John Kitzhaber is being accused of . . . well, privilege.  In 1999 then-governor Kitzhaber accepted a $306,000 loan from Bidwell & Co., to buy a cottage.  Bidwell was an investment firm, not a bank, and had only one other loan on its books; the Kitzabler loan was with no down payment, a deal unheard of in those days.  Then 2 1/2 years later, Kitzhaber appointed Jerry Bidwell to the Oregon Investment Council, an unpaid position which nevertheless was prestigious and put Bidwell in regular contact with the most powerful individuals in the investment industry.  There was nothing illegal about the loan.  Kitzhaber didn’t even have to disclose it, because Bidwell’s firm was regulated by the state and therefore exempt from the disclosure rule.  Kitzhaber paid 8.25 percent interest at a time when 15- to 30-year loans were going for 7 to 7.4 percent, off the 5-year loan early interest, and he paid off the 5-year loan early.  So what’s the big deal?

Doesn’t everyone get a little help from their friends?  Isn’t it true that “it’s who you know” that determines who gets the job–or at least an interview?  Isn’t it OK that the next-door neighbor who is handy with automobiles helps you repair your car?  I mean, even if you live in the ghetto, don’t your buddies watch your back?  As a minister, I got all kinds of special privileges–tickets to performances, stays at lovely beachhouses owned by congregants, referrals to the best doctors.  Once when I needed to purchase a car, I got a “no money down, low interest rate” loan, just above dealer’s price, on the spot, because I was a minister. 

So what is the big deal about Kitzhaber?  It is that elected officials cannot afford to give even the suggestion that they might not be objective in their decision-making.  No one is saying that Bidwell was not qualified for the position on the Council, or that his company was given any special benefits from the state government.  But the fact is that when someone in political office is given a “favor,” it is an unwritten, unspoken expectation that the favor will be returned in some form or another.  These kinds of special privileges are given all the time–everything from nights in the Lincoln bedroom to meals in expensive restaurants to sought-after tickets at sports events.  “It’s nothing,” a wealthy politico will say.  “Do you think that a couple of tickets to a game is going to change my vote?”  Actually, yes, I do.  Not that it’s a one-for-one exchange, no–but it’s access to power, something that the little man (or woman) does not have.  It’s an ear that will hear when the phone rings.  It’s a handshake, a meeting of the eyes, however briefly, that says, “I know you.  We’re two of a kind.  I understand your needs, and I’ll be there for you.”

But lest those of us who are privileged begin to feel self-righteous, let it be said that we should recognize that we enjoy advantages that many others do not have.  What do I mean by “privileged”?  We know people who know people.  We have enough money to buy what we need, and to get the best professional help.  We can leave town when we need a break.  We give support, financial and otherwise, to certain people of power and influence.  Our skin is the right color.  We have had a chance to go to university.  And so on and so forth.  We need not feel guilty, but we should never feel that our accomplishments are all due to our hard work and moral superiority.  If we are so privileged, we should do all we can to even out the playing field.  We should never dare to congratulate ourselves on what we have become.  We’ve had a lot of help from our friends.

The documentary “Raw Faith” (director, Peter Wiedensmith), concerning my transition out of ministry and my surprise in falling in love for the first time, will be shown tomorrow night at 7:00 PM at the Sun Valley Spiritual Film Festival.  I’ve been impressed with the quality of the other films selected (see info and the trailers at www.svspiritualfilmfestival.org), and so my husband George and I are about to leave for our flight to Boise and our drive to the festival, through what I understand is beautiful country.  The festival is putting us up at the lodge (Peter and I will be speaking), so we’re looking forward to all these new experiences–and hoping that “Raw Faith” will win another award!  More upon my return next week.
 

I just re-read A General Theory of Love, a book about the origin and powerof love–and in fact a book grounded in hard science.  The book was written by three psychiatrists–Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon–and it argues that we learn to love, starting perhaps even before birth with the sound of our mother’s voice, and that our physiological health demands that we continue to make relatedness and connection central, lest we risk unfulfilled lives or even early death.

The authors’ theory goes like this:

*The human brain is composed of three parts: reptilian, limbic, and neocortical.  The reptilian brain houses the survival centers: breath, heartbeat, swallowing, etc.; the limbic brain is the seat of the emotions; the neocortex handles functions like speaking, reasoning, writing, and planning.

*Through limbic resonance, a mutually responsive emotional exchange, we develop our social sense–i.e., learn to love and to connect.  This exchange happens first and most significantly with the mother.  Without it, physiological systems fail, and the child dies (the syndrome known as “failure to thrive.”)

*Even with the best parentling, children never develop a completely self-tuning physiology: we are social animals, and we continue to need the emotional regulation that we receive through emotional exchange in intimate relationships.  “Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying with them.”

*As children mature, they extract knowledge about human behavior through implicit memory, which is not subject to reason and is not part of the conscious mind.  Individuals who have poor or erratic parenting find themselves drawn to people who replicate the negative patterns of behavior they learned in their family of origin.

*Limbic revision is possible, but is not  an easy task–it is a remodeling of the emotional, or limbic, pathways in the brain.  In therapy, limbic revision does not come through insight, for emotional familiarity exercises a stronger pull than reason.  Rather, it comes through a healthy, loving and  extended relationship with the therapist.  It can also be facilitated through close relationships with people who know how to love well.

*The authors warn against the intense use of “electronic stewards” for our children: television, videos, computer games.  These cannot substitute for face-to-face emotional exchange.  Anxiety and depression are the consequences of ignoring limbic needs, and these are epidemic in the U.S. today.

A General Theory of Love is profoundly counter-cultural in several ways:

–It calls into question the American ideals of individualism and independence: human beings are ever and always interdependent, regulating one another emotionally–loving one another into life and health.

–It questions a mental health system which depends so heavily on medication.  Medication can be useful, but cannot provide limbic revision.  It questions an insurance system that provides so little coverage for mental health.  It questions the efficacy of “insight therapy.”

–It questions a social policy that asks single mothers to “get a real job” rather than raise their children–and indeed, a society that is generally unsupportive of women who choose to work in the home.

–It questions our growing substitution of electronics for actual human contact.

–It questions our culture’s pursuit of consumer goods rather than relationships, calling modern American culture “an extended experiment in the effects of depriving people of what they crave most.”

–It questions a corporate culture that asks workers to pour their hearts into a job, when the corporation itself has no attachment inclinations such as loyalty, concern, affection.

–It questions our cultural attitude that relationships don’t need much time and attention–that there can be an “efficiency” in relationships, as with the other areas of our living.

A General Theory of Love is not a self-help book–it aims to change consciousness, not just pose ideas.  And when such a shift occurs, we can’t ever see the world again in exactly the same way.  We stop, we sense an internal shift, we change.  In an anti-life culture, this book is one of those rare ones that help us choose life.

My husband George and I are going to the beach on Friday for the week, and during that time we’ll be celebrating our first wedding anniversary.  How can that be?  It still feels strange to call George “my husband.”  Sometimes I look at him in a kind of wondering, dazed way, and think, “I’m married to this man?”  And already a year gone.

This coming anniversary brings to mind the unfair, unwarranted, unbelievable passage of time.  Like most of us, I believe that I have forever–forever to travel, forever to write, forever to forgive, forever to love.  But then the markers come: another New Year, another birthday, another anniversary.  One day it’s fairly easy to do that 6-mile hike, and the next . . . well, not so easy.  My body is saying “slow down,” and yet I’m so hungry to soak up every moment of experience from every day.  Rest?  How unfair, to have to rest!

I realize that I’m trapped in the finite–with the infinite, there is no boundary called “time.”  But I’m flesh and blood, and so I hear the clock ticking.  I will not have a lifetime with my new husband, for instance.  I told him when we married that he had to give me at least 30 years.  But can he?  Can I give him thirty years?  I only know that every moment we share is precious.  I don’t want to waste any of the life we have left with wondering or arguing or posturing.  And yet because I’m human, I toss off moments like I have an infinite number.  This anniversary reminds me that I don’t.

Likewise, there are the children to consider: George’s children and my children, and our grandchildren.  We don’t tell our children while they’re growing up, “Life is not easy.  It’s hard to live well–to live with integrity, I mean.  It’s hard to love well.  Dangers abound.”  What do they need from us, in the years we have left?  Can we be there for them in the ways they need us?

And what about our work, our gifts to the larger world?  What remains to be given?  What is significant and what is not?   Our days our numbered.  Time pushes us to make choices.  Not that any one of us is irreplaceable, or is going to save the world from its headlong rush into darkness, but we have to answer to ourselves.  Have we exploited our gifts to the fullest, have we done what we have been given to do by whatever powers that be?

And so I approach this anniversary with some degree of melancholy, yes, but also with awe and thanksgiving.  I know the moment is everything.  I’m living with the full understanding that I will not be living one day, and that understanding makes each day sweet and full of possibility.  Of course, I’m heir to all the human stuff that plagues us all: I want to lose 10 pounds–well, maybe 15; I wish the construction noise would stop; I don’t understand why my husband take the longer route home, when I’ve told him better.  Let it go, I say, just let it go.  Pay attention to what really matters.   

Last night I saw Eugene O’Neill’s play “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” starring William Hurt and Robyn Nevin, in Artists Repertory Theatre here in Portland.  It is an amazing play–3 1/2 hours of family angst–and the production was outstanding, with Hurt and actors from the Sydney Theatre Company, the premier theatre company in Australia.  The play’s characters come right out of O’Neill’s family.

It was an excruciating play to witness.  I watched the family disintegrate–in spite of their wanting to do better, wanting to be better persons, they seemed caught in their family history, unable to escape their fate, unable to make a way for the next generation.

I believe Hurt was quoted somewhere as saying that he wanted to do this play because it was about “transformation.”  But I saw little transformation in the play itself.  O’Neill’s character was the younger son, who is stricken with tuberculosis.  He is the poet, the young seer, the “truth teller” in the family–but nobody can really listen.  The mother has been so wounded by being dragged from one dirty hotel room to another her whole married life, never having a home and never feeling loved by her husband, that she has succumbed to mental illness and drug addiction.  The father grew up desperately poor; as an adult, he became a well-to-do actor, but remained a miser with his wife and children.  He turned to drink after selling out, by doing one lucrative but unchallenging role for most of his career.  The older son is a n’er do well and an alcoholic. 

All the characters have a love/hate relationship with all the other characters.  They say hurtful things, followed by “I love you!”  They push away in anger, only seconds later to hug warmly.  Over and over again the mother voices what I must believe is the deterministic philosophy of O’Neill: “We can’t help being the way we are; what has happened to us has made us this way.” 

Is this true?  To what extent are we forced by life’s exigencies into patterns that we cannot change?  I think we are far more determined by environmental influences and by genetic disposition than most of us believe we are.  We come out of the womb with certain personality traits hard-wired in, and a certain amount of brain power.  And then how this vulnerable child is raised either opens the way to growth or closes off possibilities–generally some of both.  In O’Neill’s play, you see negative family influences ravaging human beings.  Because O’Neill’s play is a supremely American one, you also get some sense of how an undue focus on money (an American passion) can lead people off course–and the father’s story of poverty tells poignantly of class issues.

But there is more to the human story than what we are given in this life–there is also what we choose.  How much choice is possible, I would not venture to say, but I believe that all of us have some measure of choice, and that makes all the difference.  We can choose to say “no.”  We can leave.  We can bring nurturing people into our lives.  We can speak our grievances out loud, and break the silence, as the stand-in for O’Neill does, in the play.  The most tragic figure, to my way of thinking, is the mother.  In the early 20th century, women’s roles were so circumscribed that only the very strongest could break through into another way–O’Neill’s mother was not strong; she loved a man who could not love and care for her; and the culture of the period gave her little option but to hunker down and make the best of it.

The one character who is redemptive in the play is the son who takes the part of O’Neill.  The redemption is the play itself.  He becomes a poet and a playwright and shines a light on what has been hidden.  When art is done with great integrity, it is redemptive.  The truth, as always, will set us free.  What we know, what we can name, we can choose or reject.  And therein lies the redemption.