Shame, Shamelessness, and Narcissism Shame sometimes looks like its opposite. When our shame becomes unbearable, it twists into an intractable shamelessness. Then we can hurt others without remorse. Unless something stokes our pride or satisfies our lust, it means nothing to us. When we are shameless, no consequence society can enforce will affect us. No matter how ferocious or ingenious, punishments cannot squeeze remorse from an indifferent heart. Catcalls, beatings, imprisonment, banishment might sting, but only those who entertain the possibility that they have done wrong will be moved to change. The shameless feel offended by chastisement. They see themselves as victims. Thus, they defend themselves from condemnation by condemning…
-
-
Animal Intelligence
Animals as Sacred For the Creek Indians, animal intelligence is a given. Indeed, not only do they, and many indigenous people, consider animals to be smart, but they see them as superior to humans. They were here first, after all. As Creek stories explain, animals created the world and then made us. We are related to them, but they are spiritually advanced, and we owe them respect. [1] The native people of the Arctic believe reindeer and caribou can understand and respond to human thought. [2] Australian aborigines recognize that animals are sentient. [3] David Aftandilian suspects that native peoples came to understand the wisdom and spiritual maturity of animals…
-
Shattering Images of God
The First Cause It may be an illusion, this world we inhabit: a virtual reality machine, a dream, a joke. But if so, who’s running it all? If it’s all smoke and mirrors, surely something is tending the fire, polishing the glass? Perhaps the Big Bang is truth, and a singularity randomly popped into existence, just as quanta wink in and out, without someone or something controlling it. Alternately, quantum fluctuations may have created a series of Big Bounces, resulting in one multiple universes. Some people imagine there was no beginning, that space always existed. When conditions were right, time manifested, and the universe-building began. No god required. It’s hard…
-
Coming Home to Ourselves
We Can’t Go Home To be a hero, at least in myth and fairy tale, we must leave home. Maybe we set off to right a wrong, vanquish a monster, save a loved one from a witch’s spell, find our fortune. In the stories, no adventure or peril is too great for us. The deed will be done. On the way, as we spar with giants, beat at windmills, turn the river from its course, melt the witch, we change. Hopefully, by the time we end up back home, we are wiser, more true to ourselves. Yet we are not who we once were. That’s one reason, of course, that…
-
Seeing But Not Perceiving
Never Perceiving In the kingdom of God, the sick receive healing, the poor have enough to eat, and the weak are powerful. Yet no matter how much Jesus preaches about this kingdom, the disciples don’t get it. They want to know if they’ll sit at his right hand in heaven. They want glory and power. But Jesus called them to serve. In the Gospel of Mark, he must repeatedly admonish them to stop thinking about their own desires, stop seeking to be served, and strive instead to become better servants. As Geert Van Oyen points out in his analysis of the gospel, the acolytes want to fulfill “their own interests”…
-
Listening to Be Changed
When We Disagree In trauma circles, they say, “Don’t ask, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Ask, ‘What happened to you.’” In other words, all those people who seem crazy and wrong—the addict, the mentally ill, the homeless, the timid, the broken-hearted, the person imprisoned by cell walls or greed or an unacknowledged emptiness of heart—are not crazy or wrong. They are wounded. But what if that person is Republican, or Democrat, or Libertarian, or Socialist? What if he worships a different god than we do, or no god at all? Do we dismiss him as deluded, ignorant, or even evil? Does it make sense to wonder what happened to make her…
-
Calming the Storm
God’s Power Over the Elements Read from a Christian perspective, Mark’s Gospel guides us, step by step, to the realization that Jesus is the Messiah, the one sent to Earth to redeem our souls. Thus, the story of Jesus calming the sea becomes one more miracle tale, meant to be taken literally so we might be convinced. Children’s lessons highlight Jesus’s power over the weather, over disease, over everything in the universe. That’s how amazing he is. That’s how we know he’s God. And this God will help us when storms rage in our life. If we have faith, we need not be afraid. [1] That message is not unique…
-
Texts of Terror and Love
Death in Numbers 25 The Hebrew Bible is the story of a love affair between Yahweh and his chosen bride, Israel. In return for God’s blessings, the people promise fidelity, yet over and over, they rebel, complain, and bow down to other gods. Sometimes Yahweh is patient. At other times, he punishes them harshly. One such harsh punishment occurred at the end of the Israelite’s wilderness journey. They were camped along the Jordan River across from Canaan. In between Balaam’s prophecy that Israel would be victorious in battle against the neighboring tribes and the taking a census of the Israeli people, lies the tale of the murder of Zimri and…
-
Help for the Journey
Heavenly Music In her anthology of folk tales, Jane Yolen retells a story about the youngest son of the King of Ireland, who wins a maiden and half his father’s kingdom. [1] In some ways, it’s like many youngest child tales in that he is victorious where his older brothers are not. Unlike most such stories, however, once he sets off on his quest, everything he needs is handed to him. It seems that the King of Ireland had three sons, Neart, Ceart, and Art. The youngest, Art, was his favorite. As might be expected, the older boys were jealous. One day, a strange singing began to be heard throughout…
-
Nonjudgment and Moral Discrimination
The Trickster Elegba Elegba, also called Èshù, is a Yoruban trickster deity. He mediates between the heaven and earth, has dominion over the crossroads, and, though he creates mischief, he does so in the service of harmony. Elegba teaches us that there are two sides to every question. [1] In their book of stories, Nina Jaffe and Steve Zeitlin retell a story about Elegba. Once upon a time, there lived two farmers, Olufemi and Olushegun. They lived next to one another and were great friends. Every day they talked, and they always agreed. If they were deciding how to harvest their crops or how to discipline their children, they agreed.…