Past Apology to the Divine Summons of Pure Desire
Writing teacher Susan Shapiro has an article in this morning’s New York Times called “How to Get Someone to Apologize.” It’s full of good advice, and it also focused me on something that had been hovering next to my conscious mind since the election, just barely out of sight, like a tickler installed so I’d remember something. I felt the tickler but couldn’t grasp what it meant. Now I do.
I want an apology.
From several places. No, more like lots of places. Try these on for size.
I want an apology from …
· Donald Trump, his wife, his children, and their spouses. And their sycophants.
· All the people who lied about the election, and those who continue to do so.
· All the partisans who chose politics over human well-being.
· All the law enforcement officers who have forgotten their oaths, and elected officials.
· All the QAnonsense spreaders, and the social media who enabled them.
· All the news media who participated in the quasi-coup, and those who still do.
· The woman who risked my life during the onset of the virus and lied about it.
· The friends who are so caught in the divisiveness that they can’t be friends any more.
· All the politicians who get a case of fiscal responsibility when faced with human need.
· All the ideologies that have been waved in front of me.
· All the politicians who think the electorate—which elected them—is stupid.
· All those who would make war when what we all need is peace.
· All the families who have allowed political viewpoints to separate them.
I want an apology, and I’m not going to get one.
Neither are you, Beloved.
What I can tell you with surety is that getting clear that I want an apology made me feel better. A lot better. It’s always a good thing to get clear on what you want. Always.
And, strangely, it doesn’t really matter whether you have a way to get what you want once you know what it is. In fact, a lot of life is geared toward figuring out how to get what you want. As Terry Cole Whittaker used to say, “How is none of your business.”
At least not at the beginning of desire. Pure desire is the task here, Beloved. It seems odd to see that in writing. But think on it, it’s hard to get pure in our desires—and no, I don’t mean pure in the sense of holiness or uncleanness—I mean pure in the sense of uncluttered, unadulterated, unaffected by what other people think, want, or care about. Here’s a good demonstration.
There’s a story told about a young man who grew up in a family of physicians. His father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather were all doctors. So were all four of his older brothers. This youngest son wanted to be a sculptor. Wanted it with everything in his being.
His family wouldn’t have it. He was to go to med school and become a doctor (and not break their unbroken record) and that was that. He put his desire to be a sculptor aside, went to med school, and became a plastic surgeon.
But not just a plastic surgeon—a highly regarded genius in his field, much sought-after, made a fortune with all the perks that went with it. He practiced for upwards of forty years. The day after his father’s funeral, he went to work and closed his practice.
And he became a sculptor, but not just any old sculptor, a much-lauded, highly in-demand, commissions-for-days sculptor and he made much more money as a sculptor than he’d ever made as a plastic surgeon. He’d kept the pure flame of his desire alight for all those years. [FWIW, he also chose the closest doctoring specialty to being a sculptor that he could.]
Pure desire.
I think that’s what we’re seeing in this nascent Biden administration. Pure desire. No, the power of pure desire.
On the morning of the Inauguration, Mr. Biden and his family went to the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle for Mass. Elizabeth Dias writes, “When it was time for the homily, the Rev. Kevin F. O’Brien, the president of Santa Clara University and friend of the Biden family, compared Mr. Biden’s upcoming inaugural message to the words of Jesus.
“‘Your public service is animated by the same conviction,’ he said, ‘to help and protect people and to advance justice and reconciliation, especially for those who are too often looked over and left behind. This is your noble commission. This is the divine summons for all of us.’”
To help people, to protect people, to advance justice, to advance reconciliation. These definitely sound like a divine summons to me, but … [I know this isn’t going to make me the most popular girl in the school] but … what do I do about that pure desire for a real apology?! Tell me that, Rev. O’Brien!
That wasn’t the topic, but it is today. You know I have to laugh at preachers, like myself, who have the temerity, the sheer moxie, the chutzpah, to explain to the rest of you what Jesus meant. In all fairness, however, we stand in a long line of preachers. That line begins, not surprisingly, with the Nazarene Rabbi himself.
Remember those pesky verses that include … It is written …. But I say unto you …? That’s your friend and mine, Jesus of Nazareth, explaining to the rest of the peeps of his day what God Almighty meant. At least most of us these days only claim to interpret Jesus’ words and ideas.
At the post-inaugural prayer service, “The Rev. William J. Barber II, a chairman of the Poor People’s Campaign, preached and directly challenged Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to pursue a Third Reconstruction, decades after the civil rights era. He urged them to address ‘interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation/denial of health care, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.’”
Any one of those topics can be found, if obscurely, addressed in the words of the Nazarene rabbi. The thing I like best about Rev. Barber’s challenge is the and at the end. He knows that all of those very real issues have to be addressed as one.
Ross Douthat’s Opinion piece this morning was on Liberal Catholicism. He suggests, “If you wanted to make a case for its prospects and potential influence, you would emphasize three distinctive liberal-Catholic qualities: an abiding institutionalism, in contrast to the pure dissolving individualism of so much American religion; an increasingly multiethnic character, which matches our increasingly diverse republic; and a fervent inclusivity, an anxiety that nobody should feel discriminated against or turned away.”
Institutionalism over individualism; multiethnicity over ethnic separatism; inclusivity over discrimination of all kinds. I see these as the same list Rev. Barber made, and the same list Father O’Brien made.
Mr. Douthat continues, “Yet the current influence of liberal Christianity in the Democratic Party goes beyond Mr. Biden. Senator Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, won election with a campaign rooted in Black liberation theology. The Sunday after his election, Mr. Warnock preached about John the Baptist, the ‘truth-telling troublemaker,’ he said, who was beheaded by King Herod for his prophetic witness.
“Representative Cori Bush, a pastor who led Kingdom Embassy International in St. Louis, has started her tenure in Congress advocating universal basic income. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez connects her Catholic faith with her push for reforming health care and environmental policy. She has said her favorite Bible story is one where Jesus, in anger, threw money changers out of the temple.”
I think all these ideas fall under a slightly different rubric than capital L Liberal, and capital C Catholicism. Instead, I think they are small l liberal—in the sense of generous—and small c Catholicism—in the sense of universality.
The pure desire we are seeing and hearing here is a two-way street. Both/and, if you will. A generous universality and a universal generosity.
Andi Owen is the CEO of Herman Miller, the company that makes the best office chairs in the world, Aeron chairs. Her Michigan staff is arguing with one another because they’re politically polarized. She says,
“We have got to unify, we’ve got to talk. We have to have respect and kindness and we have to listen. What happened at the Capitol was not OK. On the other hand, I have to make sure that we’re listening to one another, and are trying to find commonality.
“Sometimes I yearn for the days when I was back in Berkeley, Calif., and I could walk down the street and everybody thought the same way. But you know, everybody is in Michigan. So you have to make the folks on the right feel comfortable, and you have to make the folks on the left feel comfortable. That’s a challenge as we get more and more divisive as a society. Sometimes you have to agree to disagree because you’re so far apart. But for us, it’s been about encouraging respect and encouraging kindness.”
Jesus of Nazareth maintained just such a stance, or his disciples maintained that he took just such a stance. In the Book of Acts [10:34], we read, “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.” Commentators allege that this means all persons are of equal value. The Nazarene Rabbi stood for this as well.
Remember that line of preachers? The one that starts with Jesus? Do you know who was second in line? Someone whom I’d bet will surprise you all, and delight only some of you. A woman. In fact, the woman most precious to Jesus in all the world after his mother.
Mary of Magdala.
One of her many names, even acknowledged in the traditional church, is Apostola Apostolorum. It means Apostle to the Apostles. And here’s why. On the morning after Jesus died, Mary went to the Garden to retrieve his body and prepare it for burial. You know the story. The tomb is empty.
She encounters the gardener whom, when he speaks, she knows is Jesus. She is forever and always the first to witness his resurrection.
When she returns to the disciples, she tells them of the empty tomb and seeing Jesus. They run to validate her story. When they return to her, and she is serene in the face of their upset, she welcomes them home in their sorrow, their rage, their demand for an apology.
Mary of Magdala, the Apostola Apostolorum, preaches the sermon that makes her the Patron Saint of Preachers. You didn’t know that, did you?
I like to think it began, “Beloveds of Jesus, I’m sorry.”
What is she sorry for? That they do not understand. She, in her witness to Jesus, understands it all perfectly, and she meets the disciples, soon to be apostles, with respect and kindness, just as Andi Owen recommends. That is enough of an apology for them, and it’s enough of an apology for me.
The universal generosity and generous universality that undergird Mr. Biden’s administration already preach a new day for all of us. Let us all join our pure desire to their intentions to serve all of us. Apology accepted.
Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection between spirituality and culture. Find out more at www.susancorso.com