Clueless

On any given day, there is enough com­edy in the news to cre­ate a com­plete stand up rou­tine. The humor is dis­cov­ered in the way you look at it. First of all, you have to be detached enough to stand back and see this com­edy of errors for what it actu­ally is. I sug­gest mem­ber­ship in what Jesus called “The King­dom of God” — the com­mu­nity of peo­ple able to unplug from worldly rules and affil­i­a­tions, and iden­tify with God as King-President-Governor-Lord or what­ever you want to call the per­son­al­ity in charge.

Sec­ond, you must have the courage to talk about the numer­ous “ele­phants in the liv­ing room” with­out jus­ti­fy­ing, defend­ing, or blam­ing. They really are all there. Thank God it is a very large liv­ing room. In world gov­ern­ments, the blind lead the blind; in reli­gion the bland lead the bland. Insti­tu­tions thrive on those that will not rock the boat, nor pad­dle it, nor untie it from the dock. The spokesper­son at the helm lec­tures about the view of the mighty ocean, while the pas­sen­gers are con­tent to sit in the still boat and imag­ine being on some sort of voyage.

Igno­rance is bliss. I define igno­rance not as a lack of edu­ca­tion but of the abil­ity to ignore the obvi­ous. In fam­ily coun­sel­ing it is part of the game called “let’s pretend” — the game in which no one admits what is really going on with them­selves or each other. It is a con­spir­acy of silence that hopes to buy one more day of sweet obliv­ion at the cost of per­sonal sanity.

The truth will set you free, but it is going to hurt at first. It will cut through denial like a hot knife through but­ter. Truth faced will shake you awake. Real­ity is not budged by rhetoric. Talk­ing never changes the facts. Truth requires courage and an hon­est look in the mir­ror. Ever won­der what it is that your friends are afraid to say to you? The loneli­est per­son on earth is the one that has bul­lied the voices of insight within and with­out into silence.

Clue­less: a tem­po­rary state of pre­ten­sion some­times extended through­out a life­time, solved only from within by a heart will­ing to admit what is.

So, what is it you do not want to tell your­self about your­self that you already know?