Although I do not approach the Bible in a devotional way, I am glad that I had become familiar with many of its stories as a child because an image from a bible story has sometimes jumped into my mind, usually at a time of stress. What happens
is that I notice how the word I was using in my own turmoil reminds me of a biblical turn of phrase and THAT catches my attention; going on to remember the parable somehow gives me a new way to think about my worry, as my attention has led to curiosity and curiosity always leads to new ways of thought and that, in itself, is an affirming process. You’ll have heard me say before how I think parables, Fairy Tales and Myths describe universal predicaments and embody psychological truths. I think the predicament of what it is to be human runs through them in all cultures.
One such time was as a nasty session was ending with someone I had come to fear and I was desperate to escape. The consulting room was on the first floor and as I reached the top of the stairs I thought of the words “cast yourself down” because I wanted somehow to be magicked down those stairs and escape, not to have to go down them step by step till I could get away. Noticing that phrase and remembering it from The Temptations grabbed my attention and I instantly felt less frantic, because I now had a wider picture in my head.
As I walked home I was much calmer, thinking about the Temptations, and when I got indoors I immediately looked up the story. I read it in Luke and mused over the temptation, to “cast yourself down, for angels will bear you up”. All three temptations involve miracles of one sort or another and the one thing about miracles is that they happen-to and, as such, are passive. The temptation for the miracle of angels bearing one up comes last in Luke; the first temptation is for the miracle to change stones into bread and the second one is miraculously to have dominion over all the Lands. Reading the first temptation I thought, “this is about dependency”, which made me think how one can long to feel made secure, especially when troubled. I thought how being dependent can be seen as being passive and how dependency itself can have a negative sneering connotation. I’ve felt that of myself. But then I thought of the natural and beautiful dependency of infancy and the way the infant is utterly dependent on its mother; I thought how she willingly allows the infant to be dependent within their bond. I saw how their bond becomes a mutual engagement because the infant’s sense of self gradually emerges from the certainty of her care and the mother’s sense of self is enhanced by the infant’s response to her. Further, I now believe that this mutually responsive bonding is at the root of ALL deep Relationships: Reciprocity being Archetypal. As such, I even posit that reciprocity is inherent in the Physics of Matter: consider the push and pull of Gravity and the interaction of Relativity. Then I thought how the young child, beyond infancy, depends for security on her/his parents in a family setting and that this is the way human beings have always gradually learnt to feel a sense of self and of interaction with the world. I like to consider how the patterning for this extends back millions of years into Mammalian instincts, and those instincts as issuing from some reptilian patterns….and so on, for surely nothing springs into being fully formed, explicit? Anyway, I decided that dependency at this stage of development is an active state of being, not a passive one, and that this temptation could be about inappropriately clinging to dependency, rather than about Dependency itself.
That made me think of the nature of child development in its next stages of “growing up”, moving from infancy and childhood to teenage years and young adulthood, the individual interacting with the world with increasing autonomy and independence. I thought about the way the youngster’s need to be sufficiently well supported through this stage is itself a development of Dependence: I saw Dependence as a cycle entailing its own looping and maturing into age-appropriate forms. I considered how the stage of later childhood involves the youngster developing an ever increasing sense of self determination and independence. I saw how Determination entails experiencing powerlessness and experimenting with powerfulness and I felt that this stage of development is portrayed in the second temptation. I thought of “looking out over the Lands” as entailing how to learn to assert and manage one’s sense of self in one’s widening Setting. Thinking in this way I felt that this temptation is about the lure to be arbitrarily powerful, to be confrontational, to want to subjugate one’s surroundings and to appropriate aspects of it for one’s own satisfaction and gratification: to possess by power. (Is the alternative to “possess” by understanding?) I felt this temptation hung in the air, rather, because one’s understanding of one’s setting/environment is itself always maturing and that Determination also has Archetypal Roots. As Archetypal, again I see this expressing itself in the Physics of Matter: consider the development of the Elements, as portrayed in the Periodic Table and their creation evidenced in supernova.
I put the feeling of hanging in the air to one side and returned to look at the third temptation. The phrase to cast oneself down, for “angels will bear you up” puzzled me because (setting aside the need to believe in miracles for their own sake) I thought to myself, if you’re sure of angels catching you when you fall, where’s the risk? What’s this one about? Not about belief in miracles, I thought, nor about belief in extraordinary privilege. Suddenly it came to me that it’s about staying safe: it’s about staying with an attitude you’re already sure of: it’s about not risking something you’re not sure of: in essence, it’s about the temptation not to change. The temptation Not To Change encapsulates the other two, is huge because to develop as a human being one needs surely always to be changing: building on what one’s experienced up till now and using that to develop further: being affected by others ever anew and oneself always affecting others around one. For an image, I thought of Morse Code patterns, as though temptations 1 and 2 are Dot – Dot, and temptation 3 is DASH, which felt so unbalanced. Because I’m curious about the reason anything has made its way into the Gospels and suspicious about how it’s presented, I was puzzled that Luke had used this unbalanced sequence. So I looked at what comes just before the Temptations and it’s the story of the Baptism. And when I looked at the Baptism story I thought, THIS is huge; it’s the calling to be named: it’s the calling to own who you are: it’s the calling to Be: it’s the calling to develop Selfhood. It seemed to me that the import of the Baptism balances the import of the third Temptation so that the four together make a balanced pattern DASH – Dot – Dot – DASH, so that the whole sequence describes Development itself: Individuation itself. With the Challenge to Be matching the Temptation NOT to change, I could flip the challenge of the Baptism into a temptation, and the temptation not to change into a challenge: a temptation NOT to heed one’s calling, and a challenge TO change; that reciprocity seemed to make the whole sequence active, not passive: that maybe the mystery of one’s own individuation is the miracle?.
Then I thought, but what if one doesn’t want to extrapolate in this abstract way? What if one feels that the important thing in being oneself is to engage with and care for the family and community around one, to uphold and promote the principles underpinning the society about one? What if abstract notions of calling and change are actually not helpful in one’s commitment to Day to Day Living in a dedicated way? I mused that Day to Day living DOES indeed have its own fulfilment, because there are dignified ways to develop as a mature person WITHIN both the categories of Dependence and Determination. Being secure enough to become dependable oneself is a mature way to feed back into the community the support and care which nurtured one when young. Being secure enough to become a responsible individual is a mature way to pass on to society the holding and guidance one had when developing self determination. From having been nurtured oneself, one can have empathy and so work to nurture others in one’s turn. From having been held steady oneself, one can have a sense of responsibility and so work for the benefit of others in one’s society in one’s turn. In this way, both Dependence and Determination aren’t abstract notions but are ways of maturing which can be fulfilled in myriad ways in everyday life, so that anything one does can express the deep calling to Be and express the challenge to Change. All actions, whether formal or informal, recognised or unrecognised, paid or unpaid, can be a way that one matures in both Dependence and Determination.
All that was in 1983; recently I’ve been applying its cluster of challenges to my thoughts about being a member of this congregation.
As a list:
DASH: What was the sense of calling which attracted me here and what is the character of our Unitarian community?
Dot: In what way do I depend on being here and in what way can I develop that in our community?
Dot: What is the best way to assess things and how can I best contribute responsibly to the decisions we need to determine?
DASH: In what way am I engaging with the changes which we are facing at this time, to respond to their challenges in temporal as well as spiritual terms?