The Otherness of Me

From Rowan Williams' lecture, "The Person and the Individual: Human Dignity, Human Relationships and Human Limits":

"(...) Christians, especially in the early centuries, talked about God as trinity and talked about the divine and the human in Jesus (...) [There is] an essential mysteriousness about the notion of the person in the human world, an essential mysteriousness that one can’t simply deal with by listing it in a number of things that are true about us (...)

It’s because a person is that kind of reality, the point at which relationships intersect, where a difference may be made and new relations created. It’s in virtue of that that we are able as believers to look at any and every human individual and say that the same kind of mystery is true of all of them and therefore the same kind of reverence or attention is due to all of them.

We can never say for example that such and such a person has the full set of required characteristics for being a human person and therefore deserves our respect, and that such and such another individual doesn’t have the full set and therefore doesn’t deserve our respect.

That of course is why – historically and at the present day – Christians worry about those kinds of human beings who may not tick all the boxes but whom we still believe to be worthy of respect, whether it’s those not yet born, those severely disabled, those dying, those in various ways marginal and forgotten. It’s why Christians conclude that attention is due to all of them.

What that means, we may still argue a lot about. But the underlying point is quite simply that there is no way of, (as it were), presenting a human individual with an examination paper and according them the reward of our attention or respect only if they get above a certain percentage of marks. Any physical, tangible member of the human race deserves that respect, never mind how many boxes are ticked.

Another way of putting this is that we ascribe personal dignity or worth to people – to human individuals – because of that sense that in relationship each of us has a presence or a meaning in someone else’s existence. We live in another’s life."  

**********

Dear Kate,

This past Christmas I gave myself a gift, something to look forward to in January and beyond.  I signed up to volunteer at a care center, and a few days ago got my interview.

I am not going to speak about the details for reasons of privacy and also to make sure I am not calling attention to myself.  I think it is great to give back to a local community that has nurtured me over the years, and that's all I am gonna say about my volunteerism.

The position has to do with being present with someone who might not be aware of his/her own presence, or is misrepresented, or under-represented.

The Volunteer Manager asked me many questions during the interview.  One has to do with how I would deal with being forgotten.  Another being underappreciated, even denied.  Another being engaged in strife.  Another being rejected.  Finally a question about silence.

To the last one I answered, "I can be a monk."

It took me many years and countless steps to arrive at that interview.  I thought about my story so far and thanked God for this possible new chapter.

The quote today is much longer than usual.  Because I picked it.  Because Rowan Williams is a true rock star, every sentence from him a tour de force, what my son would call "shredding."  And I don't want to under-present greatness.  The passage speaks for itself and you can read the full lecture HERE.  I have nothing to add and seek only to diminish none.

Yours, Alex

**********

Dear Alex,

Some time ago I stood at the rare junction of dignity and madness, realism and invisibility, my first stare at hate hope yoked as the most disabled lovers in time place mood least understood.

It came on a Summer evening calm and light as organza on foam. I was called to join a rescue team to revive a pulseless teen. Her body sprawled on flat surface in mystery, a hologram of steel grey absorbed into frigid white from fluorescent bulbs above. She was about my daughter’s age. In her face I saw my mother, myself - a trinity fleshed out in flaws.

There was no time to question the absurd, the otherness of her in offscreen past living. She was really who? From where? To what end?

Instead the better thing to ask in this emergent moment was why I was here. The most dignified deed then was to confront the truth and fear visibly and realistically in front of me, us. Heads and hands hovered over her to stab yank prod shock per resuscitation protocol. I and the crew knew precisely our roles ascribed to us on the grounds of individual competencies with specific boxes ticked, examinations rated, points in percentages pinned, merits conferred. One could not gather around the communion table, this plot of life-less body vs. life-saving devices and drugs, if the criteria of our worthiness were not met or benchmarked for evidence-based outcomes.

But when despair drew towards marginal madness, all knowledge, vital signs and data garnered to weigh the likelihood of survival, of success began to fade in irrelevance. Her shirt, her flesh were torn beyond the limits of restoration. All my college degrees and qualifications collectively mounted on the ascending expertise of every educated experienced body and brain intervening in that desperate room could not impart any presence or meaning to a corpse. She remained ghastly static, entirely divine, a full-blown stranger to me in her birth and brief bracket of breaths, a human individual I had known more intimately after life.

So I wonder in the stench of death, how could anyone make sense of "the kind of reality, the point at which relationships intersect, where a difference may be made and new relations created”? What does it mean to "live in another’s life” - the otherness of another - when the language for existence may be grievously tenuous, distorted, forgotten, dead?

And I remember her parents crouched at a distant corner to my left. Dad bent in defeat and hate. Mom bawling, “God! Give her back to me!” I wanted to tell touch hold them but I did not have the words to give back. I can’t seem to stop retreating to that odd hazy place and those hopeful helpless heroes and mourners with me, our “full set of required characteristics for being a human person” exposed without tidy boxes to be checked-off for closure.

Well I still don’t have the right words to speak fully of that evening. Maybe it’s ok... to stand in reverence and attention, keep keeping not the objective sum of our 10-year challenge in posting good tastes looks and likes, but rather retain our marvel about human dignity from life through death, bridge human relationships even when all seem lost and accept our human limits silencing words and thoughts altogether on the mystery of the person, the individual - the otherness of me in another.

Yours, Kate