Look Away, Look Away, Look Away....

Looking away.  Aversion.  It’s the first way that we choose not to look.  It’s instinctive, like flinching when we think we’re going to get hit, when we want to avoid pain.  Why don’t we see? I want to tell you the story of Randy as we continue these next few days a look at my friend Fr. Howard Gray’s Good Samaritan model of becoming our most human selves, that proposes that seeing someone in trouble evokes a feeling of compassion, which in turn moves us to help them, which consequently moves us to change things that caused their pain in the first place.

Randy was a very talented student who had graduated from a poor black high school in Detroit.  He had an important job at the university, coordinating the summer orientation for our incoming freshmen.  Part of that program was a day of community service, which in our case is working in small groups as directly as possible with the poor and marginalized.  We had found that if our students could work side by side with people different from them, they had the greatest chance of seeing them, and being impacted by their situation. 

I went to Randy’s office, and told him that in the coming year we would be focusing on homelessness, really getting to know it.  So I wanted his group leaders, as part of their week-long training, to work in shelters and warming centers, the same places that we would arrange for the freshmen for their service. 

Randy responded with a gesture so eloquent that I can still visualize it.  He crossed his arms, turned to the side, shook his head while looking away from me and said, “I dunno, Mr. D.; having our students messin’ with a bunch of homeless guys.”  He averted not only his eyes, but his whole body.  He nearly flinched; being with the homeless would hurt. 

We’re free.  On Sunday our priest here in Traverse City, Fr. Reuben Munoz, called our freedom the biggest mystery of creation, that sometimes, he smiled, he thinks that God made a mistake doing that.  We so easily make choices that take us farther away from our truest selves; we spend time with distractions.  Bobbie’s litany in yesterday’s blog is typical of ours, I suspect.  We look away, or we move away, we set our course to avoid those things that upset us.  

Freud would say that our id is steering us by our “Pleasure Principle”, just like the Wizard of Id in the cartoon above.  According to Wikipedia, The pleasure principle is a psychoanalytic concept, originated by Sigmund Freud. The pleasure principle states that people seek pleasure and avoid pain, i.e., people seek to satisfy biological and psychological needs.  The counterpart is the reality principle, which defers gratification when necessary.

An individual's id follows the pleasure principle and rules in early life, but, as one matures, one learns the need to endure pain and defer gratification, because of the exigencies and obstacles of reality. In Freud's words, “an ego thus educated has become reasonable; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also at bottom seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished”

Bobbie’s friends are real; so are yours and mine.  Bobbie’s house and the beautiful, comforting places in it are real; so are yours and mine.  I don’t think Howard Gray, or Jesus who told this story in the first place, calls us to an ascetic life, denying ourselves any pleasure.  In fact, the story started after he had said “love your neighbor as yourself” and some smart guy asked “yeah, but who’s my neighbor?”  He pulled a Randy on Jesus.

The Samaritan didn’t turn into a social worker or a medic.  He didn’t camp on that dangerous road to protect travelers or become a social activist.  He continued his life, he went on his way after doing the just thing, performed the human act.  I recall mother Theresa’s words to us in Detroit.  You don’t have to come to Calcutta to serve the poor; the poor are all around you.  There are all kinds of poverty.

When we have courage to see, a new voice is not put into us; we are not possessed by some alien voice.  It is our own voice that is evoked, which has been waiting, muted or silent.  We will, when we have the courage to look at those around us in the same openness that we look at the pictures in the posting below from two days ago that we will hear our own voice call to us, that voice in our deepest center, that calls us not out of ourselves, but toward ourselves, toward our nature that is creative, restorative, imaginative.

If this takes hold of you, this question of whether you are averting or seeing, avoiding or engaging, it might be a time to consider the Examen, the nightly reflection on your day.  Ask yourself as you are slowing down to hit the sack,

• What did I see today that was beautiful, or ugly?
•  Into whose eyes did I look and allow their humanity to enter mine, and who did I look at superficially?
• Who did I approach comfortably, open to encounter and communication, and who did I avoid?

As some commenters pointed out regarding Free Hugs, I have no answers.  Your answers will come from you, for you.  They will come from that voice in you that has been waiting, muted or silent.

Tomorrow the story of the beautiful Polish girl who saw, but could not feel.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.