Be Interesting!

This was the command put forth at the start of a new sub-blog by one of my cyber friends. I hope he will not take what follows personally as he has had quite a tumultuous few days and it is not my intent to pillory him. However, I find his use of the command intriguing. Be interesting! It was a dictate to follow before posting or one risked the consequences. And what exactly does it mean? This? Or this? Or this?

I was struck by the thought of the emperor Caligula. The guards bring in some poor soul. She is placed before the throne. One of the attendants turns to her and sternly commands: Be interesting! The gods help her if she is not.

So the friends of this particular blog are forwarned. Black Bart has pulled out his six shooter and commanded them to dance. The irony here, of course, is that we bloggers hear that command all the time in our own heads. We are chained to our blogs and live in fear that we will lose our readers if we are not interesting. Two other bloggers I know have tried to set their blogs aside and failed within days of making their big announcements. Those words keep whispering in our ears as we type, cut and paste, download, upload -- be interesting.

Maria has a wonderful post up at her blog today. It's a discussion of freedom, obedience and Benedict. What I got from it is that true freedom requires choosing from conscience and conscience requires understanding what you are choosing to obey. It is this meditation on obedience that has wrapped itself up with that dictate to be interesting. What rules are we obeying? What rules have we absorbed from our culture and guide our choices...of dress, of language, of theology, of civility?

Many of us on the progressive left think that we are defying all those rigid, dogmatic rules - that the rules are set forth by the right wingers and our role is to smash those paradigms. We don't always see that we have our own rules and paradigms. That we can be equally rigid and dogmatic.

Jesus said love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. Those were the two big rules. Everything else was negotiable. Over the centuries our squabbling over the negotiable rules has led to much bloodshed, revenge, anger, divisiveness. I live in the belief that God is the love that exists between us and "evil" is that which strives to destroy the bonds of connection. "Evil" is that which isolates us in our little bubbles, stewing in our own pain until we lash out.

Trusting in God, trusting each other, understanding when we are slapped and turning the other cheek instead of slapping back, loving our enemies. We try and we often fail. We are not divine. In our exhaustion, in our pain, in our fear, in our frustration...we say and do regrettable things to each other. Perhaps our devotion to our rules, that which we choose to obey, drives us on in our damaging behavior.

There are far too many ways our culture tells us that we are less than, not good enough, encourages us to feel failed, wronged, weak. If we absorb these messages and do not meditate on how they effect the rules we make for ourselves, the beliefs we blindly obey...then we are not free. We are slaves to something "evil."

Brothers and sisters - be yourselves, accept yourselves, love yourselves. All the rules are negotiable but two - love God and love each other...and "eat the lunch you brought." (Perhaps you should listen to the song below to understand that last bit.) Peace.

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