Conversations with Ourselves: Making Sense of It All

Throughout this series the core theme I want to get across is the importance of asking questions. Questions allows us to explore and create within our vast universe. And as we explore, our interconnectedness to each other and the universe is strengthened. But living with all these questions rattling around in your head can be unnerving especially when you're trying to make sense of it all. On the surface, questions don't offer an immediate peace of mind. This is why people gravitate towards religion which offers answers to many of life's questions. I'm OK with religion being used in this manner even though some would say it is a crutch. Sometimes life is too hard to deal with and there is no shame in believing in something to help you through life's obstacles. What I am against is people bashing others in the head with their "crutch". You can't serve love on a plate of hate.

So how do we make sense of it all? How do we make sense of life with a bag of unanswerable questions or, worse yet, questions which leads to other questions? What has helped me in my personal journey is coming to terms with the chaos of life and knowing that we are already There.



People desperately seek out a constant state of happiness, they want to know that everything will be OK. They want the assurance that nothing will go wrong, they want control over the future. But no matter how hard you struggle no one's future is ever secured. (And in terms of Christianity and the afterlife, no knows for sure that they will go to Heaven, they can only hope and believe they will.) So what then? Do we go through life a nervous wreak waiting for the axe to fall at any moment? That would be as pointless as a dog chasing its own tail! Once we come to the understanding that life is full of chaos and we stop trying to control the uncontrollable we can begin living. Shit happens. Life is full of ups AND downs. Instead, we should surround ourselves with good friends and family to celebrate the ups and to comfort each other during the downs.

It is easier, and much more interesting, for me to live with the questions than accept a prepackaged answer. Questions help you connect with the world around you, they help you to grow spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. They help us to discover and embrace our humanity more fully. So sit back relax with a few good friends and enjoy the moments we have on this pale blue dot.

Part 1) Conversations with Ourselves: The Question
Part 2) Conversations with Ourselves: The Internal Struggle
Part 3) Conversations with Ourselves: The External Struggle
Part 4) Conversations with Ourselves:  Reflections on Who We Were
Part 5) Conversations with Ourselves: Making Peace with Chaos
Part 6) Conversations with Ourselves: Making Sense of It All

How Good Do We Have to Be? Part 5- Is there Enough Love for Everyone?

  [I started this blog series well over a year ago on Harold Kushner's How Good Do We Have to Be? and life got in the way and I never got a change to finish reviewing, let alone reading, the book. I recently recommended this book to other people which caused me to dig up this long unfinished post.]

"The Original sin that affects virtually every one of us and leads to other, worse sins is the belief that there is not enough love to go around, and therefore where someone else is loved, he or she is stealing that love from us." Harold Kushner

In chapter 6 Kushner moves on to a topic most people with siblings struggle with: sibling rivalry. I admit I fought daily with my sister (she's 2 years younger than me) over simple things like who got the last pudding cup, but I don't remember fighting over anything major like my parents' affection. My sister, however, saw it differently, she's mentioned many times how our parents loved me more than her and supported me and my endeavors. We're both in our mid to late 20's now so that resentment and rivalry has completely vanished and my sister and I are closer than we ever were. Kushner points out that the book of Genesis is a series of sibling rivalries as siblings with opposite qualities and personalities fight over their parents' affections. He also states that the Original Sin is not disobedience or lust but of hatred and resentment born out of our fear that we will not be loved enough. Kushner goes on to say that this is a fear so primal it follows us into adulthood and our pain and suffering resurfaces throughout our adult years.

As a parent of three I admit I am also guilty of subconsciously attributing certain roles to my children (e.g. good vs. problem child,  responsible vs. care free child). I believe I am more blind to these subconscious acts as the eldest who was given everything, the greatest amount of love (I don't personally believe I was given the most love I'm just illustrating how younger siblings might view the eldest). These roles given out by the parents causes all sorts of guilt and pain as the child come into adulthood. The eldest, as the responsible child, feels guilty if they ever let down their parents and resentment towards the younger for not also being able to lead a carefree life. The younger, as the carefree child, is allowed to make more mistakes but feels is not given enough love and attention as the eldest and is often negatively compared to the eldest ("why can't you be more like your big brother?" or "your big brother/sister has finished school and has a career, what have you done with your life?").

Even with all this sibling rivalry Genesis also demonstrates how we can overcome this original sin: by coming to terms with our feelings towards our siblings (and also friends, coworkers, etc.) and by understanding that love for one child doesn't negate or reduce the amount of love given to the others. Like Isaac and Ishmael coming together at their father's, Abraham's, grave and Joseph reunited with his brothers who sold him into slavery, we can outgrow the roles given to us in childhood and move past the primal fear of being unloved. That is the great thing about love there is plenty to go around, the only restrictions on love are the ones we impose on ourselves. This doesn't mean that suffering will disappear, it just means we don't have to go through it alone. We don't have to wander through life restlessly like Cain who murdered the only other person who understood what it was to fight for a parent's (i.e. God's) affection. We don't have to be alone, and in the end that's all we really want, to love and be loved.


Part 1: A Story of Emergence
Part 2: Guilt and Shame
Part 3: The Cycle of Guilt
Part 4: The Wholeness We Seek
Part 5: Is There Enough Love for Everyone
Part 6: Final Thoughts

My Thoughts on the Greatest Commandments

I woke up this morning oddly thinking about the Greatest Commandments which for those who don't know their Bibles (myself included, I had to Google it) is found in Matthew 22:36-40.

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’
³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'
⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

(I know I've used this picture in a recent post, but I just love it to bits. You can get the t-shirt here, now for only $12. Argh, I should have waited.)

The first thing I do whenever I read a passage from a sacred text is remember that these words were written in a different time and place. These words carried different weight and meaning back in 1st century Palestine than 21st century America. Regardless I am aware that these two commandments are references to the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-6) and to a reference to an Old Testament Law (Leviticus 19:18) Jesus was once again using to pull the rug from under his debater's feet. He took something his audience was familiar with and turned it upside down and inside out to make a point. How his message(s) were read depends on us the reader. Once we read, think, or write about it, the meaning changes. There are timeless truths in the Bible but I don't believe the Bible itself IS a timeless truth. If the Bible were a timeless unchanging truth our legal system, culture, heck even our grocery stores would be completely alien.

This passage reads differently for me than it would to a Southern Baptist Christian (my favorite example of Christianity because I live in Southern Baptist country, gimme that ol' time religion!), not because I want it to be different to fit my worldview but because I speak in a different language than a Southern Baptist. The words carry different meaning in my language.

To me the first commandment reads:

• Open your heart, make yourself vulnerable to Reality with every ounce of your being, and by opening your heart you struggle lessens in shared suffering. No one has to suffer or enjoy bliss alone. 
• Be open-minded to what you can discover about Reality, you don't have to believe in magic there are enough wonders in the universe for humanity to unravel, experience, and explore.
• Open your soul to Reality by understanding and embracing your individual uniqueness. You are a unique cosmic phenomenon, the universe never has nor will ever see the likes of you again.

The Second commandment reads like the first:

• By opening your heart, mind and soul to the wondrous and beautiful reality we live in we understand that we are connected to one another. We don't have to live life as if we are completely separate and isolated beings, but connection to one another and to the universe makes us vulnerable, which, in my humble opinion, scares the shit out of us. We're all scared even though we try to hide that fear behind beliefs and faith (faith in general, not just religious faith). By understanding that we all (yes, that includes homosexuals and Muslims) are connected to one another we can empathize with our neighbor no matter how strange their beliefs and culture may seem on the surface. And through understanding and empathy blossoms the opportunity for love and beauty.

I know I might sound overly optimistic and slightly ignorant of how the real world works, and you might be right. I admit I'm a fairly open-minded person but I'm not going as far as saying that holding hands with your neighbor and singing "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles will make war and poverty go away. I'm just saying that by understanding our interconnectedness to each other, to the universe, we may begin to minutely understand how our personal actions and beliefs may affect our neighbor. I believe that even a tiny bit of understanding and empathy can go a long way.

Seventh-Day Adventists: It Gets Better!

As a former SDA myself I found myself excited after viewing this It Gets Better video filmed by Seventh-day Adventist filmmakers and activists as a part of the It Gets Better campaign. You can read the full article here.


It Gets Better (for Adventists too) from Stephen Eyer on Vimeo.


I was surprised at my own ignorance of LGBT people within the SDA church but also of my views of the SDA church. Growing up in a SDA church I always found the church stuffy, filled with an aging congregation pushing their conservative, Bible based views on the younger folk (or at least what this particular group calls Bible-based). It wasn't until after graduating from my SDA boarding school that I first realized that even within our conservative community some people were "different" from the established norm (almost 1/8 of my graduating class came out shortly after graduation, one of them being a very dear friend of mine I had absolutely no clue was gay). No one talked about it on campus because we all knew anyone who openly contradicted the values of the SDA church was grounds for expulsion. I wouldn't call it an ingrained fear or indoctrination against any non Bible-based relationships but it was a view that stuck with me and took years to unravel.

Ryan Bell, author of the article, is right, this It Gets Better video is a step in the right direction for the SDA church. I once viewed the SDA church with their heels dug in so deep into their conservative evangelical roots that I thought they were beyond any form of reformation. I've forgotten there are individuals and groups within the Christian church that are pushing the envelope of what it means to be Christian. What gets me even more excited is not that there are those who are challenging the boundaries of religious group they identify with but that we (mankind) are continuing to push the envelope of what it means to be human and how we interact and love our neighbor.

Naked Before Reality

"The point is that each moment of your life you're confronted with reality. And you have to do what seems to be right in that moment, but you won't know what that is until that moment happens. You can't prepare for it...that's not how it works. Life brings stuff that you're not prepared for, and then you simply have to confront the wildness of it, the madness of it, the horror of it, or the ecstasy of it." Rabbi Rami





Rabbi Rami Shapiro at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville 7/25/10

The wildness of reality is too much to bear at times which is why I believe some people turn to religion. But even when people clothe themselves with religion to guard themselves from the wildness of reality our hearts are still opened by our shared suffering.

"When you're suffering together love emerges."