Footsteps
Following a path
Of sunshine
Windowing
Across
The floor
From vast
And cold
And empty space
To warm my feet
So miniscule and far
And needing light
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Honesty is Not Negotiable
Some time ago I watched a young Christian lady talk herself into a number of dishonest acts. It troubled me because I know she is a good person with high ideals. It started rather innocently when she detected a double standard in the way her boss treated people. She then let this apparent injustice fester in her mind until she began to whine and complain about it. Then she began to justify doing things that she had been asked not to. “It’s only fair,” she would say to herself, followed by, “no one will ever know.”
What made this easy for her was that no major sins were being committed – or at least she didn’t think they were. It was her boss that was not being fair and she was on the side of justice. What she didn’t realize was that she was falling into a trap to which Christians, living in democracies, are very vulnerable. She put a higher value on fairness than on honesty.
Fairness is a very important virtue. When it is disregarded societies fail. In fact, in a very real sense, the history of liberty is a history of making society increasingly fairer. We disregard it at our own peril. But justice is important because it helps us live with each other. At an individual level it diminishes in importance. Being fair to ourselves is usually not something we have to work on. Being fair to others is important, but if we’re honest, fairness usually takes care of itself. The reverse is not always true.
Consider, for example, two simple questions. Suppose you have just returned from the store and noticed that the clerk short-changed you a dollar. What is your reaction? Now suppose you have just returned from the same store and discovered that the clerk gave you one dollar too much change. Now what is your reaction? Well the answer is pretty clear for most of us. We’re a bit upset by the first situation. A bit less upset by the second – in fact, maybe we’re not upset at all by it. Very few of us would be more upset by the second situation than by the first. Why is this?
No doubt part of the reason is self interest. If we don’t take care of ourselves, how can we expect others to? Besides, the customer is always right. If the clerk made a small mistake that benefits me – well, that’s his problem. Isn’t it?
Another part of the reason is that we’ve divided honesty into manageable compartments. We’ve learned to be honest to the extent of not breaking the civil law. But when it comes to our allegiance to a higher law, we are much less eager to comply.
A fair question to ask is which virtue is more important to a community – honesty or justice. Clearly, it will be argued, as long as there are criminals, there must be ways of dealing with them. In an imperfect world, justice cannot be dispensed with. Fair enough.
But this is the point where we make our mistakes. It’s certainly the place where my friend made hers. By emphasizing the importance of justice at a community level, we fail to recognize more important virtues in our personal lives. Instead of trying to overcome our own imperfections, we see how unfair others are and then we start gossiping and complaining about their imperfections.
A comparison might be made to espionage. We recognize that it can be important in international politics. But who would argue that spying on each other is good for families? This same disconnect in the relative hierarchy of virtues includes justice and honesty but we never seem to give this much thought.
Part of the reason seems to be that honesty is not something free societies worry too much about. It tends to take care of itself – at least in so far as it matters to the society at large. A dishonest person gets his comeuppance sooner or later. His colleagues might lose trust in him; or, if the dishonesty is illegal, he might end up in jail.
The Christian ethic, however, has never considered honesty a minor virtue or something that will just take care of itself. In fact Christians are not only expected to be completely honest with each other, they are also to be completely honest with God – regardless of who might be watching.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ taught His followers not to judge others at all, for “with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Later in the New Testament Jesus taught the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. In the story, the master agreed upon a wage with the laborers for working a full day. The master then agreed to pay others the same amount for much less than a full day’s work. The laborers that had worked all day were a bit upset, understandably. Even though this is a parable about the last and the first in the kingdom of God, it works as a parable because of its basic understanding of justice. Fairness is what we agree to, not something we negotiate after the fact. If there is a message for us in the perceived injustice it might be something like this: “don’t get so preoccupied with these things, life isn’t fair - deal with it”.
Yet while fairness preoccupies our thoughts, we often fail to see the effects of being honest. They happen automatically. To someone serious about never cheating, lying or getting more than a fair share, injustices hardly ever occur. When they do, they are accepted as part of an imperfect world. An honest Christian expects that sacrifices are necessary and that perfect justice has never been promised to anybody. In fact the central message of Christianity is that the justice that has condemnatory claim on each one of us can be trumped by the sacrifice of Christ. It can be, that is, to those who are honest.
If we are fair, we will probably get along with each other. We may even be very ethical people. Justice certainly does not imply selfishness. But then again it doesn’t prevent it either. It depends on what sort of justice we believe in. But if we become imbalanced in our justice to the point of ignoring honesty, other things follow. Chances are we’ll get carried away with endless self-justifications. We become experts in situational justice, as if truth were negotiable. In the end, we live without peace, for there are no promises for this sort of thing other than a world of anger and offended people living tit-for-tat lives.
To those who are honest and are willing to sacrifice for a nobler cause, though, the rewards are immense. Life can be lived with a peaceful conscience. Injustices happen, of course, but somehow they seem to occur less frequently than they do to others. When they are overlooked, the honest person often wins a friend. More import is the spiritual maturity that comes from obeying a higher law and the joy of being acceptable to God (see Doctrine and Covenants 97:8).
It might seem that returning a dollar to the clerk who gave us too much money is an act of justice. And so it is. But we don’t praise this sort of thing for its fairness. We praise it for its honesty. Fairness, after all, is something we praise children for. It is a politeness like saying “thank you”. We are expected to have it when we grow up. It takes a lifetime and then some to become honest. It’s not something we can talk our way through by pointing out the failings in others. It is part of a higher law, and it isn’t negotiable.
What made this easy for her was that no major sins were being committed – or at least she didn’t think they were. It was her boss that was not being fair and she was on the side of justice. What she didn’t realize was that she was falling into a trap to which Christians, living in democracies, are very vulnerable. She put a higher value on fairness than on honesty.
Fairness is a very important virtue. When it is disregarded societies fail. In fact, in a very real sense, the history of liberty is a history of making society increasingly fairer. We disregard it at our own peril. But justice is important because it helps us live with each other. At an individual level it diminishes in importance. Being fair to ourselves is usually not something we have to work on. Being fair to others is important, but if we’re honest, fairness usually takes care of itself. The reverse is not always true.
Consider, for example, two simple questions. Suppose you have just returned from the store and noticed that the clerk short-changed you a dollar. What is your reaction? Now suppose you have just returned from the same store and discovered that the clerk gave you one dollar too much change. Now what is your reaction? Well the answer is pretty clear for most of us. We’re a bit upset by the first situation. A bit less upset by the second – in fact, maybe we’re not upset at all by it. Very few of us would be more upset by the second situation than by the first. Why is this?
No doubt part of the reason is self interest. If we don’t take care of ourselves, how can we expect others to? Besides, the customer is always right. If the clerk made a small mistake that benefits me – well, that’s his problem. Isn’t it?
Another part of the reason is that we’ve divided honesty into manageable compartments. We’ve learned to be honest to the extent of not breaking the civil law. But when it comes to our allegiance to a higher law, we are much less eager to comply.
A fair question to ask is which virtue is more important to a community – honesty or justice. Clearly, it will be argued, as long as there are criminals, there must be ways of dealing with them. In an imperfect world, justice cannot be dispensed with. Fair enough.
But this is the point where we make our mistakes. It’s certainly the place where my friend made hers. By emphasizing the importance of justice at a community level, we fail to recognize more important virtues in our personal lives. Instead of trying to overcome our own imperfections, we see how unfair others are and then we start gossiping and complaining about their imperfections.
A comparison might be made to espionage. We recognize that it can be important in international politics. But who would argue that spying on each other is good for families? This same disconnect in the relative hierarchy of virtues includes justice and honesty but we never seem to give this much thought.
Part of the reason seems to be that honesty is not something free societies worry too much about. It tends to take care of itself – at least in so far as it matters to the society at large. A dishonest person gets his comeuppance sooner or later. His colleagues might lose trust in him; or, if the dishonesty is illegal, he might end up in jail.
The Christian ethic, however, has never considered honesty a minor virtue or something that will just take care of itself. In fact Christians are not only expected to be completely honest with each other, they are also to be completely honest with God – regardless of who might be watching.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ taught His followers not to judge others at all, for “with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Later in the New Testament Jesus taught the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. In the story, the master agreed upon a wage with the laborers for working a full day. The master then agreed to pay others the same amount for much less than a full day’s work. The laborers that had worked all day were a bit upset, understandably. Even though this is a parable about the last and the first in the kingdom of God, it works as a parable because of its basic understanding of justice. Fairness is what we agree to, not something we negotiate after the fact. If there is a message for us in the perceived injustice it might be something like this: “don’t get so preoccupied with these things, life isn’t fair - deal with it”.
Yet while fairness preoccupies our thoughts, we often fail to see the effects of being honest. They happen automatically. To someone serious about never cheating, lying or getting more than a fair share, injustices hardly ever occur. When they do, they are accepted as part of an imperfect world. An honest Christian expects that sacrifices are necessary and that perfect justice has never been promised to anybody. In fact the central message of Christianity is that the justice that has condemnatory claim on each one of us can be trumped by the sacrifice of Christ. It can be, that is, to those who are honest.
If we are fair, we will probably get along with each other. We may even be very ethical people. Justice certainly does not imply selfishness. But then again it doesn’t prevent it either. It depends on what sort of justice we believe in. But if we become imbalanced in our justice to the point of ignoring honesty, other things follow. Chances are we’ll get carried away with endless self-justifications. We become experts in situational justice, as if truth were negotiable. In the end, we live without peace, for there are no promises for this sort of thing other than a world of anger and offended people living tit-for-tat lives.
To those who are honest and are willing to sacrifice for a nobler cause, though, the rewards are immense. Life can be lived with a peaceful conscience. Injustices happen, of course, but somehow they seem to occur less frequently than they do to others. When they are overlooked, the honest person often wins a friend. More import is the spiritual maturity that comes from obeying a higher law and the joy of being acceptable to God (see Doctrine and Covenants 97:8).
It might seem that returning a dollar to the clerk who gave us too much money is an act of justice. And so it is. But we don’t praise this sort of thing for its fairness. We praise it for its honesty. Fairness, after all, is something we praise children for. It is a politeness like saying “thank you”. We are expected to have it when we grow up. It takes a lifetime and then some to become honest. It’s not something we can talk our way through by pointing out the failings in others. It is part of a higher law, and it isn’t negotiable.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Forgetfulness
Most of us have lamented, on more than one occasion, how unfortunate it is that our memory is so poor. When we hear about people that seem never to forget things, it’s hard not to be jealous. Everybody knows of an unmotivated truant who gets better grades than the sedulous student because he never forgets what the teacher says - even if he doesn‘t show up to half of the classes. It doesn’t seem fair.
But this is really only a minor part of the problem. Forgetfulness has much more to do with who we are than we think. It is one of the biggest limiting factors in our lives. Our ability to remember determines, in many ways, what we are and what we do with our lives. What we forget, on the other hand, determines in many ways how much we will be held back.
There is one particular kind of forgetfulness that is, by far, more important than all the others. It is the forgetfulness that we call birth. Unlike other kinds of forgetfulness, though, the forgetfulness at birth is evenly experienced by all of us. And, as often happens when everybody experiences something to the same degree (like breathing oxygen), we tend to ignore it.
But this is a mistake. Regardless of its universal nature, this forgetfulness can cause us a great deal of grief. If it were to disappear suddenly, our individual lives would be filled with rapture. Unconditional love would prevail. There would be no more problems of poor self-esteem. We would no longer be pre-occupied with social standing, with how we look, with how much money we make, or with all the things that we imagine will help us feel good about ourselves. Wars would cease altogether and we would be at peace with ourselves. In a word, life would be heavenly. And it would be heavenly because, in the eyes of God, we are His children and we are of great – even unimaginable – worth. The trouble is that we just don’t remember that we are.
Which is, of course, the way mortality was meant to be. Life here on earth, at least for the time being, is not intended to be heavenly. It is supposed to be a testing ground. And this forgetfulness is an important part of the test. It even has a name is some faiths. In the Judeo/Christian tradition it is called “the veil”.
The image of a veil is a fitting one. Veils hide things that are not meant to be profaned. In some cultures a women’s face is so considered. Our life before and beyond mortality – life that remains obscured and yet informs our most sacred longings – surely fits this image as well. Yet, interestingly, the Judeo/Christian veil refers specifically to one particular veil – at least it used to. That veil was the veil in the temple in Jerusalem.
There was actually more than one veil in the temple. Some of them were like curtains separating rooms and sacred places. But the one that was specifically referred to as “the veil” separated the Holy of Holies from the Inner Court. This was the most sacred place on earth. It was the place that only the High Priest could enter – and then only once a year. The New Testament refers to this veil as the katapetasmatos, or literally, “the place to draw near to heaven (or winged things)”. It is mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews as the focus (or anchor) of a Christ-centered life (Hebrews 6:19).
This veil is not like other veils we are used to. We can’t just remove it and expect to see clearly. Neither can we just exercise, get a good night sleep and then wake up remembering what we have forgotten for many years. The veil of forgetfulness is intended to remain with us for as long as we sojourn in mortality. And yet remarkably, there are those that manage to sense what is on the other side anyway. I’m not referring to those that have near-death experiences – going through and returning from the veil. Such cases are certainly noteworthy but they seem so remote from most of our own experience.
There is another way to understand what lies beyond – to get a glimpse of what it means to be a child of God in this life and in the eternities. This other way is through the window known as charity.
By charity I don’t mean the giving of money to the poor, or the love that we have for our family and close friends. This kind of love is one of the greatest experiences of life but it is, nonetheless, a part of this life – of mortality. It is in our genes. Charity, or the love of God, is more than this. It is the great gift of the spirit that is vouchsafed to us when we give all of our hearts to God. Through this window of charity we see and understand the great worth of each of our Father in Heaven’s children. Through this window we are filled with love for all whom we see – even, remarkably, for our enemies. When we look through this window we begin to understand just how valued we are as members of this divine family. It is only through this window that we can ever hope to get beyond the constraints of this fallen world – constraints that are necessary but inseparable from so much sadness – even to the desperate angst of existential despair.
The veil is quite misunderstood
When it is cast before the mind
But it is not the brain that worries me
As does another kind of memory
That sunders from the heart
Belief in Heaven’s pedigree
How much grief could be avoided if our criminals – even our angry neighbors and coworkers, for that matter – could somehow see through this window. Instead of trying to get a bigger boat, the family down the street might instead offer to help take care of the neighbor’s yard while they are on vacation at the lake. They wouldn’t be worrying about their own importance or their visible possessions. Instead of competing with each other at work in order to please the boss, we would already understand that we are accepted by the greatest boss of all – our Heavenly Father. Knowing this, we would spend our time being helpful to everybody – helping others get ahead.
And it is no wonder. Seeing through the veil has the effect of filling us with the love of God. Of course the opposite is sometimes more commonly seen. When we fail to look through the veil, the love of many seems to disappear. Selfishness is the opposite of this eternal perspective and one of its greatest causes is not looking through the window often enough.
But failing to look through the veil is one thing. Forgetting about the veil altogether is quite another – sort of a compounded forgetfulness. Remembering that there is a place where we can glimpse into heaven – however imperfectly – should inform every aspect of our lives. Without this anchor, we are left to find meaning any other way we can. And, sadly, there are too many people living this way, and they are easy enough to spot. Charity is missing from their lives.
What then is to be done with this global epidemic of amnesia – with this failure to understand our relationship to God? The answer is really quite simple. It is the katapetasmatos. It is the veil in the House of the Lord. It is a life focused on that window into the knowledge of the love of God and of our relationship to Him.
Let’s face it. Life doesn’t offer us free samples of self esteem. How sad it is that most of us spend a lifetime trying to feel good about ourselves. It’s so much easier to just remember what we have forgotten – what is obvious on the other side of the veil. We really are children of God.
But this is really only a minor part of the problem. Forgetfulness has much more to do with who we are than we think. It is one of the biggest limiting factors in our lives. Our ability to remember determines, in many ways, what we are and what we do with our lives. What we forget, on the other hand, determines in many ways how much we will be held back.
There is one particular kind of forgetfulness that is, by far, more important than all the others. It is the forgetfulness that we call birth. Unlike other kinds of forgetfulness, though, the forgetfulness at birth is evenly experienced by all of us. And, as often happens when everybody experiences something to the same degree (like breathing oxygen), we tend to ignore it.
But this is a mistake. Regardless of its universal nature, this forgetfulness can cause us a great deal of grief. If it were to disappear suddenly, our individual lives would be filled with rapture. Unconditional love would prevail. There would be no more problems of poor self-esteem. We would no longer be pre-occupied with social standing, with how we look, with how much money we make, or with all the things that we imagine will help us feel good about ourselves. Wars would cease altogether and we would be at peace with ourselves. In a word, life would be heavenly. And it would be heavenly because, in the eyes of God, we are His children and we are of great – even unimaginable – worth. The trouble is that we just don’t remember that we are.
Which is, of course, the way mortality was meant to be. Life here on earth, at least for the time being, is not intended to be heavenly. It is supposed to be a testing ground. And this forgetfulness is an important part of the test. It even has a name is some faiths. In the Judeo/Christian tradition it is called “the veil”.
The image of a veil is a fitting one. Veils hide things that are not meant to be profaned. In some cultures a women’s face is so considered. Our life before and beyond mortality – life that remains obscured and yet informs our most sacred longings – surely fits this image as well. Yet, interestingly, the Judeo/Christian veil refers specifically to one particular veil – at least it used to. That veil was the veil in the temple in Jerusalem.
There was actually more than one veil in the temple. Some of them were like curtains separating rooms and sacred places. But the one that was specifically referred to as “the veil” separated the Holy of Holies from the Inner Court. This was the most sacred place on earth. It was the place that only the High Priest could enter – and then only once a year. The New Testament refers to this veil as the katapetasmatos, or literally, “the place to draw near to heaven (or winged things)”. It is mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews as the focus (or anchor) of a Christ-centered life (Hebrews 6:19).
This veil is not like other veils we are used to. We can’t just remove it and expect to see clearly. Neither can we just exercise, get a good night sleep and then wake up remembering what we have forgotten for many years. The veil of forgetfulness is intended to remain with us for as long as we sojourn in mortality. And yet remarkably, there are those that manage to sense what is on the other side anyway. I’m not referring to those that have near-death experiences – going through and returning from the veil. Such cases are certainly noteworthy but they seem so remote from most of our own experience.
There is another way to understand what lies beyond – to get a glimpse of what it means to be a child of God in this life and in the eternities. This other way is through the window known as charity.
By charity I don’t mean the giving of money to the poor, or the love that we have for our family and close friends. This kind of love is one of the greatest experiences of life but it is, nonetheless, a part of this life – of mortality. It is in our genes. Charity, or the love of God, is more than this. It is the great gift of the spirit that is vouchsafed to us when we give all of our hearts to God. Through this window of charity we see and understand the great worth of each of our Father in Heaven’s children. Through this window we are filled with love for all whom we see – even, remarkably, for our enemies. When we look through this window we begin to understand just how valued we are as members of this divine family. It is only through this window that we can ever hope to get beyond the constraints of this fallen world – constraints that are necessary but inseparable from so much sadness – even to the desperate angst of existential despair.
The veil is quite misunderstood
When it is cast before the mind
But it is not the brain that worries me
As does another kind of memory
That sunders from the heart
Belief in Heaven’s pedigree
How much grief could be avoided if our criminals – even our angry neighbors and coworkers, for that matter – could somehow see through this window. Instead of trying to get a bigger boat, the family down the street might instead offer to help take care of the neighbor’s yard while they are on vacation at the lake. They wouldn’t be worrying about their own importance or their visible possessions. Instead of competing with each other at work in order to please the boss, we would already understand that we are accepted by the greatest boss of all – our Heavenly Father. Knowing this, we would spend our time being helpful to everybody – helping others get ahead.
And it is no wonder. Seeing through the veil has the effect of filling us with the love of God. Of course the opposite is sometimes more commonly seen. When we fail to look through the veil, the love of many seems to disappear. Selfishness is the opposite of this eternal perspective and one of its greatest causes is not looking through the window often enough.
But failing to look through the veil is one thing. Forgetting about the veil altogether is quite another – sort of a compounded forgetfulness. Remembering that there is a place where we can glimpse into heaven – however imperfectly – should inform every aspect of our lives. Without this anchor, we are left to find meaning any other way we can. And, sadly, there are too many people living this way, and they are easy enough to spot. Charity is missing from their lives.
What then is to be done with this global epidemic of amnesia – with this failure to understand our relationship to God? The answer is really quite simple. It is the katapetasmatos. It is the veil in the House of the Lord. It is a life focused on that window into the knowledge of the love of God and of our relationship to Him.
Let’s face it. Life doesn’t offer us free samples of self esteem. How sad it is that most of us spend a lifetime trying to feel good about ourselves. It’s so much easier to just remember what we have forgotten – what is obvious on the other side of the veil. We really are children of God.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Why We Need Field Guides
Travel books are popular and tend to sell well. They don’t make best seller lists, at least that I know of, but they usually occupy more shelf space in our favorite bookstores than titles on philosophy, for example, or music or even field guides.
This shouldn’t surprise anybody. We prefer traveling to thinking deeply, after all; and, as far as music goes - well, we’d much prefer to just listen to it rather than read about it. But what about field guides? This might seem like an odd question. After all, what does traveling have to do with field guides?
Well, frankly, traveling has - or at least it should have - a lot to do with field guides. The truth is that the most distinctive part of any place we might visit is more evident in the native animals and plants (even in the fungi and microbes for that matter) than in whatever man-made structures we might otherwise associate with them.
This is evident in spades to the business traveler who flies to a big city, eats at a nice publicly owned restaurant, sleeps in an upscale hotel and hardly steps outside except to hop in a cab back to the airport. “Oh the food was great,” our traveler might confess back at the office. But, in reality, our traveler has really not traveled at all. At least he hasn’t really experienced what is unique about the place he has just visited. All he has really done is change locations for few days. Unfortunately this is becoming more and more common as places all around the world compete for the world traveler’s business. The more interconnected we become nationally - and especially internationally - the more our business and tourist attractions begin to look more and more alike (as Daniel J. Boorstin has pointed out in The Image).
I don’t mean to downplay the many historical buildings and parks that make up our cities and give them personality and charm. I merely wish to point out what should be obvious. The complex of living things, that have made individual places around the world their home, is a part of the history of the world that should take priority to many other human constructs. These complexes are what make places unique.
We recognize this in ways we might not have realized. Experienced connoisseurs of wine (which I am not) are keen to the types of grapes that grow in a particular region. Sometimes these grapes are different varieties and give a corresponding flavor that is distinct. Sometimes, though, the same grapes just taste differently in different places that experience different climates. Even subtle environmental differences can make a very different wine.
Restaurateurs are also keen on locally produced foods. Crab cakes are just better on the Delmarva Peninsula than they are in Detroit. I can also vouch for the superiority of key lime pie in the Florida Keys over any other place I’ve tried it. Place is important after all, even if the purveyors of global markets try ceaselessly to convince us otherwise.
An acquaintance of mine - a true foodie - once told me that he would never eat at a chain restaurant if a local restaurant were available. And although it happens that the local cuisine is not always impressive, it at least has individuality. If he happens to misjudge a place because of a poor dinner choice, he has at least made a judgment using better criteria than the quality of a handful of national chains.
All of this may seem like a long way from field guides but, in fact, it isn’t. If food and wine are sufficient to give a place a level of local interest, the kinds of wildlife that live in a given place should do so to an even greater degree. If you like the seafood in Seattle, you should check out the coast and see how many unusual seabirds you can identify. Of course, you’ll need a field guide to help you - and hopefully you’ll be able to find a local one. Bird guides of the entire US are nice to have but for beginners looking to identify organisms in a specific place of interest, local field guides are quite a bit more helpful.
When you’re done with your trip, you’ll probably have many more fond memories of the place you visited and a more accurate understanding of what makes that place unique. Before long you’ll start planning your trips around places of natural interest instead of places that are just popular. You’ll also have a better understanding of the real world and be wiser than you would be for having just been a tourist. Before long you’ll have started to collect field guides from different places and have a lot of great reading material for bedtime. Field guides, after all are the perfect light reading at the end of the day. The information comes in small reading bites and leaves you with thoughts of interesting places to visit. You may even start dreaming of exotic places and beasts. Then, to top it all off, you’ll also be a lot smarter. This is hard to beat. And all of it for the price of an inexpensive paperback - that is usually bound to take a bit of beating. So next time you buy a travel book, make sure you stop by the field guides as well. They go hand-in-hand. And have a nice trip.
This shouldn’t surprise anybody. We prefer traveling to thinking deeply, after all; and, as far as music goes - well, we’d much prefer to just listen to it rather than read about it. But what about field guides? This might seem like an odd question. After all, what does traveling have to do with field guides?
Well, frankly, traveling has - or at least it should have - a lot to do with field guides. The truth is that the most distinctive part of any place we might visit is more evident in the native animals and plants (even in the fungi and microbes for that matter) than in whatever man-made structures we might otherwise associate with them.
This is evident in spades to the business traveler who flies to a big city, eats at a nice publicly owned restaurant, sleeps in an upscale hotel and hardly steps outside except to hop in a cab back to the airport. “Oh the food was great,” our traveler might confess back at the office. But, in reality, our traveler has really not traveled at all. At least he hasn’t really experienced what is unique about the place he has just visited. All he has really done is change locations for few days. Unfortunately this is becoming more and more common as places all around the world compete for the world traveler’s business. The more interconnected we become nationally - and especially internationally - the more our business and tourist attractions begin to look more and more alike (as Daniel J. Boorstin has pointed out in The Image).
I don’t mean to downplay the many historical buildings and parks that make up our cities and give them personality and charm. I merely wish to point out what should be obvious. The complex of living things, that have made individual places around the world their home, is a part of the history of the world that should take priority to many other human constructs. These complexes are what make places unique.
We recognize this in ways we might not have realized. Experienced connoisseurs of wine (which I am not) are keen to the types of grapes that grow in a particular region. Sometimes these grapes are different varieties and give a corresponding flavor that is distinct. Sometimes, though, the same grapes just taste differently in different places that experience different climates. Even subtle environmental differences can make a very different wine.
Restaurateurs are also keen on locally produced foods. Crab cakes are just better on the Delmarva Peninsula than they are in Detroit. I can also vouch for the superiority of key lime pie in the Florida Keys over any other place I’ve tried it. Place is important after all, even if the purveyors of global markets try ceaselessly to convince us otherwise.
An acquaintance of mine - a true foodie - once told me that he would never eat at a chain restaurant if a local restaurant were available. And although it happens that the local cuisine is not always impressive, it at least has individuality. If he happens to misjudge a place because of a poor dinner choice, he has at least made a judgment using better criteria than the quality of a handful of national chains.
All of this may seem like a long way from field guides but, in fact, it isn’t. If food and wine are sufficient to give a place a level of local interest, the kinds of wildlife that live in a given place should do so to an even greater degree. If you like the seafood in Seattle, you should check out the coast and see how many unusual seabirds you can identify. Of course, you’ll need a field guide to help you - and hopefully you’ll be able to find a local one. Bird guides of the entire US are nice to have but for beginners looking to identify organisms in a specific place of interest, local field guides are quite a bit more helpful.
When you’re done with your trip, you’ll probably have many more fond memories of the place you visited and a more accurate understanding of what makes that place unique. Before long you’ll start planning your trips around places of natural interest instead of places that are just popular. You’ll also have a better understanding of the real world and be wiser than you would be for having just been a tourist. Before long you’ll have started to collect field guides from different places and have a lot of great reading material for bedtime. Field guides, after all are the perfect light reading at the end of the day. The information comes in small reading bites and leaves you with thoughts of interesting places to visit. You may even start dreaming of exotic places and beasts. Then, to top it all off, you’ll also be a lot smarter. This is hard to beat. And all of it for the price of an inexpensive paperback - that is usually bound to take a bit of beating. So next time you buy a travel book, make sure you stop by the field guides as well. They go hand-in-hand. And have a nice trip.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Discovery and Invention
Our time is a time of invention and innovation. We expect a constant supply of new and better products. Our economy is based on a growth that is driven by these products and by new and better ways to do things. Our patent offices around the world are busier than ever before with all the new ideas that promise to make their inventors rich.
In contrast, the period of discovery is losing momentum. There are fewer and fewer unexplored places left on earth. No new maps are being made with the inviting words “Terra Incognita” written in far away places. This doesn’t mean that we’ve discovered everything there is to know - far from it. The oceans are still mostly mysterious to us, and many new species of living things are being found every year - sometimes in our own backyards. Even so, we are funding fewer and fewer taxonomists to handle the added diversity. There is a lot we still don’t know about our world, not to mention all that lives beyond it.
Bu in spite of all this, there has been a shift in the focus of or creativity. This shift may seem subtle but it is, I think, significant. Whereas discovery accepts the reality of the world as it is, invention attempts to re-create it. Neither discoverers nor inventers can claim a monopoly on virtue or take all the credit for improving the world. But when it comes to blame - blame for harming the world - inventers far exceed discoverers. Of course inventers usually don’t try and do this intentionally. But whether they do so intentionally or not, there is a different kind of arrogance that starts with a human construct outside of the natural order and imposes it upon the living world.
I say that this is a different kind of arrogance because I don’t wish to minimize the overweening pride of many discoverers and inventers alike. Without doubt the early explorers were often motivated by pride and their arrogance lead to much harm among conquered peoples. This is not all so different from many discoverers today who compete with each other in laboratories and in the field for recognition and prestige. It may even be true that the pride of discoverers is greater than that of inventers, who very often are more motivated by wealth than by pride.
But this is not the point I wish to emphasize. Human hubris - the kind that has disrupted our planet and threatens to destroy us in any number of ways - is a problem we have inherited from inventers and not so much from discoverers.
Now it is also true that inventers would have no basic building blocks to work with if it weren’t for the effort of the discoverers. And so it might be tempting to blame them as well, but this would be a mistake. I am not arguing for a cessation of inventions. In fact, if anything, I am asking for more - but for inventions of the right kinds - the kinds that respect the natural order of things.
There is nothing inherently wrong (or even sinful) about inventing, just as there is a lot of room for wrong (and even sin) in acts of discovery. The difference is that the act of discovery itself is grounded in the creation, and if it happens that the discoverer lacks any and all respect for the Creator, this grounding is at least a check on un-natural consequences.
The act of inventing, however, is a different thing. It often involves a modification of the natural order. When this saves lives or otherwise improves the world, it is commendable. As someone with a few patents to my name, I would be a hypocrite to argue otherwise.
But the part that we have ignored for too long is that there are consequences to everything we do. There are consequences that follow from natural events. These consequences are themselves part of the natural order. But consequences that stem from unnatural events can be an entirely different thing. Perhaps these consequences may be small - like a dry shirt as a consequence of using a clothespin on a rope. Or the consequence may be great - like the genocide of an atomic bomb. In some cases we don’t have the smallest idea of the consequences of the things that we invent.
But it’s about time that we started thinking about them a little more seriously, and stop supposing that invention is an unambiguous good. A good place to start is to ask the simple question about how an invention impacts the natural order. Subsequent questions follow naturally from this.
Come to think of it though, there’s even a more fundamental issue before we can ever start to ask this question. We need to start recognizing the fact that we are part of the natural order ourselves. When we ignore this, even while we unleash so many unnatural things upon the world, we risk much. Strange as it might seem, we need to “discover” again just how much a part of this order we belong to.
Daniel Boorstin pointed out several years ago that we are living more and more in a world of what he called pseudo-events. These are un-natural events that we as humans contrive for our convenience and pride and that now surround us and fill our lives to the exclusion of the natural order of things. A significant consequence of these many contrivances in our lives is that we are no longer grounded in reality. Boorstin writes,
“More and more of our experience thus becomes invention rather than discovery. The more planned and prefabricated our experience becomes, the more we include in it only what “interests” us. Then we can more effectively exclude the exotic world beyond our ken … and which we most need to make us more largely human.” (See The Image, A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Vintage Books (1987) p. 256.)
Of course the key issue here is a willingness to acknowledge that there is a natural order for us as humans and that it is not the same as for us as animals only. This was always evident to our ancestors – who in many ways were much wiser than we seem to be. This was evident to them because they were discoverers. They were discoverers of many things – including of what it means to be human.
So let’s continue to fill our patent offices with ways to improve the world. But let us be wise enough to realize that unless we also continue to discover what it means to be truly human, we run the very real risk of destroying ourselves and a whole lot more.
In contrast, the period of discovery is losing momentum. There are fewer and fewer unexplored places left on earth. No new maps are being made with the inviting words “Terra Incognita” written in far away places. This doesn’t mean that we’ve discovered everything there is to know - far from it. The oceans are still mostly mysterious to us, and many new species of living things are being found every year - sometimes in our own backyards. Even so, we are funding fewer and fewer taxonomists to handle the added diversity. There is a lot we still don’t know about our world, not to mention all that lives beyond it.
Bu in spite of all this, there has been a shift in the focus of or creativity. This shift may seem subtle but it is, I think, significant. Whereas discovery accepts the reality of the world as it is, invention attempts to re-create it. Neither discoverers nor inventers can claim a monopoly on virtue or take all the credit for improving the world. But when it comes to blame - blame for harming the world - inventers far exceed discoverers. Of course inventers usually don’t try and do this intentionally. But whether they do so intentionally or not, there is a different kind of arrogance that starts with a human construct outside of the natural order and imposes it upon the living world.
I say that this is a different kind of arrogance because I don’t wish to minimize the overweening pride of many discoverers and inventers alike. Without doubt the early explorers were often motivated by pride and their arrogance lead to much harm among conquered peoples. This is not all so different from many discoverers today who compete with each other in laboratories and in the field for recognition and prestige. It may even be true that the pride of discoverers is greater than that of inventers, who very often are more motivated by wealth than by pride.
But this is not the point I wish to emphasize. Human hubris - the kind that has disrupted our planet and threatens to destroy us in any number of ways - is a problem we have inherited from inventers and not so much from discoverers.
Now it is also true that inventers would have no basic building blocks to work with if it weren’t for the effort of the discoverers. And so it might be tempting to blame them as well, but this would be a mistake. I am not arguing for a cessation of inventions. In fact, if anything, I am asking for more - but for inventions of the right kinds - the kinds that respect the natural order of things.
There is nothing inherently wrong (or even sinful) about inventing, just as there is a lot of room for wrong (and even sin) in acts of discovery. The difference is that the act of discovery itself is grounded in the creation, and if it happens that the discoverer lacks any and all respect for the Creator, this grounding is at least a check on un-natural consequences.
The act of inventing, however, is a different thing. It often involves a modification of the natural order. When this saves lives or otherwise improves the world, it is commendable. As someone with a few patents to my name, I would be a hypocrite to argue otherwise.
But the part that we have ignored for too long is that there are consequences to everything we do. There are consequences that follow from natural events. These consequences are themselves part of the natural order. But consequences that stem from unnatural events can be an entirely different thing. Perhaps these consequences may be small - like a dry shirt as a consequence of using a clothespin on a rope. Or the consequence may be great - like the genocide of an atomic bomb. In some cases we don’t have the smallest idea of the consequences of the things that we invent.
But it’s about time that we started thinking about them a little more seriously, and stop supposing that invention is an unambiguous good. A good place to start is to ask the simple question about how an invention impacts the natural order. Subsequent questions follow naturally from this.
Come to think of it though, there’s even a more fundamental issue before we can ever start to ask this question. We need to start recognizing the fact that we are part of the natural order ourselves. When we ignore this, even while we unleash so many unnatural things upon the world, we risk much. Strange as it might seem, we need to “discover” again just how much a part of this order we belong to.
Daniel Boorstin pointed out several years ago that we are living more and more in a world of what he called pseudo-events. These are un-natural events that we as humans contrive for our convenience and pride and that now surround us and fill our lives to the exclusion of the natural order of things. A significant consequence of these many contrivances in our lives is that we are no longer grounded in reality. Boorstin writes,
“More and more of our experience thus becomes invention rather than discovery. The more planned and prefabricated our experience becomes, the more we include in it only what “interests” us. Then we can more effectively exclude the exotic world beyond our ken … and which we most need to make us more largely human.” (See The Image, A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Vintage Books (1987) p. 256.)
Of course the key issue here is a willingness to acknowledge that there is a natural order for us as humans and that it is not the same as for us as animals only. This was always evident to our ancestors – who in many ways were much wiser than we seem to be. This was evident to them because they were discoverers. They were discoverers of many things – including of what it means to be human.
So let’s continue to fill our patent offices with ways to improve the world. But let us be wise enough to realize that unless we also continue to discover what it means to be truly human, we run the very real risk of destroying ourselves and a whole lot more.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Owl Near Aspen Grove
It might have been a hunch
That had me turn my head
Right when the specter glided by
And then I felt the silent
Wielding of her wings
And knew it wasn’t me
For my heart wasn’t beating
When the feathers
Ruffled past
I think she saw me all along,
And merely came to wish me
Pleasant dreams
That had me turn my head
Right when the specter glided by
And then I felt the silent
Wielding of her wings
And knew it wasn’t me
For my heart wasn’t beating
When the feathers
Ruffled past
I think she saw me all along,
And merely came to wish me
Pleasant dreams
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Limiting Factors
Many years ago when I was in junior high school, I decided I wanted to be on the track and field team and compete in the high jump. The gym coach made arrangements for me and I spent many hours practicing. I learned quickly that I could clear the bar better by jumping backwards and so I worked on that technique. I made quick progress at first as I strengthened my legs and learned a how to better control by jump. But then I hit a plateau and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get any higher. The lower part of my back kept hitting the bar. I tried different kinds of exercises and lifted more weights but no matter how strong or flexible I became, I remained limited by my lower back. We didn’t have anybody at the school to help me on my technique so I never improved. When basketball season came around, I gave up high jumping; and, as it turned out, I never returned to the sport.
I’ve come to believe that limiting factors - whether they be a high jumping technique or anything else - are much more important than many of us think. And yet we hardly ever do pay much attention to them. The truth is that we really don’t like to because it usually isn’t very pleasant. This is understandable because limiting factors are very often things in our lives that we don’t do well. We much prefer focusing on our strengths. It makes us feel better about ourselves. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking also keeps us stranded on plateaus. Sometimes we want very badly to get off these plateaus and do something more with our lives. When we seem unable to do so, we get frustrated. “Why can’t people see how good I am? We ask ourselves, never realizing that it isn’t our strengths that keep us back. It’s our weaknesses that do.
When we are young we tend to take people at face value. If someone looks smart or pretty or keeps a particular image we believe that it accurately represents them. Not realizing that we are only seeing one side – the side the person wants us to see – we sometimes assume that they have no negative traits at all. When, to our surprise, this person ends up, say, in prison, it completely surprises us. “That’s not the person I knew,” we tell ourselves. And this, of course, is not a lie. We never did thoroughly know that person. We would be a good deal wiser if we recognized this. We all have virtues. Everybody expects this. Why should we be surprised when we discover that we also have limitations?
I’ve watched a lot of basketball players through the years. One thing is common among almost all of the fairly good players - I mean players that are not quite good enough to make the team. They think the game is all about scoring and so they practice and practice their shooting and ignore other important parts of the game. Many of these individuals would have done much better to have learned to be more aggressive and be tougher defenders and rebounders. These skills are much more commonly the limiting factors among this group of players.
The truth is that we are quite good at ignoring our limiting factors. The most common way that we do this is by making excuses or by otherwise justifying our behavior. I know a bright manager who desires to move up the corporate ladder. He has a lot of excellent qualifications but has a habit of being too glib and at times condescending in his conversation. He realizes this but instead of trying to change behavior, he says that people are just like that where he is from and that he can’t help the way he is. “We all have our little hang-ups anyway,” he says, or so he has convinced himself.
Another reason we tend to ignore our limiting factors is because they are often tied to our habits or to things that make us comfortable. The example that comes most immediately to mind is our preference to relax instead of work, like our habit of watching just one television program that then leads to a second and so on until the entire evening is wasted. It is a tragedy the amount of life that is wasted in this way.
These are obvious examples, but what about gossiping? It is also a habit that keeps us stuck on plateaus. Very few habits so readily mark us as mediocre as habitual gossip. It is the hallmark of prideful virtue and self-righteousness. It automatically puts one, whether merited or not, in the camp of the complainers instead of among the few that can be trusted. It is a past-time of moral laziness.
Another very common limiting factor is the lack of knowledge. Take for instance an inexperienced farmer who decides to plant an acre of his favorite sweet corn in a field that was planted in wheat the year before. Unknown to the farmer are the thousands of hungry wireworms hidden in the soil that are eager to eat every corn root they can find. The farmer, with a bit more knowledge, could have learned that farming isn’t just a matter of planting, watering and harvesting. Losing a crop is a hard way to learn about limiting factors.
But the most serious kinds of limiting factors are those involving sin. One of the reasons that they are so serious is because sin tends to be a cascade to so many other limiting factors. Maybe we are kept back in our employment because we tend to be lazy occasionally. This, of course, is a sin against our employer. If we fail to overcome this habit it very often leads to complaining or gossiping in order to vindicate our poor performance. When this happens, it becomes all too easy to tell lies which then lead to even more serious problems. Even the smallest sins that are left to fester can be profoundly limiting.
But sins can also have a bright side. They can be overcome and changed into strengths. This is the message of the prophet Ether. Those that humble themselves, exercise faith in Christ and forsake their sins have the promise that their weakness will turn to strengths (see Ether 12:27). This is not always the case with other limiting factors.
Very often when we overcome a limiting factor, we progress. This isn’t necessarily because our weakness has become strength but because we have just removed so much dead weight that was holding us back. When weaknesses are removed by Christ, however, the promise is that not only will we have the dead weight removed but that we will gain a new strength. This can happen because we gain access to strength beyond ourselves.
One of the great examples in literature both of the limiting and strengthening nature of sin is the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The honorable Reverend Dimmesdale, in a moment of passion lost his virtue with the married woman Hester Prynne. Unlike Hester, though, whose sin was readily visible in the child of their adulterous relationship, the child’s father, Reverend Dimmesdale, remained unknown. And yet, for all its obscurity, the sin had a profound effect upon him. He planned many times to announce his error publicly but was unable to. In a society that was intolerant of this sin, his life would have been completely ruined. Any hope that repentance can lead to a better life in this sort of society did not exist.
And so Dimmesdale’s sin festered and he considered himself the worst of humanity. In fact, his self-demeaning habits were so obvious that the citizens of Boston considered him a very saintly and pure man because of them. Yet his burden made him physically sick. His health was even more compromised because of his doctor (who, unknown to him, was also Hester’s husband seeking revenge).
Through all this, the citizens believed their Reverend Dimmesdale to be among the greatest men alive. The reader is made to know that it was because of his sin that he had become such a humble and compassionate man. And yet, in the end, it was his sin that also too his life. His sin was the major limiting factor in his life. And yet it was also an unfulfilled strength. It has been argued that without his sin, he never would have been such a great spiritual leader. Hester believed that he had paid for his sin many times over and that he need not carry the burden around any longer.
But Dimmesdale knew that he had not completely repented. When he finally mustered the resolve to announce what he had done publicly, it only came after a crisis of his faith and just before he died. He never gained any solace from all the good that he had done. A sin that truly could have been turned into strength ended up being his greatest limiting factor. In the end it killed him.
The world around us is filled with people and their limiting factors. This world includes us. Maybe we hesitate to consider this fact in the people we care about. But acknowledging weakness in others does not need to be judgmental. It can be a prelude to great service. Considering weaknesses in ourselves can be even less appealing. And yet we really only have two choices is this matter. We can continue ignoring them – and remain forever limited. Or we can become better. Nothing needs to hold us back. In fact, the sky’s the limit.
I’ve come to believe that limiting factors - whether they be a high jumping technique or anything else - are much more important than many of us think. And yet we hardly ever do pay much attention to them. The truth is that we really don’t like to because it usually isn’t very pleasant. This is understandable because limiting factors are very often things in our lives that we don’t do well. We much prefer focusing on our strengths. It makes us feel better about ourselves. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking also keeps us stranded on plateaus. Sometimes we want very badly to get off these plateaus and do something more with our lives. When we seem unable to do so, we get frustrated. “Why can’t people see how good I am? We ask ourselves, never realizing that it isn’t our strengths that keep us back. It’s our weaknesses that do.
When we are young we tend to take people at face value. If someone looks smart or pretty or keeps a particular image we believe that it accurately represents them. Not realizing that we are only seeing one side – the side the person wants us to see – we sometimes assume that they have no negative traits at all. When, to our surprise, this person ends up, say, in prison, it completely surprises us. “That’s not the person I knew,” we tell ourselves. And this, of course, is not a lie. We never did thoroughly know that person. We would be a good deal wiser if we recognized this. We all have virtues. Everybody expects this. Why should we be surprised when we discover that we also have limitations?
I’ve watched a lot of basketball players through the years. One thing is common among almost all of the fairly good players - I mean players that are not quite good enough to make the team. They think the game is all about scoring and so they practice and practice their shooting and ignore other important parts of the game. Many of these individuals would have done much better to have learned to be more aggressive and be tougher defenders and rebounders. These skills are much more commonly the limiting factors among this group of players.
The truth is that we are quite good at ignoring our limiting factors. The most common way that we do this is by making excuses or by otherwise justifying our behavior. I know a bright manager who desires to move up the corporate ladder. He has a lot of excellent qualifications but has a habit of being too glib and at times condescending in his conversation. He realizes this but instead of trying to change behavior, he says that people are just like that where he is from and that he can’t help the way he is. “We all have our little hang-ups anyway,” he says, or so he has convinced himself.
Another reason we tend to ignore our limiting factors is because they are often tied to our habits or to things that make us comfortable. The example that comes most immediately to mind is our preference to relax instead of work, like our habit of watching just one television program that then leads to a second and so on until the entire evening is wasted. It is a tragedy the amount of life that is wasted in this way.
These are obvious examples, but what about gossiping? It is also a habit that keeps us stuck on plateaus. Very few habits so readily mark us as mediocre as habitual gossip. It is the hallmark of prideful virtue and self-righteousness. It automatically puts one, whether merited or not, in the camp of the complainers instead of among the few that can be trusted. It is a past-time of moral laziness.
Another very common limiting factor is the lack of knowledge. Take for instance an inexperienced farmer who decides to plant an acre of his favorite sweet corn in a field that was planted in wheat the year before. Unknown to the farmer are the thousands of hungry wireworms hidden in the soil that are eager to eat every corn root they can find. The farmer, with a bit more knowledge, could have learned that farming isn’t just a matter of planting, watering and harvesting. Losing a crop is a hard way to learn about limiting factors.
But the most serious kinds of limiting factors are those involving sin. One of the reasons that they are so serious is because sin tends to be a cascade to so many other limiting factors. Maybe we are kept back in our employment because we tend to be lazy occasionally. This, of course, is a sin against our employer. If we fail to overcome this habit it very often leads to complaining or gossiping in order to vindicate our poor performance. When this happens, it becomes all too easy to tell lies which then lead to even more serious problems. Even the smallest sins that are left to fester can be profoundly limiting.
But sins can also have a bright side. They can be overcome and changed into strengths. This is the message of the prophet Ether. Those that humble themselves, exercise faith in Christ and forsake their sins have the promise that their weakness will turn to strengths (see Ether 12:27). This is not always the case with other limiting factors.
Very often when we overcome a limiting factor, we progress. This isn’t necessarily because our weakness has become strength but because we have just removed so much dead weight that was holding us back. When weaknesses are removed by Christ, however, the promise is that not only will we have the dead weight removed but that we will gain a new strength. This can happen because we gain access to strength beyond ourselves.
One of the great examples in literature both of the limiting and strengthening nature of sin is the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The honorable Reverend Dimmesdale, in a moment of passion lost his virtue with the married woman Hester Prynne. Unlike Hester, though, whose sin was readily visible in the child of their adulterous relationship, the child’s father, Reverend Dimmesdale, remained unknown. And yet, for all its obscurity, the sin had a profound effect upon him. He planned many times to announce his error publicly but was unable to. In a society that was intolerant of this sin, his life would have been completely ruined. Any hope that repentance can lead to a better life in this sort of society did not exist.
And so Dimmesdale’s sin festered and he considered himself the worst of humanity. In fact, his self-demeaning habits were so obvious that the citizens of Boston considered him a very saintly and pure man because of them. Yet his burden made him physically sick. His health was even more compromised because of his doctor (who, unknown to him, was also Hester’s husband seeking revenge).
Through all this, the citizens believed their Reverend Dimmesdale to be among the greatest men alive. The reader is made to know that it was because of his sin that he had become such a humble and compassionate man. And yet, in the end, it was his sin that also too his life. His sin was the major limiting factor in his life. And yet it was also an unfulfilled strength. It has been argued that without his sin, he never would have been such a great spiritual leader. Hester believed that he had paid for his sin many times over and that he need not carry the burden around any longer.
But Dimmesdale knew that he had not completely repented. When he finally mustered the resolve to announce what he had done publicly, it only came after a crisis of his faith and just before he died. He never gained any solace from all the good that he had done. A sin that truly could have been turned into strength ended up being his greatest limiting factor. In the end it killed him.
The world around us is filled with people and their limiting factors. This world includes us. Maybe we hesitate to consider this fact in the people we care about. But acknowledging weakness in others does not need to be judgmental. It can be a prelude to great service. Considering weaknesses in ourselves can be even less appealing. And yet we really only have two choices is this matter. We can continue ignoring them – and remain forever limited. Or we can become better. Nothing needs to hold us back. In fact, the sky’s the limit.
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