GO AWAY
When he says, “Go away and don’t come back,” you are hurt by the words even though you know he does not mean what the words say, or rather you think he probably means “Go away” because he is so angry at you he does not want you anywhere near him right now, but you are quite sure he does not want you to stay away, he must want you to come back, either soon or later, depending on how quickly he may grow less angry during the time you are away, how he may remember other less angry feelings he often has for you which may soften his anger now. But though he does mean “Go away,” he does not mean it as much as he means the anger that the words have in them, as he also means the anger in the words “don’t come back.” He means all the anger meant by someone who says such words and means what the words say, that you should not come back, ever, or rather he means most of the anger meant by such a person, for if he meant all the anger he would also mean what the words themselves say, that you should not come back, ever. But, being angry, if he were merely to say, “I’m very angry at you,” you would not be as hurt as you are, or you would not be hurt at all, even though the degree of anger, if it could be measured, might be exactly the same. Or perhaps the degree of anger could not be the same. Or perhaps it could be the same but the anger would have to be of a different kind, a kind that could be shared as a problem, whereas this kind can be told only in these words he does not mean. So it is not the anger in these words that hurts you, but the fact that he chooses to say words to you that mean you should never come back, even though he does not mean what the words say, even though only the words themselves mean what they say.
PASTOR ELAINE’S NEWSLETTER
We went to church a year ago on Easter Sunday because we had just moved to this town and wanted to feel part of the community. At that time we put our name on the church mailing list and now we receive its newsletter.
Every day, almost, we walk to the post office in the late afternoon and then around by the park and on to the hardware store or the library.
On our way from the playground to the library, we sometimes see Pastor Elaine in her yard, in her shorts, weeding around the phlox near the back door, which has a sign on it that reads “Pastor’s Study.” Now we learn from what she writes in the church newsletter that she has lost most of her newly planted tomatoes and eggplants to a “night creature” and is angry.
“I was furious!” she says. She is furious not only at the night creature but also at herself for her carelessness or forgetfulness, because the same thing happened to her last year. “Why had I forgotten it?” she asks.
There is a point to her story, a lesson she wants to teach us, which is that “it is our human condition which brings us back again and again to doing the things we would rather not be doing. We are far from perfection. I forget this at times and get so annoyed with myself.”
We are often angry at ourselves, too, for such things as carelessness and forgetfulness, and things we feel are much worse.
Pastor Elaine uses the Bible to illustrate her lesson. “Paul put it so well,” she says, before going on to quote from Romans: “I do not understand what I do; for I don’t do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate. What an unhappy man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death?”
This seems too strong a reaction for the mistake Pastor Elaine has made in her garden, since she is not doing what she “hates” by setting plants in the ground without proper fencing, but we read closely what she has to say because it does describe exactly what we often do. We often do what we hate. We often tell ourselves what we would like to do, most importantly that we would like to be kind to our children, and gentle with them, and patient, and then we do not do what we would like to do, but what we hate; that is, we lose our patience suddenly and shout at them, or squeeze them, or shake them, or pound our fist on the table and frighten them. And we, too, do not understand why. Is it that we do not want to do what we so much believe we want to do?
We are sometimes aware that the ugly sounds coming from us may be overheard by the good family next door, whose younger son is an altar boy at what they call the BVM or the Perpetual. But this does not have the power to stop us.
We are not Christian but we have a Bible belonging to a church-going mother of ours, and although we are not believers, we think that if we read the same words believers read, we might also be comforted or learn something. The passage quoted by Pastor Elaine is a little different in our Bible. It begins: “For that which I do I know not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. For to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”
This sounds quite like our situation, though what we do, we would not call evil but wrong. We will, we will with great determination, up in the privacy of our study, up in the bathroom, anywhere we are alone. But when it comes to performing what is good, sitting over lunch between our two children, who are not bad children, if the older one, bored, is teasing us and the younger one, tired, is fussing, our will is weak, in fact it is powerless. Then what does it mean to will, at all, if we can’t perform? All that willing, upstairs, is for nothing. It seems that we are able to will only from a very shallow place and when we draw upon all the will in us it is quickly used up and there is nothing left. Or something else, if not that, is wrong with the way we will.
When we lose our patience so suddenly, we feel possessed, as by some outside force, almost as it is described in the next lines we read: “Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing.” It is as though it were not we who were doing what we do, but some being we do not recognize. Certainly we do not recognize ourselves, in our fury, as what we have so lately been, gentle, for we can be gentle. Only, this other being does not seem like sin to us, but a living demon, and does not seem to dwell in us, but only to come into us sometimes and then leave again. Unless it is in us all the time, but quiet, and is then roused by some aggravation.
“I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,” says our Bible. But if there is another law in us, it does not seem to be in our members, in our body, but elsewhere, in our passions, raging like a storm, possessing us, and warring against the law of our mind. Unless, arising in our passions, it then spreads to our members, for we can sometimes feel that into our flesh no good thing comes: our blood becomes hot and our nerves sing, when we are angry.