‘It was said of Rabbi Simcha Bunim that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha’olam – “For my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’aefer – “I am but dust and ashes.”
He would take out each slip of paper as necessary, as a reminder to himself.’
Toba Spitzer
(Found in Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals (153))
At some point, either before the journey began or along their travels, the Wise-Ones decided that the new star they had watched, recorded and observed was the ChristStar: the star of the Messiah, the long-expected, prophetically-predicted, new King of the Jews.
Somewhere along their travels, or perhaps it was their original destination, the Wise-Ones decided that the new King of the Jews would most probably be born in Jerusalem, the Jewish ‘capital’ under the Roman occupation of Judah. Or at least, they made the assumption that even if the new King wasn’t born there, someone there would know more about the scriptures, prophecies and folk-stories of their own culture than the Wise-Ones did. Someone else would be able to enlighten them, to supply them with the answers they sought.
Whilst they followed the ChristStar across trade-routes, sea- or river-ways, road-networks or landscape features, the Wise-Ones came up with a narrative to explain their journey. They would go to Jerusalem, head straight to the heart of the royal household, and there they would ask one basic question:
Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage. (Matthew 2.2 NRSV)
With the benefit of hindsight I can see the pitfalls in this plan, the assumptions that even the Wise-Ones made. They were focussed on receiving one single answer: Where? Such single-mindedness gives me blinkers, and I can treat people as mere receptacles of the knowledge I seek from them, rather than seeing the whole person in front of me and engaging in genuine dialogue. In her DayBook, the sculptor Anne Truitt put it like this:
Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than our-selves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery. (41)
By narrowing my focus, by excluding how information might be received in ways other than the most obvious, not only do I fail to receive all the information I might need – the wider context, the alternative explanations – but I ingrain a restrictive habit of seeing both myself and the one I am with. The control I impose on another by my inattention is an effective way of killing the possible life between us. If I do not engage what is other to me with love, then I am made poorer. If I do this habitually then, in John O’Donohue’s words, I make ‘a strong invisible prison’ for myself:
We confine our mystery within the prison of routine and repetition… Habit is a strong invisible prison. Habits are styles of feeling, perception or action that have now become second nature to us. A habit is a sure cell of predictability; it can close you off from the unknown, the new and the unexpected. You were sent to the earth to become a receiver of the unknown. From ancient times these gifts were prepared for you; now they come towards you across eternal distances. Their destination is the altar of your heart. When you allow your life to move primarily along the tracks of habit, the creative side of your life diminishes. … constant changing about … keep[s] alive [our] sense of being pilgrims here on earth. The true pilgrim is always at a new threshold. (Eternal Echoes, (176,178))
Even as my Wise-Ones were on the adventure of their lives, their assumptions about what they needed to know for their journey endangered the very gifts it could bring them.
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
Nebuchadnezzar stared while the prophet blazed.
A stone not cut, stormed Daniel, by any human hand,
However self-righteous or self-deluded. Understand:
It is the Lord has quarried here. The king’s eyes glazed,
Because all he knew was earthly power: kings who razed
Entire cities, dogs, women, babies, mules, the very land,
Kings whose subjects, high & low, did their each command.
A stone not quarried by any hand but God’s. Amazed,
The king fell back before the prophet’s words. A stone
That would smash each self-important, self-made idol,
Whether built of gold or steel or any other thing their throne
Was made of. Yes, whatever insane, grand mal, suicidal
Impulse kings could conjure up. A stone shaped by God alone.
Womb-warm, lamb-gentle, world-wielding, tidal.
‘The Stone Not Cut by Hand’
Paul Mariani
unnoticed direction. (iPhone image)
image into ikon 