Donuts and Ashes

The pile of Pączkis in my local grocer remind me that “Fat Tuesday” (Polish Mardi Gras) is upon us. Pączkis are rich cream or compote filled donuts. A final indulgence before Ash Wednesday begins 40 days of fasting. I choose not to observe this ritual because my body gives me plenty of reminders that I am returning to ash and dust.

This annual observance of gluttony and fasting is supposed to remind me that I am a sinner, a slave to “original sin” or “utter depravity.” The assumption is that I will somehow be transformed by ritualized indulgence and self-denial. Except that I am not. I remain vexed by behaviors and motives I do not understand. So from time to time I pray:

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."  

Even though I am no longer religious, somehow this prayer has stuck with me. When I recite these words, I often extend it, “that I may have mercy on others.” What is it about this prayer that resonates in me? 

As I thought about it, I realized that as a "sinner" I am simply a person with a shadow (dark side). I share this trait with all of humanity. Yet I was taught that being baptized or "accepting Jesus" would render me free of sin (my shadow). I was taught to place all of my sin, my wrong attitudes, motives, and doings on Jesus so I don't have to deal with my own darkness. St Paul wrestled with his darkness when he observed:

"For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing." -Romans 7:19

Like St Paul, I noticed that my darkness didn't go away. Paul finally asks “who will deliver me?” and answers his own question when he says “through Jesus Christ my Lord.” But what is it about Jesus that deals with our shadow?  Jesus makes it visible!

Jesus made the collective shadow of society visible. The shadow of society is reflected in its caste system. Jesus upended the caste system of his day by making invisible people visible. He took notice of the lame, the blind, the leprous, tax collectors, and prostitutes. He took them out of the shadows of society and treated them with dignity. In the end that was the charge against him, “he eats with tax collectors and prostitutes.”

Jesus also dealt with individual shadows. When he challenged the rich young man to follow him and the man refused because he had wealth and standing in society, his attachment to wealth was exposed. 

Simply observing religious rituals and practices alone did nothing to transform me or anyone else I know. Religious practices do help us feel good about ourselves. Acts of penance makes us feel like we've paid for our sins. Piety bolsters our standing in a community. But as soon as something challenges our notion of goodness, who is deserving of help, who belongs and who doesn't, our dark side comes out.

So what to do about our shadow? Keep it in view! Like a mischievous cat. Those of you who have cats know that silence means one of two things: they are sleeping or they are up to something. So we close off rooms to limit their range… and keep them in view. 

Our shadows are a part of who we are because we have substance. We exist. And we cast a shadow in the presence of light. Attempting to deny our shadow only results in projection on someone else. This results in blaming, shaming, and scapegoating.

“On a cultural level, shadow means what our group, our tribe, our religion, our political party deems negative, out of bounds, to be shunned, to be improved, or to be punished. Behind every social oppression lurks a piece of group shadow whose members are exporting it onto others who are not of their tribe. When the shadow part is not faced, it goes unconscious and lives there.” ~Ann Belford Ulanov, Where to put the Bad?

So I will skip the Pączkis. I will forgo the ashes on my head. I will try to keep my shadow in view. I will hold it in tension and accept that it is a part of me. If I can see my shadow, then I can be sure it will not act through me. I can treat all people with dignity, which is the most subversive thing you can do in this day and age.

Awakening from the Sleep of Inhumanity

 

The Lenten season marks a time of fasting and self-examination for those of us who observe. It is supposed to be a time of repentance from sin and awakening to the spiritual dimension of our lives.  However, if Lent or other religious observances are supposed to be mark a time of awakening, then what are we awaking from? Sin?  Indifference? Materialism? Secularism? Greed? Intolerance? Hatred? Could there be a deeper sleep or torpor that we need to be awakened from?

In his book, The Principle of Mercy, Jesuit priest Jon Sobrino recalls his arrival in El Salvador and his immersion into the grinding poverty and oppression of the people there. It forced him to reframe his life in light a more fundamental question: 

“Are we really human and, if we are believers, is our faith human?”

Living among the people of El Salvador, he discovers the answer to that question: 

“to change our vision in order to see what had been there, unnoticed, all along, and to change hearts of stone into hearts of flesh — in order to let ourselves be moved to compassion and mercy.”

How could we be sleeping in a state of inhumanity? After all, in our personal dealings we are genuinely nice people. To the people we encounter, our family, friends, and co-workers, we are kind. But how about the people we don't encounter directly, the people we don't often see? Those who are part of the  infrastructure of humanity that makes our life possible.

We need to awaken to the fact that our life in modernity is only possible because of the people who work in supply chains, the people who plant, harvest, prepare, and deliver bread, produce, and meat to our grocery stores. Nearly everything we own and everything we wear is manufactured by people somewhere in the world.  The miracle of technology enables goods to be delivered to our doorstep with the tap on our smartphones. But the miracle of technology still needs the labor of human beings. It does not occur to us that the supply chain might be an actual chain, enslavement by other means, forcing people to work for inhumanly long hours, in occupations where people spend every waking hour just to survive. 

The sleep of our inhumanity might just be concealing idolatry. That is a strong statement. Our idolatry might not be our physical bowing down to a golden calf. Our idolatry is our unquestioned commitment to the structures that maintain our comfort, our society, and the social order. Sobrino writes:

“... it is clear that the true God is at war with other gods. These are the idols, the false divinities — though they are real enough — which Archbishop Romero has concretized for our time in speaking of the absolutization of exploitative capitalism and "national security." Idols dehumanize their worshipers, but their ultimate evil lies in the fact that they demand victims in order to exist. If there is one single deep conviction I have acquired in El Salvador, it is that such idols are real. They are not the inventions of so-called primitive peoples but are indeed active in modern societies. We dare not doubt this, in view of such idols' innumerable victims: the poor, the unemployed, the refugees, the detainees, the tortured, the disappeared, the massacred. And if idols do exist, then the issue of faith in God is very much alive.”

We may feel justified simply because we believe in God. But Sobrino shows us that faith is not only a matter of belief but of choice. Sobrino tells us that our beliefs must explicitly specify what we do believe in and what we do not believe in. 

“That is the reason we humans must make a choice not only between faith and atheism but between faith and idolatry. In a world of victims, little can be known about a person simply because he calls himself a believer or a nonbeliever. It is imperative to know in which God she believes and against which idols she does battle. If such a person is truly a worshiper of idols, it matters little whether he accepts or denies the existence of a transcendent being. There really is nothing new in that: Jesus affirmed it in his parable of the last judgment.”

An idolatrous society is necessarily a merciless society. Sobrino says, “idols demand victims.” Who among us can deny that our society is merciless to those on its periphery?  We dismiss the suffering as victims because we don't consider them neighbors. We are all familiar with Jesus' admonition to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” In Luke chapter 10, a teacher of the law responded to Jesus' teaching by asking “who is my neighbor?” Jesus then told him the story of the Good Samaritan and asked the teacher, “who was a neighbor to the man who was beaten by the robbers?” The Good Samaritan was good because he was merciful. He performed a charitable act, a singular act of mercy. The Gospel doesn't tell us anymore about the Samaritan, so we don't know if this was his pattern of life, a principle of mercy. 

If you dare go further down this road, read the book The Principle of Mercy (Google Book Preview).