Grandma Fannie, Shakespeare, Davy Crockett and King Solomon – the dynamic foursome
This morning my spiritual intention was to remind myself to be at peace with my humanness. As I contemplate my life I am acutely aware of how often I either want to slink away and hide for the rest of my life or give in to the temptation to puff myself up in an attempt to win the respect or admiration of others. These others are people to whom I give the power to determine my worth. Of course, when I puff myself up or when I slink away few people notice or care. They are busy with their own lives.
As a child, Grandma Fannie as well as our mother, often suggested one of us children were getting too big for our britches. Grandma Fannie was an avid reader of history and could well have read Davy Crockett An Account of Col. Crockett’s Tour to the North and to the South in which we says, “I myself was one of the first to fire a gun under Andrew Jackson. I helped to give him all his glory; But I liked him well once; but when a man gets too big for his Breeches I say Good Bye.”
Perhaps she was thinking of King Solomon when he, as reported in Proverbs, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall.” She was also fond of Shakespeare and might have been thinking of the Brutus saying to Julius Caesar in the play by that name, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall.” Perhaps she was thinking of another Shakespeare play, Macbeth, in which Hecate says, “And you shall know security is mortal’s chiefest enemy.” Often the word security is interrupted to mean over confident.
In any case, as with all core truths, wise people throughout history have known that while we must all, at times, be brave enough to take the risk of making decisions, we must, at the same time, remain open to new information – to learning. As a child I sometimes thought I knew more than the adults in my life and would argue with them if they suggested I was wrong or I would get my feelings hurt if they accused me of not knowing something. As a child I wanted to prove I was worthwhile by providing I was smarter or more knowledgeable than someone else. I was often told I was getting too big for my britches.
The deceased self-help guru Louise Hay suggested “We are perfect in our imperfection.” This seems to be the most essential truth with which many of us humans struggle to accept about ourselves amd others. It seems we cannot wait to verbally eviscerate the person who makes a mistake. Morgan Wallen, the country singer, recently, when drunk, made a racist statement. Apparently, his brain has taken a detour on other occasions when he has been drinking. I found myself wondering why he continues to drink. Could he be alcoholic? He would not be the first public figure to admit that and get help. Often we humans are fearful of admitting that we are vulnerable or less than perfect even while singing songs which clearly attest to our fragile humanness. While the country music industry and this country as a whole needs to finally be clear that racism is unacceptable, at the same time we need to be focused on the factors which draws one to racism or other forms of oppression. Clearly, us humans have a long history of attempting to prove our worth at the expense of the worth of others. When Jesus approached the prostitute or in other situation attempted to teach he did so with enormous gentleness. He taught that we must love others as we love ourselves. It is easy to miss the essential truth he was teaching; the truth that we need to love ourselves unconditionally as the imperfects works in process that we are. We do not need to, as did Julius Caesar, compare ourselves to the Northern Star “ immovable and incomparable”, to be worthy of love and respect. We do not need to pretend to be too big for our britches.
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