3 blogs in 2 days!!!

I cried in my Poverty and Inequality class again today. Just teared right up. On the one hand, I’m embarrassed by what a reactive and bleeding heart I have.

On the other hand, I’m glad I’m still bowled over by needless suffering in the world, by the ignorance that drives us to hurt each other and ourselves. It’s like clockwork; Julian puts up a powerpoint slide with statistics on the divergence between the rich and poor--tick--and something in my heart just goes tock--no, no nono.

As a little girl, I cried when things didn’t make sense, when my inherent expectation of fairness had been disappointed. I remember when Katie and I fought, I’d lament the unfairness of it all and Dad would say “life’s not fair, Anna. Just ignore your sister.” Life has certainly shown me that Dad was right--it’s not fair.

Now, Katie and I are upset by the same things that upset Dad; war, poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, violence, hatred, etc. And none of us can ignore them. Perhaps we could all use a good talking to, a good “life’s not fair” reminder. But I don’t think it would help. I don’t think it would stop us from being bowled over afresh each time our inherent expectation of rightness is disappointed. There are many possible explanations for this, and I’ll give the two with which I’ve recently battled: 1) We are stupid and have yet to internalize the lesson that shit happens in this godforsaken and/or godless existence or 2) God has created us with some inalienable sense of what's right at our core.

I’ll flesh out these thoughts in reverse order, but before I do, I must qualify them as thoughts, ideas..attempts to make sense of things I know I will never grasp, hence why they keep bowling me over:

2) There is some vision in us that just won’t quit. No matter how many times we encounter the “reality” that there is no sense or method or truth guiding us to the promised land--that all is absurd and meaningless and we should just stop expecting and trying for something different and to hell with it all!--no matter how familiar we should be with the territory, we can’t stop crying. People haven’t stopped being angry. Our hearts go right on bleeding and shouting and saying HEY, WHAT’s GOING ON? Yah know. Do you know what I mean? Prophets and Apostles and our own dreams keep revealing that something different is possible.

1) Yes, children get inexplicably, terminally ill, “good” things happen to “bad” people, cyclones tear through swingsets and dogs get run over. There’s a lot of suffering we can’t do anything about and will NEVER BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT. But--B. U. T.--the “shit happens” explanation doesn’t account for all the terrible, unnecessary suffering in the world which we create. With our blind desire and greediness and fear, we expand that chasm between what should be and what is every single day. We can’t blame suffering on the universe. We are partly to blame. And so of course we want to put right what we’ve made wrong. Of course we keep striving after justice and peace.

I believe the Lord’s prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There must be something vital inside me which brought on those tears, something which informs my sense of what should be happening here on earth. There’s a balance to find here between 1) being disturbed by the chasm between what is and what should be 2) learning as much as one possibly can about the causes of that chasm and 3) finding some particular way to build some bridges across, or at least to do one’s best at keeping it from expanding.

This is where Jesus steps into the picture for me today (He steps in at different places depending on my mood and the biggest current question in my heart ): God created us in God’s image. And so we hunger after this vision. It’s inalienable. However, God also gave us the freedom to choose the vision that we follow; ours or God’s? Clearly, it’s a lot easier to follow our own vision of the good life (i.e. nice things and comfort and sometimes even blissful wine-induced ignorance) vs God’s vision which--besides holding some immoveable place in the dark reaches of our hearts--is SO DAMN HARD TO DISCERN and to follow...I’ll get to Jesus in a minute...God gave us the capacity to choose our vision over God’s, and in doing so, gave us the capacity to go too far in our pursuit of that vision. Bottom line, God gave us the capacity to create abominable suffering. To sin.

Enter Jesus who gives us a good talking-to, and it’s not that life isn’t fair. Rather, it’s that life is fair, on some level, after all: Humans can kill God and God will still love us cause God knew we were going to do it in the first place. How can God do anything but forgive us for our poor choices if God created us with the capacity to choose so poorly. That might be blasphemous, but a Priest whom I love once reminded me that God loves us even through our blasphemy. I mean, come on, look at how rude and presumptuous the Psalmist is!

This good news of forgiveness would work out nicely and comfortably for us if that other part--that vision of what’s right part--weren’t so woven into our very being. So we keep crying and bleeding and messing up and asking forgiveness and recommitting ourselves to loving each other better.