Rash Vows and Beautiful Grandchildren: Prejudice in the Northwoods

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Prejudice in the Northwoods

I had a strange thing happen on the way to the Physical Therapist's office at the end of last week. I was on the elevator and a couple entered and rode down to the basement floor with me. They looked like they were in their 60's and to my prejudiced mind - the classic northwoods couple. She had on an old Tweety Bird Sweatshirt, dirty hair and about the worst teeth I have seen in years. He had on a dirty sweatshirt, ball cap and large beer belly. I politely said hello and got off the elevator. About 5 minutes after me they made it the same office. As I was struggling with my own attitudes, the man started to complain that the office shouldn't be closed over the noon hour (there was a little sign stating that the receptionist was out from 12:30 to 1:00.) They were an hour early for their 2:00 appointment. Then he started complaining about too many holidays off in the US. He said it must be a "Jewish Holiday." This really offended me but I did not know what to say. He just kept complaining about not wanting to wait and basically showed his own unhappiness. I then was called into my appointment. I would love some feedback if there was something I could have said to let him know that his comment was offensive - OR was my view of him just as offensive?

4 comments:

MJ Krech said...: You absolutely did the right thing by not saying anything. We are supposed to love no matter what. Any way you tried to put your opinion out there, however, lovingly, would have been interpreted badly by this couple. I find these situations very difficult to live through but saying and doing nothing is the right thing to do! Way to go for holding your tongue!; February 4, 2008 at 9:26 AM
neverlie said...: I think Marcia is probably right, if you could not respond to the comment in love than it was probably better not to respond. Also, I like your instincts to question your own prejudices and heart. Having said that, it would be interesting to know what would have happened had you confessed your judging of them, something like, "Hi, I am a Christian, and I am called to love my neighbors, and I have to confess that I have not done a good job of that with you guys. I am sorry, I judged you before I even met you, and I assumed the worst about you. Please pray for me as I work on this." Then you could go about your business. I don't think I have the courage to do that, but I do think it would be amazing to speak the truth that way and see how the Holy Spirit worked. I love the blog by the way.

greg; February 5, 2008 at 6:44 AM
Anonymous said...: How about: "No, I work for a Jewish carpenter, and He's at work today".; February 5, 2008 at 7:29 AM
christian said...: Tricky one. I would have probably muffled a laugh at the ridiculous-ness of the statement. (Incidentally, it made me remember all the days off of school Jesse Sondell used to get for Jewish holidays!)

Beyond that I would have probably walked to the corner and read a magazine. On a good day I'd like to believe that I would interrupt by the third offensive statement, maybe.; February 5, 2008 at 8:05 AM

Post a Comment

The Inspiration for the title of my Blog - What is a RASH VOW!

A Defence of Rash Vows by G.K. Chesterton An abridged version of a chapter in Chesterton's book The Defendant.
If a prosperous modern man, with a high hat and a frock-coat, were to solemnly pledge himself before all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill's 'Liberty' seventy-six times, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown, to remain for thirty-one hours holding his left ear in his right hand, to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimes expressed, was 'an artist in life.' Yet these vows are not more extraordinary than the vows which in the Middle Ages and in similar periods were made, not by fanatics merely, but by the greatest figures in civic and national civilization -- by kings, judges, poets, and priests. One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great chain hung there, it was said, for ages as a monument of that mystical folly. Another swore that he would find his way to Jerusalem with a patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see that these two exploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any saner than the acts above suggested. A mountain is commonly a stationary and reliable object which it is not necessary to chain up at night like a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a man pays a very high compliment to the Holy City by setting out for it under conditions which render it to the last degree improbable that he will ever get there.
But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in our time, we should, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the 'decadence.' But the men who did these things were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentially sane performed such insanities, it was under the capricious direction of a superstitious religious system. This, again, will not hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and even sensual departments of life, such as love and lust, the medieval princes show the same mad promises and performances, the same misshapen imagination and the same monstrous self-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which it is necessary to think of the whole nature of vows from the beginning. And if we consider seriously and correctly the nature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it is perfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanity is involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the decadence. That John Paterson should, with apparent calm, look forward to being a certain General Barker on Monday, Dr. Macgregor on Tuesday, Sir Walter Carstairs on Wednesday, and Sam Slugg on Thursday, may seem a nightmare; but to that nightmare we give the name of modern culture. One great decadent, who is now dead, published a poem some time ago, in which he powerfully summed up the whole spirit of the movement by declaring that he could stand in the prison yard and entirely comprehend the feelings of a man about to be hanged.
'For he that lives more lives than oneMore deaths than one must die.' And the end of all this is that maddening horror of unreality which descends upon the decadents, and compared with which physical pain itself would have the freshness of a youthful thing. The one hell which imagination must conceive as most hellish is to be eternally acting a play without even the narrowest and dirtiest greenroom in which to be human. And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover. To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we know cannot scare us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us, to defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us -- this is the grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.
Let us turn, on the other hand, to the maker of vows. The man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment. He vowed, for example, to chain two mountains together, perhaps a symbol of some great relief of love, or aspiration. Short as the moment of his resolve might be, it was, like all great moments, a moment of immortality, and the desire to say of it exegi monumentum aere perennius was the only sentiment that would satisfy his mind. The modern aesthetic man would, of course, easily see the emotional opportunity; he would vow to chain two mountains together. But, then, he would quite as cheerfully vow to chain the earth to the moon. And the withering consciousness that he did not mean what he said, that he was, in truth, saying nothing of any great import, would take from him exactly that sense of daring actuality which is the excitement of a vow.
The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words -- 'free-love' -- as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.
It is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterlizing spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, 'Let us have the pleasure of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.' Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: 'Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus.' Thus in love the free-lovers say: 'Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.'
Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the aesthetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul of a lover or a poet to know that in consequence of some one instant of decision that strange chain would hang for centuries in the Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.
©1997, The American Chesterton Society

Rash Vows and Beautiful Grandchildren

Rotating pictures of Beautiful Grandchildren

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Prejudice in the Northwoods

4 comments:

Thought for the Year (Thanks Best Friend Dee Dee!)

Thought for the Day. Periodic postings

Blog Archive

Links to Blogs (and people) I love

About Me

The Inspiration for the title of my Blog - What is a RASH VOW!

Labels