"'The [sciences] will clip an Angel's wings, /Conquer all mysteries by rule and line." – John Keats (195-1821)
Scientific thinking is one of the great gifts of the Renaissance. Throughout the Dark Ages, scientific thinking and logical analysis were often punished by officials of the Catholic hierarchy that ruled Europe at the time.
As science has grown to dominate modern thinking, we have sometimes turned to it as a god. "There are no mysteries left," some scientists argue, "only problems that remain to be solved."
Yet, the most important energy of all, God's Love, remains far beyond what Keats understood as "rule and line." What I call Radical Loving Care, is beyond science because it involves the mystical journey of healing Love through our hearts.
Who are these courageous people that become vessels of Radical Love? Some are saintly caregivers. Some are artists.
Some of the greatest among us have often been classified as "crazy" and "possessed of mental illness. Indeed, many of our greatest saints and most brilliant artists have suffered from what is now called "bipolar illness."
What happens when lay people use modern-day psycho-babel to stereotype (and therefore degrade) those who see the world through an oddly colored lens? Could Abraham Lincoln have survived the kind of scrutiny that would have exposed his moods of elation and depression. Would labeling him (correctly) as "bipolar" have caused his commitment to a mental institution instead of the White House?
In her insightful book, Touched With Fire, Dr. Kay Redfeld Jamison, professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins Medical School ponders "whether we have diminished the most extraordinary among us – our writers, artists, and composers – by discussing them in terms of psychopathology or illnesses of mood." (italics added)
Jamison offers one of the most important and provocative questions I have ever encountered:
Do we diminish artists [and saints] if we conclude that they are far more likely than most people to suffer from recurrent attacks of mania and depression, experience volatility of temperatment, lean toward the melancholic, and end their lives through suicide?
As Jesus proved for all of us, the path of Radical Love is paved with thorns of ridicule, persecution, and degradation. Jesus was mocked as a megalomaniac for claiming to be the son of God and the messiah.
Yes, there are those among who are dangerously ill with mental diseases. Yet, the greatest among must travel into dark corners, explore dangerous jungles, and climb the most daunting heights in order to bring back to the world the riches these areas hold. The trip they make is one the rest of us are too timid to try.
Imagine what happens if you try to live Love beyond the rules and are punished for doing so by a supervisor stuck to "line and rule." How loving would you remain if your job were threatened for something as kind as letting the family member of a dying patient stay beyond visiting hours?
Society sends a strange message: Practice Radical Love but be sure you follow the rules. Paint something better than anyone has every painted, but make sure it's traditional. Live Love, but don't act "crazy" (like some kind of Jesus?)
In other words, society tells us, "Do not act like Jesus. Don't fall into depression and question why you have been forsaken. Live revenge: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
Saints like Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Dr. Albert Schweitzer and artists from Beethoven & Charles Dickens to Mark Twain and Vincent Van Gogh (along with thousands of other greats) were all afflicted with various kinds of bipolar illness. They were celebrated for the genius of their work created in the more manic state and shunned when they fell into depression and irritability.
But, we don't have to be great to suffer rejection from our peers. All we have to do is truly Live Love and we will likely be attacked by society for being different.
The shunning of Lovers is the crime. Radical Love calls all of us who may not have the gifts of the great to honor the suffering that saints and artists endure.
It is not for us to condemn the bad moods of the great. Love is free, but not cheap. Radical Love is not for the faint-hearted.
I admire the gifts of science. But, I am not going to let it clip my wings – my belief in the eternal mystery and ineffable power of Love.
As Jamison writes, "The great imaginative artists have always sailed 'in the wind's eye,' and brought back with them words or sounds or images to 'counterbalance human woes.'(Byron) That they themselves were subject to more than their fair share of these woes deserves our appreciation, understanding, and very careful thought."
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
Leave a reply to ann kaiser Cancel reply