Heath Ledger, R.I.P.

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred,
And I myself see not the bottom of it.
- William Shakespeare

Heath Ledger died in NY yesterday from an apparent drug overdose. He was 28. I had just read in the NYT where his role as The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie (Christian Bale) had taken a huge toll on him. Evidently, playing a heartless psychopath left Ledger unable to sleep, even with multiple doses of Ambien. He obviously was already struggling with a drug habit, as his fiancé, Michelle Williams, had taken their 3 year-old daughter and left him, telling him to go get help. How very sad and tragic.

I remember first seeing Heath playing opposite Mel Gibson in The Patriot. It can’t be easy holding your own, acting with a living legend, but he did a great job. Of course most people will remember him as Enis, in Brokeback Mountain, the movie critics loved but only a few people from the Hamptons actually saw.

May God have mercy on his soul, and may he rest in peace.

Real v Fake

I am a Real Christmas Tree kind-of-a-guy. Part of it is nostalgia, as my parents always had real trees, as did my grandfather, Monte Sr. Part of it is the ritual of going to get the tree, tying it to the roof of my car, and then later cursing at myself (every year!) for forgetting what I thought I had learned last year from all the scratches on top of my car. But the number one reason is that there is something almost sacrilegious about a fake tree: it is like using grape juice in communion. What’s up with that?

I was thinking about the Real v Fake tree debate the other day, while talking to one of Job’s Counselor’s. Why Job gave him my phone number baffles me. After all, Job couldn’t wait for the guy to shut up when he was harassing him.

The bottom line for this guy was that all my troubles would disappear if I were just filled with Holy Spirit. He then began describing to me exactly how I would feel--“in an instant”-- if I would yield myself to the Holy Spirit.

Me: And how do you know I do not do this every day?

JC: Well, you keep writing about the anguish of the Dark Night of the Soul.

Me: And being filled with the Spirit will turn the lights back on?

JC: Absolutely!

Me: But what if someone prays to be filled with the Spirit and it is still dark?

JC: Then he doesn’t have faith.

Me: Where does faith come from? Strike that. Let me ask you another question: who is to say exactly what the Holy Spirit wants us to experience in any moment in time?

Manufacturing Spiritual Experiences
How many of us have ever manufactured a spiritual experience? I willlll be joyful! I willlll sound spiiiiriiitwallll.

We are all familiar with jailhouse conversions, foxhole conversions, but how many of us are aware of crisis conversions? An individual goes through a crisis that leaves his or her life in disarray. Then, in only a matter of days after his life has fallen apart, BAM, he sounds like Charlton Heston playing Moses.

Sometimes I wonder if people create these pseudo experiences so as to distance themselves from the mess they made, both in their minds as well as in the minds of their friends. “That was the Old Me: this is the New Me. Don’t confuse the two!”

Yes, God can and does use such crisis’ to bring about an awareness of our deep need for his grace. And yes, sometimes such transformations begin with a life-altering experience. (See Saul becoming Paul) However, more times than not, it is more a case where a few seeds are planted: seeds that might take years to grow into a tree that produces fruit. But what happens when the individual is in a community where people expect instantaneous demonstrations of joy and power, where people who say they have repented or have given their life over to God are expected to sound like Charlton Heston no later than next Sunday? Easy.

You put up a fake tree with plastic fruit hanging from its limbs

You serve grape juice and tell everyone it is new wine

You manufacture an experience


Copyright, 2008, Monte E Wilson

Merlin's Prayer

Great Light, Mover of all that is moving and at rest, be my Journey and my far Destination, be my Want and my Fulfilling, be my Sowing and my Reaping, be my glad Song and my stark Silence. Be my Sword and my strong Shield, be my Lantern and my dark Night, be my everlasting Strength and my piteous Weakness. Be my Greeting and my parting Prayer, be my bright Vision and my Blindness, be my Joy and my sharp Grief, be my sad Death and my sure Resurrection.

From Merlin, second volume of Stephen Lawhead's The Pendragon Cycle

Confirmation Bias

I was listening to a couple of buddies talk about the Republican debates the other day: each of them asserting their candidate of choice had “won” the day. When I mentioned that the focus groups after the debates had all chosen a candidate other than the two they were advocating, they both simultaneously said, “Idiots!”

I recently read a study about how, during the 2004 elections (Kerry v Bush), some researchers at Emory University used functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans (fMRI) on 30 voters: 15 committed Democrats, 15 committed Republicans. While viewing multiple instances where their candidate of choice had contradicted himself, the researchers monitored the 30 brains. (The Secret Language of Leadership, Stephen Denning)

And what did the men and women at Emory discover?

While the viewers watched and listened to the self-contradictory statements of their candidate, that part of the brain where we reason – was inactive! And what part of the brain was active? The emotional circuits were all firing away.

People pretty much hear what they want to hear. I like you, so I am going to constantly place what you do and say in a particular frame. You weren’t contradicting yourself: you were adding a nuance to a previous statement. You weren’t staking out an entirely different position than previously taken, you were merely reframing the same position you had always held to for a different segment of the voters.

Psychologists call this confirmation bias.

A few weeks ago I read another study where the participants would answer a questionnaire dealing with the various issues being debated during the primaries. Their answers would then be tabulated and, insto-presto, the candidate’s name that most accurately represented the questionnaire’s positions would be given. Only problem was that in many cases it did not jibe with the candidate the participant had already chosen.

Obviously this presents a major challenge for the Presidential candidates. How do they get past people’s biases? Obviously the answer is not merely to make a more rational argument regarding their positions, as people are not thinking their way to a candidate as much as they are feeling their way. What they should do, then, is add an emotional component to the rationale given for their positions. And how do they do this? One way is to tell stories that incarnate the rationale of their positions.

However, what about us voters? What about our confirmation biases? At the very least, I think we must become more self-aware. If we know we have them—if we refuse to adopt the position that we are above such biases—we can become a bit more skeptical about how we arrive at our decisions, and, therefore, dig a little deeper, think a bit more, about our candidate’s shortcomings, and their candidate’s strong points.

Copyright, 2008, Monte E Wilson

Curators, Counselors, and Chaos

One of the titles and responsibilities a minister often holds is that of curator: someone who cares for souls, facilitates the healing of souls. In a previous life, I was a minister who took this responsibility quite seriously. Whether it was the damage done by family dysfunction, or a traumatic experience such as the loss of a long cherished friend, or simply the dust from the surrounding culture crusting around a soul until it is as hard as concrete, people’s souls need tending to.

When I was young, I had the Answer Book (The Bible), and so had all the answers. “O,” Monte would pontificate, “you are struggling with that? Just say one prayer before you go to bed, another after you wake up in the morning, and memorize this verse by Friday!” Okay. I wasn’t that simplistic, but you get the picture.

When I was in my late 20’s I began realizing that I was talking more than listening, making more assertions than asking questions. In other words, I was assuming that I understood exactly what the problem was; precisely who the person was; and knew without a doubt what God was up to in their lives. Talk about arrogance!

Life and people are complex. There is a mystery that surrounds and permeates most of what we experience in the Dark Night of the Soul that I was not taking into account. Now? Now I believe that there are very few solutions to life’s problems: if by that you mean, “feeling all better” about yourself and your life.

Imagine if I had been sitting with Jonah in the belly of his whale. “The goal, Joe, is to ‘fix’ you up so you can get out of here ASAP! Rebuke the whale and, yeah verily, he shall spew you out of his mouth!” Really? And what if Jonah would have escaped the whale before God’s prescribed three days? Well, he might be “feeling all better” about himself but he wouldn’t have been in Nineveh.

What if God is not all that interested in our feeling better about our selves but about deepening our souls? What if all we can do—all we should do—is embrace what is happening, live our life as wisely as we can, and wait for God? Anyway--

After some time monitoring my results, I began to see that some of what I was counseling people may have helped to deliver them out of the chaos and agony they had been experiencing ("Golly gee wiz, is it great to get out of the whale!"), but they remained shallow people. Gradually, I began to redefine my place and function.

As I understand it now, I don’t think anyone can fix anyone else. (I am not referring to teaching people life-skills or helping them with practical wisdom, but to those experiences that shatter our worlds.) People aren’t computers or machines, and to treat them as such is beneath the dignity of their personhood. After all, you cannot solve life: you can only live it.

The older I become, the more reticent I am about giving advice to anyone. First of all, most people who ask do so because it either gives them the opportunity to tell you what they think (which is paramount in their minds), or they are shopping for what they want to hear. (Cue PA System: Counselor # 10, Counselor # 10.) Secondly, and this is most important, I, as the counselor, do not understand their challenges, do not understand what God is doing in their life, and so can have no definitive, airtight, this-solves-everything answers for them.

Again (and again and again and again), I am not suggesting that those who specialize in human nature cannot help us. I am suggesting that their help is limited. While they may have some general understanding of who you are, and what you might want to do about what you are facing--they do not understand. The counselor who humbly comes along side to help you knows this. The counselor who sits across from you seeking to fix you does not.

Remember the story of Job? He never knew what hit him, never knew why all hell erupted everywhere in his life. In fact, even when he “saw” God, he still was given no answers. But Job was cool. After all, once you see God you no longer need answers. God’s presence is infinitely better than having answers, more life-changing than discovering solutions, and more satisfying than “gaining closure” on our earthly trials and tribulations.

If many of life’s challenges are sent by God to deepen our souls, the counselor’s job, then, is to hold us steady while this occurs. Our job? Embrace the chaos and agony that is doing the excavation work.

And why is greater depth of soul important?

Because: only deep people can love deeply.

Copyright, 2008, Monte E Wilson

Jihadist

Have been reading about Muslim Jihadists.

For them:

God is Absolute Will, and his will is not to be questioned or argued with (as Abraham did), even when, to us, it appears irrational. Here, for these particular Muslims, God’s will does not flow from a holy love (which presupposes a relationship, which, in turn, presupposes conversation), but is more akin to Nietzsche’s Will to Power

God is Monarch--but not The Heavenly Father

God is Transcendent--but never God coming along beside us

Compassion and Mercy are not attributes but weaknesses, which ends up perverting any concept of God’s justice

I use to be somewhat of a Christian Jihadist: pretty much saw, or at least behaved, as if the above were Orthodoxy. I was a Christian Jihadists who did not kill with weapons, but with my mouth and attitude--and believed I was acting righteously! Of course, there are also those Christians who, while they do not treat “infidels” this way, they do relate to God—and see God relating to them—as Absolute Will rather than as the holy compassionate and merciful Father. (If you are such a Christian, I recommend you read number 9 in the Daily Decalogue of Pope John XXIII from a previous post.)

For both of these Christians, it is as if God’s self-revelation did not climax and come to fullness with and in Jesus Christ, but is frozen at Mt Sinai.

None of this is to say God is not holy (or that he doesn’t want us to be holy) … only that he is The Holy Father.

Whatever it is we think we know about God—however it is we think God deals with and relates to us humans—if we do not see this reflected in the life, words and actions of Jesus … our knowledge is defective.

Copyright, 2008, Monte E Wilson

New Year's Resolutions

Be at ease in the silence
Embrace the dark night
Acquire strength in solitude
Be as fearless as a corpse
Keep moving
Seek depth of soul over health and happiness
Stop explaining
Choose simplicity
Love -- with discernment and knowledge
Rediscover individuality
Be impeccable
Accept my weirdness and eccentricities