No Scourging Allowed
Originally posted at The Way of the Rose 54-Day Novena group August 14, 2020
Novena Day 2
The Sorrowful Mysteries
I find it difficult to look at my Facebook feed these days—and Twitter? Fuhgeddabout it.
It seems everywhere I look, someone is mocking, pointing fingers, and yelling at someone else, blaming them for everything wrong in the world today—and there is plenty wrong in the world today.
And it goes all the way up to the top—the Chief Executive of the United States of America.
But it seems to me that this tendency to blame others for our problems—“us vs. them” thinking—is in itself one of our biggest problems. The responsibility always seems to lie over there, in that camp, rather than in our own hearts and minds. That doesn’t mean I think individuals and groups aren’t responsible for the consequences of their actions, of course; it just means that we are all part of the sick system that created our current circumstances. Thus, we all bear responsibility for changing it for the better.
Positive change isn’t going to come from mocking others or screaming at them—especially in public. All that does is induce more trauma (see yesterday’s post). In fact, whenever I get to the Scourging at the Pillar in the Sorrowful Mysteries, when Jesus was tortured and mocked by the Roman soldiers, I think about the way our society collectively gathers to torture, humiliate, and scorn those who, like Jesus, step outside the cultural norm to call for greater love, compassion, and grace.
I think of the way we silence whistleblowers. I think of the way we punish politicians—and others—for telling us the truth by choosing those who repeatedly lie to us. I think of how we dismiss uncomfortable topics like racism and sexual assault by demeaning those who talk about them. I think of how easy it is to justify our personal expressions of contempt and cruelty while decrying others’. I think of how mockery and cruelty attract admirers, encouraging further mockery and cruelty.
I think of how seldom we look within to take the planks out of our own eyes before reaching to take the specks out of our neighbors’.
And I don’t want to be part of it anymore.
When I find myself veering toward “scourging” and mockery, like the second sorrowful mystery, I plan to shift gears by focusing on the second joyful mystery, the Visitation, or the second glorious mystery, the Ascension.
These three mysteries strike me as inter-related. They’re all about interaction with others. In the Visitation, Mary and Elizabeth, two pregnant women, put their heads and hearts together, causing constructive interference as physicists would say, and amplifying their power to create big miracles. The Scourging is the exact opposite, a large number of people reinforcing the worst in each other, canceling out any good they might do as individuals. In the Ascension we see the withdrawal from the influence of others in order to see with the eyes of Heaven, re-establishing internal balance and harmony before we come back to share that understanding with the world.
How would this shift look on a planetary level? What if, when we started thinking in terms of “us” and “them,” we all trained ourselves to withdraw from the culturally reinforced fear of limitation and remind ourselves of our essential oneness? And what would happen if we then joined with other powerful, clear channels of Mama Mary’s joy and miracles to work miracles? What couldn’t we accomplish?
I don’t know, but I would sure love to find out.
