Tag: Discernment

Who’s Vetting This Damned Mess?

Rita Sommers-Flanagan11 Comments

Here’s how vetting works: Unbiased authorities carefully examine the basis of claims and issue a verdict of accurate, unlikely, or bullshit to help average citizens determine what to believe. When we decide not to trust credentialed authorities, we are prone to mistake our opinions for facts and our personal beliefs for reality.

But there’s a painful tension between belief and reality. Believing a falsehood doesn’t make it true. Or does it? The placebo effect is powerful. Maybe it’s possible to believe lies into reality.

“Excuse me,” God says.  “Could you give us a minute?”

My ancestors, friends, and readers slip out of the conference room in my head and quietly shut the door. I’m alone with an edgy God.

“Now listen,” God says. “Blind faith is dangerous. Some people think there is such a thing as ‘the word of God.’ Maybe. Maybe not. But I am not the Great Vetter in the Sky. You’ve got to vet things yourselves.  It’s relatively simple…”

I hold up my hand. “Let me stop you right there. Nothing is simple or straightforward about seeking the truth, and you know it.”

“You have education, language, and history,” God says.

I frown. “Yeah, right. And there are people who deliberately teach lies.”

 “But you have scientific methodologies,” God says.

I glare. “And we have science deniers. There are billions who don’t believe in the existence of germs and think carbon dating is from the devil.”

“Well, good grief. You have common sense,” God says.

I shake my head. “Nah. We believe that which is convenient or matches our needs or leanings. Con artists do quite well politically and financially.”

“But you’ve got eyes and ears and beating hearts,” God says in a firm and final voice.

 He packs his briefcase. I stand at attention, eyes wide open, hand over heart while the honor guard of God marches by.

Then I pull my hand down and stare at it. What, exactly, was I saluting? My feet take me to the garden. My eyes behold the dry brown hills and smoke-filled skies. I dig into the honest dirt and listen for the pulse of reality, raw and unhindered.

Bullshit breaks down and fertilizes tender green things. What goes around comes around. It is the earth itself who will do the final vetting.

“Sorry I was so harsh. We are helping where we can,” the Creator whispers from a sad, small space under the chokecherries.

“I know, Precious,” I whisper back to the Bleeding Heart of the Universe. “Of that, I am sure.”

Is you is or is you ain’t?

Rita Sommers-Flanagan5 Comments

For the past 45 minutes, God’s been following me around while I fuss and mutter my way through the large piles of rocks in our house. It’s time to clean and sort. Smooth, thin, striped, white, broken, odd-shaped, heavy, pointed, round, speckled, flat, agate, sandstone, granite, petrified wood. I’m blessed with an inexhaustible supply of rocks. It’s awful. Blessings always come with a dark side. In this case, I have to sort and judge my rocks. Which stay? Which go? Sheep or goat? Precious or plebeian? In or out? Evil or good? Worthy or worthless?

I’ve been lazily indiscriminate about rocks, but there are limits. Life demands at least some discernment, and as we all know, discernment easily slides to judgment. Humans have many sayings about this.

  • One person’s treasure is another person’s junk.
  • Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. …And of course, there’s this one:
  • Do not judge, or you too will be judged. In the same way you judge others, you will be judged.

I hold an amber crystal and a friendly river rock in my hand, overcome with doubt. What makes anything or anyone precious? What makes anyone or anything worthless? Who or what belongs anywhere?

God sighs. His jazz band materializes and sets up in the kitchen. God positions himself on a stool, and in his sultry, seductive voice, begins singing that old Louis Jordan classic: Is you is or is you ain’t my baby? He sips bourbon. I’m afraid he’s planning to light up a cigarette. Clearly, he’s in one of his sarcastic moods. I briefly consider throwing the bum out.

The mood fades. The band packs up, leaving the kitchen littered with peanut shells and shot glasses stained with oily lipstick. God lingers and watches me clean. He’s smiling. Humming. Waiting. I’m a little put out, but God has cleaned up after me more times than I can count. And he’s always done a stellar job.

He’s unpredictable, unruly, unjudgable, stereotype-proof—but whatever God does, he does well. I know because I have a memory of perfection. An infinitesimal fraction of me was present when God and his jazz band crooned the Universe into being; when stars burst out of their atomic skins, when the planet I call home began to cool. In fact, we were all there—which puts us in the same boat—which makes judgment futile.

I wash the last glass; God sweeps the floor and opens the north facing window to a blast of late-November air. I endure the chill while I search through the rocks. I’m on a mission.

God laughs. “I don’t need a rock,” he says, accurately reading my mind.

“I know,” I say. “But I’d like to give you something anyway.” I feel nearly desperate to find the perfect rock.

“Okay, baby,” God says. He holds out his hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LGl70VGvmg