Unintended Consequences

We hear it every day, “I didn’t mean it!”  I did not intend to hurt someone.”  REALLY?  One of the assumptions that goes hand-in-hand with this is that if I never intended to do something, I should be absolved if the outcome is not what was intended.  One could write a book of examples where this reality is expressed in stories about human relationships.  Applicable to any relationship, we might want to consider where this applies within some of our most critical social issues of the day.

Recently, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission completed its work and we heard thousands of stories of well-intentioned care-givers who perpetrated some horrific actions in attempting to wipe out the aboriginal culture, language and heritage.  Added to this exercise of power over people, the unintended results of abuse added significant trauma to the life experience of children and their children today.  As civil servants and Christian community servers we would never consciously want to destroy a person and yet this is exactly what occurred.  The Impact of those actions is inter-generational.

So many times I can recall in my own life making “funny” comments about someone’s race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.  I was never a person who would knowingly hurt another human person.  And yet, my ‘funny’ comments were heard and received and felt by others around me.  What was the impact?  Some maybe laughed nervously, some were embarrassed for me, some were even angry with me because (I didn’t know they were gay?) they felt pushed further back into isolation from the world.  I never intended to hurt them….I would NEVER!!!  But I did!

Today we are hearing more and more about the progress we have made in our society in insuring the civil rights of all persons.  And, indeed, we have.  I want to suggest that the arena where we have made the least progress in this regard is within our own hearts.  Our heads have come to know and accept the appropriate parameters for relationships among ourselves in our world; our hearts have just not caught up.  Why else would there be such continued experience of racism in our North American world?  We see people and form opinions about them.  Those external opinions form judgments and we react accordingly.  It may be fear of the unknown; it may be influenced by values and beliefs we were taught as children.  We know intuitively that what is different will take us out of our comfort zone more often than not.

I remember the words of the song from the seventies that went, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me…”   Gradually we veered away from that notion giving way to working on systemic peace.  We needed to change systems to make peace, to free the oppressed and uplift the poor.  Today, we still believe this systemic perspective and rightly so.  Systemic racism and prejudice is a significant concern.  But have we thrown out the baby with the bathwater?  Can we simply change the rules of engagement, the laws, the policies and the parameters in such matters and still be able to humanly relate to one another in an open, compassionate, give and receive manner without first changing our own hearts?  The answer, my friend, is still blowing in the wind!

My old friend, Bob Carty, wrote a song called Desert Eyes.  It tells a story of when city folks went to the desert for a ‘different retreat’ they were confronted with the parched, arid, stark reality of the desert and they became depressed and desolate about what they saw. After a few days and with the help of their guide, they found their desert eyes to see the true life that lives in the desert- the licken, flowers, seeds and animals, etc. With desert eyes they could discover the real beauty, life and wisdom held within the sand and pebbles.  They discovered that with different eyes they also saw that they could be the water of life in that different reality.  As so, too, we can be mindful of our own need to form desert eyes in relation to others who may seem so different and removed from our own comfort zone.  Once we nurture that vision within our own eyes and hearts, we too can be the water of life to our relationships and will embrace change with a new and different vision of what the future might be.

Mary Euphrasia, who founded the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, once taught her young sisters about their work with such marginalized young women.  She said,  “It is not enough that you love them (intent), they must know they are loved (impact).  I guess in her own way she knew about the importance of mindful awareness of what we say and do with one another.  She knew that what you do is far more important than what you say.

I never intended to ramble on like this, but I hope that the impact is noteworthy.