Beauty/Spirituality

Creatures of the Good God Leap

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Today, upon seeing a lady bug inch its way up a wooden railing I recalled this journal entry from exactly three years ago.

You wouldn’t think that Willie Nelson could cheer up a soul. But I feel like traveling on, on that is, that train they call the City of New Orleans. I feel like traveling a long way away. I want to feel the rhythm of steel wheels on steel track clacking beneath me. I want to feel it for miles of hours, and hours of miles. I want to travel anywhere, it doesn’t matter. Anywhere takes me away. Feeling this tells me I’m still alive.

And of course James Taylor’s music takes me, transports me, away. It opens up the possibility of leaping into the still blue breeze, climbing as high as two translucent wings can take me and drifting, catching up and down drafts without worrying the destination.

lady_bug_032705_04This is what the lady bug did. I watched from my lawn chair beside the barbecue. The spotted beetle landed for just a moment and before it had reasoned or made up its mind it flew straight up. Catching the wind about a story off the ground it sailed more than flew, weaving and swerving into a cloud covered sky, to a destination yet unknown. Considering its size, the distance it traveled was great. It was a leap I admired.

The French call the lady beetles les betes du bon Dieu or creatures of the good God and les vaches de la Vierge or cows of the Virgin. The Germans call them Marienkafer or Mary’s beetles. Lady beetles are primarily predators of aphids and other soft body insects. This makes them a friend of most gardeners. But when their life supplies thin out they don’t hesitate to fly and try another destination. And most any direction will do. Who knows if there are aphids here or there? The thing to do is to leap and to find out, not to stay and subsist on meager pickings, and die slowly.

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Christianity/Peace/Violence

Scapegoating Permutations

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Connie said,

So we tend not to be aware of being guilty of scapegoating (though I think we’re all quite well aware of being scapegoated)…how do we become more aware of being guilty? Or maybe I’ll answer my own question by way of another one – are we tempted to scapegoat when we’ve been on the receiving end of it? Like when we’ve been hurt by a friend, rejected or slandered in some way…is that just our reflex, to return the favour?

Reflex is an accurate description of our reciprocal-aggression habit. We payback without thinking. But of course the permutations of our "payback" are countless. A friend may have hurt us but because we desire the friendship, for what ever reason, we "scapegoat" in any number of unpredictable directions.scapegoat

To live a limpid life, free from tit-for-tat hostility is what we are meant for. But oh so hard. We need models.

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Atonement/Christianity/Peace/Religion/Violence

Scapegoating Violence Exposed

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

(Continued from yesterday’s post) RichardLanding-l

After reading Alison’s story in "On Being Liked", the incident I described in the last post and my treatment of Colin came back to me like a swift blunt blow. More importantly, the truth and insight that the Gospels attest to regarding my (our) sacrificial ways, and how God desires to save us from all that, leapt out with a freshness that I can hardly overestimate. That said, I dedicate yesterday’s and today’s post to James Alison. (The following is a mere stencil of his thought.)

To the conclusion…

Let me revisit my experience with Colin. Imagine that when we were chasing Colin, he had run into traffic and been hit by a car and was hospitalized for a few months. It’s not hard to see that after a short time of regret, perhaps even genuine remorse, our group would be irritably off balance until we found someone else to pick on. And of course, with Colin gone, all of us on the lower levels of the prevailing power structure would be seriously worried.

But now suppose that Colin, having healed, came back to school not sullen, or angry, or vengeful; not holding on to any resentment, but entirely free and open and wanting to play with us, because he truly liked us. And what if it became apparent that he always did like us, had always wanted just to play with us, but that before our causing his injury, we just couldn’t see it.

Because the relationships in our group depended on there being an outcast, this would be hugely destabilizing. But, at the same time, Colin’s presence would now offer us a way of relating that was free from there being others who were supposedly inferior or superior to us. That is, free from structures of power.

And in this buoyant freedom we could find ourselves called into being people we had no idea we could be. Because Colin’s non-violent “liking-presence”, would be our forgiveness. In this way, Colin could become our radical counter model.

This, of course, is what is offered to us by Jesus Christ. Jesus, in allowing himself to be the ultimate scapegoat, and through his resurrection-as his forgiving and merciful return, is now our radical counter model that has nothing to do with retaliation, shame, or any sort of violence.

In his dramatic self-giving act, Jesus exploded the power of the “scapegoating mechanism” and its false unity through sacrificial violence, offering us the possibility to renounce involvement in it and embrace true peace. As Christ put it, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”

Grow Mercy

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Atonement/Beauty/Christianity/Religion/Spirituality/Violence

My Involvement in Scapegoating

Posted on by stephen t berg / 1 Comment

When I was in grade six, there was a group of us that picked on Colin. Colin was in our class and always got better grades than everyone else. He was also ungainly and preferred sticking to himself. In short, Colin was a "natural" outcast.

I remember one day agreeing with a few of the bigger boys in our group to corner him after school and beat him up. Colin somehow smelled our plan and when the bell rang to end class he was the first one out the front doors, running as fast as he could to his house a few blocks away. But I was a fast runner. I caught and tackled him before he made it out of the school grounds. The other boys, having caught up to us, began to beat him up while I stood there watching.

The utterly detestable thing about this, besides the act itself, was that at the time, I had no remorse for Colin, only relief that it wasn’t me flailing away on the ground. I knew my action gave me a place within the group; but I remember having the vague feeling that without Colin around I might have been the target. In some twisted way I needed Colin to occupy this place.

I’ve since learned from anthropologist Rene Girard, that Colin was our "scapegoat". In some elemental way our identity was bound up by being something that Colin wasn’t. And so, while he was the "outcast" he was also the thing that unified and solidified our group. For a while at least, any conflicts in our group could be solved by a new round of bullying, or "scapegoating" Colin.

Now while we pretty much knew that abusing Colin in this way was wrong, we didn’t understand the dark dynamics of our involvement in this "scapegoating violence". We didn’t know, as Rene Girard has shown, that this "scapegoating mechanism", in all its limitless permutations, is at the bottom of all kinds of "power plays" and power structures, from schoolyard bullying to "office politics", from church splits to gang wars, and from the creation of cultures to the founding of religions.

We didn’t know because the mechanism has an uncanny ability to stay hidden when we are personally caught up in it. It’s usually only when confronted by our own deep complicity in scapegoating violence that we are able to choose another way. Mercifully, there is a story that can confront us, and begin to heal us. (Continued)

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