Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The Prodigal Son

The Prodigal Son

We know the story. The youngest son goes wildly adventuring, womanizing, loses jobs, fails education, parties, does drugs, damages his health and endangers his life, finally in despair returns home becoming a child again seeking his parents. He is exuberantly welcomed by his father, who with tears of joy exclaims this my son was lost and now he is found and now I am happy, now we we will have a feast and gifts for him!! The older son looks on with barely concealed anger. I have done everything correctly, got my education, got and kept a good job, visited my parents every week, sacrificed myself to raise my family, look after my wife, why should my brother get all this celebration and I get nothing?

My Thoughts

 The elder son is not made happy by his own rectitude and correct behaviour. He obviously takes his cue to be happy from what his father thinks of him, not of what he thinks of himself. His anger toward his brother and father comes because he tells himself he gave up his freedom to do what his brother did, followed his fathers’ rules, and now feels unrewarded. Evidently not capable of rewarding himself for his choices, he now doubts he is worthy in his father’s eyes. He doesn’t see that the father is not rewarding his brother for his profligate lifestyle, but is celebrating his safety, his returning home. The elder could join in the celebration but he mistakes the reason for it and so doubts his father’s love, and so doubts himself, and his fear makes him angry.

The younger son was evidently not made happy by his adventuring and reckless so-called self-indulgence. (How is it an indulgence if he is not happy?). The younger son set out to find himself in opposition to his fathers ideas, and found only suffering, and then he was desperate to get home, to get healed, to feel nurtured. He has not grown up yet, no matter how much the father celebrates him. Both sons have yet to learn about themselves, to have respect and love for themselves, regardless of what others may think of them. When they do, they will attain the wisdom of the father, who respects them both, loves them both, scolds neither of them, and shows them how he feels when he feels it.

This parable is played out daily in our culture. More sons and daughters than ever in recent history are returning home because they have not found themselves in the world, and seek safety and comfort of home and parents, like the children they still are. They have yet to grow up. Elder brothers ( and sisters) abound, scolding those who return to their childhood home, scolding the street people, scolding the poor, scolding those without jobs, those on welfare. Scolding the government for not looking after them better, granting them more roads, lower housing costs, better jobs, less taxes, etc. Younger brothers and sisters protest in the streets, demand the return of a nurturing government, demanding jobs, minimum pay, demanding governments do better, stop oppression, organize work and a meaningful place in society for them.

Yet returning to the childhood home may be the first step in healing our society for all of us. The childhood home is the nucleus, or ought to be, of a viable community.  Where each cares for all and all care for each. And given what is coming to our world habitat, massive and life endangering climate change, the breakdown of our global monetary system, the end of cheap oil fueled energy. Perhaps a time when most of those in developed countries will have to spend their own personal energy growing and making, in order to survive. Will we not need the comfort and skills of small communities of friends and, good neighbors, to survive?

It is all about our fear, of violence, of sickness, of hunger, of loss of goods and shelter, loss of love. We call it insecurity. We crave security, and give up our freedoms and often our social justice systems, hoping to get it.

There will always be predators. All classes in society are afraid of the predators. The rich bar their doors at night, co-opt police forces to do drive-bys, travel only on well lighted safe streets in fast expensive vehicles, enter only buildings protected by security guards and passcodes, spend time only with others of their class, surrounded by security.

Why all this emphasis on security? Why does the United States have 11 battle groups of thousands of warships, costing billions upon billions, army expenditures in the trillions, equal to the next ten largest armies combined? Why does that same country insist on having 3000 tanks and 6 billion rounds of ammunition, and much more, for their homeland security apparatus within their own country? Why do the rich in the developed countries all live in gated communities, and co-opt their governments into making the entire country a gated community for them?

They are afraid to lose what they have, afraid of the predators. And even the poorest, the street people, have a well founded fear of predators, seeking to rob them at knife point at night as they sleep on a subway grate in the cold and snow of winter.

It is all about fear, this desperate search for security. And there is no such thing as personal or even collective security. A life destroying disaster can happen to any, any time. The elder son in the prodigal son story discovered his self regard, his personal security, shattered when the father celebrated the younger in spite of his profligate behaviour. The younger son will wake the morning after the feast and know the insecurity of understanding he must leave home again sometime, to an unknown future.

The only security we will ever know comes from within. Learning not to doubt, learning not to fear, learning to trust and be open always to all the possibilities for joy, moment by moment, in being alive.

Donato Cianci  Feb. 25  2014

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