Saturday, 08 March 2008

Anne Blackwill and Cornel West to the Rescue!

In my last blog it seems clear that I am struggling with what it means to be human, what that looks like outside of my own context and my presuppositions and assumptions. So, while I should be writing a paper today, I happened to fumble across two videos on my computer: Anne Blackwill's lecture "The Christian Self" and Cornel West's "Christ Matters."

Yesterday I was talking to a friend and she was telling me how she had put off reading a letter I wrote her for days and days for what seemed like no particular reason. But when she did read it, it was done at the most opportune and meaningful moment. When the words would not just be skimmed, but when they would have the opportunity to penetrate her soul. At a time when they would reach into her heart and allow for harmony between the words on the page and the struggles and perplexities of her own heart. And that, that reverberation with the perplexities of my soul and my mind, is the feeling I had after listening to these two great and inspirational minds (and a friend, in Dr. Blackwill's case...still waiting for Dr. West to call me back....for some reason he didn't respond to me stalking him while I was visiting Princeton for Thanksgiving...I don't understand). I specifically remember downloading Dr. Blackwill's speech months ago and watching it with my apartment mate, Annery. I was so excited! But then once I started watching it I just got kind of sleepy after a couple of minutes and went to bed. It is not that I didn't need to hear those words then, but the moment and circumstances in which I watched them now filled them with a meaning they wouldn't have possessed then.

What hit me and what began to explained to me the perplexities of my own heart, was the link between self, others, and God. Dr. Blackwill's lecture was about how do we begin to break down the ways in which the Enlightenment has trained our minds in Western societies? How it is trained us to compartmentalize and dichotomize. What is the connection between the natural and the supernatural, our bodies which she described as "egos wrapped in skin?" What are our concepts of space? And she said that that space is the capacity for connection. She says that the Enlightenment has made it difficult for us to not try to control the world from threatening our individual and unrealistic realities. I suppose my last post was about the realization of that space for me here. The space, the "capacity for connection." You know? Ugggh, this difficult to explain!

Dr. West continued to help me link the two. The understanding of ourselves existentially (apart from others), and our understanding of ourselves being inextricably linked with others. How do I balance that? For him, Socrates is indispensable. "An unexamined life is not worth living" and then Malcom X saying "But the examined life is painful." That...that is where I find myself! In the middle of those two. That is where humanity finds itself. But it is the Socratic approach to life, an approach of intellectual humility (I know I am the wisest man alive simply because I know I know nothing), where we are willing to take off the mask and look at ourselves unabashedly in mirror, that allows us to accept our own humanity. Love provides the armor for our journey "from womb to tomb." How do I truly know myself, know humanity, while at the same time not distancing myself or allowing myself to slip into an observer mentality? Dr. West says:

That is an acknowledgment that self-mastery, autonomy and self-control are overrated. They are all over rated. There is dependency, interdependency, an acknowledgment of finitude. A call for community, a need for connection. That is how the Hebrew Scriptures end. Oppressed people calling for help. The cries of the various prophets, from Amos all the way through Micah. And, of course, Jesus comes out of that prophetic Judaism. What I'm talking about building on is this trail of tears. Because the trail of tears has something to do with the hypersensitivity of other peoples' sufferings, but more importantly the centrality of love...steadfast loving kindness.

And for me, that is where Christ enters the scene. When talking about the humanity of this life, and of what it means to be human, you cannot simply leave it at that. At least I cannot. I cannot leave it at knowing we are all the same. Knowing our humanity is interlinked. As crucial and as important as tolerance is, tolerance without love will in time simply beget only more intolerance. Why should you tolerate someone or something you hate or are indifferent to? Perhaps out of utilitarian principles, but what if those don't last? It's unsustainable. But when love is brought in, the picture changes. When one dips into the well of love that feeds one's own intimate love of self and begins to apply that love with others, that is transformative. Once you begin to equate the pain of your own humanity and your search for wisdom with that of others, you step closer to love. How is that we can mess up only one commandment to the degree in which we have? To love God and to love others with an intimate love that we would normally only reserve for ourselves?

So, yes, it is about humanity, but it is about something deeper as well. The link between myself and my sister/brother is not always visible from the surface. It is rooted in this trail of tears Dr. West talks about. I would also say it is rooted in a trail of joy as well! Dr. Blackwill says that "Primarily when God comes into history, he comes to give himself." To give of God's own personal well of love! To us! God sets the example! Our sin does not simply pull us away from God, but also from one another. And all of it is interlinked. Anne says that just in the same way that a good book tugs in multiple directions, so do our lives, so do questions of morality and humanity.

I hope I continue to feel that tugging in my life here. That tension. And not so that I can know we are all human, but to know that that realization is simply a stopping point on the way to learning how to love.

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