Fiercer Delight and Fiercer Discontent

I was doing some devotional-inspirational type reading today and came across this quote from G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). I know I've read it before because the book I got it from is one of my favorites (That would be Patches of Godlight by Jan Karon), but it struck me with such force today, I felt compelled to share:

What we need is not the old acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate it and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and fiercer discontent. We have to see the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.

Wow. I really heard that. The older I get, the fiercer I feel ... both in my delight and in my discontent. Surly contentment won't get the job done any longer, if it ever did. Interestingly enough (to me at least), I've undergone a bit of a sea change in the past year or so. I have come to hate judgmentalism in all its forms more than I ever thought possible, but I have also clutched healthy discernment more tightly to my breast than ever before. There is a very fine line between judging and discerning, but in my opinion once you see that fine line, you can never again ignore it. Or if you do, you do so at your considerable peril. As a result I no longer have any desire to judge someone who is doing something I choose not to do -- whether on moral, preferential, or practical grounds -- but by the same token I'm sick of being deemed judgmental if my discernment tells me not to do it. It simply does not follow that if I choose to take a different (some might say higher) path than someone else, that I am judging anyone who is not on that path with me. How ludicrous would that be after all, since there are droves on paths much higher than the one I'm walking, and in no way do I want to be judged by them. (Nor do I think they are judging me.) And yet those who take a different (some might say lower) path, love to wag a finger and accuse the one on another (sometimes higher, sometimes only different) path of being judgmental, when in actuality the one on the other path may simply have a more finely-honed sense of discernment in that area. Or you might say, a better sense of direction. They have enough fierce discontent to take that high road, even if it means traveling it alone and being hated for it.

Is this really so confusing? I mean, judging is judging is judging; am I right? It's just as wrong to judge one whom you judge to be judging (although unless you read minds, how can you really know?) as it is for them to have judged (if in fact they did). If the one snarling at one they are certain they have caught judging, has the right to do whatever they want without being judged, then why does the alleged judger not have that same right? If someone is labeled by someone else as a judger and therefore deemed utterly comtemptible, what does that make the one who made the "judgment" call? There are all kinds of judgers in the world and all of them wrong (that's the discernment talking). Let's not compound the problem by saying the judgers are idiots for judging (if they are judging, that is). I repeat: unless you read minds or someone walks up to you and says in plain language, "I have just judged you and found myself to be superior to you in every way, and found you to be severely lacking in one or more important area," you do not know for a solid fact that you have been judged. And in the final analysis, it really doesn't matter whether you have been judged or not. If I do judge you, it affects no one but me   -- unless you allow the mere possibility that I might have judged you, to consume you with hatred.

If I told my children once while they were growing up, I told them fifty times: You Do Not Know -- will never know, cannot know, were never intended to know -- What Anyone Else Is Thinking. Only God knows that. Even if someone tells you what they are thinking, you still don't really know what they are thinking. I mean, think about that. I say to my husband, "What are you thinking?" and he says, "Uh, I was thinking how pretty you are looking today." Now, he may have been thinking that, but was also thinking "The old girl has gone a bit broad in the beam and long in the tooth," but he's not going to tell me that part, is he? He'd better not! He'd better repeat the pretty part or go hide! He has told me part of what he thought (perhaps) but I still don't know what he was thinking. I might know part of it, but only because he chose to tell me. There is no sense in tormenting myself with what else he might have been thinking, because I will never know. In my experience with said husband, half the time he does not remember his own self what he was just thinking, so it is of no consequence! He's not so much disingenuous as he is just generally detached. While I'm sitting over there worrying about what he might have been thinking and the potential ramifications of his thought processes, he's already changed the channel from whatever's on ESPN to Hannity and Colmes to whatever's on the Golf Channel to The Dog Whisperer to an old rerun of Law & Order to The Deadliest Catch, and back to ESPN again. The only one sweating it out is me.

I am not saying there is no such thing as judging; people do it all the time. I used to be a world-class judger; I could give lessons. That's not the point. My point is, judging is judging no matter who is doing it, or why, and there is never any justification for it. That said, I believe that so often what is happening when someone has a knee-jerk reaction to someone they think is guilty of judging them is, they are in fact judging themselves. They can't handle this, so they project the judging onto whoever it is whose actions forced them to examine themselves in the first place. When someone else's behavior points up some deficit (real or imagined) in our own, though, it's so easy (and such a cop-out) to react to such feelings by instantly accusing the person on the higher road (or the road we wish we were on but lack the courage or moral fortitude to get on it) of being judgmental. Our reactions at such times reveal so much about what is going on inside our own hearts. I know because I've done it plenty of times; you might say I'm an old pro. How much easier to blame someone else for being judgmental, casting various aspersions back onto them, than to deal with the insecurities that caused us to think there was anything they should judge us for in the first place?

Insecurities -- or what we like to call insecurities -- are often simply pride and ego run amok. And lots of times when we accuse someone else of judging us, we are simply jealous of them.

Since my children are now deemed officially "grown" even though two are college-age and still technically dependent upon my husband and me, and since our 2,500-square-foot manse has gone all echoe-y and the vents upstairs are shut tight, I've been doing a great deal of reflecting on where those child-rearing years went. Or rather on how, for me, they seemed to crawl at some points and are merely a blur at others. When I had a five-year-old and a three-year-old to care for and was expecting a third, each day seemed to go in slow motion. Not that they were bad or unhappy days; quite the contrary. There was just so much responsibility! So many chores, and so many questions to be answered. Such a small margin for error, it seemed to me ... and I was never quite sure what I was doing, so that made it worse. Earth mother I was not. I often felt judged in those days by other mothers. I remember once when someone accused me of making a hash of my daughter's home haircut, I cried all afternoon. The truth was, my pride was hurt that the woman had criticised the haircut, and I was insecure because I really didn't know how to cut hair and my daughter was paying the price for it. (Luckily one-year-olds don't care a whit about hairstyles. We should all be more childlike.)

But now that my three daughters and my son are adults (is 18 an adult? ... don't tell Andrew), my husband and I talk a lot about how they turned out. We've been so fortunate. We were not exactly dumb when we started out as parents, but let's face it: those little babies don't come with owner's manuals. It's hard sometimes to know what to do, and even sometimes when you think you know what to do, it's hard to do it. One thing my husband and I knew, and that was that we were after a certain "product," and that the product we wanted was not being mass-produced. We would have to stand alone in lots of cases, and take flak for the way we reared our children, and resist peer pressure (which exists at every age), and stay true to our vision. I am happy to say that, although I could blog for a week on the mistakes we made in the first year alone, we are the parents of four fine adults. Are they without faults? Afraid not ... not even close. But they are smart, responsible, funny, tenderhearted, goal-oriented, productive people who have not shirked the demands of life. They enter into the fray each day with aplomb and a sense of purpose, and I have learned a great deal from their reactions to circumstances in their lives. I admire them and I'm sure I am not the only one.

But when they were growing up, we demanded obedience from our children and made a pretty big ruckus when we didn't get it. Obedience was not negotiable at our house. You could talk about what was being asked of you, but in the end you were going to obey. The times that we did not obtain obedience from our children, I see as our fault rather than theirs, because the onus was on us (onus = on us ... never noticed that before!) to secure their obedience for their own benefit. To say: go this way, and not only point the way, but walk it with them. Many times you even told them why, but not always. Because sometimes in order to enjoy the fiercest of delights, one must first be willing to experience the fiercest of discontent. War must be endured before peace may be had, in some respects.

But in the end we all get to decide which way we'll go, don't we? A few weeks ago I came home from an all-day depo and was moved to blog about the young underage drinker who flipped her car and died on a dark, deserted South Carolina road a few years ago, at about four in the morning. When I typed the transcript I noticed a bit of testimony I had forgotten although I had heard it that day. Earlier in the evening, around midnight, the lovely girl's mother had called her on her cell phone and told her to come home. The young lady said, simply, no. I'm not coming home; I don't care what you want me to do. I'm staying out as late as I want. She still hasn't come home and her mother isn't listening for her step in the hall anymore.

In my work as a court reporter I do a fair amount of driving. Imagine if I got a call to cover a proceeding tomorrow morning in Greenville, a two-hour drive northwest on I-26. Morning comes and I want to go to Greenville, so what do I do? I get in my car, crank it up and head toward the interstate. But when I get there, instead of taking the ramp for I-26 West toward Spartanburg, I take the I-26 East ramp toward Charleston. I drive for a little less than two hours, the same amount of time it would take to get from Columbia to Greenville ... but at the end of my journey I find myself not in Greenville, but in Charleston! I'm now twice as far from my original destination than I was when I started! All is lost; I'm going to be fired! Bad things will happen now! the depo is set to start but the court reporter is a no-show! How dumb am I if at that juncture I get out of my car, take a deep breath of the salt air of the lowcountry, look around and say, "How in the sam hill did I end up here? I'm supposed to be in Greenville! What am I going to do now? Who can I blame for this? How could this have happened?" You know, not only did I have to wilfully point my car in the wrong direction, but I had to ignore a lot of signs along the road between Columbia and Charleston in order to eventually end up at the wrong place. I was either blind, not paying attention (not good practices when operating a vehicle or living a life), or just plain stubbornly ignored all the signs that told me where I was going. So it is with so many issues of life.

I had an adored uncle, my Uncle Don, a big strapping Georgia boy, who loved to eat. It helped that my Aunt Linda is an awesome cook, as is her sister (my mother), because they were classically trained in the culinary arts by my Mississippi-bred grandparents who, after moving to Baton Rouge to raise their family, became skilled at the sumptuous but down-home Louisiana style of cooking. Uncle Don, even if he was from Georgia, was a great cook in his own right, and he loved to eat what he cooked just as much as he loved cooking it. Some years ago, in his fifties, Uncle Don got very sick. The doctors found blockage in his heart so advanced that a multi-bypass surgery was required. During his recovery the doctors told Uncle Don in no uncertain terms that if he did not change his eating habits, his heart would clog up again and the next time, he may not be so lucky. Uncle Don did not change his eating habits. Not even a little bit! At the age of 62, Uncle Don's time ran out. He suffered a massive coronary and died in the emergency room. Because he could not find it in himself to obey the signs, he had no choice but to end up where the road took him. I miss him. I wish he could have found a way to heartily hate the world of food while still heartily loving it. I wish he had had a fierce discontent with his way of life, and could have experienced the fierce delight of overcoming the bad habits of a too-short lifetime. I wish I could hear him sing again, and enjoy his laughter over one of his own silly jokes! I wish his joy and anger had not neutralized one another and produced the surly contentment that brought on his early demise.

Back to G.K. Chesterton's quote. I can heartily love someone while heartily hating some of the things they do. I still love my uncle although I hate what he did. It may not always be easy, but I willingly accept this challenge because people are worth it, and because Christ commands us to love others the way He loves us. I believe this is what Christ meant when He commanded us to be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves." I refuse to accept the world, and life in general, as one big compromise. That's just too lame for my taste. I want to feel that fierce discontent where my discernment -- based I hope on eternal truths -- advises me that an activity or a philosophy is untenable and inconsistent with my beliefs. This way I can feel the fierce delight that comes from seeing the result of determined adherence to the truths that led to the original measure of discernment.

That doesn't mean I think I'm perfect or that I think anyone should look at me and make me their example. Heaven forbid! That would be totally missing the point, not to mention extremely dangerous! What I mean is, if anything I might do can say to someone, perhaps I should follow, not her example, but the example she is following ... then, armed with my fierce discontent, I'll gladly storm the ogre's castle by day. Then, buttressed by an equally fierce delight, I'll return to my cottage at evening to reflect on all that has once again been accomplished by simple faith combined with simple obedience, not forgetting to add considerable amounts of risk and love.