Laurel Massé

Skandalon

My title is a Greek word that turns up fairly often - 44 times - in New Testament. As you can guess, it is the source of the words scandal and scandalize, and it means stumbling block, something one trips over, something that causes one to fall. These things happen in life, but no one should be placing the stones so as to cause a fall, as Jesus said. "Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!" (Matthew 18:7). Paul wrote, in his letter to the Romans, "Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another... Let us then pursue what makes for peace and mutual edification." (Romans 14:13,19)

When two women from the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were tried and sentenced for an activist action in a church (or committing sacrilege in a church, depending on one's point of view), I became involved in an online discussion led by a member of a Christian religious order. I felt that person's position against the women of the band, even in light of the pain and anger the action had caused, was extremely harsh, and I posted a comment questioning that stance. We back and forthed a little bit, chapter-and-versing, but in the end, I was smacked down by Thomas Aquinas. Oof! Serves me right, perhaps, for messing with [a person of unnamed gender who is a member of an unnamed religious order of an unnamed denomination].

About a month has passed, and now a conflagration triggered by insults to the founder of Islam and his followers has caused riots, and killed our ambassador to Libya, along with several members of the embassy staff. These deaths are not justifiable in any way. They are heartbreaking. Information currently suggests that the protests were used by outside agents to cover the murders of the ambassador and embassy personnel. I am trying to separate the killings done by a few from the anger displayed by so many, across several countries.

If Pussy Riot's action was sacrilegious, it seems to me that the film Innocence of Muslims is, too. If we are to accept that churchgoers were hurt and scandalized when the punk band disrupted the sacred service, how can we not see that devout Muslims would be outraged by this film?

Someone - I think it may have been Fran Lebowitz - once wrote, "Your freedom to wear a lime-green polyester pantsuit ends where it meets my eye." There are limits, even for we Americans. I have heard people say that though the film is regrettable, we have freedom of speech. Yes, we do. Here. If we stay within our own borders. But elsewhere, where American law does not apply, we have to abide by the laws and customs of the country we are in. Even at home, we have to be prepared to accept the consequences of that free speech. In Muslim cultures, one does not make a picture of or a joke about the Prophet. I am sorry to have to say this, but really, if a five-year old can figure out that it's unwise to pull the kitty's tail, can't alleged adults predict that riots and violence will be the result of such "free speech"? That may someday change, but we are not the ones to force that change.

There is another definition of skandalon: the movable stick that triggers a trap, the stick that has to be carefully and deliberately set in order for the trap to function.

Someone made a movie defaming the prophet Muhammed. I have read it was intended to be a Christian evangelization tool. Most people smart enough to make a movie are probably too smart to have made such a colossal misjudgement, but it didn't matter much, because only about ten people ever saw the film prior to now. So who really decided it would be a good idea to release such a film, and to post a trailer on YouTube at this particular time? And who funded it? $5,000,000 went into that film. Instead of criticizing the quality of the production, why are we not asking who put up the money? Because it's not that easy to find that kind of money. If five million dollars grew on every tree, I would have planted an orchard, and be having a very different life right now.

Most Christians agree that it is, at the very least, bad manners to show blatant disrespect to Jesus Christ. Responses vary from person to person. Grief. Rage. A shrug. A prayer. But there is always a reaction. So what, then, makes it OK to similarly disrespect Muhammed?

Nothing. It is not OK. And we misrepresent the God of love we profess to follow when we allow it to happen in His name.

I don't know what the religious I conversed with last month might say about what happened and is happening in Libya, Tunisia, Sudan. And Aquinas? I have not studied his work much, so I don't know that, either. But I do know this: three months before his death, Aquinas, while serving at Mass, had a mystical experience that led him to say, "All that I have written seems like straw compared to what has been revealed to me."

 

About manners

My stepmother has the loveliest manners of anyone I know. She is thoughtful, compassionate, and unfailingly kind, she engages people in conversation and listens to what they say. In the years I have known her, I have watched the effect she has on people. They feel happier when she is near. They feel acknowledged.

I think such courtesy is a profound indicator of character. Manners matter. I am not talking about the unthinking mouthing of meaningless politenesses, I don't mean which fork one should use for the salad course, and I am not espousing rules for rules' sake. What I am talking about is perfectly captured by Alexander McCall Smith, in his book The Sunday Philosophy Club. In this passage, the primary character, Isabel, a philosopher by profession, muses about Toby, whom she has just met:

Jamie had good manners. Paul Hogg had good manners. Her mechanic, the proprietor of the small backstreet garage where she took her rarely used car for servicing, had perfect manners. Toby, by contrast, had bad manners; not on the surface, where he thought, quite wrongly, that it counted, but underneath, in his attitude to others. Good manners depended on paying moral attention to others; it required one to treat them with complete moral seriousness, to understand their feelings and their needs. Some people, the selfish, had no inclination to do this, and it always showed. They were impatient with those whom they thought did not count: the old, the inarticulate, the disadvantaged. The person with good manners, however, would always listen to such people and treat them with respect.

This was not the best book I have ever read, but that passage is the best I've ever come across on true courtesy. Once we start "paying moral attention to others", we cannot escape our connectedness; that we are our brother's and sister's keepers becomes obvious. Then life gets very interesting indeed. I am trying to do a better job of embodying this quality. And in this election season, I'm watching for it in the candidates. It's easy to see, so far, that some have it in their bones.

And others don't even have it on the teleprompter.

Mirror, mirror

I recently read something arresting in a blog called The Pagan Princesses. The writer, a pagan, wrote:

...the fact remains that we all of us [pagans] find inspiration in pre-Judeo-Christian gods. We all practice a faith focused on life and not on an afterlife.

The remark weighed on my heart because, though it should not be, that second sentence is too often true. Many who follow Christ seem to  ignore what he actually did and said, and focus instead on blame and punishment, and conversion-or-exclusion, all in his name. Some of these folks are in our government, and this grows more frightening every day.

What are non-Christians to think when Christians act this way? How are they to recognize how off-base that behavior is if the rest of us keep silent? Why do we allow harshness and cruelty to supplant Jesus' teachings as if replacing the pages within a book but keeping its well-worn cover?

You'd think everyone's forgotten how to read.

According to the gospels, Christ was very attuned to nature, relished a good feast, loved his friends, healed the physically and psychically sick, sang hymns, and in every way constantly reminded his followers to care for and help each other in this life. On this earth, in these bodies, with these hands. Love your neighbor, he said, and then showed that everyone is a neighbor. Love, to him, was not a theory or a nice idea, or something to be strained to exclude the unworthy. It was an all-embracing action, and not an action to be delayed until the budget was balanced, either. Love, and the economy of love, will always be in the red in human terms, as red as Jesus' words in many editions of the Bible. But in God's accounting - or the balancing of the Universe, if those words ring more true for you - love overflows all measure and always will. That is the nature of God's love.

To the politicians and pundits who describe themselves as Christian, yet are now insisting on holding back disaster relief because it's "too expensive", I ask this: did our Lord Jesus Christ bill the people he healed? Did he check his funds, polls, or vacation plans before he got on that donkey to ride into Jerusalem?

It's time, and long past time, to take "love your neighbor" seriously. Until we all do, I don't see how we can face what we see in the mirror every day, because if I am indeed created in God's image along with everybody else, then I should be seeing God in the mirror, and in every face I see.

To the woman who wrote the passage I quoted at the beginning of this post, and to all my readers, I am deeply sorry for the havoc wrought in Jesus' name, and for the meanness.

 

 

Gaga din

I have always been a Beatles fan. Always. I remember the first time I heard them, and from that moment on, as far as I was concerned, they were The Ones.

But I had friends, tin-eared and delusional, who thought the Rolling Stones were The Ones. Poor dears! Their sonic worlds were clearly different from mine, and they were clearly wrong. 

One thing was certain: nobody liked both. In fact, it was tacitly understood that one was not allowed to like both.

Which meant that I deprived myself, on principle, of the raucous splendor of the Stones music for many years. I still like the Beatles best, and probably always will. But I know now that there are times when only Keith Richards' guitar tones will do.

Over the years, I watched heated arguments over whether Kiss was categorically better than Alice Cooper, jazz better than rock, fusion indisputably better than swing, countertenors better than female altos. Yikes! Either/or, either/or. Choose or lose! Yes,  it's necessary, to a certain extent. But it's also choose and lose. The best musicians I know listen to everything, and borrow from everything. Both and all would seem to be their motto, and I think this is the best way to be.

I bring this up today because I am tired of hearing wonderful musicians and singers (including me) complain about Lady Gaga. I think we should stop doing that. Most of us can't do what she does, and there are a lot of folks who really love what she does. Fair enough. Her music and performance style are not to my taste, and so they're not part of my daily life. What does seem to be part of my life is the ceaseless growl of negative comments made by some of the artists I do like.

Most of us are old enough to know better. I think we can do better, if only when in front of other people.

Let's lighten up on each other. Let's speak with a greater measure of grace and dignity, and stop flaying the girls in the meat dresses and the short dresses and no dresses at all. Let's stop muttering about J.K. Rowling's wealth, too (you know who you are). Success does not ensure a trouble-free life. Things can happen. The Wheel of Fortune can turn very quickly. Believe me. I know this very well.

Benjamin Disraeli is credited with having said, "Never complain, and never explain." I'm going to try that, at least for the rest of the afternoon.