Walls and Gold
One of the biggest tragedies I know is the way people get divided from each other. Physical separation, yes, but I’m thinking more here about other kinds of separation – separation of souls, I guess. Though by nature of being human we all have terribly much in common, it’s the differences that often keep us from knowing this, and from living connected, meaningful relationships. Our differences become walls, disallowing us from even having access to all the other stuff, the common stuff, that exists between us.
I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to be talking with someone about religion or politics or even sports for that matter, and be able to see that there are deeper things going on than the topics being discussed – maybe deeper joys or griefs being expressed, deeper wounds, or questions about what life really means, or what, when it all shakes down, really matters; maybe insecurities about the way we look or talk, or fears that we might reveal how little or much we actually know on the topic – and be helpless to actually engage overtly at that level. Instead, conversation must often stay up on stilts, away from the level of soulful connection, away from all the stuff that seems, to me, to really matter. We pretend, and maybe actually convince ourselves we believe, that this particular theological point or this particular argument for who should be president or who should have been traded instead of this or that guy are really what matter, are really what we pressingly need to get to the bottom of.
I don’t know. Maybe they are. Maybe this isn’t a black-and-white issue where surface-level conversation can be separated from the deeper, soulful stuff happening between people (surely I’m overstating a point here, too, since there are plenty of occasions where surfacy talk is just what feels right and good). I guess I just tire of having differences, in my life particularly religious and theological differences, become such enormous barriers to authentic relationships with people. Try sharing what you really think or question or feel with a lot of people, and things get terribly awkward, terribly tense, terribly charged, sometimes, with one or the other party feeling urged to evangelize the other, or set the other straight. I don’t want to treat others as projects, and I don’t want to become one myself. I don’t want to feel like people I’m talking with are working really hard to gently, imperceptibly even, push me toward their way of knowing God, their way of knowing what’s real and trustworthy, their way of understanding life.
I just want to be humans together, connecting around our real joys and pains, acknowledging the things we’re afraid of, the things that make us angry, the things that make our souls happy and sing. I want to take all those walls, all those differences, all those surface-level things (maybe religion included?), and set them aside for once. We could even look over at them together and laugh or cry about what they do to us…what they’ve done…and all the havoc they raise at all levels of public and private life.
But I’m thinking most of us aren’t that self-aware most of the time. We don’t know ourselves well enough to sense what’s really going on when we get riled up about this or that topic, or scandalized that someone else isn’t. We bang away at life unaware that there’s any other way to live.
So here’s something that makes my soul sing: those moments, sometimes fleeting, sometimes lasting a little longer, when souls deeply meet. When the veils between us get thin, and we catch glimpses of each other as we truly are: naked, raw, beautiful. When all the walls that will always exist between us lose substance somehow, and it’s as though they don’t exist at all.
That’s what I love. That’s the treasure I seek. That’s the gold, for me, that makes life so worth living.
January 16th, 2005 at 2:42 am
i’m not sure if you’ve ever hear about martin buber and his explination of the ‘i thou’ experience. it is very similar to what you are describing. you can find a good description here:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Buber.html
January 16th, 2005 at 2:42 am
heard, not hear… sorry
January 16th, 2005 at 10:12 am
At my work there are some of us who are passionate baseball fans. I am a Giants fan and the other day I walked into the employee lounge and saw one of my Dodger fan friends whom I had not seen in over a week. Immediately a sheepish grin came over his face, he shrugged his shoulders up, turned his hands up, and said “I don’t know what they are thinking”. We didn’t even need to name the subject (the Dodgers trying to trade Shawn Green) to know each other’s thoughts and start a conversation. Even though he was embarrassed by his teams latest actions, we both enjoyed our encounter. Focusing on the “wall” is what brings us together. Maybe I am too post-modern, but I am not sure I have a concept of what a bare soul would actually be. My sense is that stripping away baseball, religion, politics, ethnic background, etc., is like stripping away layers of an onion (sorry if that is becoming too trite an analogy). I think that some of my best contacts with other souls come when the “wall” is treated more like a fence that two neighbors lean on from opposite sides while talking, neither trying to break the fence down or make the other hop over to his or her side. Of course, it is caring about the other that brings us both to the fence, but without the fence, I’m not sure where we would meet.
January 17th, 2005 at 8:44 am
Nice post! And, Bobbie, that is a really great link. I relate with the post but I also find myself relating with Roger’s point. It is an optimistic way of looking at our differences; at their best, they can act as fences that bring us together. At the same time, our differences can also act as walls that keep us apart. Sports and the like have never acted as a barrier between me and others, but issues like politics and religion certainly have. And, sometimes, even when I am talking to someone amiably over the conversational fence I still want more depth (to *know* and *be known* at a deeper level). Perhaps it is good to have a few close friends where this can be the case. I sure can’t imagine having that type of relationship with everyone I meet. In any case, this is all really good food for thought.
January 17th, 2005 at 10:17 am
Bobbie, thanks for the link. Buber’s “I-Thou” experience really resonates well with what I’m describing here. And WOW, Roger - your fence description is so helpful! Of course! When you take away religion, politics, ethnicity, vocation, hobbies, etc., etc., one can rightly say there’s nothing left. In one sense, these ARE us - I’m thinking not in and of themselves, but in the sense that they are the language and the images and the reference points we have through which to be the unique persons that we are.
So then I think Nate also makes a good point…there are times when these things ARE creating fences at which to meet and converse, but when the meeting and conversing nevertheless lacks a kind of depth one might crave. Could it be that in such instances, the “forms” (religion, politics, etc.) get treated as actual “substance”, rather than as means for exchanging true substance? Thinking out loud here…in the early stages of being in love, one can almost palpably feel that words being exchanged between lovers about weather, or food, or movies have far less to do with those literal things, and far more with communicating how crazy each feels about the other. The “forms” (the words about food, weather, etc.) are necessary, but aren’t an end in themselves. Could this be true in many other kinds of conversation? Maybe all conversation? - where the “forms” don’t have to be ends in themselves, but rather means for other things, things like feeling known, like getting to express anger or joy or frustration, like feeling connected with another human being, or beaing validated for who you are and what you’re drawn to. Of course there exists a whole range of intimacy that “fence conversations” can have, but maybe even the less intimate kind - kind with strangers at the grocery store, for example - can have the quality of form-as-substance, or form-as-means-to-other-substance to them. It’s the latter, maybe (still thinking this idea through), that I generally crave. And maybe it’s the latter that can be so frustrating, since people can BELIEVE they’re engaging at the form-as-substance level, when it seems quite clear they’re not. In such cases, the person who notices the distinction can feel helpless to focus things on the real substance that the other seems to be needing to engage around. Does that make sense? Conversely, I think two people can both be aware that much more is getting addressed or worked on in a conversation that, for all outer appearances, is only about weather (or ___ fill in the blank).
In sum, it sounds a lot like I don’t equate our religious, ethnic, political, vocational, etc. affiliations with the substance of who each of us is. I think our substance goes deeper than that, even though these things are necessary to communicate and engage around our substance. I don’t think we’re onions. Once all that stuff is peeled away, maybe I think what’s left is raw, human need, longing, joy, intuition, woundedness, power, etc. — a mix unique to each of us, but also tapping into a huge pool of common human ground — but little capacity to actually engage with each other around it.
How’s that for an initial brainstorm on the topic? :)
January 17th, 2005 at 11:38 am
I appreciate everyone’s brainstorming. Kristin, I still have trouble understanding what “substance” you have when you have “human need, longing, joy, intuition, woundedness, power, etc”. Those seem like characteristics of a self, but they seem more secondary than primary. In other words, I am likely to have a sense of loss of power and of woundedness if the candidate I voted for lost a close election, but I don’t think I have those feelings if those political things are all going the way I like. On the other hand, I recognize that there is a thinker in me that is external to political (etc) events because I am able to able to rationalize political news in such a way that it eases my suffering. I’m just not sure to what extent that thinker can feel all those emotions WITHOUT there being a political situation (or other external stuff) to think about. Is the deeper level of communication that you crave just the chance to tell the other across the wall/fence how certain religious or political situations makes you feel, and to get the message back that they understand and that they have feelings about those things too?
I guess what I am wondering now is if you don’t need to peel away those emotions you described (human need, etc.) to see if there is really a nut in the onion, and what it looks like.
January 18th, 2005 at 8:44 am
Surely there’s an inseparable link between our external experiences in life (including receiving information) and what goes on inside of us. The raw human needs and cravings and wounds I talk about can’t ever be fully separated from what we do and don’t get or experience in life. So I hear you there.
I guess I’d like to take a step back from theorizing about what the “true self” actually is, and say only that I think in any conversation, there are always deeper levels of engagement that can happen. I like the image of awakening very much, and think I crave in conversation the sense that both parties are waking up to some new depth of themselves or life or God…or are at least open and receptive to this happening. I think that there are topics, religion being one of them, that can become a kind of roadblock to the awakening I’m talking about, getting people stalled up on arguing this or that point when maybe the real issue to be woken to is fear, or the need to be respected, or the desire to prove that one’s life and passions are worthwhile and good. It’s these roadblocks that seem like tragedies to me at times. I’ve a hunch that at deeper levels of ourselves, the differences we argue or get so tense and awkward about shift into a whole lot of common human ground. Who CAN’T relate with fear, or the need to be respected, or the desire to prove one’s life worthwhile?
Anyway, those are my thoughts for today at least…
January 18th, 2005 at 11:33 am
Well said. I agree completely.