Friendship is rare:

“Reuven listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher, do you remember the other?”

“Choose a friend,” I said.

“Yes. You know what a friend is, Reuven? A Greek philosopher said that two people who are truly friends are like two bodies with one soul” (Potok, 74).

The joining together of two souls is the most arduous and difficult process; the joining together of two souls is also the most enjoyable of human experiences. A friend, a true friend, is one who knows another person in a sense deeper than the cognitive. To truly know another, one is the other; one becomes the other. This is, in essence, the process of becoming a true friend. It is my belief as presented in The chosen, psychology, anthropology and life sources that this is an ultimately painful process where the end result is love; and that the core of love is pain.

The process of becoming another involves what Paul Tournier states as the dropping of our personages, to fully reveal our person. Tournier refers to theatrical performance when describing the notion of a personage with “the play that we see there is in fact a ‘play’ of personages” (Tournier, 13). In this, Tournier talks of our actions: a set of actions embodying a role makes up our personages. In contrast to this he begins to define persons as “[that which] remains in every man… something of impenetrable mystery” (Tournier, 13). Lastly, concerning Tournier’s notion of the person versus personage he states that “there is thus a strange relationship between the personage and the person; they are linked together, and yet they remain distinct. I can approach the person only through that image which at one and the same time allows me glimpses of it and also tends to hide it from me, reveals as well as conceals it” (Tournier, 15).

Another theory that I believe needs to be noted in this context is the walkabout theory proposed in modern anthropology. The theory states that in all forms of cultural transmission or rites of passage, we see a triadic process in the development of persons. The three steps of this process are separation, transition, and incorporation.
Separation is the first step in which a person leaves their current, comfortable environment. This can be a physical or metaphorical separation. We see this in context of The chosen when Reuven goes over to Danny’s synagogue for the first time. “I regretted having let Danny take me into his environment” (Potok, 115). We see in this statement that this marks not only the beginning of Reuven’s physical embarking on his walkabout journey, but also the metaphysical separation that he experiences. His regret marks the beginning of his discomfort in that through seeing what he is not, he begins to see what he is. This is congruent to both Tournier’s notion of knowing oneself in relation to another and Danny’s statement “the most mysterious thing in the universe is man himself. We’re most blind about the most important thing in our lives, our own selves” (Potok, 147).

Transition is the second step that one undertakes in a walkabout. In this stage a transformation occurs. If we use Tournier’s terms, this is where two persons are in contact with one another without the buffer of personages to collude the interaction. In all societies that undertake walkabouts as rites of passage the transition stage is an arduous one. If people were not to undertake difficulty in this process it is not conceivable that they would be truly changed. In the instance of Danny and Reuven we best see their moments of transition (ironically) when they are not able to see each other. There are many instances in which they were unable to see one another and during these times they underwent difficulty: difficulty that allowed them to grow closer together.

Lastly in the triadic theory of walkabouts and human interaction, incorporation is the time where people are reunited with their ways of comfort, anew and different. People return to their society or their home with new insight as to how they are to act and with new roles to play as is deemed socially acceptable to them by the people they are in constant interaction with. These new roles are new personages that collude a person from truly knowing themselves once again, but also are required by society to know how to functionally act towards them. Danny and Reuven went through their longest segment of transition for a prolonged two-year period when Zionistic movements were being made in Jerusalem. The trigger that marks the end of this segment of time is when “Danny came over to my table, smiled hesitantly, sat down, and asked me to give him a hand with his experimental psychology” (Potok, 242). This statement is coupled with another on the following page where Reuven observes, “his eyes were very bright and blue” (Potok, 243).

In these two sentences are many metaphors. Danny and Reuven had not talked in roughly two years and the first form of interaction that they engage in concerns the meshing of their respective courses of study. Their chosen majors are metaphors for their personages and they are transparent ones that allow us to see glimpses of their person. To have the first form of interaction during a reincorporation following transition include the attempts to mesh the two personages that they have emerged from their walkabout with is yet another metaphor signifying not only their desire to return to normalcy with a new set of personages, but also signifying their desire to mesh these personages once again in yet another walkabout.

The second set of metaphors included in these two sentences use Danny’s eyes as a catalyst. In this passage they are seen as “bright and blue.” The previous allusions to Danny’s eyes show them as increasingly darker, and more ominous. To show them at this point as vibrant and blue (soothing) shows that he has emerged from his transition stage with newfound fervor, but at the same time tranquil acceptance of his personage. It is his acceptance of self that allows him to once again acknowledge Reuven’s friendship and enter into another stretch towards liminus.

The notion of personages directly links to the idea of true friends. As two persons are in direct contact with one another they are, in essence, two bodies with one soul. Personages separate our souls – our persons – from one another. When we begin to strip away the layers of our personages that we can be aware of, we begin to actively engage in our walkabout of friendship. When we come to a point where we cannot see the layers of personages that collude our persons from one another (reference Danny quote, page 147), we come to a point where transition can occur. Transition occurs through the painful process of the other tearing away at the final layers of personage. As only the other person can see and acknowledge these layers, it is contingent upon the willing act to engage on both parties to make this process possible. We make the willful act to engage in the initial stretch towards liminus; the other then actively engages in removing the final layers. This is when we actually change.

Transition is the state that I would most like to emphasize. The point of truly knowing a person and being in relation to them hurts. The times when we get closest to people we are the most open to them. To open ourselves to people, we must be willing to actively engage in the process of exposing ourselves to vulnerability. Vulnerability is the state in which another person not only knows how to encourage and build us up the most, but it is also the state in which a person can hurt us the most. In this time, we both are lost within the liminus of the other. It is in this time, when we are farthest from our comfort; we are able to grow the most. We grow not only in our knowledge of ourselves but our knowledge of the person we are in relation with. It is our knowledge of the other that enhances our knowledge of ourselves.

What is consistent in the novel, anthropology, and my life is that when persons enter into relation to another and desire to be true friends with the other, those persons must undergo numerous walkabouts. The fact that this stage is completely real and vulnerable and painful is what makes us desire to return: to reincorporate back into comfort. It is through this return that we are able to function in normal life. Once we return to normal life we do so with greater understanding of the person that we are in relation with, and of ourselves. It is this gained knowledge that spurs us to go on another subsequent walkabout to gain more insight. The process is continual, gleaning what we can of the other and ourselves with each venture to liminus.

We cannot forever remain in the stage of transition. We would not be able to function in relation to the person we are true friends with, nor with the rest of the world. The stage of transition excludes and isolates us from the rest of the world, as we are entranced in the state of the other. We become introspective during this time, just as Reuven did during his times when he was not able to speak to Danny. We begin to bring into question the true nature of our person, and through these questions we begin to find answers about ourselves and about the other that we are true friends to. While we are able to grow in this stage, we are also not able to fully function in the world, and as such are driven back to reincorporation. We must continue to go through cycles of comfort, stretching, and return. The very process repeats itself toward the ends of being a true friend.

“It is not so easy to be a friend, is it, Reuven” (Potok, 253)? The process of engaging in the willful walk towards liminus – the stretching to know both our friend and ourselves – is not an easy process. The creation of one being from two is a process that takes time and many removals of comfortable layers of personages. The continual process of walking and exposing ourselves to another human being is painful to say the least. But the end result of one soul with two bodies is well worth the effort.

This is old... from India old... but updated and amended...

Love-

It’s a beautiful thing. To fall in love is to come to one another completely unabashed - completely naked. But not physically naked - emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually: completely naked. Naked to ourselves, naked to the other. The process takes the willful act to engage in the other, the willful act to participate in that stretch towards liminus - the ultimate Other.

Naked to our personages - as they've been torn off by the other. We allow ourselves to shed some of our personages - to the point that we can - but then that other tears away at the final layers. We stand in control of our actions, and it is willful for us to come to the other, but the process is only partly within our locus of control. They tear the layers that not even we can see. They tear to the point where it’s not really even that we fall in love - but that we are pulled into it.

And its not that we try to fall in love, its that - for the moments that we are truly in love - we try to convince ourselves that we aren’t. Because love is too good to be true. Because love IS the cheesy conquer-all that we are all searching for. And as such, we can't believe it when it happens - truly happens. We don't ever try to fall in love. We desperately try - with all our humanely might - to fall out of it.

Because - as Buechner put is - "life is complicated enough as it is" after all. The joy associated with love, is eternally yoked to the insufferable pain that is the layers of enmeshment into personhood that we illusion ourselves with. The joy that is love is the pain that is the disillusionment to our own illusions that we present to ourselves. It is the pain of disenfranchisement. It is the pain of disequilibrium, as we are pulled out of ourselves, into union with the other. We walk in relation to another, letting the gentle breeze caress our faces; our hands entwined with the other, conversations turn from simple “how are yous” to more complex “who are yous.” And in listening through the words of the other – never to – we come to the point of removal. As we remove that which clothes (our personages) our inner selves (our Person) to the other, so do they do the same. Until there are layers that we can't see; our skin still holds us back. Our skin is those layers of our personage that we have become blind to, that we can no longer – or could never in the first place – locate and begin to know how to remove. It requires liminus. It requires the presence of the other to see these things. And the other begins to remove things that we can’t; they begin to remove the skin that traps us. And it begins to be unbearable, as they are exposing things that we haven’t dealt with, or have colluded from our dealings. They begin to Know us: to Know us naked.

The Joy associated with true Agape love from Christ is eternally yoked to the unbearable pain of our own deaths. We make the willful act to love Christ, to take up our crosses - sun blaring on our shorn backs - and walk painstakingly up the hill while the sun and the flies and the splinters and shards of wood tear us apart. We make the willful act to lie down for our Lord, to let the nails be rammed through our wrists, to watch the blood spew from freshly created orifices not meant for human life. We make the decision to do all of this, and realize for a split second the immense, immeasurable pain that is Love, and we try with all our might’s to pull ourselves off - to convince ourselves it isn't real. We try to fall - to fall out of Love. And then His hands pin us there to it. His hands are the ones that pull us back to our pain - our death. This pain - the vulnerability - of having to be completely real: completely naked. And truly, it’s only the love of Christ that makes the love of Christ bearable. It’s only the love of Christ that makes the love of Christ not ultimately that which does us in.

"It's like we were pals back then; we would do things together. Look at the knight armor at the met. The scary fish at the Natural History museum. I was always afraid of the squid and the whale fighting. I could only look at it with my hands in front of my face. When we'd get home - after my bath - she'd go through all the things we saw that day at the museum. And - And we'd get to the squid and the whale and she'd describe it for me. Which was - it was still scary... but it was less scary."
- Walt, to the school-assigned therapist, in The Squid and The Whale

The whale towers over the squid as a mighty beast that rules the sea. Compared to the whale, the squid is no problem; compared to the squid, the whale is THE problem. A monstrosity in size and power, the whale has the upper hand. The squid is terrified. Looking up at the troubles looming overhead, he makes his first move.

The two wrestle for what seems to be seconds, but is in reality eternity. The squid has always fought the whale; the whale will forever fight the squid. The fight may or may not be direct blows, nay, most of the time the fighting that is done is passive-aggressive on the whale's part: the whale blocks the squid from action, paralyzing it with fear. But the action is not whale-centered: the squid allows the whale to block its path, allows the whale to paralyze it with fear.

We are the squid.

The whale is the world we present to ourselves.

We tell ourselves that there is "this whale" or "that whale," and we allow ourselves to believe it. We make the whale, we draw it into existence. The whale would not exist if the squid were not to conjure it into existence. We are the greatest magicians, warlocks, wizards and witches the world has ever seen; we can conjure the greatest forces humans can wrestle with: fear, apprehension, sin. The whale is all of these things, and we the squid bring it into reality.

The squid wrestles the whale for what seems like eternity, but is in reality not any time at all. The squid looks to all sides: where has the whale gone? From whence shall it make its next attack? From which murky corner will it rise?

The answer is nowhere; the whale does not exist.

The squid is freed, once it knows how to see the whale for what it is. The whale is the squid. The squid is the squid’s greatest foe.

Altruism:

"I asked myself over and over again, why me? Among the many millions of people in the world, why did this happen to me? I always had the thought I was not born into this world to be locked up and to allow my whole life to be ruined.

"I despaired over this injustice. I felt like a poor battery hen or battery chicken. You [meaning the interviewer] have obviously seen my dungeon on television and in the media, so you know how small it was. It was desperate."

"You shouldn't talk to me so much about Mr Priklopil because he cannot defend himself any more. I don't find it very nice to complain about a dead person, especially because of his mother. I had bad thoughts. Sometimes I dreamt that if I owned an axe, I would chop his head off."

These are words from Natascha, the girl that was kidnapped and hidden for 8 years of her development.

The initial question that sprang to my mind is: how does a person under such conditions learn compassion like that? Granted, she did admit that she wanted to kill the man, but the preceeding statement was that we shouldn't talk about this person when he's not around.

Was it her upbringing prior to her abduction? Did her parents instill in her these morals before she was abducted?

Or did they come about through her abduction? Did they come about from her having been in a condition that she never wants another human being ot experience?

I guess, then, the quesiton is rather: how do we, not under these conditions, learn compassion like that? Where is that compassion instilled in us? Is that why we don't see compassion in the world? Becuase people are egocentric, and don't have the foresight to see that they don't want something bad to happen to another human being?

And then the quesiton that rises, as this is true that we need experience to empathise: why? Why can't we decenter? Why are we trapped to our own heads?

"Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them - 'ordinary things' is a better expression. That is the way the world is." The Chosen, p 107.

A boy walks through Forest. He comes to stream, where he stops momentarilly. He is young, and does not see what stream is, he only sees a break in his path. He is annoyed by stream, and brushes her aside, plowing through her without so much as giving her a second thought.

Later in his walk, as the boy is a little older now, he comes once again to stream. He does not see her as she is, yet, and he pays little heed to who she has been in his past. Once again, he plows through her.

This continues many the years of boy's journey through Forest, till he is at the advent of man. In the shedding of the skin of boy, man comes to stream. He has now become aware - not of who she is in his life - but that she is in his life. As he is shedding boy from his flesh, she laps at his ankles. He sees that she is both a constant rush against him, but also solid footing that allows her to weave in and out of view. He has learned to both love and fear her presence in his life.

As I grow older, I see things that I never saw before. As I tear away the enmeshments of instances, I see the constant stream that lies underneath. The stream may be good, and the stream may be bad.

Stream tells me of the things I don't want to realize. Stream shows me through her force that rushes past my ankles, thighs, waist, chest, and face that which I need to work on.

Stream is also the path that the water must rush. Stream is both confined and freed by the land that she herself has cut through Forest: life. Stream is not merely water that rushes through the ravine, stream is the ravine that ebbs water.

Stream's interaction with me comes through as ordinary things. Sitting on the couch, walking down a street, talking with a friend. A noise, a sight, a smell. These things are stream. She is every present, and she will persist until I no longer need her.

But that will be at the time that I leave Forest.

what is a pastor?

honestly, does such a thing exist? is it truly biblical to have a pastor?

did Jesus sit there and tell his followers: "go, and designate a person through whom I will speak and devote divine theological speeches every week... sometimes twice a week."

I'm not denying the fact that people have done research and know (greek) the bible like a roadmap, and I'm also not denying these people's knowledge (hebrew) of the relational aspects of Christ as well, but...

are we really to expect a person to be the one and only source that an entire congregation of people will listen to every week?

I love my pastor. she's an amazing woman who, I'm sure, has both knowledges of Christ, but can we honestly EXPECT divinity to happen every week?

or, is it truly church services that we ought to question then? should we be going to church with expectations of any kind?

which, I will admit, is hypocritical because I know that I go to a highly liturgical church, and therefore I know what to expect every week from my rituals.

do I expect to have the answers posted within this blog? no...

but, to quote R. P. MacMurphey in the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: "well, at least I'm trying , damnit... at least I'm trying..."