A good preparation to read this blog is the YouTube video above developed by Richard Rohr.
The most radical idea offered by Richard R0hr’s Spirituality (above) is that
To recognize that what I resent, and perhaps even detest, in another, comes from my difficulty in admitting that this same reality lives also in me. . . .
In this confession we give over our claim to the “high ground” of pacifism and recognize that our deepest resentments stem from resisting the principle that: we are guilty of what we accuse our opponents of. It is symbolized by the pointing finger, which shows when we point the index finger at the other, there are always three fingers pointing back at us.
That has always been my challenge: to accept that nonviolence does not raise me to a plateau above others, but places me in the vulnerable lowlands where I am as guilty as my enemy. Perhaps the background of the plateau foregrounded by the low desert plain in the video above illustrates the contrast between the high and the low. There is, in fact, no high ground in an argument. There is only the opposing forces that struggle on a “darkling plain.”
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
(Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43588/dover-beach)
Matthew Arnold’s pessimistic poem suggests there is no true love except that of a single person for another. It is all about the withdrawing of the “Sea of Faith” from our shores.
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
I’m not sure what form Arnold imagines the “Sea of Faith” to take. Is it the church? Is it the quelling of Faith by Reason? Is it the appropriation of faith by institutions that fail to keep the Faith? Does the church always succumb to violence? As Jesus says, “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven is violently attacked as violent people seize it”
( Matt. 11:12, Common English Bible).
Perhaps this is what Arnold means by the “Sea of Faith” withdrawing. Violence has overtaken the Church, and we, its membership, also resort to violence. We cannot defend the Faith without violence. We want the moral high ground. We don’t want to acknowledge how we are like the enemy.
I, myself, assume the moral high ground. I turn my anger on Vladimir Putin who seems nothing less than a bully and an aggressor. He covets the ground once claimed by the Soviet Union and stakes his righteous claim on it. It is a territory partially inhabited by ethnic Russians, so he has a minor point. Still it is violent aggression, and I don’t condone it. But I don’t recognize it in myself.
So I don’t accept the low ground of peace, because I can still point to enemies like Putin. I’m sure there are people closer to home who defend him, and dismiss the claims of the Ukraine. I reject them, too. And this makes me a violent person, part of the “ignorant armies.”
I want nonviolence, but it is going to cost me something– my righteous high ground. It is a tough ask, even if a worthy one.
