21 minute read
CARMEL WYNNE
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
CARMEL WYNNE
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What is a friend?
What is the logical thing to do if you want to know the meaning of a word? Does it surprise you to know that the answer is age-related? Younger people immediately go online to look the word up on Google. People who may be older or not computer literate are more likely to look it up in a dictionary. Dictionaries give limited information compared to what you will find online.
Our copy of the Oxford dictionary is on a high shelf. It measures 11x9 inches and weighs almost 7lbs. Rather than take it down, I find it easier to go online to look up the definition of a word. It's also more fun and much more interesting. You can look up the five-gift rule, the three-gift rule, and the etiquette for giving Christmas gifts.
For example, some online definitions of the word 'friend' are: 'A person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations,' and 'A friend is someone other than your family or partner that you share close affection with. You share kindness, sympathy, empathy, compassion, loyalty, fun, and probably some common beliefs and values with them.'
Google gives a variety of definitions for any word you look up, a list of the questions people ask about the word and other information. If you want to learn about the qualities of a good friend, the 13 essential traits of good friends, 11 signs of a genuine friendship, and the nine 'must knows' of a great friendship, look online.
The closest definition I found online to what I believe about friendship is, 'Good friends are loyal and accept you for who you are during the good and bad times. Good friends are also honest – honest enough to tell you when you're not being a good friend yourself.'
There is a widespread belief that a caring friend should withhold information that might be hurtful or upsetting. The positive intention may be to spare a person's feelings. But honesty is the foundation of trust in a friendship. Honesty in a friendship involves way more than simply telling the truth. It involves having integrity, being genuine, authentic and trustworthy.
A brief definition of integrity is: 'The quality of being honest, trustworthy and living by strong moral principles.' Isn't it sad that a person who dares to tell the plain, unvarnished truth can sometimes be perceived as insensitive? Expressions like 'too honest for his or her own good' or 'brutal honesty' devalue both honesty and integrity.
People know intuitively when someone lives in accordance with their deepest values. They value the integrity of someone who is honest with everyone, and who will always keep their word. Integrity is such a highly valued trait that if a 'good friend' unknowingly says something that isn't true, people will have confidence that it was a genuine mistake.
When asked for an honest opinion, do you answer instantly with your first uncensored thought, or do you pause to consider how to reply? If you need to second-guess how the person will react before you speak, you may have a trust issue. People intuitively pick up on a tiny pause and, depending on the quality of the relationship, assign it a meaning.
The majority of us spend an enormous amount of time trying to second-guess the thoughts, feelings, intentions and attitudes of others. When we shield someone from the whole truth, the underlying belief is that we do not trust that the person has what it takes to make good choices and decisions. From the best of motives, we decide what information to reveal and what must be censored to avoid hurting the other person's feelings. To stop someone from making a perceived bad decision may be the positive intention, but the action demonstrates an enormous lack of respect for the other's skills and capabilities. The non-verbal message is: I have superior knowledge. I know better than you.
The belief that a good friend feels a responsibility to protect you from the truth goes against almost everything we have learned about friendship. In her book Flourishing, Dr Maureen Gaffney says, 'To be seen as honest or trustworthy, someone has to be honest at all times and in all their dealings with you.'
You must really love someone to tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Finding the correct language to convey an unflattering truth is a challenge. My good friend Colm had a loving way to answer truthfully if I asked him a question like, "Be honest, how do I look in this?" A wise man and a good friend, he'd grin and say, "I refuse to comment on the grounds that I might incriminate myself."
Carmel Wynne is a life and work skills coach and lives in Dublin. For more information, visit www.carmelwynne.org
THE ADAM AND EVE MYTH
THE MYTH OF ADAM AND EVE CONVEYS THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH THAT NONE OF US IS PERFECT BY JOHN J. Ó RÍORDÁIN CSsR
Let me read for you the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis (3.1-5): "Now the serpent was the craftiest of all the wild creatures that God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say: You must not eat from any tree in the garden?' The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden God said: You must not eat, and you must not touch it or you will die.' The serpent said to the woman, 'You will not die, but God knows that the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.'"
The Bible is the word of God, but it is God's word mediated to us through human beings in a particular language, within a particular civilisation. The sacred writers used all the skills and knowledge at their disposal, drawing on history, poetry, myth, folklore, literature, drama, and whatever else was available to them. The purpose of the exercise was to communicate a religious message concerning God's relationship with the world.
The culture of the Middle East from which the Bible emerged between two and four thousand years ago is a far cry from that in which you and I have grown up. So you will forgive me if I suggest that we give ourselves a little too much credit by thinking that we can interpret the scriptures without some guidance. Some years ago, a priest friend of mine was working in America. One morning after Mass, a lady followed him into the sacristy and said, "You are the father of my child!" Without batting an eyelid, my friend replied in his rich cultured accent, "Madame, I'm afraid you give me altogether too much credit!" So the good lady turned on her heels and walked out. As interpreters of the Bible, perhaps at times, we too give ourselves altogether too much credit.
GUIDANCE
Let me turn to the Adam and Eve story in the Bible to illustrate this need for guidance. To begin with, the story of Adam and Eve is a myth. Now, anything described as a myth in today's language is dismissed out of hand. Myth in a biblical context is entirely different. Here, the Bible employs myth to communicate something so profound that it is really beyond expression in ordinary terms. Therefore, when I say that the Adam and Eve story is myth, I mean that there is a lot more to it than we see at face value.
The story of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise made good sense to its hearers because they all shared the same language, culture and values. Ears cocked up immediately on the mention of the serpent, for example. The fact that the serpent sheds its skin each year gives a semblance of immortality. Furthermore, because serpents lived underground, they acquired a reputation for communicating with the dead and sharing juicy bits of gossip and scandal with them. As a result, the serpent was considered to be both crafty and wise – we still use the term 'wise as serpents.' The serpent sets about deceiving Eve by suggesting that she is forbidden to eat of the fruit of the tree at the centre of the garden to prevent her from becoming like God, knowing the nature of good and evil.
THE TREE
The Bible does not refer to the popular notion that the tree at the centre of the garden was an apple tree. So, where did that idea come from? It seems to have originated in Homer's great poem, The Iliad, dating from the sixth century BC. It was part of the folklore of the Middle East for centuries and would have been known to the author of the Book of Genesis.
There is a story about a society wedding in the Iliad to which all the gods and goddesses were invited, except for Eris, the goddess of chaos, strife and discord. Even though not invited, Eris gatecrashed the party and, true to form, caused chaos by throwing a golden apple into the crowd of goddesses with the words 'the fairest' inscribed on it. Well, three goddesses started fighting over which of them was the fairest. The row ultimately led to the Trojan War, which lasted for the following ten years. In the Iliad, it was the goddess Venus that got the apple, but in the biblical version, it is Eve that takes the apple and gives it to Adam and sparks off endless trouble for humanity.
With the development of modern psychology under the influence of Sigmund Freud, people saw the snake as a symbol of the male sexual anatomy and that Adam and Eve had a bit of hanky-panky in the garden. From a biblical point of view, that interpretation was totally off the wall.
EXCUSES, EXCUSES
At the beginning, I said that myths are stories to convey a depth of meaning that is beyond words. The Adam and Eve myth presents how the world is, how people ought to behave, and how people have to sweat and toil, bear and rear children, and most important of all, the message is that while everyone has elements of good and bad within them, there is something lacking, something that falls short of perfection.
Some sociologists nowadays believe that everybody is a good person. There is so much violence in society because the perpetrators have been raised in a bad environment – horrible parents, screwed up at school, sexually abused by the pastor, or whatever the reason. If only one could stop pastors or parents or teachers from behaving as described, the person would grow to be perfect.
But there is another point of view, that of the Book of Genesis at the root of the Jewish and Christian faith, namely, that no matter what you do, there will always be inherent weaknesses in the person. So, depending on your viewpoint of society, you will have different laws, different rules concerning human behaviour. I think we can all agree that none of us is perfect.
John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsR is a member of the Redemptorist Community in Limerick and has written extensively on early Irish and Scottish Christianity. He is also author of a memoir Before the Night Grows Late.
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The joy and despair of Christmas
FRANÇOIS MAURIAC’S CONTE DE NOËL
FRANÇOIS MAURIAC’S POWERFUL SHORT STORY IS A REMINDER OF THE NEED TO CELEBRATE OR TO REDISCOVER THE CHILD-LIKE JOY THAT IS PART OF WELCOMING THE SON OF GOD AT CHRISTMAS
BY EAMON MAHER
The French Catholic writer François Mauriac (1885-1970) is someone whose work was widely read and appreciated in Ireland, especially in the 1950s and 60s. A member of the Académie Française and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952, Mauriac is possibly as well-known for his journalism as for his fiction. His Bloc-notes, published in L’Express and Le Figaro between 1952 and 1970, provide superb insights into France’s struggle to recover from the travails of World War II and the steady break-up of its empire, the bloody Algerian war of independence (1954-1962), which contributed to the fall of Mauriac’s hero, Charles de Gaulle, the Cold War, the diminished reputation of France on the world stage, and the steady rise of secularism, all of which are discussed in Mauriac’s customary elegant prose and brutal honesty.
Born into a wealthy family who lived close to Bordeaux in south-west France, Mauriac suffered from an early stage as
a result of doubts he harboured in relation to his sinful nature, doubts that were attributable in large part to his mother’s distrust of the human body. This is seen to telling effect in the following extract from the autobiographical account of his childhood, Commencements d’une vie:
Our nightgowns were so long that I couldn’t even get to scratch my foot.
We knew that the Lord above demanded from His children that they sleep with their arms crossed over their chests. We went to sleep with our arms folded, our palms almost nailed against our bodies, grasping the holy medals and the scapular of
Mount Carmel that we couldn’t remove, even in the bath. The five children thus hugged against their bodies, in an embrace that was already passionate, the invisible love of God.
MOTHER’S LOVE
The relationship with the mother is key to the discussion of Mauriac’s wonderful short story, Conte de Noël, which relates the contrasting experiences of two eight-year-old boys on Christmas eve. Jean de Blaye is the victim of serious bullying by some of his classmates, especially the rough and ready Campagne, who refers to him as a girl because of his abundant blond curls, which are in stark contrast to the cropped hairstyles of the other students. To them, he is a living incarnation of Little Lord Fountleroy, a wellknown literary character of the Frances Hodson Burnett novel of the same name, and a Mammy’s boy to boot.
On this particular Christmas eve, Jean’s friend Yves Frontenac hears a heated exchange in the yard, the source of which becomes clear when he hears one student exclaim: “He thinks it is Jesus who comes down the chimney…” The discussion concerns Jean’s belief that Jesus is the purveyor of the presents that appear miraculously on Christmas Day. He is firm on this point because his mother told him so, and she would not lie. Greatly distressed, the young boy turns to Yves and asks him to repeat what he said during their walk around the yard. However, Yves, in a moment of cowardice, betrays Jean by announcing he did not believe such nonsense and that he was only talking in jest. As they head home after school, Jean once more confronts Yves and suggests he only said what he said because he was afraid of Campagne, an accusation Yves denies. In the end, they resolve to stay awake that night to ascertain the exact provenance of the presents.
Frontenac struggles to stay awake, but he is determined unimaginable midnight Mass that I had not attended, I knew that Maman and my brothers must have received
Communion and returned from the altar, as I had seen them do so often, with their hands joined and their eyes closed so firmly that I always wondered how they could find their seats.
So while Yves realises that it may be his mother who is leaving presents in the fireplace of his bedroom, God is also present in her as a result of her receiving him during the Mass. That thought is enough to assuage any doubts he had about how the presents appeared so miraculously every Christmas.
REVELATION
After the school holidays, Yves eagerly looks around to locate the notorious curls of his friend,
to whom he wishes to share the revelation he has had. In the end, he sees Jean minus the curls and with a visage that has hardened in some way. When Yves prompts him to reveal what he discovered, Jean brusquely shuns such a discussion, saying that no one believes that sort of thing at their age. He adds that he will never again accept his mother’s lies. Yves tries to share his own experience of
to ignore his mother’s warning that Jesus will not come if he is not asleep. The peeling bells of the nearby cathedral aid him in the fight against sleep and he is still conscious when his mother enters his room after midnight Mass. He detects a change in her: It was my mother and yet it wasn’t her. It seemed to me as though someone else had taken on the form of my mother. During the
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how the mystery of Christmas had been revealed to him, and how his mother had not lied, but Jean cuts him short, saying: “I saw exactly what happens.” Clearly, their understanding of the event was very different and the impact this had on Yves was catastrophic.
On the one occasion during his youth when he was not at home for Christmas, Yves wandered from bar to bar in Paris, trying unsuccessfully to get drunk, and suddenly thought he saw Jean in one of the establishments. It turned out to be his younger brother, who explained how Jean had had a challenging life, largely as a result of the troubled relationship he had with his mother. One incident in particular reveals the extent of their enmity. Their mother had a silver box which she always kept under lock and key. Jean was convinced that it contained treasure and decided one day to force the lock, only to discover that it contained his childhood curls. He confronted his mother with what was for him a sordid revelation and ended up throwing the mother’s cherished memento into the fire. They reminded him of his lost innocence and the betrayal of his mother. After that, he was constantly in trouble with the police, drank to excess and dabbled in drugs. He died prematurely in a hospital in Saigon.
Reflecting on the destiny of his friend, Yves reflects on what had transpired between Jean’s fierce defence of his mother’s honour in the school yard all those years ago and his lonely death in Vietnam. Cutting off his curls was the first act of rebellion, as they were for him a reminder of the time when he believed utterly everything she told him. He also knew how much she cherished them. What he failed to comprehend was the unconditional love she had for him – his brother admits that she loved only Jean – and that what he perceived as a betrayal could easily have been interpreted as a sign of love and a wish to preserve the innocence of youth.
So moved is he by the story he has just heard that Yves starts writing the minute he gets back to his apartment at dawn, feverishly tracing the outline of a destiny that could well have been his own. Mauriac himself had a rather fraught relationship with his mother, but in his case it was mainly down to her close surveillance of her children’s potential frailty when it came to matters of the flesh. Mauriac’s father died when François was only 20 months and it would be subsequently revealed that he was an apostate, something which must surely have horrified Madame Mauriac.
SIGN OF THE INCARNATION
I always think of Conte de Noël when I attend midnight Mass at Christmas. The fact that it rarely if ever takes place at midnight anymore doesn’t matter. The story of the birth of Jesus is beautiful and those present at Mass on the eve of this momentous feast, when families are reunited, carols sung with a particular gusto, children’s faces red with excitement, the priest in the golden chasuble, the congregation attentive to the nativity narrative as they prepare to receive the host that is the concrete sign of the incarnation, all these elements induce happiness in many people, and especially in children. That Jean de Blaye should have had such a horrible experience of Christmas, an experience that changed the course of his life, is a reminder that childhood memories, both traumatic and happy, leave an indelible mark.
So this Christmas it would be nice to rediscover the child-like joy that is part of welcoming the Son of God onto this earth and to reach out to others in the knowledge that kind gestures can change people’s view of themselves and give them a feeling of self-worth.
