lord of the (intersecting) rings
January 1st, 2010
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LOTIR… LOL! Thank you for the hat tip to my “Bottom Circle” (and my affection for the Tres Hombres). I’ve invested most of my life to creating it. Its funny because the “Orthographs” are basically my “Confessions of a Bottom Circle Dweller” and have now contributed to enlarging it by “drawing about the spiritual life”. But hey, I’m not saying I don’t like it or plan on repenting any day soon. I’m having too much fun making fun of myself and having people link to it. So, I’ll ditto your New Year’s resolution and caveat too.
I also have a nostalgic affection for Beard and the Bearded Ones–and I know nothing about Gosselin. The thought that sprung to my mind is that the cynic is the one who has transferred this kind of self-revelation onto everyone else and is therefore certain that everyone who is deep is faking it. This will be especially true if you have been inculturated by “spiritual leaders” to maintain a facade of spirituality even in the face of failure and discouragement for the “benefit” of the faith of the “Body of Christ”. It can be a hard habit to break…
That is a brilliant point, Mark. After one has plumbed their own toilet, it is rather cynical to assume that those who might be considered “deep” simply haven’t plumbed as deep as you have.
Might be a thin line between honesty and cynicism in our culture of the expose (I cannot find an accent mark in the comment section, read – expose-ay).
Using “Steve the Builder” as my example, he is quick with grace, which I suppose, is the only real cure for cynicism anyhow. Of course, good wit helps the medicine go down.
Indeed, Mark. One can point out fairly universal human failure and foibles from a high ground with an arrogant jaundiced eye, or one can admit they’re a part of the human race and point them out with some wit, grace and a “Grandma’s pinch” on the butt to wake others up to the fact they don’t have to keep up the facade… it’s OK. There’s a fine line between grace and cynicism, voyeurism and self reflection, self-exposure and self-revelation. We do indeed have a pretty screwed up culture in most of our Churches that promote and perpetuate our human pain in the name of “the spiritual life”. Good comment. Thanks.
I brings you good luck when I shakes hands with you!
Thanks for your replies, guys. I am very much in a place of wanting to renovate my paradigms without having pain as the driving force. I feel like I have observed this in many others, and they wind up *throwing out the baby with the bathwater*. It is too easy for me to be critical and dismissive and contempuous–especially towards those who were my “leaders” whose flaws I discovered, and whom I felt neglected or abandoned me.
For me there are two parts in the struggle: the pain of my own real failures that have led me to where I am, and then compounded misery that comes from the suspicion that even if I hadn’t gotten off course in my own life, the failures of others would still have doomed the “success” of my leadership.
Most of all, I liked Ryans comment that I said something brilliant, and Steven’s comment about voyeurism…
@Mark
I’ve been thinking a lot how things like pain, discontentment, frustration, etc are really the only things that motivate “change.” I definitely struggle with scrapping the baby. That’s why I continue to blather about it on the internet! Keeps me from jumping off a bridge. I find that if I write some true feeling, it becomes far easier to “let it go,” as my therapist friend might suggest; and thereby it is easier to not make decisions based on that feeling.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been making some changes here at RoP to demonstrate my failures and hopefully make people laugh a little more. Before I thought I could just intrigue people by presenting a compassionate God, but it seems our world is too jaded and divided to believe that anymore. I know that some will interpret these changes as a grand and lasting bitterness. Really, I hope that my small audience understands that this in only my attempt to provide empathy and humorous compassion.
Grace.
Mark, After living 57 years and doing some kind of ministering for about 40 of those (and failing in the most humiliating, public and consequential way in a ministry: ie., David), I usually tell people that, in my experience, human beings generally learn the “hard way”. It is a special grace to learn from someone else’s experience or by the anticipation of joy. As Ryan said, one can intellectually try to convince people of a compassionate God, but I find it easier to convince people I’m in need of God’s compassion and they probably can’t be much worse than I am.