confusion reigns, will you hear our burning cry?
When the wound won't heal as the truth's revealed, when our anguish just won't die:
Come save us as you saved your Son, who was faithful to the end.
God of justice reign; through our sin and shame
be salvation, God, and friend.
When our leaders fail, when the dark prevails, be the path that will guide our way.
When our anger burns may we strive to learn to reveal the light of day.
Come save us as you saved your Son; in your truth we will be set free.
Teach us how to deal with the hurt we feel;
may we rise from this Calvary.
When the weakest ones have no place to run from the terror that haunts their days,
Who will give them peace, make their nightmares cease? Who will drive their dark away?
Come save us as you saved your Son, who embraced each child in pain.
May your healing balm bring a peace and calm
that will make us whole again.
Teach us what is just and in whom to trust; by your wisdom we will abide.
May the ones with pow'r, in this crucial hour, seek the Spirit as their guide.
Come save us as you saved your Son from corruption's deadly toll.
May we rise at last from our shadowed past
with your love as our guide and goal.
In a note at the end of the score, O'Brien writes: In this time of crisis in the church, many have found that, once again, music and lyrics have the power to confront and to heal. This text was written as a prayer to our good and gracious God to express the confusion, pain, and other emotions that well up within so many in these difficult days in the Catholic community. It is also intended to be a prayer of hope that our church may confront the darkness and move toward the light of Christ, which is our goal and guide.
At least for now, I think I'll leave it at that.
In a time of pain when confusion reigns, will you hear our burning cry?
When the wound won't heal as the truth's revealed, when our anguish just won't die:
Come save us as you saved your Son, who was faithful to the end.
God of justice reign; through our sin and shame
be salvation, God, and friend.
When our leaders fail, when the dark prevails, be the path that will guide our way.
When our anger burns may we strive to learn to reveal the light of day.
Come save us as you saved your Son; in your truth we will be set free.
Teach us how to deal with the hurt we feel;
may we rise from this Calvary.
When the weakest ones have no place to run from the terror that haunts their days,
Who will give them peace, make their nightmares cease? Who will drive their dark away?
Come save us as you saved your Son, who embraced each child in pain.
May your healing balm bring a peace and calm
that will make us whole again.
Teach us what is just and in whom to trust; by your wisdom we will abide.
May the ones with pow'r, in this crucial hour, seek the Spirit as their guide.
Come save us as you saved your Son from corruption's deadly toll.
May we rise at last from our shadowed past
with your love as our guide and goal.
In a note at the end of the score, O'Brien writes: In this time of crisis in the church, many have found that, once again, music and lyrics have the power to confront and to heal. This text was written as a prayer to our good and gracious God to express the confusion, pain, and other emotions that well up within so many in these difficult days in the Catholic community. It is also intended to be a prayer of hope that our church may confront the darkness and move toward the light of Christ, which is our goal and guide.
At least for now, I think I'll leave it at that.
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