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| Christ as the Man of Sorrows by Luis de Morales |
Glad, mad, and sad
By Morris Dean
[This article was published as a post at 12:00 a.m. on July 3, 2016, but was taken down at the request of my wife at about 11 a.m. the same day. A much shortened version, using just the part about Jesus, appeared as a post on July 20, titled “Sad like Jesus.”]
Over the course of four days the week of June 20, I suffered three blows that cumulatively put me in touch with a feeling I recognized as identical to one I had occasionally as a young man, when I identified with Jesus as a “man of sorrows” [Isaiah 53:3: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” –English standard version]. The image I had of him then returned to me, that of the accused revolutionary silently awaiting torture and crucifixion.
The first blow was the revelation that someone with whom I had been having a frank email conversation about some of h[er; originally “disguised” as “his”] behaviors in both her home and mine had thoroughly misunderstood what I had been trying to say to her. I had, for example, pointed out the way she had prodded her spouse about speaking louder and not resting his elbows on the table, how she frequently corrected the rest of us when we didn’t do things according to “the rules” she seemed sure applied, and how she would ask questions during a conversation that showed she hadn’t been paying attention to what we had been saying. She now wrote that she was deeply hurt by things I had said about her. I replied that I was sorry she was hurt, I didn’t intend to hurt her, nor had I expected that she would be hurt by frank, honest, factual descriptions, and I asked her to tell me what particular things I had said that pained her. When she wildly misquoted a couple of things, I realized how fantastically she had been reading me (and partaking in conversations?).
I wrote that I didn’t appreciate the way she was distorting what I said. If we were to continue corresponding, I said, I would need for her to be open and honest and accurate in the way she read me. I challenged her to listen and hear what I was actually saying. But she baffled me again by saying that she felt my anger towards her and she wouldn’t be communicating with me further.
Exasperation I was certainly feeling, but anger? I hadn’t thought I was angry – although some anger would seem to be justified by the way my clear language had been mangled.
While disappointed that my attempts to communicate with the person had failed, I could see now that my attempts had probably been doomed all along, and I felt glad to be done with her. At that point, I detected no hint that Jesus might be stirring in his grave.
The second blow came the next day, by way of an electronic social network that I was straightforwardly using for its intended purpose, to provide information and discuss matters of concern in our local homeowners association. A homeowner had suggested that our board of directors arrange to have a few more trash receptacles in our community park and children’s playground, and a member of the board, who also moderates the network to ensure civil conversation, stated that such concerns could be brought up at the next homeowners meeting. In context, the statement seemed to imply that the concern would have to be raised at the meeting if it were to be considered. I had until then assumed that its being raised on the network would be sufficient, but I was now unsure, and I was also concerned that the person who was suggesting more trash receptacles might be new in the community (I didn’t recognize his name), and I wanted to help ensure that he understood whether attending the meeting would be required or not – so I asked the board member whether he meant to imply that the concern had to be raised at a meeting in order to be considered.
Well, was I ever surprised when he responded: “Your implications are not my words. You seem to enjoy diatribes and bloviating on these post[sic], so I choose not to engage you in such a way.”
The snappiness of my immediate reply reveals that I was offended as well as surprised: “Your antisocial remarks are shocking, especially coming from a board member one of whose duties is to moderate this network. Please clean up your act.”
To which he responded: “Your assumptions and attempt to cause disharmony regarding my announcement for the upcoming meeting seems to be the root of this perceived problem. No one is being antisocial nor do I need to ‘clean up my act’.”
My assumptions? My attempt to cause disharmony? I was really offended now, and indeed angry, so I emailed the two other members of the board who moderated the network to complain about the disrespectful comments from their fellow colleague. I noted that there had been other instances of this person’s disrespectful comments toward various individuals in the past [including my wife, although I didn’t mention that]. I told them that the board should not depend on their colleague to help moderate the network, because he was clearly not suited for it.
To me the matter was urgent, and I expected the comments to be “cleaned up” immediately, but when, 18 hours later, nothing had been done and I had received no reply, I emailed them again to ask whether they had received my email. I pointed out that “the offensive personal aspersions have not been removed [from the social network], and there has been no public apology.” I told them that I hoped this meant simply that they had not read my complaint yet or hadn’t had time to take action, and it didn’t mean that they condoned such personal attacks. I asked them to “Please find time to handle this as soon as possible. No one who lives in this community should be subjected to that kind of abuse, and for it to come from a board member (and a network administrator) is unconscionable. Thank you.”
But I wasn’t nearly as angry as I became when I read the reply, which came fairly quickly now from one of the two board members. “There was no need for that question as you’re fully aware that we bring up community concerns at our meetings. As someone that comes to the meetings you know this.”
In other words, it was all my fault, and his colleague had been within his rights to talk to me like that, for the board had decided “not to police freedom of speech rights unless it falls into racism, vulgarity or other not tolerated interactions.” So much for our so-called social network – a good dollop of anti-social speech had been authorized.
But he very thoughtfully let me know that “At this time your concerns are noted.”
I wrote back that, while his colleague’s “replies may not have been racist or vulgar, they were personal and abusive, and they should not be tolerated.” I explained that I had been analyzing texts for about sixty years, as a student of literature, a technical writer and editor at IBM and UNC, and the editor of published books and a blog. I then provided him an analysis of the text of the interchange between his colleague and me, pointing out that his colleague had not even answered my question, and showing how my question was reasonable and deserved a simple yes or no answer. I observed that his colleague “seemed more concerned to try to belittle and humiliate me. Sure, people on Facebook try to do that everyday. But moderators? Board members? Board members should be trying to foster positive contribution (as I was trying to do), not shaming people. [Your colleague’s] response was completely uncalled-for.”
I ended by stating that I did not appreciate his questioning my motives and that he seemed to have bought into his colleague’s apparent prejudice against me. I asked him to “please edit [his colleague’s] reply to provide a straightforward answer and apologize for his initial response, which you might say ‘has been removed as inappropriate,’ or something like that. Thanks. I appreciate it.”
I noticed that my hand was visibly shaking as I clicked the send button. I don’t think I realized until that moment how angry I was.
I soon received another reply. He said he was not “educated enough to provide [me] a written contest of wit[sic]” – as though all this had been simply a battle of wits without any real substance. But he acknowledged that he had removed the interchange altogether (making apology unnecessary, I guessed). He reiterated that the whole thing was my own fault for asking the question and told me I was “in a defensive mindset.”
By that point I felt a good deal more offensive than defensive. During the next couple of days, from time to time, I tried to imagine attending the next meeting. Various scenarios unfolded in my mind, including one that I am thankful was entirely fictional fantasy – taking a gun to the meeting and shooting the network moderators. It was fantasy because I knew I could never do that. For one thing, I don’t own a gun. And I don’t have the right combination or intensity of various “motivations for mass murder” that we have had occasion to read about far too often lately in America (revenge, unquenchable thirst to get even, despair, suicidal rage, visions of annihilation, intense hatred of “inferiors,” a sense of “no way out,”…). There but for a gun and a compelling constellation of motives might go I?
But I did have one motivation, and I now understood that anyone could have it under certain conditions: anger. Anger is one of the reactions that standardly come with being human; the four major feeling groups are said to be glad, mad, sad, and scared. (I thought that I had discovered a powerful reason for there to be no guns in either public or private places. But that’s another story.)
I began to feel sad to realize that I wouldn’t feel welcome if I showed up at the next homeowners meeting. I would feel devalued and underappreciated. And as much as I might like to be there just to hear what was on people’s minds and what was being done to make our community a better place to live – even if only in the way of providing more trash receptacles in the community park – I understood that I would be staying home that evening. Jesus had raised his head to look sadly at his inquisitors.
The third blow fell two days later. The spouse of the pained interlocutor from the first scenario emailed my wife to ask whether I was unwell. The question had come up because of what I had been saying in my emails. Was I okay? Or was something wrong with me that was making me say such unwelcome things?
I hadn’t told my wife anything about these email exchanges, and she told me that she had initially just replied that I was all right but it had been very hot here and I had been doing strenuous work in the back yard. Maybe that had put me in a bad mood.
I decided to show her the emails, so she could see how impossible it had been to deal with the person in question, and after reading them she agreed. But she decided to email them again to let them know that l had shared the correspondence with her and she could no longer claim ignorance. She had even offered to show me her reply before she sent it, but I told her I trusted her and didn’t need to see it beforehand.
She copied me, and I could now read that “Morris is a prickly character. It may not seem like it, but this correspondence is his version of a warm embrace and his way of saying let’s negotiate the terms of a friendship.” You can tell from that that not only does my wife know me intimately, but she also has a robust sense of humor and can turn a fine phrase.
And she added, parenthetically, “Another issue is that it’s also his way of interfering in my relationships and controlling them.” My wife didn’t seem to have meant this as humor, and I already knew that she tended to be territorial, for she had warned me off another acquaintance whom she regarded as her friend, not mine – even though the woman had been our neighbor equally.
But what could I say? I hadn’t asked to vet her email. I had told her I trusted her to say whatever she wanted.
And so I didn’t say anything, then or later. And I immediately recognized the feeling of deep sadness from my twenties that I associated with the “man of sorrows.” A familiar-seeming image of Jesus entered my mind. I suppose I must have seen the image in a painting somewhere, but I didn’t find it among the hundreds of images Google showed me in response to my query for “images man of sorrows.” I chose the one above, by the Spanish painter Luis de Morales (1512-86), as being suitably close, even though Morales’s Jesus isn’t looking you in the eye the way “my Jesus” is.
I suppose I could myself have formed the image of Jesus that I was seeing; maybe it had been my own private image even back then – my image of Jesus quietly listening to his interrogators after being arrested: not responding, not seeking to justify himself, just letting them pronounce their judgment, trusting that they knew not what they were doing.
Identifying with Jesus as the man of sorrows is the closest I ever got to Jesus. But it was an intimate relationship, and to have felt it again, fifty years later, was strangely, deeply comforting. In the days since its renewal I have felt delivered to a new plateau of equanimity and self-acceptance. I have acted more friendly toward my wife, who has been friendlier toward me. We have spoken more nicely to each other. We are more considerate. I do not regret the way things went south with my wife’s acquaintances and the two board members – a small price to pay for experiencing the resurrection of Jesus.
| Copyright © 2016 by Morris Dean |
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