Reflections on the War on Christmas Season in NYC

Journal rdewald's Journal: Reflections on the War on Christmas Season in NYC 8

Journal by rdewald on Sunday December 18, 2005 @06:41PM

"You can't count on the system to be good. People have to be good."

The words were spoken to me just a few years by a friend of mine who is a Catholic nun. She taught at my high school and distinguished herself as one of a handful of adults (my parents were not among them) who both really *saw* me as a kid/teenager and was brave enough to speak up about it. I was difficult to see as a kid, I hid behind a wall of lies and roles, all defenses against the reality of my life as a child and adolescent. The reality of my life was neglect and abuse, the consequences of which survive to the very day, though I'm closer to putting it behind me now than I ever have been.

But, I digress.

Sister Mary Brian uttered the above quote in the garden of the old MoMA, where we met a few years back to visit when she was in town to visit a friend of hers. We were discussing the Catholic Church itself and the scandals and mismanagement which was emerging at the time. But, the utterance has stuck with me, it has so many applications, particularly to political life here in the US right now.

I just came in from a day in the City. Christmas here is very special, the City really puts a show on, and there's multiple opportunities here to really have very nice experiences during the winter holidays.

There's also very little awkwardness around the coincidence of the religious holidays here. A number of Jews I know have Christmas trees in their homes. Religion-inclusive greetings such as "Happy Holidays" and "Seansons Greetings" are seen as evidence of a proud generosity of spirit, not of exclusion or co-opting of some group's traditional territory.

In group therapy we've been talking about and working on what we call "roles." The term refers to patterns of behavior and thought which take our attention away from feelings and our present experience. Included in this work is recognition of "frames" and "framing," which provides the mental entrance into a role.

Roles come with a price. A high price. We lose ourselves in them, we get further away from who we really are, as do those around us. The payoff is they are familiar and temporarily comfortable. They shield us from the pains of life: (1) isolation, (2) responsibility, (3) uncertainty, and (4) impermanence.

I can give you what I think is an excellent example of this in a short exchange from the group. Pauline in a very beautiful and warm member of group whose defenses and roles have kept her from knowing her own beauty and warmth well into her 30's.

Pauline: My boyfriend left me last Friday.

Therapist: Pauline, that's a frame. Tell us what really happened.

Pauline: My boyfriend told me he wanted to end our realtionship last Friday.

Therapist: Note how you're feeling now, Pauline, what'e the difference?

Pauline: I'm not feeling so much like a victim.

Victimhood is a powerful role for many people, myself included. It gives you a warm cuddly blanket to wrap yourself in to protect yourself from the pains of (1) bad things happen, (2) we are each free to chose how to react to them, (3) there's no way to know what's going to happen next, and (4) every relationship and everyone dies.

I can tell when I am going into a role when I notice that I am going off-alignment with another human being. I can take a superior or an inferior role, which I refer to as "one-up" and "one-down." One-up is when I decide that someone else is not as wise, evolved, kind, or (insert ettribute here) as myself and therefore I can dismiss my interaction with them as being beneath my authenic consideration. One-down is when I decide that someone else is simply more (insert attribute here) than I am and I can't have an authentic transaction with them because we are not peers. They sound like opposites, and they are in the way that North is opposite South, but both are directions and share many more attributes than distinguish them.

What is the inevitable result of the entrance into a role is the loss of my authenticity as a human being. Roles go according to scripts, patterns that are worked out beforehand, that are repeated every performance, which resemble real life in only the most superficial of contexts. That is, words are exchanged, agreemments are sometimes entered into, and feelings are swept safely under rugs, no longer present in the room.

Authentic transactions involve the exchange of words, agreements are sometimes entered into, and feelings are felt, which results in them no longer being present in the room. But its not safe, not in the sense of avoiding the awareness of isolation, responsibility, uncertainty and impermanence. What happens in authentic transations is the participants are left with a sense of shared humanity, no matter what the resolution, each participant in an authentic transaction knows their own isolation, responsibility, uncertainty and impermanence. Compassion and empathy can bridge the details, connecting people who are experiencing all this as doing so together. That's community.

Those who wrote about Jesus hundreds of years after his death relate that this was central to his message. That's what Christmas means to me and it seems to me to be the kernel of wisdom around gift-giving. Here, beloved, be alone, responsible, uncertain and dying, here together with me.

So much of political life in this country has devolved into roles, in fact, we really only have two: Conservative and Liberal. Everyone and every issue has to be reduced to one role or the other, and then everyone can fall into line behind their role of choice. Conservatives are completely robbed of authentic interaction with Liberals, and vice versa. The payoff for the roles are group membership, demonization of the opposition, certainty, and solidarity with a long history of related positions which stand the test of time, such as assertions about what the founding fathers really wanted, or whatever.

Liberals shield themseves with the notion that since both Presidential elections were fradulent they aren't *really* responsible for the government we have now. They'd be different if we weren't the victims of election/campaign fraud. Conservatives shield themselves with the notion that the terrorists force our hand on this or the other discontinuation of our political culture and values, so they aren't really responsible for the government we have now. They'd be different, all for freedom and privacy and peace, if it weren't for being victims of terrorism.

Both sides seek to shrink from the horror of the government we have now. They each use their own defenses. They are much more alike than different.

Taking a page from Rove's frame that religious organizations have been discriminated against by the government by an abusive misapplication of the First Amendment, we are now told that Liberals are taking the Christ out of Christmas by advocating for inclusive and generous holiday greetings. The utter ironic absurdity of this should be as transparent as the notion that Pauline's boyfriend abandoned her by being authentic about a change in his feelings for her. But, the roles blind us.

No one can take the Christ out of anything. There's no there there. The presense or absence of Love in any situation is in the eye of the beholder. No one can put it there, no one can take it away. We see what we choose to see.

Just a few words on my mind now. I don't get to post as often because my life is filled with my work, which I dearly love. I read, though, and I'm glad each of you is along with me on this ride.

Om Mani Padme Hum. Be well, be happy.

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