Monday, March 10, 2014

What Are You Giving Up for Lent?

My Pastor, Donna Rountree, shares that one of her parishioners has decided to give up “feelings of unworthiness” for Lent. Next year, she says, she’ll give up something easier, like cigarettes. It’s a wonderful idea, and it’s timely because most people I know have those feelings occasionally (and some seem to work at cultivating them!)
Donna hosts an email group of clergy, and she asked for ideas to help her member who longs for feelings of worthiness.
Someone quoted Paul in Romans 5:8, “But God proves his love for us in that while were still sinners Christ died for us.”
Some referred to great Christian quotes through the ages:
·         “God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love” ~ St. Augustine
·         “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less” ~ Attributed to Bishop Desmond Tutu.
While these affirmations are true and wonderful and may receive cognitive confirmation from everyone, they probably don’t reach the deep corners of the human soul to touch the sources of those feelings of unworthiness. Those sources are experiential, not cognitive, and most of them have long histories of reinforcement.
Still, the quest to give up feelings of unworthiness is valuable for several reasons. In the first place, many negative actions and relationships emerge out of negative self-images. Virtually all abusers were abused—most molesters were molested. Self-affirmation is a matter of preventive maintenance.
Perhaps a more crucial justification of the quest is theological: “feelings of unworthiness” deny the grace of God.
In the Broadway Musical, “Man of La Mancha,” a Spanish gentleman named Alonzo Quijana fancies himself a knight errant named Don Quixote. He and his companion, Sancho Panza, sally forth on a quest to fight the unfightable foe and “To Dream the Impossible Dream.”
On their first night (after fighting the infamous windmill0, they find lodging at an inn. Employed there is a woman named Aldonza. She waits tables by day, and by night supplements her income as a prostitute.
But Don Quixote sees her differently: “Sweet lady; fair virgin,” he gushes upon first sighting her (at which the muleskinners who frequent the inn erupt in thunderous laughter). He calls her “Dulcinea”, which in Spanish means, “Sweetness.”
She thinks he’s taunting her; and yet, his gentle advances throughout the play begin to chip away at the callused exterior she’s built up. Finally, she confronts him: “What do you want of me?”
“I ask of my lady that I may be allowed to serve her; that I may hold her in my heart, that I may dedicate each victory and call upon her in defeat. And if at last I give my life, I give it in the sacred name of Dulcinea.”
On the verge of tears, she begs, “Once, just once, would you look at me as I really am?”
And he responds, “I see beauty, purity. I see the woman each man holds secret in his heart, Dulcinea.”
She responds with the following song:
“I was spawned in a ditch by a mother who left me there
      naked and cold and too hungry to cry.
I never blamed her. I’m sure she left hoping that I’d have the good sense to die.
And then there’s my father. I’m told that young ladies can point
      to their fathers with maidenly pride.
Mine was some regiment here for an hour. I can’t even tell you which side.
So, of course, I became, as befitted my delicate birth,
The most casual bride of the murdering scum of the earth.”

And the song ends,
“Can’t you see what your gentle insanities do to me:
rob me of anger and leave me despair.
Blows and abuse I can take, and give back again; tenderness I cannot bear.”
There appears on the scene at this point a doctor, the fiancé of Alonzo Quijana’s niece. She has engaged him and the local priest to bring her uncle back home. After all, he’s becoming quite an embarrassment to her. The doctor disguises himself as “The Knight of the Mirrors”, and forces Don Quixote to look into the mirror of reality and see, not Don Quixote, but an aging fool.
And Don Quixote crumbles into a weeping, quivering mass of disillusionment.
“The Impossible Dream” seems dead. Aldonza, on the verge of joining the quest, withdraws into her shell of bitterness and self-loathing; and Don Quixote succumbs to the “melancholy burden of sanity.”
Later, back home, Alonzo Quijana lies on his deathbed with family and friends gathered about. As he dictates his last will and testament, Aldonza forces her way into the room and begs Senor Quijana to restore to her the vision of “Dulcinea.” A memory is triggered deep in the old man, and he rises from his bed to reclaim his identity as Don Quixote. But the effort is too much, and even in this moment of reaffirmation, he collapses and dies.
Sancho Panza weeps, “My master is dead.”
But Aldonza comforts him, saying, “A man died. He seemed a good man; but I did not know him. Don Quixote is not dead. Believe, Sancho. Believe!”
Taken aback by this strong affirmation, Sancho says, “Aldonza?”
And she responds, “My name is Dulcinea.”
By treating her throughout as a person of unique value and worth, Don Quixote’s grace has raised her up—has transformed her. She is a new person.
Self-identity is formed in response to people’s perceptions of acceptance or rejection by significant others. Feelings of unworthiness emerge from put-downs, taunting, bullying (including spiritual bullying from legalistic, pharisaical, guilt-oriented moralizing). I suggest that the antidote is also experiential—that when people consistently receive affirmation and confirmation, they live out the positive expectations implied by those affirmations.
Dulcinea! Dulcinea!
I see heaven when I see thee,
Dulcinea!
And thy name is like a prayer
an angel whispers:
Dulcinea! Dulcinea!
Together in the Walk

Jim

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