First Thoughts

Friday March 27

Readings – WIS 2:1A, 12-22; JN 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

In today’s readings there’s a sobering tone.  You can feel the anger, jealousy and violence brewing against the person who is challenging the systems of power, social conventions and taken for granted practices.

Even Jesus, who at times seems immune to the anger of the crowd, is on guard and being more careful.

Maybe you have had the experience before where you said something difficult to someone else that the other person found hard to hear.  And instead of letting that truth in, they lashed out at you for saying what you said.  Maybe you were the person who lashed out.

In the first reading, the “crowd” is very defensive.  They hear the words of the righteous one as a critique of them and immediately start saying, “Who does he think he is?  He can’t talk to us that way!”  You can feel their seething as they start to plot against the just one, and the scripture gives us an inside look into the psychology of hate.

Once we can objectify someone or something, we seem much more capable of hurting them.  So many of the world’s worst atrocities began as propaganda campaigns where people, governments and institutions started to repeat derogatory names for a group or calling them animals of some kind.  This objectification helps to pave the way for “justified” violence. 

I honestly believe that down deep it is very hard for us to violence to another person.  But if we can see them as “other” in some way, suddenly that connected part of us can recede into the background – making it possible for us to harm, bully, torture, hurt and kill.

Mahatma Gandhi, one of humanity’s great teachers of nonviolence, reminds us that, “your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits.”  And while we are not always in charge of our thoughts (they just seem to show up sometimes), we are in charge of what we do with them and whether we feed into them or not.

My friend Kit Miller is a great teacher for me on this.  She tells a story from her own life of a teacher who pointed out ‘first thoughts’ versus other thoughts.  That teacher reminded her that, in general, first thoughts are a matter of conditioning.  They are there for many complex reasons and are fed by the media, our family upbringing, culture, etc.  What we need to focus on are our second, third and fourth thoughts.  These are ours to control and we can let these guide our actions.

Notice your own thought patterns.  Notice your first thoughts – especially in situations of stress or when people frustrate, challenge or threaten you somehow.  Our first thoughts might try to disconnect us from the humanity of the other by calling them a name (jerk, stupid, a-hole, etc.) or might go to where the crowd goes in the first reading (a position of righteousness).  Don’t judge yourself for having the first thought, just don’t entertain it.  Move onto a second, third or fourth thought.

For today, just follow your thinking and notice what happens when you feel defensive, criticized or scared somehow.  Just breathe.  Stay connected to your own humanity.  Stay connected to the humanity of the other.