Catharsis while training for the Spartan Race

Posted on February 21, 2013 by

wpid-2013-02-21-10.50.46.jpg

Today I returned to my favorite cross-country ski trail – Peru Creek in Keystone, Colorado. While my trip on this trail last year was a serene and spiritual experience, this year was very different. Now I’m training for a Spartan Race, so today was all about pushing myself as hard as I could, for as long as I could (I ended up skiing for 3 hours, 2 of which were uphill).

Signing up for a Spartan Race is the culmination of several years of trying to whip myself into shape after having three kids (two of whom I had at the same time, gaining 65 pounds in the process). In particular, over the past year I have  gotten into what I guess can only be described as ‘extreme exercise’ – circuit training work-outs that consist of cycling through one excruciatingly painful exercise after another, keeping my heart pumping throughout while I work different muscle groups.  These work-outs are so intense that even though I usually only exercise three times a week, I can eat whatever I want and am now in the best shape of my life.

To keep up this positive momentum, I decided to sign up for a Spartan Sprint. The Spartan Sprint is one of a multitude of obstacle course races that have sprouted up recently (other well-known ones include the Tough Mudder, Tough Guy, and my personal favorite, the “You Will Die Death Race”). As the names imply,  the promotional materials for these races tend to be testosterone-laden affairs, filled with photos of guys who look like this:

spartan racers

The inspirational message I get in my ‘Work out of the Day’ email from Spartan Race continues the egocentric vibe:

Why WOD?
Because you are committed. Because you are hungry not to just show up and get through a Spartan Race, but you are hungry to show up and dominate the clock with a peak performance. Spartan Race is here to help you achieve your fitness goals.

Every time I read that message all I can think is “No, actually, I’m just hungry”.

Anyway, while there is definitely a part of me that buys into this egocentric and competitive mentality (it’s kind of fun when I can do more straight-leg push-ups than anyone else in the room)  there is a whole other aspect of extreme exercise that fascinates me from a spiritual perspective. Because to me this form of exercise is essentially an ascetic experience.  It is all about getting to a point where your will is stronger than your body – where you deny your body’s desire for rest, where you transcend your physical pain.

Asceticism is a core component of  spiritual practice in both Eastern and Western faith traditions.  It can take many forms and serve different spiritual purposes, but always involves some form of bodily deprivation – fasting, wearing ‘hair shirts’, self-flagellation, or enduring extreme physical effort (see Exodus 17:9-12 where Moses has to hold his hands up for an extended period of time or, as my friend Anna pointed out, the Hajj). The Islamic practice of fasting during Ramadan, or Jewish fasting during Yom Kippur or the Christian practice of ‘giving up something for Lent’ are all examples of self-deprivation as part of spiritual practice. While often these ascetic practices are tied to calls for atonement for past sins, I have always been intrigued by asceticism as a mystical effort to shed one’s materialistic shell in order to spiritually connect to the Divine. Ghandi is probably the one of the best-known practitioners of this form of asceticism, but there have been a multitude of Christian mystics (particularly in the Middle Ages) who were similar. These mystics were all seeking ‘Catharsis’ – the shedding of one’s physical reality so that one’s soul can directly connect to the transcendent (Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God covers this subject, as does William James’ The Varieties of Religions Experience). As William James notes in his lecture on Saintliness:

..the writer describes his experiences of communion with the Divine as consisting “merely in the TEMPORARY OBLITERATION OF THE CONVENTIONALITIES which usually cover my life”.

Well, it seems like pushing yourself to run as fast as you can for three miles while trying to overcome a range of extreme obstacles such as sprinting up a mountain while carrying a twenty pound bucket of sand or crawling through a pit of rocky mud would be effective mechanisms to ‘obliterate conventionalities’. Indeed, this page about becoming a Spartan Coach makes an explicit connection Spartan Racing, spiritual health, and mastering one’s impulses.

However, there is one major difference between this new form of asceticism and religious mysticism: the mystic seeks Catharsis in order to connect directly to the Divine, to the Transcendent, to Ultimate Truth. As Evelyn Underhill puts it in her book Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness:

I understand (mysticism) to be the expression of the innate tendency of the human spirit towards complete harmony with the transcendental order.

In contrast, the extreme athlete seems more focused on connecting to a more transcendent version of his or herself. For example, the Spartan Race tagline promises a form of revelation:

Spartan Race: You’ll know at the finish line.

You’ll know what? That the answer to the universe is 43?

No – what they are talking about is you’ll know your own potential – you will have transcended your own past limits.  Given that I still tend to think of myself as the short, uncoordinated and slightly chubby kid who always got picked last to join the team in gym class, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Furthermore, I am impressed by the broader humanistic values espoused by Spartan Race: team-work, helping others (I noticed that a group of Spartan Racers helped clean up in the Rockaways after Hurricane Sandy), standing up for your beliefs, etc. 

So – I guess the question is: does it really matter if you are transcending yourself in order to connect to the Divine (and thus becoming a better person) or just transcending yourself (and thus becoming a better person)? Perhaps I’ll know at the Finish Line…

Posted in Nature, Spirituality | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Our (first) year without a Santa Claus

Posted on December 16, 2012 by

Year without a santa claus

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

After years of dodging the bullet with elaborate explanations of how Santa deploys state-of-the-art Supply Chain Management systems to deliver all those presents around the world in one night, my younger children finally got the truth out of me.

It happened during a walk at the dog park. Out of nowhere, my almost-nine year-old son Andrew turned to me and asked:

Mom – does Santa really exist?

I choked. His older sister, now eleven, knew the real deal, and was standing right there. I knew our days of Santa-belief were numbered, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go yet. Using a patented technique learned from years of therapy, I responded:

Well, what do you think?

Andrew paused, deep in contemplation.

Well, there’s no real evidence that Santa exists. Sure, there’s the presents, but those could just be from you and Dad. Plus, I just don’t see how Santa could go all around the world in one night. Especially with just reindeer to pull his sleigh.

I debated taking the time to draw process-flow diagrams of Santa’s delivery solutions. But I could tell that what my son really wanted was the truth. I was also impressed by his thought process, incorporating the search for evidence to support a claim and analysis of the feasibility of a given proposal. I turned to Andrew, gave a little sigh, and the gig was up.

Thus ended one era in our family, as my children moved one step closer to tweendom. There is a part of me that is mourning the loss of innocence (and also of the convenient scapegoat when the kids don’t get what they want for Christmas). But I also immediately started to worry what learning the truth about Santa might do to their views of faith more generally. Would learning that their parents had lied to them about Santa make my sons question whether we were lying to them about much bigger targets of belief – like God?

As we continued our walk, I decided to address the issue head on.

You know, just because Santa doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean that there aren’t still things that are worth believing in, even if you don’t have hard evidence for them. It’s important to keep an open mind about things. Sometimes there are things in life that you can’t explain, that you just have to take on faith.

My daughter, who is not a huge fan of organized religion but is a dreamer, replied:

Of course! There’s still magic in the world. There’s mystery.

Exactly!  I replied. Or, for example, for me, I can’t exactly explain what happened after Jesus died. Something happened that doesn’t make complete logical sense, and it happened so long ago that we are never going to be able to get the whole story, but I think something special happened that touched his followers, and continues to touch people today.

The kids all walked on silently for a minute. Then Andrew turned to Emmy:

Hey Emmy, did you put a bed into your Minecraft house yet?

I guess that’s about as good a response as I could expect.

I thought that was the end of the story, at least for this season, but the issue came up again a few days later. Despite my very clear instructions that the boys should NOT discuss their insights about Santa with their third grade friends, I found out that in fact the boys had leaked this information at school. While discussing Santa’s non-existence with a friend who had never believed in Santa, they were overheard by other classmates whose belief in Santa was still going strong. Their other friends directly asked them whether they believed in Santa. Not wanting to lie to their friends, they replied “No”. They were then promptly chased around the playground, with demands to recant their heretical lack of faith.

In other words –  they were persecuted for their beliefs.

Well, not really. It was mostly in good fun, but the word did get back to me that the boys were spreading the bad news about Santa, and could they please cease and desist. We had stern words with the boys about not destroying the magic of Christmas for other families, and for ignoring our explicit instructions. We took away their screen time for a day as punishment.

But a part of me felt a bit bad for punishing them. Isn’t expressing belief, or lack of belief, in Santa, a form of free speech?  If it was a case of an atheist child expressing his lack of belief in the divinity of Jesus, would it have been socially acceptable to ask the child to stop expressing that view?

Well this is of course where the parallel breaks down. Because there’s no way to conclusively prove the divinity (or lack thereof) of Jesus, while all you need to do to prove the Santa story is to look in the right spot in your parents’ closet. Santa is a parents’ sweet, well-intentioned lie, while Jesus (or God more generally) is humanity’s great unsubstantiated hope.

So I am confident that my children’s ultimate faith in God will not rise and fall on their faith in Santa. In fact, finding out about Santa doesn’t seem to have caused much damage at all.  When I asked my daughter if Christmas is still magical without Santa, she said absolutely, because Santa isn’t the spirit of Christmas. Also, we can still look forward to Easter. As Andrew put it:

Well, I still believe in the Easter bunny. Although normally bunnies don’t lay eggs….

Posted in Parenting | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

After a day in The Rockaways

Posted on November 7, 2012 by

As I trudged past towering piles of sand and moldering debris in the Far Rockaways today, I was suddenly reminded of a motorcycling accident I had in my early twenties. My boyfriend at the time was taking me for a ride on a beautiful sunny day in the Berkshire Mountains. He was driving just a bit too fast, in the middle of the road. As we crested a hill we came face to face with an oncoming car. After a terrifying moment, we pulled over to the shoulder and the bike fell to one side. We were both banged up but otherwise escaped unscathed. The experience made me realize something that should have been obvious: when you’re riding a motorcycle there’s very little standing between you and utter destruction.

Likewise, when Mother Nature turns to Mommy Dearest, there’s only so much we can do to protect ourselves and the lives we’ve worked so hard to build. Standing in my kitchen just a little over a week ago, with violent gusts of wind battering my home and the lights flickering ominously, I felt an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. At any moment water could come rushing into our flood-prone basement; trees could crash through our many large windows; the power that kept threatening to disappear could make its final curtain call.

Ultimately we escaped the storm unscathed and have spent much of the past week helping those who were less fortunate. But I keep feeling like the idiot rejoicing at dodging a bullet who turns around to realize she’s facing a firing squad. Because this time we just got really lucky. Next time, our home could be like the one I spent cleaning out today in the Rockaways: full of sewage-infused fragments of a life.

I remember many people remarking after Hurricane Katrina that New Orleans was ultimately doomed, because it was built below sea level. But much of the New York area is at sea level. Given the accelerating rise in the sea level, ‘at’ becomes ‘below’ rather quickly. At this point these freak storms feel like an annual event, at the minimum, and each time we face the question of whether it’s better to sleep in the basement and face potential flooding or sleep on the second floor and risk getting hit by a falling tree (and why is it that so many of these storms seem to hit at night when we are sleeping?

So, thousands of years after it was written, Psalm 29 still captures much of what I’ve been feeling lately:

…The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty. The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, “Glory!” The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever. May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!

Tomorrow another storm is supposed to hit – a Nor’easter. I pray that those left homeless and vulnerable by Sandy’s wrath will be safe. For those wishing to help with relief efforts, please check out this website for up-to-date information on how you can help.

Posted in Nature | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

What should I teach my kids about the election?

Posted on October 5, 2012 by

As election day approaches, politics has become a common topic of conversation at my kids’ elementary school. Last week my 5th grade daughter had to watch the first presidential debate and then discuss it in class. When I asked Emmy what they’d discussed, she said that her teacher had asked the kids what they thought was the most crucial challenge facing the country right now.

“Oh,” I replied “Great question. What was your answer?”

“Taxes.” Emmy replied (an appropriate answer given that I’d only let her stay up till 9:30 because it was a school night and taxes had been the main topic at the start of the debate).

“And what do you think the problem is with taxes?” I asked, curious how much she’d been able to follow the fairly technical discussion by the two candidates.

“The problem with taxes” my daughter wisely replied “is that they’ve gone over their 15 minute time limit.”

Thank you Jim Lehrer.

Political discussion has even seeped into the playground. My third-grade twin boys reported to me that two of their friends got into a heated political argument at recess last week in which one boy (whose parents are clearly Republican) told another boy (whose parents are clearly Democrat) that the Republican boy’s dad clearly knew much more about politics than the Democrat boy’s dad. Ouch.

All of this has gotten me thinking about what I should be teaching my children about politics. I distinctly remember my own childhood political education. I grew up in a liberal bubble – attending a Quaker school where one of my teachers was actually a Marxist and everybody I knew was a far-left Democrat. I remember being completely confused about how Ronald Reagan could have been reelected since everyone I knew hated him. I also remember my well-meaning cousin explaining the difference between Democrats and Republicans in this way:

Democrats care about poor people. Republicans are rich and greedy and want to keep all the money for themselves.

Right. Since then I’ve spent significant time in post-Communist countries, which has made me appreciate Capitalism like nothing else could have; I’ve worked in small businesses where I’ve seen how they’ve provided jobs and opportunities for people who otherwise would have been on welfare; and I’ve gone to business school where I’ve learned what exactly Wall Street does and why it’s important. At the same time I’ve remained a staunch liberal on a range of social, foreign policy and economic justice issues.

In other words, I am stuck somewhere between both parties - much as I often find myself stuck between religious identities.  I know that what my husband and I teach our children about political affiliation may strongly influence them for the long-term . So what should I be teaching my kids about this election?

After some thought, I realized that the key lesson I wanted to teach my kids had nothing to do with party affiliation. It had to do with my belief that we are all children of God, worthy of being granted the benefit of the doubt. It had to do with my experience of finding that frequently both sides of an argument have a valid point to make, and the truth is usually somewhere between the two poles. It had to do with my secret desire to see Jon Stewart run for president (because the Million Moderate March was pure genius and his State of the Union addresses would be so entertaining).

So after hearing about my sons’ friends’ political fight on the playground, I told my children that both political parties have good intentions, good ideas and a sincere desire to make our country a better place. They just have different philosophies on how to accomplish those goals. And frequently the best path for our country involves combining approaches from both philosophies. I encouraged them not to blindly embrace one party’s political platform – just as I encourage them not to blindly embrace a given religious doctrine. Treat everyone with respect, even those with whom you don’t agree, and look for the truth somewhere between the extremes.

I feel pretty good that my message got through. Later that day, as we were eating lunch at Five Guys Burger and Fries, we got into a discussion about whether Five Guys or McDonalds was better. A vigorous debate ensued.

“Five Guys has better burgers!” my son Austin exclaimed.

“But McDonalds has chicken nuggets!” Emmy retorted.

“But Emmy – you can get hot dogs at Five Guys” Andrew noted.

With a sigh, Emmy turned to me and said,

 ”You know mom, I think the ideal lunch destination is somewhere in between.”

Posted in Parenting | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

My label-free children

Posted on October 3, 2012 by

“Hey guys – do you know why there’s no school today? It’s Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and the most important Jewish holiday.”

It was September 26th, and I was taking the kids and the coon hound to the dog park in the minivan. As I sometimes like to do when the kids are strapped down in an enclosed space, I was trying to educate them a bit.

“Really?” my eight-year old son Austin replied “I though Christmas was the most important Jewish holiday”.

Oh dear.

After further discussion in which we reviewed what Christmas was all about (the birth of Jesus, not receiving new Lego sets), and the fact that Christian views of Jesus are different from those of non-Christians, Austin’s twin brother Andrew piped up with a question I’d heard many times before:

“Wait, Mom, what are we again?”

I gave the same answer I’d given many times before:

“You are being raised Christian, but I also want you to have some understanding and exposure to Judaism since I was raised Jewish and my whole family is Jewish.”

Later that night I began reading Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief by Dale McGowan et al. and came across this statement among a list of ‘best practices’ for raising freethinkers:

Leave kids unlabeled. Calling a child a “Christian” or an “atheist” is counterproductive to encouraging genuine free thought.

I realized at that moment that in fact I never clearly answer my children when they ask “what are we”. In fact it is not a question I want to answer. Just as I refer to myself as a Jistian because my religious views don’t fall neatly into one bucket, ultimately I want my children to develop their beliefs based on what makes the most sense to them. I never want them to blindly adopt a packaged set of beliefs or unthinkingly embrace a given religious identity.

My aversion to rigid religious identification probably comes from my rather unconventional German Jewish upbringing, where we served pork for Passover and latkes at our Christmas tree trimming parties. Although I always knew I was Jewish and attended Hebrew school for many years, I always felt like my religious identity was, to put it mildly, complex. It remains so today, since to my mind one never stops ‘being Jewish’. I just happen to have discovered a spiritual side to my life through studying Jesus, and have acted accordingly.

I see people struggling with these same issues of religious identity all the time.  This past weekend I participated in an orientation for a new member class at our church, and almost everyone in the group had some sort of mixed religious background – Catholic, other mainline Protestant or even completely secular. Most of these folks were still feeling their way – trying to figure out exactly what they believed. They were looking for a community where they could wrestle with these issues while beginning to provide their children with some form of religious education. In fact many people who attend our church have connections with other religious institutions, and our church supports and respects the need for people to maintain those relationships.

Our church is not that unusual. A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that roughly one quarter of Americans (24%) sometimes attend religious services of a faith different from their own (this number excludes people attending services for things like weddings or funerals). This same study also documents that Americans’ beliefs often include elements that are not part of the orthodoxy of their faith (in particular, it documents the high percentage of Christians who believe in various elements of Eastern religion). As the study so aptly puts it:

The religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories.

This willingness to seek God through many paths and worry less about following strict rules for one’s religious identity seems like something that Jesus might actually have approved of. As his story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) or his criticism of the Pharisees (Luke 11:37-43) demonstrate, Jesus didn’t think righteousness was automatically secured just by being a part of a given religious group.

Just as racial intermarriage is creating a generation whose racial identity is fluid, I sincerely hope that interfaith marriage will lead to greater nuance in religious identity, with more people challenging and evaluating their beliefs and practices and coming to a place of faith that is authentic for them. As for my own kids – I guess I hope at least one of the boys will end up meeting a nice Jewish girl who, just like my mother’s family, will enjoy putting out Easter eggs on the Seder plate.

Posted in Celebrating Religious Diversity, Parenting | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Be not conformed to this world…on picture day

Posted on September 24, 2012 by

Tomorrow is picture day at my kids’ elementary school, and this year is a big one: my daughter is in fifth grade. While the children in the other grades usually sport a range of attire (with my kids typically at the most casual end of the spectrum), fifth graders are supposed to step it up significantly.

Since the start of school, I’ve been receiving notices about fifth grade picture day. All of them have contained this language:

Fifth grade boys traditionally wear dress slacks, button down shirt, tie, jacket and dress shoes.  Fifth grade girls traditionally wear dresses.

As I do with all the (voluminous) school communications, I skimmed these notices, and realized that I needed to make sure Emmy had a dress to wear. I talked to her about it and we determined that she did indeed have one dress that would basically serve the purpose – this one:

I offered multiple times to take her shopping for a new dress, but each time I was quickly dismissed (my daughter, God bless her, takes after her mother in finding clothes shopping excruciatingly boring).  But heck, she had a dress, so it was one thing I could cross off the to-do list.

Until today, when Emmy decided she didn’t want to wear a dress for picture day. Although I’m still not sure what provoked this change of heart, it came after we had just learned that one or two other girls had also expressed a desire to opt-out of the dress requirement. My husband, being even more laid back about these things than I am, had told Emmy she could do whatever she wanted. However, after some thought I was less sure.

I had seen the fifth grade kids at school every year all dressed up on picture day. It’s a tradition, part of their rite of passage, a way of identifying themselves as the ‘seniors’ of the elementary school world. Dressing up is a sign of respect. It’s just what everyone is supposed to do.

Then there’s also the issue of precedent. My twin boys will be in this same position the year after next, and one of them at least has insisted on wearing pretty much nothing but sweatpants since he was three. If I let Emmy buck tradition, where would that leave me with my sons?

So I told Emmy she needed to wear a dress. When I told her I saw her face fall, and that look of disappointment I’ve seen so often.

The fact is, Emmy is different. She likes to be different. She’s an artist, a voracious reader, and a dreamer. If given the choice, she’d wear black leggings and some funky sparkly top all year long. Every time I’ve tried to get her to do what other kids her age are doing, it’s been a disaster (i.e., team sports). She’s also very comfortable being who she is. In a word, she’s awesome.

But the question is, are there times when you need to conform? Like wearing a suit to an interview, or standing up and putting your hand over your heart to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I want to raise Emmy so that she embraces her individuality, but also knows when she needs to fall in line.

So I felt like I’d made a good parenting decision, and Emmy seemed to accept it.

Later, I was reading to one of my boys at bedtime. We started on one of the great children’s classics: Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman, and there it was on page 38 – a poster hanging at Harold and George’s school that looked like this:

I began to panic. Was making all the kids adhere to this dress code a similar kind of ‘mindless conformity’? By forcing Emmy to respect tradition, was I inadvertently passing on the message of this poster to ‘be just like every else’, that ‘individuality causes pain’?

This particularly bothered me because of my faith. To be honest, one of the reasons I became so taken with Jesus was exactly because he was a non-conformer. Heal on the Sabbath? Yep. Eat with social outcasts like tax collectors and prostitutes? Bring it on. He didn’t care about societal rules or tradition. As Paul put it in his letter to the Romans:

 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Was God trying to talk to me through a Captain Underpants book? It seemed a little improbable, but truth has come from weirder places….I think.

So after I put the boys to bed, I went to Emmy and asked her how strongly she felt about the whole dress thing. She said she was OK, but she really would prefer to wear leggings and this cool black and blue shirt she has. I told her that was OK. She could wear what she wanted to school, and just bring the dress as back-up, if she changed her mind.

Her face lit up again. Maybe individuality doesn’t cause so much pain after all.

Posted in Parenting | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Pushing Muslim Buttons

Posted on September 18, 2012 by

My eight-year old twin sons are masters at pushing each other’s buttons. In a matter of seconds, one small provocation can transform peaceful playtime into Armageddon.  Usually the dispute is over something unbelievably stupid, like who has the right to a specific Lego piece (out of the thousands of pieces that litter their room). However, the boys have a history – and if the provoked twin gets angry enough, he will haul off and smack his sibling provocateur.

Like many Americans over the past week, I have been somewhat bewildered by the tragic violence provoked by “The Innocence of Muslims” video. How could a cheesy movie trailer provoke such a dramatic response? Well, today I took the time to actually watch the 14 minute trailer. As I suffered through this piece of shlock (a bizarre mash-up of amateur porn and the worst Saturday Night Live video you’ve ever seen), a light-bulb suddenly went off. This video pushes all the Muslim buttons. While I didn’t pick up on all of the slights, I’ve heard enough anti-Islamic rhetoric on topics such as the age of Mohammed’s wife Ayesha to understand why this video would be so offensive to Muslims. Then I thought about how after eight years of history, my sons can be moved to violence by a seemingly small provocation. So how surprising is it that people who have decades of troubled relations with the US would be likely to respond in a similarly disproportionate manner?

David Kirkpatrick’s recent article in the NY Times sums it up well:

Others said that the outpouring of outrage against the video had built up over a long period of perceived denigrations of Muslims and their faith by the United States or its military, which are detailed extensively in the Arab news media: the invasion of Iraq on a discredited pretext; the images of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison; the burning or desecrations of the Koran by troops in Afghanistan and a pastor in Florida; detentions without trial at Guantánamo Bay; the denials of visas to prominent Muslim intellectuals; the deaths of Muslim civilians as collateral damage in drone strikes; even political campaigns against the specter of Islamic law inside the United States.

Kirkpatrick goes on to quote an Egyptian political scientist, Emad Shahin, who says that the video was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.

I am not in any way condoning the violent responses to the video. The death of diplomat Christopher Stevens and destruction of property has been terrible, tragic, and self-defeating. As Muslim Syed Mahmood notes in his response to the video on YouTube, these responses are exactly what the creators of the video wanted.

However, I am also saddened by much of the response I have seen from Americans to this whole mess. Many of the comments I’ve seen online are as sensitive as these:

  • Other religions get made fun of and teased all the time, Muslims need to develop a thicker skin about it.
  • If your religion is worth killing for, start with yourself.

These kinds of attitudes just contribute to the perception that Americans don’t respect or understand Muslims. It seems we are in a vicious cycle of disrespect and overreaction.

There are certainly other aspects to this story, such as the fact that much of the violence has been the work of a small group of radicals (just as the video itself was produced and promoted by a small group of nut jobs), and that many Islamic countries do have different cultural attitudes towards religion and free speech.

However, although Muslim culture may be different from ours in some ways, we are all human. No one likes to be dissed. We all know what it feels like to be fed up, tired of being insulted. We all know what it feels like to snap.

So just as I keep teaching my boys to learn to control their tempers when they are provoked, I am praying that the voices of reason in the Muslim world will help bring peace and calm back to their countries.  But I also teach my boys to avoid pushing each other’s buttons – to avoid provoking each other in the first place. I hope that more of us in the West will learn that lesson as well.

Posted in Islam, Religion and Morality | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments