Treasure Chest
Maybe the common purpose of humanity is to be misunderstood but still try hard anyway. Such an approach would inoculate us against certainty or the egotism of believing we’re in the right camp all the time because Jesus or the Bible or the authority we’re inclined to agree with anyway said so.
Here’s something I think is true: for many people, those “authorities” are mirrors. Jesus/Bible/preacher/parish/politician/party/Buddha/whatever become little ways of reflecting us, not the other way around. It’s not much of a stretch from here to say that many of us just make an idol out of Jesus, slapping a brand name on whatever our homemade invention is.
Much of this manifests these days in comment threads and algorithms: the layering on of various arguments and hermeneutics and ontologies meant to prove we exist and are worthy. Our egos need this. We need to be different from other people. We need to be right. We need to be understood. We need a tribe. In order for us and our tribe to matter, there need to be things that aren’t in. That are wrong. That aren’t us.
But there’s another way. Instead of layering on, it is peeling away. Revealing. Moving in the opposite direction — not out of spite, but in a kind of willing disavowal of being understood.
Polish director and acting theorist, Jerzy Grotowski, suggested that when we engage in this peeling away — like removing one by one the layers of an onion — we invite ourselves into holy relationship between one other. For Grotowski, this relationship was between holy actor and holy audience, each of whom had given up the need for authority and righteousness and technique in order to simply be with other people. Agendaless. Camp-less. Void of ego and tribe.
To get to that delightful center, we have to open up — peeling away costume and posture and trappings and (metaphorical) flesh to get to the thing beating at the heart. That’s a place, I think, of deep understanding.
But it takes being misunderstood to get there.
How can we practice being misunderstood?