Posted by
Gayle Plato-Besley, M. Ed. on Friday, June 27, 2008 2:54:13 AM
by Gayle Plato-Besley
A middle-aged women with lots of opinions is about as appealing as a root canal: each grates on the nerves. Once in awhile I find myself standing alone on an issue, values worn on my sleeve, being handed my hat. But then, what fun is it on the fence anyway? Are we really here to make sure everyone else is content, in a politically correct and astringently clean city-state? When I think of politics I realize we are getting away from values and that is dangerous. Political Correctness is an oxy-moron anyway.
We cannot allow anyone to intellectualize values. It weakens the political ethics, the representative government based on passionate discourse, and creates buffered controls. Values become guidelines and citizens become clients. We aren't stakeholders of a claim, but members of a society. Standards apply because life is limited. We get one and it ends soon.
Whether an agnostic or apostate, there is a search for meaning in each soul. During the search, we each seem to be plopped down on a path, smack dab in the way of others we know and love. So it goes with the dysfunction that is life. A friend very dear to me discussed a New Age approach where, if I understand it, each one is God and all of life is at one's command. There is no reality that the person doesn't create. No hell or evil as each creates all life. The “I” is everything and nothing else really exists. It all seemed a reworking of Existentialism, with a presenter retooling the work of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. I never was fond of all of that as it fell in on itself, into what I see as Nihilism. Though I loved Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground, and Kafka's The Metamorphisis was disturbingly cool for me, in my today- the daily mundane of motherhood and overly grounded drudge- I couldn't stomach it. I told her, calmly and concerned, that it seemed dark. I may have pushed my views or was I upholding my values? I am not sure.
My journey of faith has been a maze-like, snaking path with many stops. For years I sought out comfort spiritually through overly intellectualized channels. I was raised by smart people who just happened to walk away from our faith long ago. The college mindset of scientific thought and proof or reason took hold; we all honored our minds and talked for hours like in a parlor or salon. My family tends to mock and snicker at the world too. With all of that postulating going on, I also tried on various non-denominational spins and New Age philosophies; I was trying to control my life and take charge of the future. But somewhere along the line of divination, in my thirties, I realized I was not happy and unfufilled. I realized that I am truly not in control of all of this.
I discovered one thing: I believed in God and saw that love of him and his son were fundamental to me. It was not an intellectual experience but a visceral and emotional hold. With this knowing came the realization that I am a being of God. Yet while on the Earth plane, I am a human with limits and values. I serve at the pleasure of God and all else comes in second. I cannot, in good conscience, support the denial of God by saying I am him.
Coming back home to church, on a path I knew so little, was also a path at odds. I stand alone in it all. Many close to me support my search of faith. But I go to church by myself and I walk with God in the unquiet of my restless heart. My siblings shake their heads, skeptical psuedo-intellectuals to the 'nth' degree. My husband is a master of tolerance and quiet resignation with Rainman-like regard for much of anything. My son, well he is five and his path remains to be seen. He can't sit still in church and gets mad he can't take communion yet :-) C'est laVie-Such is life.
I am open to any belief system that supports the knowing of God. But then, all values require us to each stand alone and say out loud, “ I believe ____.” Devotion is not an intellectual act; it's of conviction by a being of the Earth, grounded in the realization that I am a part of something bigger. If we intellectualize all of our life's events,we can then justify anything. That, to me, is the downfall of society. Living life in third person: we are not in The Matrix and I am not Neo.
Last Sunday at church, at the height of my quandary, I read the passage for the week and the words of the Bible said it all: Matthew 10:24-33-
“No disciple is above his teacher, no slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, for the slave that he become like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more those of his household! Therefore do not be afraid of them. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.”
- AMEN