Reflection
on Thoreau’s night in jail versus Psyche’s journey
Two stories
which are at war in my mind this morning. One is an anniversary this week
of an event on July 12, 1846 , when Henry
David Thoreau was arrested and spent the night in the Concord Jail as an act of
Civil Disobedience for refusing to pay the poll tax to protest the government’s
policy of support of slavery, and/or another account against the imperialistic
was on Mexico. The story goes that he was visited by his friend and neighbor
the transcendental philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, through the bars in
exasperation asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau
replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”
I always loved that story, which neither Emerson nor Thoreau record in
their writings, because it calls to mind the duty of all
of us to stand up for justice. My daughter sent me word that her mother, my
ex-wife, had spent the night in jail in Raleigh for protesting the actions of
the NC General Assembly in its cutting of benefits to the unemployed as a way
to afford a tax cut to the wealthy and well connected. She has been one of 700
citizens arrested so far as part of the Moral Monday protests. The old activist
in me is asking myself, why am I up in the woods in Maine when there is so much
work to do?
Yesterday, as part of my quiet time by
the bay, I was reading a book in preparation for the Dream Group Leaders Class
starting next month. The book Natural
Spirituality by Joyce Rockwell
Hudson. is an introduction to using the insights of C. G. Jung to explore the
depths of the unconscious in which
dreams are a way to reconnect to the true Self, the Christ within us. Dreams, which
use symbols as a way to communicate with us, are a way around the rational ego’s
attempts to keep everything on the surface. Hudson retells an account of the old
Greek myth of Psyche and Eros. One
part of the is when Psyche (Greek means soul) out of her longing for the God,
Eros (Greek for love), has to go into the underworld. She is armed with two
coins which she keeps in her mouth so she cannot say anything and two barley
cakes, one in each hand so she will not be tempted to use her hands to do work.
The coins are to pay the ferryman who takes the dead souls across the River
Styx, the way into Hades, one to get in and one to get out. The two barley
cakes are to distract the fierce three headed dog guarding the gates of Hell,
one to get in and the other to get out. An interpretation of that part of the
myth is to let nothing get in the way of our journey into the depths of the
unconscious where we find our true selves.
.
I hold these two stories in tension as
in the same time I wrote a sermon for this Sunday when I return to work in the
church on the Outer Banks. One of the lessons in the lectionary is Luke’s
account of the parable of the Good Samaritan. In that story the Priest and
Levite are so busy doing religious stuff that they pass by the injured person
on the road; which brings us back to the question, “What are you doing out
there Wilson?”
The
Inner Journey is where my energy is at this time.
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