I no longer blog here

I was surprised to click on a link and find myself on this site that I last posted to six years ago. For more current stuff; JustConflict.org or MarkLeeRobinson.com.

Yes and Yes and Yes

Around the wish to respond to the world and its demands with a “yes,” and not a “no,” comes the circumstance wherein someone makes a demand of us such that if we say “no” to them we are denying the integrity of ourselves and the integrity of the relationship we have with them.  The choice is

• do we say yes to the other and by so doing deny our sense of what is right and good, or
• do we say yes to ourselves and by so doing risk the other feeling rendered wrong or unimportant to us.

The answer, as always is “yes.”

As Endel suggests, this can be seen as an application of the Law of Three.  We each hold a position which is affirming of our expectations but is a denying the other’s.  What many have said (Ron I think most clearly) is that the creative response is not to deny the reality of either perspective but to hold them both in loving tension which regards our relationship—our love for each other—as a greater reality than either of our perspectives.  With the affirming and the denying held together by reconciling love we create a new way of being.

Creating Justice

Not everyone wants to see conflict resolved. As someone who works in the field of conflict resolution I tend to think of the best outcome as one in which everyone gets what they need…at least as much as possible. But from time to time (and this afternoon was one of those times) I find myself talking to someone who is asking “What should I do?” but what they are looking for is, “How can I make the other lose as much as possible without getting myself into trouble?”

Certainly there are a good many people who think of justice as a quality that arises when bad people get hurt for hurting good people (i.e. people like us). This is the “logic” behind much of what passes for a criminal justice system. To be clear, I support the presence of a system that determines when people have violated rules for public safety and gives them certain negative consequences as a way of getting their attention and inviting them to change their behavior. In the absence of such a system people tend to behave badly.

But there is a higher form of justice that is about being sure that everyone gets their needs met as much as possible. While we are not making rapid progress in establishing this as the standard across society broadly (though proponents of restorative justice are doing powerfully creative work) we can certainly make this the standard in our own lives. Indeed, in the absence of working to be sure that others get what they need; we will not be able to create what we need.

When we attend to what we need, discern the qualities that are missing for us, act in ways that create these qualities while letting go of the impulse to change others, we succeed in creating what we need and in the process, create what others need as well. But when we are dedicated to ensuring that the other doesn’t get what she or he needs we are constrained to act in ways that fail to meet our own needs. We cannot create justice for ourselves by denying it to others.

Quote from Jacob Needleman

Let me put it bluntly, leaving aside some important qualifications and exceptions: It is only in and through people, inwardly developed men and women, that God can exist and act in the world of man on earth. Bluntly speaking, the proof for the existence of God is the existence of people who are inhabited by and who manifest God.

“What is God”, page 196

The Life We Choose

Viewing the movie The Way again reminded me that there are some movies that you have to see multiple times to begin to get what they have to offer. Since this is one that gets better the more times you see it I won’t be spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t yet made their own Camino.

Early in the movie we see a flashback that sets up one of the central themes of the movie. Tom has learned that his 40 year old son, Daniel, has been killed in a tragic accident during a storm in the Pyrenees. As his train approaches the village in which he will identify and claim the body, he remembers his last conversation with his estranged son. Tom and Daniel have argued over the path each has taken in life and Tom defends his experience saying, “This is the life I have chosen.” Daniel responds sadly, “A life isn’t something you choose, Dad, it is something you live.”

We don’t get enough detail in the conversation to know just what Daniel means by that comment, but the contrast in their lives is clear. Tom is settled into a profession and is tired. He doesn’t even want to walk the short distance to the golf ball to take his next shot but his ophthalmology patients are scheduled a month in advance. Daniel is going to hike 500 miles across Spain and has no idea what he will do after that.

So the death of his only son at a time when he is confused about himself and still mourning the death of his wife tips the balance and Tom decides to walk the Camino with the ashes of Daniel. Along the way he meets other pilgrims and they tag along with him. When he finally softens toward them he gets into a conversation with “Jack from Ireland” whom Tom has identified is much like Daniel. But Jack justifies his life as a travel writer who still hasn’t started on the novel he dreams of writing by saying, “This is the life I have chosen.” Unlike Daniel, Jack sees a life as something you choose.

In the parlance of the movie there is a distinction between a life as something you choose and a life as something you live. And it isn’t about being a romantic vagabond.

I had a conversation many years ago with a colleague who challenged me to be more ambitious. His critical feedback was that I wasn’t clarifying what I wanted in life and going after it. I remember noting to myself—more than to him, he wasn’t asking me about my philosophy—that it was my sense that most of the really amazing things that had happened in my life arose in a manner that seemed random or even capricious. I was afraid that if I tried to be too focused on creating a specific outcome I would plan out the serendipity. Still I took his counsel to heart at least enough to become more self-critical. It doesn’t seem that one can have a life well lived if one only accepts whatever arises.

I am tempted to suggest that we may need to find a balance between “choosing” and “living” but that seems too passive a stance. A more active framework is one I first learned in the writings of George Leonard. He urges us to engage in focused surrender. Pay keen attention and put all your effort into it and then… let go.

At the School for Living this week we will be exploring the phenomenon of anxiety. This feeling arises when something is out of balance in our lives. It can be a call to action if we hear it correctly.

I Disagree with Todd Akin

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

In my post of two days ago I tried to construct a brief and clever response to Todd Akin’s gaff about rape that has created such a well-deserved firestorm. I was pretty much universally misunderstood in my effort at irony. So let me say directly what I intended to say by inference.

There are two things that are implied by this statement by Congressman Akin that are true, though they are not the truth he is focusing on.

“Legitimate rape:” The first is his use of a modifier for the word “rape.” While this choice is a thinly veiled alternative to “forcible,” its use does acknowledge that rape is a social reality that is hugely traumatic for victims and for society as a whole and we do not respond to it well. In its most basic form rape is unwanted sexual contact. This contact can be violent or subtle or come from strangers or from close acquaintances and even family members but no matter who is creating the contact, if she says “no,” it is rape.

“the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down:” The second is that one can easily understand that the trauma of rape might cause such hormonal distress that a woman could spontaneously abort. If this were to happen it would be understood as natural and in harmony with God’s will. But in fact this rarely happens. When rape results in pregnancy the chances that the pregnancy will be carried to term are the same as a pregnancy that results from a loving union. But the pregnancy, the fetus, the birth, and the child are all emotionally fused with the trauma of the rape. And that traumatic bond can not only bring great harm to the woman, it can also be a huge burden to a child who is seen as a product of a violent assault. So God has created the means by which the female body can shut that whole thing down. In a just society it is available over-the-counter.

I Agree with Todd Akin

 "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Congressman Akin has few friends these days and having decided to defy the Republican establishment by refusing to step down in his race against Claire McCaskill for the Missouri Senate seat he will face even more opposition. So I want to raise my voice in support of at least a portion of what he is saying that is so unpopular.
I agree with him first of all that his statement was poorly worded. And since he didn’t actually say what he meant to say, I have to interpret a bit what I think he actually intended. But two things, important things, jump out at me from this statement. One is that rape is not all of the same type. The second is that women must have a way shut down “that whole thing.”
President Obama has said that “rape is rape.” I don’t think that is true. A man coming in the window in the middle of the night is not the same as a couple of teenagers having sex when one is too young to give legal consent. I use as a basic standard that it is rape if one partner says, “no,” but sometimes the “no” is said too softly for the other to hear. I worked with many men convicted of rape in my psychotherapy practice and most of them deny that she said “no.” I have worked with a number of women who were ambivalent the night before but with the cold light of dawn found a part of them shouting, “No!” If she says, “no,” it is rape.
Still, it doesn’t seem right to punish him when she didn’t say the “no” out loud or at least loud enough for him to hear it. And I do think that justice requires (though is not limited to) punishment. So maybe her pregnancy is the punishment she gets for allowing herself to be raped. It was her choice, after all, to not say the “no” loudly enough.
The problem with that is that she is not the only one who is affected here. What about the unborn child. Why should the child have to suffer with a parent who sees him or her as a punishment? We know how critical healthy attachment to parents is to human development. What is the justice in saddling a child with a parent for whom they are a symbol of a disastrous mistake? No child should be unwanted.
This is why I agree with Congressman Akin that a just God will give “the female body” a way to “shut that whole thing down.” Under the stress of the rape the woman will naturally react though a process of introducing hormones into her system which will protect her and any potential child. This hormone is marketed under trade names Mifegyne and Mifeprex and commonly known as RU-486.