Confronting our darkness
This evening I watched Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. The film itself was a powerful cinematic expression of some of the ideas that Jay Bakker and myself were exploring in Revolution last week. Be warned that this post contains spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the film you might want to watch it before reading the remainder of this post.
Just as the Hebrew scriptures speak of being unable to stare into the face God, in Shutter Island we confront the idea that we are unable to stare into the face of our trauma. To avoid such a confrontation with our own darkness we create fictions that insulate us from the truth of our deepest scars. These fictions are then taken as the truth of who we are. Fictions that may be deeply elaborate and obscure (involving conspiracies etc.) or rather mundane (that we are happy in our present relationship, job, etc.). But regardless of what they entail these fantasies protect us in some way from ourselves. Such fantasies are not a problem but rather the solution to a problem. Yet it is a solution that fails to deal with the fundamental issue.
What is more, the darkness that we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves is made manifest in disavowed ways. We all like to think of the communities we are part of (friends, family, political movement etc.) as some kind of reflection of Eden. Others are unforgiving, distrustful, ungracious, greedy, arrogant etc., not us. And yet so often we place these judgements upon others as a way of avoiding a confrontation with them in ourselves. And all the better if the accused is really guilty of these transgressions, as this can make it even easier for us to avoid confronting them in ourselves. For the simple reason that we feel justified.
The path to healing and transformation involves the painful process of glimpsing the Real of our own darkness. Glimpsing our wounds, and giving language to them. Wounds that are hinted at in such things as our dreams and our drunken conversations. More than this, it involves being able to do this in an environment of love.
So what would it look like to have a community in which we allowed our darkness to be seen? A community where we would be confronted with the truth of who we are? A community that was therapeutic, not despite the fact that it gives space for this horrific self-disclosure, but precisely because of it?
At Revolution I got a chance to share a little about these ideas. Jay then led the way by showing the type of strength needed to become vulnerable. After this people were invited to reflect upon their own wounds. During a song Jay ripped out pages from the back of a Bible and passed them around the room. Those present were invited to write something that reflected their own darkness. Then we gathered up the paper, read these glimpses into the Real of our hurts and placed them back into the text. We finished by binding the book and reflecting upon how our present suffering binds us to the suffering of those who went before us.
This sacred gathering was not about providing some glib answers for our suffering, but rather about providing a place for them to be shared. In this way shining a little bit of light upon our darkness. You can listen to the talk below. I will finish this with a quote from Henri Nouwen,
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of offering advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand”
June 23rd, 2010 at 7:07 am
[...] with Jay Bakker on Sunday. He also reflects on Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. Read it here This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Jay Bakker, Martin Scorsese, Peter Rollins, [...]
June 23rd, 2010 at 9:02 am
Glad you saw this magnificent film – my own thoughts (that resonate well with yours) are here:
http://godisnotelsewhere.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/shutter-island-scorseses-lament/
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:17 am
Surprisingly good film. There are numerous illustrations for the world that Leo’s character built around him. We all do it to different degrees in the different tribes we run with.
I like the idea of facing the pain. That’s not always the picture that people have in their minds when they hear Jesus say “I am truth”.
June 23rd, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Sounds nice. I’ve enjoyed all the audio talks from Revolution, good stuff.
June 23rd, 2010 at 7:16 pm
[...] Peter Rollins (In a blog about the movie Shutter [...]
June 24th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Hey Pete,
read this parable; if you aren’t familiar with it already, I thought you might find it interesting…
On Parables
Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says; “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with everyday: that is a different matter.
Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.
The first said: you have won.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.
Franz Kafka
June 25th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Excellent post! My reading of Kierkegaard, as well as John Caputo and Zizek, has led me to reflect on this stuff a great deal. I feel very drawn to this kind of community. I’ve participated in more than one attempt, but it is very difficult when others are more invested in fiction than in disclosure. I’m aways seeking ways to gather with people who are ready or willing to share these things… its just so few that are willing to be that vulnerable or even think they need it at all. Although I see lots of folks whose lives are becoming increasingly difficult, IMPOSSIBLE even. I don’t lose hope, because for me hope arises in those very circumstances.
More of this language and conversation is needed, to give permission, enough safety around these topics so that folks can begin to question those fictions and venture out into uncertainty. Please keep up this work!!! I started listening to the Revolution sermons too and will pass them on to friends.
June 25th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Hi Peter:
I really like what you are saying about community and the need for openness about our darkness. I have been fortunate to have experienced a few microcosms of such community. I experienced it first in a ex-gay support group where everyone knew everyone else’s “worst secret”. Because of that common ground, it became a non-issue and in that one place, we could be the people we were and move toward becoming the people we were created to be (meant in the broad sense of the word). It was an oasis in the midst of the rest of life. I also experience this kind of community with one particular friend and colleague. Starting with a gut level sense that I could trust him, I pushed the bounds of what one “should share”. The result is an amazing friendship where he knows all my darkness. He doesn’t reject me or shame me, it doesn’t change our friendship, and thus it is a safe place. No need to pretend, to hide, or to say “I’m fine” when I’m not.
Why can’t more of life be like that? Why are spaces like this one so rare? I’m grateful to know deep down that God is a space like that for me. I would like to be in more such spaces with other people.
June 26th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
One of the most beautiful and powerful aspects of the Judeo-Christian traditions (the only one I have enough experience of to speak about at all) is that in them there is an embrace of our darker side rather than its denial.
Much of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is confessional in nature. A flawed and violent people regularly reject God, and in the Christian scriptures, even murder the Messiah, the Son of God. The miracle of grace is that rather than wipe us out or leave us be, the living God embraces us and our suffering, in order to bring redemption and new creation. Bruggeman wrote somewhere something to the effect that we have a bold faith; it does not deny the darker side life, experience, and history, but embraces life as it is, and proposes that in the middle of it we meet God.
The traditional practices have offered ways to name our darker side before God rather than deny its reality: Psalm 51, various practices of personal and communal confession, Examen of Consiousness, to name a few. All are made possible because grace and forgiveness are already extended by God who knows us and is full of mercy, who will wash us and make us clean, put a new and upright spirit in us.
I guess the challenge is to develop new rituals and practices, or new courage to embrace the power of the things that are present for us.
The purpose of which is not to swim in a sad pool of misplaced guilt, a false humility that is proud to confess, or a dirty rags understanding of the human person, but to receive God given freedom and joy.
June 29th, 2010 at 1:11 am
Does not real dialogue
set the table for a kind of vulnerability,
as we wish to reveal ourselves and
likewise have the other do the same?
Even our closest brothers and sisters are
entrusted
in this dynamic risk of mutual interdependency.
We
never
trade
scars
for nothing.
If this happens, then dissent occurs –
and while that sucks, it must be named/identified as such..
Indeed, if we take Christ seriously
tables must always retain the right to be turned over,
even the most intimate tables,
as we struggle toward critiquing the system from within;
a system
we find ourselves inextricably wrapped up in.
Like Caputo intimates, even the outsider defines, effects
the insider.
We can never fully escape the self/other relation,
and there is no such thing as an easy street, one-way discourse.
June 29th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Bill: Your comments (particularily the latter portion) bring to mind Bonhoeffer writing about “Christ in my brother is stronger than the Christ in me”, especially in terms of knowing the grace and forgiveness that God extends to us. Much easier to know when others around us are extending it in person….
June 29th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Hi Rob,
I appreciate your comments, especially your sensitivity to the power of a community that has experienced and extends grace. I also do look often to Bonhoeffer. For sure he experienced more of and looked more directly into the face of our dark side than most, and yet insisted that we speak powerfully of God who meets us in our strength and not just in our weakness, who opens for us the power to be human.
July 7th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I spent the past decade as a faith-based/home-based counselor attempting to enter and respectfully participate in the holy space of under privileged urban at risk families and their children in need. This required that I humbly sit in their sacred space not as someone with all the answers, but as a safe presence, and a resilient hopeful advocate; someone that could contain and hold all the systemic pathology they needed to unpack as the result of several generations of chronic poverty.
Being with a family in its darkest moments as their children are forcefully removed because of charges of abuse and neglect is enough to test even the most seasoned professional care givers. Sitting with these distraught parents under the dark cloud of legal accusation, and constant hassles of being caught up in an anxious family welfare system (intent on a one size fits all approach) reveals a process that is often more damaging to the family and children than the actual offense that triggered the process to begin with.
Coming along side of hurting embarrassed distraught families with the calm confidence of quiet faith and simple hope is like taking the 16,000 Volts from the power line outside the home and transforming it to a usable 220 Volts inside the home. We can be a step down transformer and take the shocking realities of someone’s life and let them run through us without ourselves being shocked. This type of Presence (with a capital P) is what living and sharing our humanity with others is all about.