Dec. 3, 2010 Morning Prayer
Ellen Orner
Good morning.
My topic today is wearing God’s mercy and freedom as corrective lenses. On Our Way tells
us that God’s glasses, if you will, allow us to see the world clearly and truly. They bring it into focus
as it is, not distorted by our self-righteousness and fear. I’m really excited to be able to talk about this
particular section because it reminds me of an essay I read for a Creative Writing class this semester.
Walter Wangerin’s “An Ethic for Aesthetics.” I’m going to read a piece of it for you thatt stuck with
me because it puts its finger on something I already knew, but didn’t realize I knew it…which is also
something Walt Wangerin would say. Basically, I’m just going to stand up here and try to channel him
for the entire homily. Anyway.
I knew, because I grew up in Gary, and went to a public school in which I was the only white
kid, that my way of seeing the world as a small child had changed drastically by the time I got my
driver’s license. That is to say, I didn’t know, per se, that I was an extreme minority, as a
kindergartner. I didn’t notice it, and neither did my classmates. We didn’t think in those terms. We
compared our hair, as little girls do, and concluded that mine was soft and straight. (I know, hard to
believe, but it was, at one point). My classmates also discovered and pointed out that I was absolutely
no good at dancing. But that was about it. We were still seeing in particulars, we hadn’t learned yet to
see in generalizations, we hadn’t yet developed the blurred vision called prejudice.
Here’s what Wangerin has to say: “That principle, ‘without prejudice,; is hard. It is
frightening, as it means to live and act in an acknowledged ignorance! (exclamation point). But we
tend to live ever by means of prejudice. We must, you know, pre-judge most of our situations; that is,
we must assume many things about each situation we enter, or we might never be able to act within it.
But in order to write the broad and otherly world around me, I must practice the hard, the sometimes
scary exercise of resisting pre-judging those I meet, of admitting that I do not know, that every human
before me is a mystery, that I am a stranger in a strange land.”
By the time I could drive, I had learned, in a small, indirect way, to fear. I had learned that
people from neighboring, mostly white towns made a special effort to avoid driving through Gary.
Because it smells bad, they said, but especially at night. Because of the crime. And this is a reasonable
precaution. But we are not called upon to be reasonable, we are commanded to love. Perfect love casts
out fear, says John 4:18. But we can’t love perfectly, and certainly not if we’re relying on our own
strength, our common sense. Wangerin is right (surprise surprise): to see truly, with mercy and
freedom, feels dangerous. Sometimes, it is dangerous. I think that we’ll have a much harder time
letting down our guards though, if we don’t acknowledge the actual difficulty, the self-sacrifice, of
what we’re called to do.
There is no easy, convenient, human solution to the problem of prejudice. One seeming
solution is to swallow your fear, squeeze your eyes shut, and drive on through. I’ve tried it. I looked
good that way, I thought, I seemed “enlightened.” I’m capable of acting the right way, and saying the
right things without seeing anything at all. My fellow humans remain a mystery, an uncomfortable and
impersonal reminder of my role as a member of the unjustly privileged white middle class. By going
through the motions, by acting “brave” but refusing to open my eyes and see a person’s details—the
man hunched in the doorway of the abandoned liquor store on 5th Avenue in downtown Gary, down
which I walk, hurried, tense, after parking my car; by refusing to meet his eyes, to see them crinkle at
the corners when he smiles at me, and nods, I rob myself of the opportunity to see with God’s mercy
and freedom, to transform fear into love, to be transformed.
“Danger makes for sharp and watchful eyes,” Wangerin says, and in that way, the feeling of
fear has value. By facing it, we give ourselves the chance to observe authentically, to make
discoveries, to see from another’s point of view. “After a while,” he continues, “it isn’t danger that
persuades me to pay attention; it’s the willing confession of ignorance and the patient watching that
must follow. For those who think they know what they do not know, will never be able to know.” (end
quote) It is only through humility, I strongly believe, and full reliance on God’s grace that we are
capable of seeing freely, and as mercifully as God sees us.