[June 2005 journal entry]
I read recently the proposition that “cherished beliefs about the divine” may have be “let go” in order to “stay loyal to the suffering human being”. I agree with the proposition. However, the author was disturbingly casual when making the comment. He left me with no indication he had experienced the complexity/difficulty/pain of the choice he affirmed. Letting go of any idea, thing, or person that/who is truly/deeply “cherished” is profound, disorienting, frightening, nauseating, . . . -- all consequences/dispositions the author of the above statement did not convey (at least to me). The chilling image of ‘letting go’ for me is in the 1979 film Sophie’s Choice (based on William Styron’s novel) when Sophie – a Polish survivor of Auschwitz – finally recounts to an aspiring writer friend her darkest secret. She and her two children – Eva age four and Jan age ten – had disembarked the cramped train car at Auschwitz. They faced a sadistic Nazi doctor who ordered her to choose between (i.e., literally and symbolically to let go of one of) her two children. The one she let go would be sent directly to death in the concentration camp. Pleading in vain and sinking in utter agony, she chose her son to live. My observation has been that most individuals, when forced to choose, hold on firmly to their ‘cherished beliefs’ about the divine and let suffering human beings go. A ‘non-religious’ and ‘with the world face to face’ approach to spirituality and ethics lets go ‘cherished beliefs’ about the divine in order to hold on to ‘suffering human beings’.
