{"id":2026,"date":"2017-01-30T19:16:17","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T01:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=2026"},"modified":"2020-11-01T12:50:59","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T18:50:59","slug":"journaling-and-journeying-pro-life-and-pro-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=2026","title":{"rendered":"Journaling and Journeying: Pro-life and Pro-Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

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JOURNALING<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I woke this morning, it was sunny for the first time in weeks. I believe everything is interconnected, interdependent, so I took the sunshine as a signal that my mental and spiritual condition would\u00a0reshape itself today, and I shouldn’t stand in the way of that process. The sun is struggling a bit, and so am I, but I am open to what comes.<\/p>\n

In that frame of mind and spirit, I sat to journal for the second time in, well, months. Last year, I took a class in journaling and learned to create a regular space in time to sit and write on a single word or phrase or idea without stopping for 15 minutes. While I practiced that technique, I discovered it was much more than a way to record my thoughts at any point in time, although it is that. It also took me on journeys into myself to places I wouldn’t otherwise have reached.<\/p>\n

When I put things into words, it makes conscious what was unconscious and amorphous. I can get hold of an idea, turn it and consider it and follow its lead to shape another word or thought. Making something conscious is a creative act, and it leads me on a journey to other words, drawing other thoughts from that amorphous place that is\u00a0unity. Sometimes we call that unity G-d.<\/p>\n

In the first chapters of Genesis, G-d creates with words. Consider that for a moment. \u00a0The “earth”\u00a0is “tohu va-vohu,” formlessness and emptiness. G-d speaks, and\u00a0shapes emerge through the differentiations language provides: light and dark, waters above and waters below, land and sea and vegetation. G-d fills those environments with life, using words: sun, moon and stars, creatures of the land and sea and air, and finally, a human being. Words are creative. Words give shape to “tohu va-vohu,” and they transform unconsciousness to consciousness. Words create the world and the life in it.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking about consciousness today because when I sat to journal, what I wanted to write about is a set of labels we created in our country, “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” and my thoughts led me to consider consciousness.<\/p>\n

A teacher once said to me, religion is the language of “as if.” That being the case, our juxtaposition of pro-life and pro-choice creates an orthodoxy of extremes, and we are living today as if that alienated state of being were ultimate truth.<\/p>\n

These labels we have chosen set out the terms of a complex moral dilemma in a framework that invites conflict. These\u00a0words as we wield them fail completely to take us on a journey into ourselves. They fail\u00a0to strengthen our connection to the unity in and behind all being.<\/p>\n

Words are powerful and creative, yes, but they also differentiate. There is a balance, and we cling to these phrases in a way that our words only differentiate us, forcing us into limitations of thought that drive us further and further apart from each other and from whatever idea of G-d we hold.<\/p>\n

JOURNEYING<\/strong><\/p>\n

In\u00a0Starting Thought<\/a>, I shared this idea about food: “As we gather raw ingredients, prepare food and eat, we embrace the central moral paradox of human existence,\u00a0that it requires taking life to sustain life. \u00a0How we respond to that paradox defines us as human beings.” In an age of “alternative facts,” this is one incontrovertible fact for all of us. In order to live, we must take life.<\/p>\n

Our profound and primary moral dilemma as human beings is to decide what life to take. This dilemma presents itself to us in every moment. Every religion deals with this dilemma and provides its own tools to navigate it. \u00a0Because religions are complex responses to complex human experiences and dilemmas, the answers within any religion are never\u00a0black and white but rather nuanced, showing us a path for exercising consciousness, thinking and decision-making. Any seemingly clear-cut statement demands interpretation and exceptions.<\/p>\n

Some of us prefer not to deal with moral dilemmas and follow what we perceive to be\u00a0clear-cut prescriptions in religions. Or we remove the reality of these daily choices from our field of perception. Factory farms are an example of this path. Picking up a package of meat in plastic wrap at the store effectively separates us from the reality that we allowed suffering and caused the death of a creature.<\/p>\n

Using words as labels to say who we are and what we think instead of using them to explore ourselves and others, instead of using them to create, is another way to escape struggling with the moral dilemma at the root of our existence in the world. And to be sure, not one of us can give each second of our existence the focus and thought it requires if we regard it as a dilemma between taking and giving life — so we accept certain norms and engage in certain rituals that don’t require minute attention.<\/p>\n

And so I wanted to think about these labels today when I sat to journal: pro-life and pro-choice. In sharing my thoughts, I’m not focusing on individual experiences and\u00a0dilemmas, stories of personal suffering and joy. These stories are at the foundation of any\u00a0discussion,\u00a0and our experiences shape us — but it’s not where I am going to focus in this post.<\/p>\n

I also don’t want to sink into consistency or a debate framed by specific theologies. Of course my religion and my culture influence my thinking profoundly, just as my experience does. Those are facts of human existence for us all.<\/p>\n

What I want to do is simply share some (now elaborated) random thoughts I had this morning and encourage responses — because while words make us all creators, words we exchange with others create in a different way.<\/p>\n

PRO-LIFE & PRO-CHOICE IN THE BIBLE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we use “pro-life” as a label, but I want to explore broader meanings. I believe for many who assign the label to themselves and use it as a litmus test for others, it really means “pro-birth.” Joan Chittister, a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA<\/a>, a noted international lecturer as well as a former fellow at St. Edmund\u2019s College, Cambridge University, England, author of numerous books and articles and co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women<\/a>, a partner organization of the UN, captures this thought with her words<\/a>: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”<\/p>\n

Certainly the Bible is pro-life, but the conversation is framed very differently from the way we frame it today. I suggest the framing, through stories, is more nuanced, richer and less polarizing than our current framing in a label. “Choose life that you may live.” (Deut. 30:19). Contemplating the meaning of\u00a0this phrase is a lifelong journey in a world where the one incontrovertible fact of our existence is that we must take life in order to live.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0phrase also\u00a0highlights that the Bible is fundamentally pro-choice. This phrase doesn’t compel us to choose life, however we understand the word. It tells us to choose it and informs us that choices have consequences. Chapter 3 of Genesis makes the same points about life. The first human beings receive instructions. They make a choice that gives them moral consciousness when they eat from the Tree of Good and Evil. And there are ambiguous consequences of their choice: warned that if they make the “wrong” choice, they will “surely die,” when they do make that wrong choice, they are cast into life. Would it have been better for human beings not to have moral consciousness, indeed, not to live?<\/p>\n

So the biblical text is perhaps not as unequivocal as we thought. It is pro-life and it is pro-choice. Choosing has consequences, the consequences play out forever, and categories of right and wrong aren’t always that clear. Indeed, we might even call these categories labels, and this is one reason I think the Bible presents a richer and more complex framework for thinking about these issues than we provide in our modern cultural and political debate.<\/p>\n

CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BIBLE<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I thought further, connecting word to word during my 15 minutes this morning, I came to the word, “consciousness.” It’s a word we toss around a lot these days with phrases like “conscious choice,” reminding ourselves to think about our actions in the world, about how our choices affect not just ourselves but the world beyond ourselves. Three things occurred to me about consciousness in the Bible:<\/p>\n