What would it take to make us give up our most cherished belief?

This was the question posed in several sermons by a former rector of my former parish. He used it at least a couple of times as a lead-in to a fable of Edwin H. Friedman, which, along with that question, has been on my mind a lot lately when following the discussion on legalizing gay marriage.

The rector was addressing certain beliefs held by parishioners that must have given him great frustration. I’m not so much frustrated with an opposing viewpoint (disclosure: I support gay marriage) as I am intrigued by the character of a discussion itself. Any discussion, really, that provokes heated exchanges and where beliefs are so strongly held that new possibilities, new insight are unwelcome.

Due to copyright laws, I won’t quote the entire fable, but will try to give you a flavor of it.

“One evening a man came home and announced that he was dead.”

The fable relates how various friends and family members try a number of tactics to persuade him otherwise. Sometimes they think they’ve come up with proof so overwhelming that the man could do nothing other than change his mind. Eventually they hit upon the idea of bringing in the family doctor, who has known the man from his childhood.

“[He] asked the man in a no-nonsense way, “Tell me, do dead men bleed?”

“Of course not,” said the man.

The doctor proposed that he make a small cut in the man’s arm, promptly dressing it so that he need fear no infection. The man agrees to the procedure.

With everyone watching anxiously, the doctor deftly slit the flesh, and blood came spurting out. There was a gasp of joy throughout the group. Some laughed, others even applauded, though a few seemed rather to be relieved.

The doctor quickly dressed the wound and turned to everyone, saying, “Well, I hope that puts an end to this foolishness.” Everyone was congratulating the physician when they suddenly realized that the man was headed for the door. As he opened it, he turned to the group and said, “I see that I was wrong.” Then, as he turned to leave, he added, “Dead men, in fact, do bleed.”

See, now I’m congratulating myself on having put forth something that will surely make all the unreasonable people out there come to their senses. This should show them how wrong they are.

But at the same time, my inner voice says, “How do I know that my belief isn’t the one that needs to be given up?”

What would it take to make us give up our most cherished belief?

From Friedman’s Fables, by Edwin H. Friedman, The Guilford Press, pp. 55–58.

Small lesson from a loss

Chicago lost its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The loss is not huge for me and neither is the lesson: Though I’m past the half-century mark, I still indulge in magical thinking. Surprise! Watching the Election Night celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park I got caught up in the “yes we can” fervor. Somehow that feeling transferred to Chicago’s Olympics bid. Having backed a winner in November, I guess I came to believe my support was no longer a curse. That sense must have remained in my subconscious, because it didn’t occur to me to test it by openly rooting for the Cubs, Sox or Bears. Then there was Oprah’s season-opening bash on Michigan Avenue. See? We’re important—we have television cameras and other stuff on the street that makes us look like we’re playing with the big boys. World-class city, you know. Home sick from work yesterday, I watched the IOC’s voting. The sense of inevitability I had matched that of Election Night. Same thing, right? Anticipating a similar outcome. Nope. My support of Obama and watching the election returns had nothing to do with his win. My certainty of a Chicago Olympics (granted, bolstered by the oddsmakers’ confidence) couldn’t guarantee Chicago’s win. But it took Chicago’s abrupt, seemingly rude, elimination to make me aware of this unhelpful impulse. Magical thinking is something we’re supposed to outgrow, if we follow normal development of emotionally healthy humans. Yeah, well…

Am I back?

The Bag Lady was wandering in the wilderness for two years, wanting to blog but easily distracted and derailed. Long story short—I've finally managed to 1) get off my duff; 2) figure out my password; 3) check settings; 4) start typing. Maybe I'll write about it eventually, but right now here I am.

Future breadwinner and citizen

Another troubling occurrence in my Observatory of Human Behavior: On the el this morning, two young women took seats in front of me. I didn’t pay attention at first, but the one who did most of the talking became a subject in my observatory. Her voice sounded as though she were pre-adolescent, though her companion appeared much older. Between the inevitable cell phone calls and her witty comments to her friend, I came to think that her emotional age matched that of her voice. The train’s destination signs were wrong on the front car, though the other cars’ signs were correct. In this situation, the train operator has to announce the correct line and destination at each stop to correct inevitable confusion among riders. After the second time or so, the talker in front of me asked, “Why don’t they just change the signs?” It doesn’t require a whole lot of time on the CTA to discover that equipment malfunctions frequently, especially the destination signs. As we traveled, I discovered from the virtual monologue of the young woman that she is a college student, apparently at DePaul. DePaul is a respected university. She complained that her psychology class wasn’t at all what she expected. She’s studying marketing and thought the class would help her in the psychology of marketing. Instead it was geared towards supervising. To her, utterly unimportant information. Future Manager From Hell in gestation! She just can’t keep her eyes open in class. Nor could she keep her eyes open in a class on multiculturalism. “Purple Line to the Loop,” the operator gamely announced yet another time, when we arrived at Merchandise Mart. “This is the Loop, Dumb Ass!” said the wise one. Uh, no. The Loop, not synonymous with “downtown Chicago,” is bounded by the el tracks in a, well, loop (Lake Street on the north, Wabash on the east, Van Buren on the south and Wells on the west). The next stop put us in the Loop. I suppressed the surprisingly mild urge to correct her, maybe because I feared that it would have been wasted breath. What would it take to shift her paradigm? Yet another person being “educated,” to what effect? I do tremble to think that if something way less than rocket science blows by a person, what kind of footprint on the earth will that person leave?

I got a kick…

I frequently witness raw human interactions and behavior. As I spend nearly two hours a day on public transit in Chicago, I have ample opportunity to observe. Tonight, though, I felt as though I had the wind knocked out of me. When I walked from the el station to the waiting bus, a man hurriedly passed me. He got on the bus just in front of me and about four seats back from the front, he deliberately kicked the leg of a young man who, while reading, had had his knee up on the adjoining seat. The bus was nowhere near filled—a number of seats were available. The young man, startled, immediately sat straight in his seat, thus freeing the adjoining seat. Only, the older man took the seat one away from that—the young man needn’t have moved at all. And no one else took the seat between them. Anyone not looking directly at them missed the event, it happened so fast. I looked at the kicker. Middle-management-type, well groomed and dressed, etc. As he sat down he pulled out a book and settled in to read. The young man, a college student as I concluded from the UIC Library stamp on his book, was obviously rattled but didn’t take any other action. So many thoughts racing in my brain. First, I felt as though I had been kicked. Second, I couldn’t help but wonder if the older man would have done that had the other appeared to be a gangsta-rapper type (would he have thought he might possibly antagonize someone who might retaliate)? And just when did a swift kick replace “Excuse me, is this seat taken”? Especially among supposedly civilized people? Yechh.

The first Friday in Lent

Tonight I did something in observance of Lent that I’d never done. The parish I’ve been attending offers Stations of the Cross and Benediction of The Blessed Sacrament each Friday in Lent. Last year I pondered going, but tonight I went. For someone raised in a Lutheran tradition that eschewed anything that “smelled” of Rome, this was a huge step, even though my Episcopalian experience of the past 20 years has been “high.” Both the Stations and the Benediction were offered in my previous parish (only once a year and separately), but for a number of reasons, I never partook. The Stations exist in a number of forms; here’s one that’s close to our observance (though without the “Global Justice and Reconciliation” heading; yet the rector’s bidding of prayers was very much in line with that concern). Emotion about Jesus’ Passion isn’t something I’ve ever felt—and on top of that I’ve blocked out so many feelings over the past several years, especially in spiritual matters. So what I did was to concentrate on staying open and trying to connect—this is the current task of my spiritual journey. What did I feel? That Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection can be instructive for me. Maybe I can’t experience it now, but I can engage and dare to be transformed. There is so much on which to ponder in these observances. The meditations and prayers are all drawn from Scripture, and I know from my Sunday School and Confirmation classes of decades ago whence most of the texts are drawn. With the Benediction immediately following, Resurrection is directly tied in, as Pope John Paul II tried to do when he attempted to add a 15th Station—Resurrection. Following the rites, we had a simple non-meat soup-and-bread meal, with a presentation by the rector on questions submitted for consideration during this time. The rector is a walking encyclopedia of spiritual and liturgical Anglican/Episcopalian concerns, and I learned tonight, as I have every time I’ve talked to him, that what may seem to many to be empty, pointless rituals are extraordinarily meaningful and significant. When I returned home, Chicago’s Lyric Opera was near the end of its opening-night broadcast of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites on WFMT (another time I’ll brag on this station—it’s world-class, with virtually no peer). As a pianist who has accompanied many singers on opera arias, I was never interested in Dialogues. It just seemed so—well—dull. Nuns talking? But a couple of months ago I heard the last portion of another production of it on WFMT and was utterly taken. Then I learned that the Lyric was presenting it for the very first time—and another time maybe I’ll discuss how a world-class opera house could have ignored such a masterwork. No, wait—I already know—probably the same reason as mine. Or, also, some logistics, such as cost versus appeal. Already in 1956, when the opera was composed, musical styles had changed considerably, and Poulenc not only returned to a somewhat older style but also imbued it with his devout Catholicism. So tonight I got to hear again (live) the portion that had so struck me. And I remain struck. The libretto is based on a true story of martyrdom during the French revolution, when not only nobility but also religious orders were targets. The last portion is the condemned nuns’ walk to their death, and they sing as they approach. One by one, their voices are silenced with each thwack of the axe. The march to the end is relentless and musically haunting—though I’m still listening to WFMT as I write, my brain keeps replaying the final motif. Even hearing it on radio (admittedly a medium that often removes me at least twice from the music source), I find a huge lump in my throat. I don’t know how Lyric’s scheduling works—there are so many factors to be considered—but presenting Dialogues during Lent seems a Godsend.

What a relief

Your Deadly Sins

Wrath: 60%

Sloth: 40%

Pride: 20%

Envy: 0%

Gluttony: 0%

Greed: 0%

Lust: 0%

Chance You'll Go to Hell: 17%

You will die, after conquering the world as an evil dictator.

How Sinful Are You?