It
would seem that only half the people can be happy half the time. That pretty much makes joy a 50/50
proposition.
This
autumn, two of the stories dominating the news were the Clinton/Trump presidential election, and the Indians/Cubs chase of
their long-illusive World Series Championship.
Avid sports and political fans have reported unusual levels of anxiety,
if not outright fear.
Don’t
get me wrong: in no way am I equating the importance of sports and politics,
although I know lots of folks who care a lot more about their teams than their
candidates. Nor am I suggesting that
one, including myself, should not care deeply about the issues involved in this
election.
I have
been taking groups to Mexico and the border for the last 30 years. I have met and know many amazing people who
are undocumented, and I fear greatly for their future, and their families.
I have
a child with Type 1: Juvenile diabetes. If she had not been able to stay on her
parents insurance until she was 26, and if she had not been able to now buy her
own insurance without being financially punished for her pre-existing
conditions—well, let’s just say, we care about what happens to the Affordable
Care Act.
I grew
up in North Dakota among farmers, ranchers and working class folk who became
such an important part of this election, and they
have plenty of reasons for feeling that they have, indeed, been left out by the
policies and priorities of the last political years.
So the
issue is not whether or not we should care about these issues and what is going
on in our country right now. Our
religious faith, in fact, calls us to care deeply about poverty, prejudice,
injustice, oppression, and violence.
The
issue I am raising here is not whether or not we should care, but HOW we should
care.
According
to Christian tradition, our human nature wants to win, take for ourselves
without regard for others, and to get our own way in all matters of life (and
death). Christian doctrine often puts
forth positions and tries to win. For
one person that position might be to stop abortion, for another capital
punishment, and they will often be opposed to each other within the church. Take our rightly beloved, present Pope. Because of church doctrine he finds himself uplifting
the rights of the refugee, including the undocumented, and at the same time
reaffirming the secondary role of women in the church.
Christian
theology terms the desire to get our own way, our “original sin.” The desire to eat of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil was the first attempt to try to take morality into our own
hands and redefine what God had already established as the good (and the evil.) If one
sees spirituality in this way, then, we are destined to be happy only half the
time--in those times when we get our way.
However, at a deeper level we might wonder if we can ever be happy. One
could argue that the spiritual person also does not find joy in seeing others
suffer because they have lost and been left out, similar to the poor man lying
at the gate of Lazarus.
Spirituality
is the attempt to find joy and meaning in life whether one gets one’s way or
not. In fact, the real power of
spirituality is in helping us to be at peace with ourselves and the world in
those very times when everything is not going the way we want it to. The year after my first wife died, it was
spirituality that saved me. I had not
gotten what I wanted, and now I had to learn anew how to find joy and meaning
in life without Pauline. (See Post of 7/31/2015.)
Spirituality
is always about assessing where we are, and then moving on, hopefully in the
right direction. It is not good for
one’s spirituality to hear the winners lord it over the losers, and to hear the
losers rehash again and again their arguments.
Neither of those things are loving things to do, and spirituality always
seeks love.
Perhaps
one of the greatest challenges of spirituality is to find joy and meaning in
those times when we don’t get our own way, while at the same time finding new
and creative ways to stand in solidarity with those who are suffering. Sometimes spirituality calls us underground
into the catacombs, where we can be reminded what the Gospel is really all
about: not about winning, but about standing under the cross with those who are
losing. Spirituality may need to build a
new underground railroad, where we can protect and give sanctuary to those who
don’t seem to “matter” right now, not until the day comes when those who have
lost finally win, but the day when our hearts have been transformed from hearts
of stone to hearts of love where all people are valued. “A
new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will
remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. [Ezekiel, 36:26; NRSV]
