“For unless love becomes tenderness—the connective tissue of love—it never becomes transformational. The tender doesn’t happen tomorrow . . . only now.”
Gregory Boyle
The Tacoma Catholic Worker newsletter which graced my mailbox yesterday referred back to some of the wisdom of Father Greg Boyle. Father Boyle offers, what I might describe as a relational hermeneutic. He suggests that the widow, orphan and stranger are our trustworthy guides into kinship. He goes on to suggest that kinship is the deeper “why” for all the concrete actions we take each day… widow, orphan, & stranger.
Something moved in me as I read his words. I think in part because we are at the point in the term where one of my colleagues at The Seattle School presents his archetypal framework rooted in Pauline in the categories of faith, hope and love, exposing one’s inner prophet, priest and king dynamically connective with one’s widow, orphan, and stranger. Its a beautiful frame. The frame has emerged over a lifetime of clinical practice and thoughtful integration of theology, psychology, and culture…. and if I understand correctly its about to be published and am confident that many pastors and Christ-following therapists will have a fresh and vital tool for their healing vocations. And many more readers will find hope and help along their healing paths.
But I think I was struck at how such a beautiful and helpful archetypal frame could so easily become an abstraction. Abstraction keeps us from encounter. Authentic encounter transcends frames, and communion is always mystical. Yet we search for language and frameworks to help us better understand those holy moments. Ironically frames help us think about encountering the real, but get in the way of encounter when one focuses on the frame. When the Hebrew prophets spoke of widows, orphans, and strangers they were were talking about people. Not archetypes, frames, ideas, or hermeneutical lenses. Real people. A woman whose husband died… a child alone… a person not known… real people, with little power, at risk, and isolated. The prophets were talking about human beings encountered walking to the market, home from the synagogue, or delivering goods to one’s landlord.
I’m struck by the dynamic of encounter with the archetypal widow, orphan, and stranger within oneself, coupled with the widow, orphan, and stranger in the face of “real” other… this seems the the grounding of deep kinship… a connection that could go way beyond charity toward shared humanity.
So I sense when I saw the reference to Father Boyle’s words that the widow, orphan and stranger are our trustworthy guides into kinship, and that kinship is the deeper “why” for all the concrete actions we take each day I felt a check within. Even in this moment can I listen for and from the deeper why? Might I master the frames so as to let the frames go in the move toward kinship?
“You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.”
Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart
I first met Father Boyle through his writings. Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion is a beautiful book born of his life in his parish of Boyle Heights in LA. Reading his name yesterday prompted me to google him, and that’s where I found the above video which was recorded at Pepperdine University. So good. Turns out he has kept writing… looks like I have some gorgeous reading ahead of me.
Peace, dwight
