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© Davidson Loehr
June 1, 3003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
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INTRODUCTION
I began writing soliloquies for the characters in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son in 1988, as a more creative way to explore the many depths and insights of great stories. As all who write stories learn, the characters have their own integrity, and once you’ve found it, the characters determine what they will say, not the storyteller. So the exercise of trying to put yourself inside the spirit of different characters is almost always eye-opening, and the stories usually lead to unexpected places. This was especially true with these four soliloquies. I wrote them in order of increasing difficulty – the older brother’s story is the easiest to tell, because everyone identifies with his complaints. In 1990, I wrote the second installment, a soliloquy for the fatted calf. This began almost as a joke, I expected the story to be very simply, whiny or angry, and straightforward. I was astonished when I found that the fatted calf had a voice and a perspective, and I was a little shocked to see what it had to say. I’m not aware that I had ever seen the story in this way before.
But after 1990, I left the project. Something about the last two characters felt harder, and felt like it would take a turn I didn’t know how to make. So it wasn’t until 2003, fifteen years after I’d begun the project, that I had two Sundays in a row to fill, and decided it would be a good time to finish what I had begun so long ago. The father was hard to write partly because I had to forget the confessional spin traditionally put on it: that the “father” is really God, so we must build this part up to be wonderful and wise. When I could finally just see him as the father of these two sons, he turned out to have a very different perspective on the story: less wise, perhaps, but much more human.
But the hardest to write, and the most surprising, was the soliloquy for the Prodigal Son. It has always seemed to me that his father’s actions put him in a tough place, living out his life among people who thought he was a shiftless cheat. As I got into him, it became clear to me that this parable – at least as I read it – contains the essential message of the man Jesus, at least as I understand it. And the lack of an ending to the story also seems to have been true to Jesus’ message: that this revolution can not be finished by one person or one God, that it is a conspiracy against the ways of the world into which we are all invited. This gave me a new appreciation for how unpleasant and unwelcome a message like this would be, in any time and place.
I don’t mean to inflict these soliloquies on you as the only way to speak through the material. I invite you into the story yourselves, to find for yourself the voices that seem to speak to and through you. And you may want to add more characters to the tale: a mother, for instance. For me, this was a spiritual exploration of the message of the man Jesus and some of its unsettling implications, as well as an exploration of my own spirit, and a challenge to my own beliefs. All great stories contain buried treasure, I invite you to dig here for a bit. – Davidson Loehr, June 2003
READINGS: Christian and Buddhist versions of the Prodigal Son Parable
I decided to contrast Jesus’ story with an older Buddhist version of a very similar situation. The two thinkers, and two religions, see things very differently, and their wisdom points in quite different directions, as you’ll see.
1. The Christian version comes from the gospel of Luke:
There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.” And he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.” And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to make merry. (Luke 15: 11-24, RSV)
2. A Buddhist Version of the Prodigal Son story
A young man left his father and ran away. For long he dwelt in other countries, for ten, or twenty, or fifty years. The older he grew, the more needy he became. Wandering in all directions to seek clothing and food, he unexpectedly approached his native country. The father had searched for his son all those years in vain and meanwhile had settled in a certain city. His home became very rich; his goods and treasures were fabulous.
At this time, the poor son, wandering through village after village and passing through countries and cities, at last reached the city where his father had settled. The father had always been thinking of his son, yet, although he had been parted from him over fifty years, he had never spoken of the matter to anyone. He only pondered over it within himself and cherished regret in his heart, saying, “Old and worn out I am. Although I own much wealth – gold, silver, and jewels, granaries and treasuries overflowing – I have no son. Some day my end will come and my wealth will be scattered and lost, for I have no heir. If I could only get back my son and commit my wealth to him, how contented and happy would I be, with no further anxiety!”
Meanwhile the poor son, hired for wages here and there, unexpectedly arrived at his father’s house. Standing by the gate, he saw from a distance his father seated on a lion-couch, his feet on a jeweled footstool, and with expensive strings of pearls adorning his body, revered and surrounded by priests, warriors, and citizens, attendants and young slaves waiting upon him right and left. The poor son, seeing his father having such great power, was seized with fear, regretting that he had come to this place. He reflected, “This must be a king, or someone of royal rank, it is impossible for me to be hired here. I had better go to some poor village in search of a job, where food and clothing are easier to get. If I stay here long, I may suffer oppression.” Reflecting thus, he rushed away.
Meanwhile the rich elder on his lion-seat had recognized his son at first glance, and with great joy in his heart reflected, “Now I have someone to whom I may pass on my wealth. I have always been thinking of my son, with no means of seeing him, but suddenly he himself has come and my longing is satisfied. Though worn with years, I yearn for him.”
Instantly he sent off his attendants to pursue the son quickly and fetch him back. Immediately the messengers hasten forth to seize him. The poor son, surprised and scared, loudly cried his complaint, “I have committed no offense against you, why should I be arrested?” The messengers all the more hastened to lay hold of him and brought him back. Following that, the poor son, thought that although he was innocent he would be imprisoned, and that now he would surely die. He became all the more terrified, fainted away and fell on the ground. The father, seeing this from a distance, sent word to the messengers, “I have no need for this man. Do not bring him by force. Sprinkle cold water on his face to restore him to consciousness and do not speak to him any further.” Why? The father, knowing that his son’s disposition was inferior, knowing that his own lordly position had caused distress to his son, yet convinced that he was his son, tactfully did not say to others, “This is my son.”
A messenger said to the son, “I set you free, go wherever you will.” The poor son was delighted, thus obtaining the unexpected release. He arose from the ground and went to a poor village in search of food and clothing. Then the elder, desiring to attract his son, set up a device. Secretly he sent two men, sorrowful and poor in appearance, saying, “Go and visit that place and gently say to the poor man, ‘There is a place for you to work here. We will hire you for scavenging, and we both also will work along with you.'” Then the two messengers went in search of the poor son and, having found him, presented him the above proposal. The poor son, having received his wages in advance, joined them in removing a refuse heap.
His father, beholding the son, was struck with compassion for him. One day he saw at a distance, through the window, his son’s figure, haggard and drawn, lean and sorrowful, filthy with dirt and dust. He took off his strings of jewels, his soft attire, and put on a coarse, torn and dirty garment, smeared his body with dust, took a basket in his right hand, and with an appearance fear-inspiring said to the laborers, “Get on with your work, don’t be lazy.” By such means he got near to his son, to whom he afterwards said, “Ay, my man, you stay and work here, do not leave again. I will increase your wages, give whatever you need, bowls, rice, wheat-flour, salt, vinegar, and so on. Have no hesitation; besides there is an old servant whom you can get if you need him. Be at ease in your mind; I am, as it were, your father; do not be worried again. Why? I am old and advanced in years, but you are young and vigorous; all the time you have been working, you have never been deceitful, lazy, angry or grumbling. I have never seen you, like the other laborers, with such vices as these. From this time forth you will be as my own begotten son.”
The elder gave him a new name and called him a son. But the poor son, although he rejoiced at this happening, still thought of himself as a humble hireling. For this reason, for twenty years he continued to be employed in scavenging. After this period, there grew mutual confidence between the father and the son. He went in and out and at his ease, though his abode was still in a small hut.
Then the father became ill and, knowing that he would die soon, said to the poor son, “Now I possess an abundance of gold, silver, and precious things, and my granaries and treasuries are full to overflowing. I want you to understand in detail the quantities of these things, and the amounts that should be received and given. This is my wish, and you must agree to it. Why? Because now we are of the same mind. Be increasingly careful so that there be no waste.” The poor son accepted his instruction and commands, and became acquainted with all the goods. However, he still had no idea of expecting to inherit anything, his abode was still the original place and he was still unable to abandon his sense of inferiority.
After a short time had again passed, the father noticed that his son’s ideas had gradually been enlarged, his aspirations developed, and that he despised his previous state of mind. Seeing that his own end was approaching, he commanded his son to come, and gathered all his relatives, the kings, priests, warriors, and citizens. When they were all assembled, he addressed them saying, “Now, gentlemen, this is my son, begotten by me. It is over fifty years since, from a certain city, he left me and ran away to endure loneliness and misery. His former name was so-and-so and my name was so-and-so. At that time in that city I sought him sorrowfully. Suddenly I met him in this place and regained him. This is really my son and I am really his father. Now all the wealth which I possess belongs entirely to my son, and all my previous disbursements and receipts are known by this son.” When the poor son heard these words of his father, great was his joy at such unexpected news, and thus he thought, “Without any mind for, or effort on my part, these treasures now come to me.”
World-honored One! The very rich elder is the Tathagata, and we are all as the Buddha’s sons. The Buddha has always declared that we are his sons. But because of the three sufferings, in the midst of births-and-deaths we have borne all kinds of torments, being deluded and ignorant and enjoying our attachment to things of no value. Today the World-honored One has caused us to ponder over and remove the dirt of all diverting discussions of inferior things. In these we have hitherto been diligent to make progress and have got, as it were, a day’s pay for our effort to reach nirvana. Obtaining this, we greatly rejoiced and were contented, saying to ourselves, “For our diligence and progress in the Buddha-law what we have received is ample”. The Buddha, knowing that our minds delighted in inferior things, by his tactfulness taught according to our capacity, but still we did not perceive that we are really Buddha’s sons. Therefore we say that though we had no mind to hope or expect it, yet now the Great Treasure of the King of the Law has of itself come to us, and such things that Buddha-sons should obtain, we have all obtained. (Saddharmapundarika Sutra 4)
I. The Older Brother’s Soliloquy
My father has spoken of justice and of love, and claims to have played the one off against the other, letting love win out. He makes it all sound so easy, as though anyone with a warm heart would have done the same. But his justice is too weak, his love too soft, and he betrays them both, as he also betrays me.
He says he is a gatekeeper, and his task is to choose life and let it come through the gate and not shut it out. And so are we all gatekeepers, and so are we all charged with choosing life and letting it through. But first we must recognize it; and we must recognize it in its largest form, not its smallest; and in its most responsible incarnation, not its cheapest.
To choose life means to be able to make some distinctions: some distinctions which are necessary even to recognize life. And this my father has not done. This is where his big and soft heart has done long-term harm for the sake of short-term good.
It is true that both justice and love are needed in order to be a proper gatekeeper, but they are not as my father has understood them. For justice to survive, there must be fairness, there must be balance, and when necessary retribution. It is harsh but true that our decisions and our actions determine the quality of our lives, and the worth of our lives both to ourselves and to others. It is also harsh but true that lives can be squandered, even wasted. It happens every day, you see it all around you. And though it may be a cruel fact of life, it is still a fact of life, and there is a terribly important kind of justice in that.
For if our decisions do not matter, if our actions do not matter, if anything we do can simply be forgiven, then what good are ethics? Why teach our children to do good at all? Why not simply teach them how to play upon the soft hearts of others for forgiveness? Why care about education and religion and laws to help people become responsible and generous citizens if it does not really matter? If it is always an option simply to slough off the very responsibility on which we all depend and follow our own selfish whims, knowing that all will be forgiven anyway, then why even have words for goodness, justice and truth?
Words like duty and responsibility may seem cold and hard words, but they are not. They are deeply caring words, for without them neither fairness nor justice could exist. And one charged with being a gatekeeper of life cannot shrug off these notions with impunity, for without fairness and justice it is not life that is being served, but the special privilege of a select few.
Justice requires doing our part. Unless we do our part, there will be no whole, for the whole is made up of all of us doing our part to keep it together and make it work for ourselves, for others, and for those who will come after us. This is what is at stake in justice, and justice is what my father has betrayed.
But he betrays love too, even though he thinks he acts in its behalf. For his heart is too soft and mushy, and he confuses love with mere sentimentality. He loses the distinctions which real love demands. And there must be distinctions. No one can love everything and everyone, for that is not love at all, but only an insipid kind of indifference which permits everything because nothing is sacred to it. A parent who endorses everything is as irresponsible and as destructive as a physician who can not tell a nose from a boil or an arm from a deadly tumor and so lets them all grow together until the sick parts have at last killed the healthy ones because those who were charged to protect life did not make the needed distinctions.
This is why not all things can be forgiven, and why we must let even those we love pay the cost of their mistakes. Real love must know what is to be loved and what is not to be loved, and to make that difference important. That is a gatekeeper’s job. That is what is involved in choosing life rather than death, health rather than sickness. And that is what my father did not do.
Listen: to choose life is to choose the most responsible forms of it, not the least, and not to let your fondness for a part be the cause of your harming the whole. You cannot isolate one life from all the rest and act only on its behalf without regard for the implications of your act. For human life is not an individual thing: it is communal, collective. It is like a giant tapestry, in which we are all parts of the fragile weave. We may each be but a thread; but without that thread the whole fabric is weakened. Gatekeepers must keep the fabric from being weakened, lest it tear and be ruined.
Life is like music. But it is not like singing a solo, it is like being part of a whole ensemble. We must all play part of the melody, the harmony, or the rhythm, or the whole piece will suffer, and all will suffer who might otherwise have enjoyed it. You cannot simply sit out and refuse to play your part, or you hurt all of the others who have come in good faith and generosity to play their parts. And to reward the one who refuses to weave or to play is to harm the entire tapestry, the entire piece of music, because of your short-sighted preference for one non-player for whom your heart had a soft spot.
We have a supreme worth, but our worth consists in our participation, not our withdrawl. Our worth consists in our being a part of the whole, not being apart from it. And the truth which both justice and love must acknowledge is that some lives are more worthy than others. Some lives are more deserving of respect, and some deserve only our criticism, our correction, or our censure.
It is not easy to be the gatekeeper my father thinks himself to be. It means loving the whole more than loving the parts, and when necessary protecting the whole from one or more indifferent parts, no matter the cost. For where all is forgiven, nothing is holy. And to do disservice to the holy, as my father has done, is not only irresponsible and uncaring, but blasphemous as well. This was my father’s sin, this was his betrayal.
Now hear my story, and see if you do not agree.
I have worked here all of my life, and have been a faithful son and a faithful worker since I can remember. Since my brother left, it has been harder, with only the two of us to share the work, but we have done it. We have each worked harder in order to carry the weight which my brother dropped at our feet, but that is what life is like, and that is what we must do. Still, it has not been painful drudgery. There is a kind of joy in earning your bread, and contributing to the lives of others. Our wheat feeds many people, just as we are protected by the clothing some of them have made, made comfortable by the furniture others have made, and kept dry by the house which still others have built for us. We are part of a community, and there is a fullness in that.
And there is an end of the work to look forward to, at the coming harvest. That is why we have been fattening the calf for these many months, as a reward for those who have earned it.
Now what would you feel if you had returned home today as I did, tired and hungry, to find the makings of a great feast? “What happens here?” I asked a servant, and it was then and in that way that I learned that my wastrel of a brother had finally returned home, his money squandered and his honor gone, and that my father had been so overjoyed by this shameful return that he had killed our fatted calf. Our fatted calf, the one we had raised to fill our bellies at the harvest festival-that is the calf which was killed. There will be no fatted calf for the harvest festival this year. Those who have earned a feast will go without while it is spent instead on the one who did nothing, earned nothing, and made life harder for those of us who stayed behind. And to see that calf slaughtered for this feast to honor that brother who did those things-it is something I will not abide.
Do not tell me that you would not be outraged if this happened to you, for you would be. And I was outraged, and flew into a fit. “Come in,” the servant had the gall to say to me, “your father has bid me welcome you in.”
“Never!” I screamed back at him. “I will not come in through that door. It is unclean. It has been made unholy and unhospitable by my brother and by my father, and by this whole offensive feast. If I cannot stop this sacrilege, I can at least refuse to endorse it. I can at least preserve my integrity. My father may do this to me, but he cannot make me participate in it.
Well, that is my story, those are the things I have been repeating to myself as I sit out here on this hill, looking across at my house where my brother parades around in his robe and his ring and my father sanctions the whole unjust mess in the name of a cheap and misguided love. And I know that of all the people who hear this story, most will take my side in it.
Ah, but now the finale: for here comes my father. He has come out of that cursed door. He has seen me, sitting here on the hill in my grand pout, and now he comes to fetch me. Well, there will be no surprises. I know him well, and know well what he will say.
“Come,” he will say, “to the feast.” “I will not,” I will answer, “for it is an unjust feast.”
“It is a feast of forgiveness and gratitude,” he will say, “not of justice.” “I will not,” I will say. “I do not care if it is a feast of forgiveness and gratitude, it is an unfair feast of forgiveness and gratitude, and I’ll have no part in it.”
And then, after a few more exchanges like this, my father will look at me in that look of his that I know so well, and he’ll kiss me on the cheek, look me in the eyes, and say: “the door is open, my son, and it can be no more than open. It is open for you and for your brother, as it has always been. There is a feast of life going on, to which you are invited. If you refuse, it will be only your own pettiness and anger which keep you out, and only your own bitterness which you shall taste. And so: come into the feast, or sit alone on this hillside and pout. But the door is open, you too are welcome, and you too are loved.”
He’ll turn, after that, and walk back to the house.
And then, I shall have to decide . . . .
II. The Fatted Calf’s Soliloquy
A fatted calf doesn’t have a lot of choices. The end is known from the beginning; for we will be sacrificed for something, and we do not get to choose what it will be. Our whole life gets its meaning from the celebration at the end of it, a celebration we never see. We have no story of our own; you hear about us only through the story told about the feast we are given to.
I was meant for a harvest feast. Many months ahead they began to fatten me. I didn’t mind; in fact, I liked it, because I ate so much better than all the other calves. I thought I was special; I suppose I was, in a way. Still, it was just a harvest feast they had in mind. They do it every year. Every year there is a harvest, and every year a calf is fattened for the occasion. It is always the same, I was just this year’s main course. Nothing special, just part of the annual cycle, as regular and indifferent as a machine, like all of Nature’s cycles.
You may not be very interested in my story, since it sounds so different from your own. And you are different from fatted calves, it is true. But we are much alike, too. For your life is also given for something. Your days and years, your energies and allegiances, are given over to something, and you serve it mostly without thinking about it, maybe without even being aware of it.
You serve a job, a career, an army, a country, another person, even a set of beliefs. So much of your life is defined by the things you give it for; your whole life is a kind of sacrifice offered to your gods large and small, to your values good and bad, even to your lusts, your greeds, your habits and your whims.
And you are fattened, too. You are fed differently according to what you serve, but you are fattened. They feed you money, power, popularity, success, recognition, a sense of purpose, a sense of place, a kind of inner satisfaction – that is the fattening you’re given while your life is spent on the things you serve with it.
And much of your story, like mine, will be told by the things you have served. In truth, you give more of yourself than you think. You serve well, even when you don’t serve wisely.
Yet in the end, how often it is that the things you serve do not serve you in return, but only take from you until at last they take your life. And then when the story is told, you are just left out, forgotten. You were just a little part in some kind of a giant game, or a play (whether comedy or tragedy), like the sacrifice of a fatted calf at an annual harvest.
This is where you are really not so different from me as you think. You may chatter about being master of your fate: but did you choose your sex and race, your family, your gifts and handicaps, your social and economic station, your country, or the times into which you were born? No, much of your play had already been written for you, and you have mostly just acted out your assigned part, just as I have.
A soldier commits his service, even his life, to the commands of his country. But he does not get to choose his war, whether it will be a popular or unpopular one, whether his sacrifices will be respected or reviled. His life hangs from threads controlled by others, and he does not choose what his life will be given to, though he knows it may be given to something, and the value of that something may not even be assessed until after he has died.
A woman may serve a business, playing in good faith the small part assigned to her, only learning at the end that it was an evil business after all; all of her good works were part of a bad story, and she will be defined by that story for the rest of her days.
You are as innocent as I, and often as powerless. So you are more like the fatted calf than you may like to think. And now perhaps you will be able to hear my story:
I was born anonymous, I lived anonymously, and I was scheduled to die the same way: as an extra, just another calf being used as calves have always been used, serving an end of no great or lasting significance to anyone. I went along as we always have, because a fatted calf doesn’t have many choices. And if everything had happened as it had been planned, you would never have heard of me. My life would have been given to a routine harvest feast on a small farm in an obscure country, and I would never have had a story to be told, for there is not much in a fatted calf’s life that is worth retelling.
I did not choose any of this. The meaning of my life was defined by the things that were chosen for me by others, by the larger play in which I was just a small part. And I was chosen to serve routine and anonymous things, things which never acknowledged or cherished me but only used me up.
So you see: that is why my story is worth telling. It is worth telling because I have a story. That’s the miracle of it: that I have a story at all! And it happened because someone came alive. A younger brother broke from the routine. He could not find himself in it. His heart, his soul, something could find no home in the routine he was expected to serve with his life. And in a burst of foolish young courage he broke free. He wasted all of his money, it is true. But he was searching, however awkwardly, for something with more life in it, for something to serve that might know his name, that might give him a more authentic life than the obedient security brought by just doing your duty.
He failed. He failed miserably. But in his failure there was a great awakening, and it made all the difference.
First the younger brother awoke, and came back home. And then his father awoke, and reached out to him – not with justice, but with forgiveness and love. That was the miracle. And with that miracle, a whole new world was born: a world with a gentleness and a wholeness that offend the workaday mind, as they have offended the older brother. But it is a world with more space to live, for those who are imperfect, who don’t find their true path on the first try. It is a world of grace and of hope for those who must fail before they can succeed – those who hope and pray for another chance.
In that moment of his father’s forgiveness, a new son was born, and a new world of possibilities, for all who can listen to this story and hear its message. Then suddenly there was something more important and more urgent than a harvest feast, for something sacred had broken into ordinary life, something with the power to transform it.
And the moment of its entry, the moment of the birth of a new son and a new world, must not be allowed to pass by without celebrating it. The birth of sacred possibilities in life must not be allowed to slide by with stopping to give thanks, without making all of life stop and look and hear and rejoice.
And so in place of a harvest feast there was a sacred feast; a holy meal; a communion. A meal not of food to be gulped down and forgotten, but of food consecrated to a holy purpose, food to be cherished and savored and never to disappear from memory. That is how this feast took place, this feast which has changed everyone who has ever truly understood it.
And I was a part of it! My life was changed by the choices others made. For now instead of being consumed by life and then forgotten, I have become a part of it all, and I will never be forgotten as long as this story is told and heard and cherished.
If a miracle is a gift of life beyond understanding, then a miracle happened here, you see? And I was a passive recipient of this miracle. The meaning of my life was changed forever because of the choices and the decisions made by others.
It’s ironic, but I could not tell my story to other fatted calves, for we have no choices, and could not elect to change what we shall serve with our lives even if we wanted to.
That is why I tell my story to you instead: because, you see, that is where we are so different. Fatted calves can not choose what we will serve with our lives. We cannot choose whether we shall serve something that gives our lives a sacred kind of glow, or whether we shall just serve something that drains our life from us until at last nothing is left of us, not even our story. A fatted calf doesn’t have many choices. But you do: you can choose.
III. The Father’s Soliloquy
PRAYER
How often we dispense justice rather than compassion. We give people what they deserve rather than what they need.
Someone we’ve wanted to get even with for months finally leaves an opening, and we rush for it.
Our partner embarrasses us, so we wait for our chance, knowing their weak spots better than anyone because they trust us. When the chance comes, we jump at it, they’re embarrassed, we feel vindicated, and the game continues.
We can’t score points on the boss, so we bring the frustration home, waiting for someone we can score on. Then we are on our guard, for we know they’ll try to get even.
How many times in our life has this kind of behavior described us? Giving people their due, making sure they get what they deserve, not letting them off the hook, showing them that what goes around comes around, while hoping we never get the same kind of humiliating justice visited upon us.
It is this world, this very recognizable human world, into which we must bring the harder lessons of religion, the voices of our more tender mercies. It is of this world and of ourselves that we ask whether this is the highest road we can travel, the most we can expect of ourselves or others.
Christians ask “What would Jesus do?” Jews say we are commanded to love God with all our heart and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourself. Buddhists ask whether we are acting from out of the Buddha seed within us, and recognizing the Buddha seed within others. Confucius would ask whether our actions let our society move with more grace, or less. And the Tao te Ching says the great secret of life is realizing that a bad person is a good person’s job, and a good person is a bad person’s teacher.
When we look anywhere that people have tried to take seriously the human condition, we find that most of the suffering we experience comes from the way we treat one another, and the ways in which we get even for the ways in which others have treated us.
Let us remind ourselves once more of things we have always known. That two wrongs don’t make a right, that peace almost always begins through the actions of the bigger person, the person of better character. That understanding is more grown-up than undermining, and that when we score points against another by demeaning them, those points are taken out of our own moral stock.
And then … then let us ask, even in those cases where a hard justice is due, whether we, our relationships and our world are better served by justice, or by compassion. By giving someone what they deserve, or forgiving their trespasses, in the faith that they are good people doing the best they can, and they could use a break rather than a breaking.
For as wise preachers have said forever, it is by giving that we can receive, by understanding that we can be understood, and by forgiving that we may be forgiven.
It is so hard to do. Let us find the strength within and around us to do what is best and most compassionate, when it would be so much easier merely to do what is right. We seek the moral strength for these higher callings, and pray for the courage to do not what is right, but what is best.
Amen.
The Father’s Soliloquy
Do you really wonder why I did it? I hardly know how to answer.
Maybe I wondered what God would want me to do, or remembered that I am his father and he’s my son. Maybe I felt some guilt, wondered what I might have done differently, how I might have been a better father.
Some people say we’re on our own, that our mistakes are our own fault and we must pay for them. Most of my friends say that. I don’t know what they mean. Everything I’ve done in my life I’ve done as part of a family, a people, a religion, part of the whole human race. You may say those connections are invisible; I say they have supported me my whole life. If we’re alone, it is everyone’s loss and everyone’s failure. We’re not alone. Who could say such a thing?
I think of how awful he looked when he returned. What sad, desperate eyes he had. I had never seen him so completely undone, forlorn, lost, hollow, without hope or joy. He no longer approached me as my son, he no longer felt like my son.
My neighbors say he asked for this. He demanded his inheritance in advance, demanded that I give him the money I would have left him if he’d waited until I died. It’s one of our laws; sons can do that. It almost never happens, of course. For it cuts all ties to the family forevermore. They may never again make any claims on their family if they do this. Yet my son did it, and he could; it’s the law.
But to let an impersonal law rip the warmth of my son not only out of my home but out of my heart? Who could allow such a thing? No one I would want to know, no one I would want to be.
When I looked in his eyes, I saw his whole life there, from the day that red little baby came, all the growing up years, all the million little memories a father has. Silly memories, many of them, you know, the things parents notice and won’t forget.
I remember when he was young how he would get scared when it thundered. “Oh,” I’d tell him, “that’s just God. He’s upset, worried about something. But don’t worry about him, he’ll get over it. You’ll see, in the morning he’ll be all sunny again.”
It was our little joke, We must have played that thunder joke a hundred times. I remember just a few years ago – it seems like yesterday – when we were out working in the field trying to get the animals fed, and it thundered something fierce. He ignored it for awhile, then suddenly he looked up from his work and shouted “Hey Lord, we’ve got troubles too, but you don’t see us griping. Get over it!”
God, he was such a burst of life, that boy! So different from his older brother. The older one has always been so serious, so responsible. All work. Maybe he was trying to be the other grown-up after his mother died, I don’t know. He’s so good, so decent, but so rule-bound. I keep hoping he’ll make space for a little gentleness, replace some compulsion with compassion.
My younger son is almost the opposite. Oh, he worked, he did his share, but for him it was never about the work. For him, life was about joy, not jobs.
Every year at the harvest festival he would ask why we couldn’t do this much more often, why we had to make work common and joy rare. I would explain that joy is all the richer because it is so rare, that life has a rhythm, like nature. Bad times, good times, work days, holidays, seriousness, fun, it’s all too much without putting a rhythm to it. That’s why we rest on the Sabbath. That’s why we just have harvest feasts once a year, I told him.
But he never bought it. He didn’t complain about the work; maybe he should have. Instead, he kept it in until it exploded in that awful decision to leave.
My neighbors, my friends, all said good riddance, that any son who would demand his inheritance in advance was no real son anyway, that I was better off without him. Like he was a bad investment.
But if you’re a parent, you know that when he left, it broke my heart.
I think I know what he wanted. Work, duty, responsibility are so important, but they’re not enough. Where’s the softness to life, the humanity? When do our hearts touch? Only once a year at a harvest feast? That’s not enough joy. I think my son was freezing to death here, and maybe some of that’s my fault, I don’t know.
But how do you bring all that into the real world? The world you and I know, of work and duty – how do you bring compassion and love into that? It only fits at the edges, not at the center. At the center, there’s work to do.
My son wanted a different kind of world, with more life to it, more connections, more of a sense of family, something better than work and duty, that might transform our duties into activities that fed the spirit as well as the belly.
These things were in my mind when he returned. Where is there room for love in our world? How can we interrupt the endless cycles of responsibility, the functional relationships, to make it all a more gentle home for the human spirit, and for the Holy Spirit? We seem to see people only in terms of what they do or earn. My servants respect and fear me not because they really think I’m a superior person, but because I control the money, the power, their jobs. Where is the human relationship?
Why can’t we know each other as brothers and sisters, children of God? That could transform the whole world if it ever took root. I miss it too. I can’t create the new kind of world; one person can’t do that alone. But I thought I could start it by acting out of a different place, so I did it.
It was only a start. I don’t know what will come of it. But I do know the only way the world can be transformed is through people having the vision and courage to act from out of a different kind of center.
In some ways, I don’t envy my son. My act was easy. He has to live with it now, among people who don’t understand.
My older boy wants an explanation; my friends and neighbors want an explanation. They say it is a slap in my older son’s face for his dutiful work, and a slap in their face too, for it has planted irresponsible ideas in the heads of their own sons. There is this whole system of work, duty, responsibility, justice and honor, they say, and I have insulted it, maybe threatened it. If the failure to do your duty can be so easily forgiven, they say, then where is its necessity?
Did I have to have a whole philosophical system to act out of? Couldn’t I just love my son and act out of that? I don’t understand all their concerns. I’m just a father who lost his son, then found him again and threw a party to celebrate it. Wouldn’t it be a better world if others did this too?
Maybe there are implications to what I did. Perhaps this act can’t stand alone. I wonder how my younger son feels? Don’t you think he’d be grateful, or is there more to that, too?
The rabbis say that the whole substance of the Torah can be summed up simply by saying love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. But if you owe all that to a neighbor, what do you owe your son? You must owe at least as much. Don’t you even owe more? And even if it isn’t owed, can’t you simply give it? Can’t you give more?
I don’t know. I just acted out of love for my son. Once he was dead to me and gone forever. Now he is alive again, and here. Isn’t that enough? Figuring out the rest of it is up to you.
I did what I could. I planted a seed, in the hope that it might some day grow into something that could give more shelter. It wasn’t enough, but I did what I could to tilt my world toward compassion and love, away from functional relationships and toward human relationships, you know? I did what I could. And you – what about you?
IV. The Prodigal Son’s Soliloquy
PRAYER
Are gifts ever really free? Are there really any worthwhile gifts that don’t obligate us, somehow, some time, to reciprocate?
Aren’t all gifts really windows opening us to a different kind of world, where generosity of spirit is the rule?
There are gifts that could be called gifts from heaven, gifts from God, gifts from the warm heart of the universe, to warm our own hearts, to replenish our souls, to give us another chance, a chance we did not earn.
We have all received such gifts, whether large or small. How would our world be changed if we responded in kind, if we saw every unearned gift as a kind of torch we may carry in the relay race called life, may carry until we can pass it on to another, in the form of another unearned gift.
There is, hidden among the folds of our world, this other, hidden world where people are measured by what they need rather than by what they have earned. Everyone who has ever received such a gift has been initiated into this higher, this hidden, world. And every such gift we receive has two parts, is two things.
First, it is an unearned gift of understanding, of compassion, of life, a second chance. Second, it is an IOU that we carry to remind ourselves that we too are now players in this hidden and higher world, that we too owe generous actions from the warmth of our own hearts, in the form of unexpected and unearned gifts to another, perhaps to many others.
It is a kind of silent conspiracy, a conspiracy that has been going on since the beginning of time. Make no mistake. Its goal is revolutionary. Its goal is to remove our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh. Its goal is to teach us to see others through the eyes of compassion. Its goal is the subtle and silent birth of a new kind of world, a kingdom of heaven, a kingdom of God, where we become one with others, become creatures whose lives beat to the rhythm of the same heart, sing the same music. It is the heart of the universe and the music of the spheres.
And we are given another chance to recognize it every time we receive a gift that we did not earn. Great gifts are also great debts. Let us pray that we have the good sense to be humbled by the gifts we have received, and the good manners to pass them on to others.
In this way, as in perhaps no other way, we may be both the midwives and the firstborn children of a new heaven and a new earth. Right here, right now.
We pray with grateful hearts for the gifts we have received. Now it is our turn. Amen.
The Prodigal Son’s Soliloquy
Don’t envy me! I would give anything for the return of my naivete.
You hear the story from outside of my life, outside of my skin, and you think it’s just a lovely tale, a free gift, a story for the children, something to wrap candy in.
But from inside, it is a torment – a torment in need of a resolution that I don’t know how to find.
To nearly everyone hearing this tale, it will sound like the story of a young fool who got away with it, who had his cake and ate it too. But can you imagine trying to live surrounded by relatives, friends and neighbors who look at you like a good-for-nothing? They think I’m a brat whose soft-minded father has cheated both my brother and the whole idea of justice.
No, most of them don’t say it out loud. The servants know better. And you can always count on most of your friends for polite hypocrisy.
A servant looked at me yesterday, a woman who has raised me since I was a baby. She looked at me with those eyes I know as well as any in my world, and she said, “Well, wasn’t that nice for you? Wasn’t that nice for you.?” She says that with her mouth. But her eyes say, “Now you owe a great debt, my boy. How will you repay it?”
And behind even that message she and the other servants think “How spoiled you privileged people are. Can you imagine what would happen to us if we threw such a fit and stormed out of our jobs? You had a safety net that we don’t have. We’ve lived our lives accepting your privilege because we must. But when you returned and your father showed us all that you are also exempted from even the most basic consequences for your actions, you lost our respect. We may not say so, and are paid to lie if asked, but you will read it in our eyes until you have paid your debt – your debt to everyone who honors our responsibilities because we trust that you will also honor yours.
“Do you think we are not connected? Do you think you live and act in a vacuum, that your privileges and exemptions don’t have consequences? They do, and you will see it in our eyes until you have paid your debt.”
These are the voices I hear, the sounds I live among. The glances that greet me. I owe a debt and I don’t understand it. It is as though my father’s act has thrown me into a new world, a world whose rules I don’t know.
I want my naivete back. I understood my world when I was still naïve. There was a balance to it, a rough kind of harmony and justice. Things fit together, because we all knew the rules and we all played by them. It was a world of work and duty.
Here, we had the farm. We had it because several generations had worked and developed it, and passed it on to my father, who was to pass it on to us after we had done our years of duties. That’s what makes the world go: it’s a world of duties.
We all have duties. Our servants have duties. Our friends and neighbors have duties. And when we all understand that world and our roles in it, when we all do those interlocking duties, then the world works and there is honor.
No, it’s more than that. We’re all parts of the world, and when all the parts work together, the combination of our efforts, our trust, our mutual respect, it creates an invisible, almost magical kind of harmony, feels like a harmony of honor and justice. Without that subtle harmony, both honor and justice are lost, don’t you see? I see it. I understand it. That’s the world I know, and I understand it. I know you understand it too.
But what my father has done doesn’t fit in this world. It breaks that chain of honor and duty.
I knew what I was doing when I demanded my inheritance and left. I wanted out. I thought, “Give me my money and get out of my way. I’m tired of the farm, I’m tired of a life hemmed in by work, duty, this unending struggle just to live, without the time or energy left for joy.”
Most nights we were too exhausted for anything but sleep. And it was far worse for the servants. What kind of a life is that? The servants work for us, and we work … for what? More of the same? Is that life? Is that all there is?
There was something wrong with that world and I wanted out. I knew the cost of what I did. I knew I had given up my rights as a son, and given up my privileges. I knew that.
I returned to ask the man who was once father to be my employer, to hire me as a servant. I tried to find a better way to live, a way beyond the endless cycle of work and duty, duty and work, never able to earn enough joy to give life enough gentleness and grace. I failed. I couldn’t do it. I came back willing to pay the price. I was beaten by that world, I was defeated by it, and I came back to pay the price, for the rest of my life, to pay the penalty.
I hate that world, but I know it, all the way down into my bones I know it. You can say it was a rut, I say it was my rut, the one I knew. But now what? Now what do I do?
My father didn’t play fair. He made a move that was outside the rules of my world, and now what? It can’t end here, don’t you see? My father says he has trumped honor and duty with love, but it can’t end here. That’s what all the angry looks and snide remarks mean. It’s the one thing I do understand. My father has challenged a whole world, and it can’t end here.
Most people will tell this story as a story of cheap grace, when your father, or God, can make everything right for you, while you ignore the implications of that charitable act for everyone else involved. But it can’t stop here. Whether done by a father or by a God, one random act of kindness doesn’t change much. The system goes on, this merely distracts us for awhile. Only if my father’s actions became the norm would it make a real difference. And one person can’t do that, whether a father or a god. The world would have to be transformed, and that would have to be done by all of us. It can’t end here.
In a world defined by work and duty, random acts of mercy like my father’s might be seeds for a new kind of world if others can understand them, are persuaded that it could be a better world, and follow his lead. But unless they transform the world, they are just ornaments.
Do you see this? If one privileged man can negate the whole structure of work and duty by a random act of kindness, then that whole system of work and duty is arbitrary: true for the powerless, optional for sons of the privileged. And this must turn the powerless against the powerful, as it has turned the servants’ hearts against me.
But it also offends others who have privilege, like our neighbors; for they sense, even if only dimly, the danger such forgiveness represents. What if all their sons demanded their inheritance and left? What if no one thought they had to uphold honor or duty? What would hold the world together? Love? There’s nowhere near enough of it.
So my father has struck a blow against the world in which I was raised, the only world I know. And it can’t stop here.
– And yet … I can’t get over his welcoming me back with love rather than justice. It gave me a new life, another chance. It was a chance I needed but hadn’t earned; yet he gave it to me anyway. I have been moved by his act, shaken to the core of my being. That’s my real dilemma. I had wanted to escape from the iron rules of work and duty by escaping into a fantasy of endless irresponsible pleasure. I felt something wrong; I didn’t know how to remedy it. And somehow, I wonder if my father hasn’t found the answer. Perhaps the grind of the world can’t be relieved by hedonistic escapes, as I’d hoped. Perhaps it can only be saved by acts not of justice but of love.
But not random acts of love. Those can only be an anesthetic to numb us to the fact that the world is really and enduringly inhumane and inequitable.
That’s what is so maddening about my father’s act. Alone, it was madness, and I shall pay for it through losing my connections with those around me. Or, if I refuse to respond to them, refuse to meet their eyes, I’ll lose my humanity through acting superior and arrogant, wearing a smugness that exults in my unfair privilege over others.
So now what?
If I stay in the old world, what do I do? If I return not as servant but as son, yet get no inheritance, then after my father dies I will be a de facto servant, not a son – everyone will see to it. But if my father still divides what is left between my brother and me, all who are left alive, including me, will see it as a cheat, a theft from my brother, and an insult to our whole world of duty and work and the honor that can arise from duty and work.
But what is the alternative? What if I prefer a world where love trumps duty, where we are valued according to our human currency rather than the coin of the realm – what then?
How should I then react to my father’s offer? And what are the implications, if I accept it? What then do I owe my brother? If I say to him, “Sorry, but our father’s love has over-ruled your expectation of justice” – is that treating my brother in a loving way, or just using my father’s love to my own selfish advantage? What kind of world would that make?
And what of our servants? What would it mean to value them by their human currency rather than their lack of money and power?
What if the servants ask to be treated as equals? What if they say in words what they are saying with their eyes: that when I was on my own, I did no better than they have – I wound up feeding pigs – so how can I now think I have a natural right to privilege that I wasn’t capable of earning? I don’t know. But this is torment.
I would give anything for the return of my naivete, for my simple world. For now my eyes are open, but only dimly. I know I owe a great debt, and do not know how to pay it. Unless I and others work to transform the world, we are the enemies of the very compassion and love that my father has used to save my life?
So now what shall I do? And you: what shall you do? And what shall we do? For this isn’t just an old story. It is our story, the story of our world. We’re in this together. And what shall we do? What shall we do now?
