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February Journal, "Who do you love?" by Debra Classen
February Journal Article,
by Debra Classen
Sequestered in my igloo (aka “house”) for days, with an Arctic blast of wind pushing temps down into the teens, I fixed a cup of steaming, hot chocolate. Moving to the window, I watched as yet another blizzard raged through our state. Inside my home, looking out, there is a raw beauty to the starkness of winter. I have the good fortune of living behind a wooded area and during these winter months animals and birds cannot hide in the thick foliage of summer growth. I observe small movements of survival in the landscape. Today I saw a magnificent hawk swoop low over our icle ridden rooftop and arc upwards, landing on a barren tree branch.
A wing span of perhaps four feet, he soared through the veil of heavy snow, as if the snow had to move around him, not the other way around. The white and fawn colored wing tips melded with snow and branches, distinguishable only by his movement. He elegantly landed, quietly perching in the wintry landscape. In one large swooping gesture across my yard, he cleared all the bird feeders of activity by his presence. Silent, majestic, enthroned on his high perch, he waited in the midst of a blizzard for prey. This hawk; predatory, silent, and solitary suddenly brought to my mind a contradictory story I read many years ago, of two hawks soaring together in a summer sky. Michael Mason, the author, had written about hawks his wife and he had observed on their honeymoon. The contrast in the two scenes is appropriate for the jarring impossibility in our culture between self-love and humble love.
My glacial hawk was alone and looking for prey, analogous to self-love. Understanding self-love or narcissism is important, because its rampant flow pulses through every avenue of our current culture. Its nature is inherently destructive to relationships and society. We have become a nation of individuals, and for many, a people who worship themselves. Authors, Twenge and Campbell explain in their book, “Narcissistic Epidemic”, that our culture’s “focus on self-admiration has caused a flight from reality to the land of self-admiration; phony riches (with interest only mortgages and piles of debt), phony beauty (with plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures), phony athletes (with performance-enhancing drugs), phony celebrities (via reality TV and YouTube), phony genius students (with grade inflation), phony nation….The psychological term includes arrogance, conceit, vanity, grandiosity, and self-centeredness and they see themselves as fundamentally superior, special, entitled and unique. They lack emotionally warm, caring and loving relationships with other people.”*
Why would anyone cultivate such qualities? The combinations of rising cultural factors which contribute to narcissism and fewer inhibitors have created an epidemic, not only in attention seeking behavior, but the relational problems that go with it. You may wonder why anyone would want a relationship with someone like this, yet these very qualities are well served, even fostered for a better FB status, more matches on Match.com, a show on reality TV, being a consummate consumer, or a competitive business edge, leaving one to feel they will be left in the dust if they don’t market themselves. All of this may be engaging to observe, even entertaining and fun; but may make you vulnerable prey in a relationship where you only feed another’s voracious appetite for attention, ego stroking, and superiority they feel entitled to.
What of the second pair of hawks? Mason describes these hawks in the prologue of, “The Mystery of Marriage”. Their gliding together in the wide expanse of a summer sky as a relationship, a dance of love which involves intricate attention to the movements and needs of another—as does marriage.
The pair were still very high up, bus as they drew closer to us they began to descend in great lazy swoops down the blue invisible banisters of the air…The sunlight spilled soft auras around their splayed forms. We could see frayed feathers, translucent at the tips. Not once did either bird move a wing muscle. They held themselves perfectly steady, taut yet relaxed, angling against the air and gliding as if they were a part of it, just two molecules of the empty air made visible, turning in slow and beautiful spirals that meshed together and then away like gears… The longer we watched, the clearer it became that these hawks were doing absolutely nothing of any practical import; they were not hunting, for example, or looking for anything, or going anywhere. They were simply playing…what particularly struck me, was that I could not recall having ever seen two hawks together. So there was something in this soaring dance of the pair of them, with a whole sky all to themselves, which spoke directly to me, not just of play and freedom on a summers’ day, but of the shining beauty of love, the pure ease and joy of companionship. *
As a new bride struggling in my marriage, I read Mason’s book. The grace of discovering this book gave me a novel perspective on God, marriage, love; the words had resonated through the decades and come to mind again after seeing my winter hawk. I was born at the end of the baby boomer generation, notoriously known as the “me” generation. I also grew up in the land of the “self-absorbed” (California). The early years of marriage, and even more so motherhood, left me completely adrift, seemingly demanding more love of me than I believed possible. Mason’s book opened a door; or rather it opened an expanse of summer sky. I was edified to discover and share my struggles with another. He too, seemed to be confronted by the awesome power of love and its demands.
I read, only recently, Pope Benedict’s first encyclical on love, “God Is Love”. “What?” you ask, “could an eighty-something year old, celibate priest, possibly have to say on the subject of love?” It turns out, quite a bit, “…love becomes the criterion for the definitive decision about a human life’s worth or lack thereof. ….Love of God and love of neighbor have become one…” *: Loving God, it turns out, is the biggest love affair of our life. It is in loving God that we have a shot at learning how to love others. I think we would probably be doing a lot better if we took the Pope’s advice on love, rather than our culture’s advice. Loving yourself isn’t wrong, it is just that we have gotten stuck there and now we are love sick—on ourselves.
Narcissism feeds us at our most basic level, but we can’t stay there and just keep replacing those relationships where we don’t get enough attention. We need to grow up, grow into a mature love. We are innately self-centered, and we are born narcissists, it is our fallen nature. All babies begin by seeing themselves as the center of the universe. It is in our earliest stage of psychological development that (hopefully) we learn to see our care-givers as “other”; and learn that we are loved and learn to love.
In their book, “Narcissistic Epidemic" the authors sound the alarm on our culture’s new cultivation of narcissism, which seems to disregard beauty, truth and goodness, replacing these essential values with phony cultural ones. Our tolerance for narcissism has increased and we now see “norms for self-presentation have shifted with cultural trends and new technology—posting a picture of yourself half naked and posturing provocatively is now considered totally normal-even though it is also deeply narcissistic. America has been persuaded that becoming more vain, materialistic, and self-centered is actually a good thing. We are missing the piece about caring for others, which is why self-admiration spins out of control.” *
Rumi’s poem about love, “Roar, like a lion and tear open my heart” is really a desperate prayer of sorts. The poet knows we have to have our hearts torn open to love. Unless God tears open our hearts, we remain in relationship for ourselves. A lone hawk in the cold, preying on others for the love and attention we seek. It is my daily struggle—to move out of myself, “my” self-centered fears, needs, pride…and to soar in God’s sky, to love others. No other symbol, so aptly displays the savage beauty and truth of love, of self-sacrificing and unconditional love for other, than the Crucifix. It is at the foot of the Cross that we are confronted with the violence, the self-emptying, the suffering, of learning to love with a humble heart. Love can be no other way. It’s a lot more than sweet cards and nice cards—it’s all of you, it’s all of me, and it’s all of God, and that takes a lot of faith.
Footnotes:
*Mason, Michael. The Mystery of Marriage: As Iron Sharpens Iron. (OR: Multnomah Press, 1985), p. 12-3.
*Pope Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est. (Pauline Books & Media, 2006), p. 20.
*Twenge, Jean M., and Keith Campbell. Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. (NY: Free Press, 2006), p.19.
* ibid., p. 39, 24.
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