A Reflection for XXI Pentecost (Proper 24) All Saints’ Church, Southern
Shores, NC October 18, 2015 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Memories of Service
This week began with a confrontation with myself. An
older (older than me) male member of the parish came in to drop off a file
cabinet. I was sitting in my office trying to figure out what I could possibly
say about the Gospel lesson from Mark for today. Judy was going over options
with him and she suggested that, since I did not need another filing cabinet in
my office, she could help him unload the cabinet and place it in the choir
room. The older male member announced, “No”, he would try to handle it, and if
not able to do it alone, he would come back and ask her help. At that moment, I
had this vision of my Grandmother looking at me sitting down at my desk while
an older person and a woman were moving heavy objects. I could hear her say,
“Mister Tom, you were reared better than this - to sit idly by while a lady and
an elderly gentleman are forced to do physical labor. You ignore your
upbringing! Get up NOW sir!” I wanted to reply to her that I am an old man now
as well, and besides - I believe in the equality of the sexes and for me to
offer to help would betray the fact that I am a male chauvinist pig. However, I
got up and helped him because I “knew” that my Grandmother would have slapped
me for what she would have seen as a breach of manners.
My grandmother died decades ago and I do not
remember a time she would have ever, or had ever, slapped me. She was a very
good woman, but I knew that she always wanted me to be better than I was. My
own self-doubt and self-loathing I projected onto her, and that projection is
alive in the core of my being. My
projection onto her still knows how to disapprove. Our projections onto people,
either positive or negative, usually tell us more about us rather than the person on whom we place our projections. The
only way we are ever to be in a real relationship is when we are able to
withdraw our projections.
Let me give you an example. Two people fall “in
love” with each other. However, what they have actually done is to develop a
romance with the projections of the kind of person their egos want the other to
be and place those projections on each other. It is only when they face hard
times together that they might be tempted to withdraw their projections and
accept the other person as a full human being. The phrase, “He is not the man I
married!”, is true because he never was.
My grandmother projection is a symbol in what I
would call a much larger “Mother” archetype, a universal figure in the
collective unconscious which all humans share in their different religious and
mythic concepts. All beings have a memory of “Mother” and it is
multidimensional - from Goddess, to Mother Earth, to Earth Mother, to Virgin
Mother, to Monstrous Mother threatening
to devour her young, to Lot’s wife frozen into salt looking away into the past
- powerful imagery as we come to make sense of the whole birth and separation
experiences we all have. My Grandmother is one part of my many complexes, or
constellations of emotionally charged feelings and ideas centered on an
archetypal figure in my personal unconscious. All of us, all of God’s chilluns,
got complexes; we walk around with all sorts of unconscious complexes built
around our experiences in life. Part of the healing of the soul is to be aware
of those times as we walk on the Swiss cheese-like floor of our conscious life
and suddenly fall through into a complex which dictates our behavior without
thinking. If we are not aware of them, they come up and bite us, or Jung has
said, “What we do not bring to the light of consciousness we tend to see as
fate”.
James and John in the Gospel lesson seem to be
operating under a Father complex in the personal unconscious around a much
larger Father archetype in the Collective Unconscious. Remember the story of
James and John who are working under their father Zebedee as fishermen, and
when Jesus calls them to follow him, they leave their father Zebedee in the
boat and follow Jesus. They may have left Zebedee in the boat, but they shift
the Father Complex constellation to the person of Jesus. Just as they were used
to be the “owners in waiting” on the fishing boats, now they become “high
officials in waiting” in the glory of the Kingdom that they hope Jesus is going
to establish. In their understanding, the archetype of Father is the one filled
with power over others, and they project this onto Jesus.
Interestingly enough, when Matthew remembers this
story in his Gospel, he projects the request onto the mother of James and John,
and she is the one whom asks for her sons’ sakes. Mothers are always easy to
blame for one’s own complexes. Part of the ministry of Jesus is to redefine the
“Father” archetype to move from being an imperious ruler, a tyrant over others,
to being a servant of all. Instead of building oneself up, one empties oneself
out. To be a servant was not to be at another’s beck and call to fulfill their
wants and desires, but to do what is best for all. Jesus, who calls God
“Father”, sees his life as a redefinition of the God archetype, away from
Father Controller of life, to one who is Giver of Self and is the ground, the
energy, of all life. The suggestion is that if we are in the image of God, then
we too are to be givers of self, participating in the divine energy of life.
The phrase “Public Service” used to be popular, and
people said something like, “I offer myself to serve as your town
councilperson, your county commissioner, your representative, your senator,
your governor, your president.” We are entering into an election cycle, and
part of our task is to ask if the proposed “servant’ is meaning to be a servant
of help to bring about what is best for all or, instead, if they see themselves
as controllers of all for the benefit of the candidate’s ego or agenda or core
supporters. What we seen so far in the debates of both parties are not
presentations of willing servants, but of projections on steroids - projections
which say more about them than they may realize.
Being a “servant” is a challenge for the church as
well. I am called to serve in this church, but my title, “Rector”, a term which
suggests the “Father” Archetype, comes from the Latin meaning “Ruler”, a word
that in English means both a King or something that measures and sets straight
lines. When I am at my best, I serve with you for the benefit of all, giving
myself while participating with you in the divine energy of life. But there are moments when my personal
unconscious interferes and I want to promote my own agenda and set you straight
or rule over you. I am not here to drop a load of guilt on you about what you
should do, or what can be called “Should-ing all over you”. Somedays I do
better than others. But I am here to
share the love I know, not the compulsions of my shadows. As Jung said:
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of
human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being” . . .” That
is the meaning of divine service, of the service which we [sic “man”] can render to God, that light can emerge from the
darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of the Creator’s [sic “His”] creation, and we [sic man] conscious of ourselves [sic himself].
We are in the Stewardship season and the question
for this season, and indeed for all seasons, is not “what is the budget?” or
“do we satisfy your projections” but “who or what or how do we serve?”
Poem:
Memories of Service
Like
Dowson’s Cynara; she hides and waits
unannounced
claiming moments victorious
whenever
a guard leaves unlocked the gates
holding
back the floods of a guilt inglorious.
Shame
rises not only for the mere deed itself
but
the self whose hands, or ways of thought
didst
fall so short of expectation of magic elf
who
should of joys and wonders had brought,
but
failed earned approval but only tolerance.
Her
body has left our earth but ghostly linger
in
spirit prisons by stingy rationed sufferance.
Yet
there are moments when her soft fingers
caress
my face with love; her only son’s son,
one
of three. My memories of her, truly false
for
me to hold. She never did lower to a shun,
remaining my partner in this, a one last waltz.
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