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{"id":8312,"date":"2014-04-25T22:06:57","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T02:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=8312"},"modified":"2014-04-25T22:15:43","modified_gmt":"2014-04-26T02:15:43","slug":"the-mask-of-obedience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2014\/04\/the-mask-of-obedience.html","title":{"rendered":"The Mask of Obedience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last year I wrote this really scattershot, unsatisfying post about \u201cThe Beauty of Obedience<\/a>,\u201d rescuing obedience as a positive term and a category you\u2019re allowed to care about. I recognize that that post was not the tightest thing I\u2019ve ever written, and in fact, I\u2019m still kind of flailing around trying to talk about what a positive vision of obedience might look like, but here are yet more extremely scattered thoughts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about that terrific phrase, \u201c the mask of command<\/a>,\u201d and why we don\u2019t think about a corresponding mask of obedience. What would it do for us if we did? The idea of the mask of command does a lot of things for us. It helps us to see leadership as a role, rather than merely a talent. We\u2019re not left with just the raw fact that some people have \u201cleadership quality\u201d and others don\u2019t. Sure, why not, that\u2019s sort of true sometimes\u2013but often people (like me) who really lack leadership quality will nonetheless have to figure out how to play the role of a leader. The mask of command helps us get past questions of personality and \u201cauthenticity\u201d and preference, and figure out how to do our duty, when part of that duty is exercising authority.<\/p>\n

And all of us also have to learn how to knuckle under. Not just whom<\/em> to trust and follow\u2013though that\u2019s hard enough\u2013but how. We have to learn how to obey when we\u2019re not good at it and didn\u2019t necessarily want to do it. I wonder if the concept of a mask of obedience, obedience as a role rather than a personality type, might help us here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really grateful that the role of the addict or alcoholic in recovery exists. Some of the trappings and traditions of that role are cheesy and some aren\u2019t really right for me, but it\u2019s a role which is designed<\/a> to create a mask of obedience for you at a time when you desperately need to get outside of your own head. On the first page of the journal my first spiritual director made me start keeping, I wrote, \u201cLook, here I am, taking a suggestion<\/em>.\u201d Being explicitly performative about my surrender helped me get past my fatalistic belief that this surrender was simply impossible<\/a> for me. I didn\u2019t have to be good at it or even capable of it; I just had to do<\/em> it. It turns out that you can totally do things \u201ca person like you\u201d isn\u2019t capable of.<\/p>\n

If we had this idea of the mask of obedience, we might look at how our practices shape our understandings of obedience: What does the mask typically look like? When we look at the gestures of obedience within the Catholic liturgy\u2013the use of the body to express a willing, receptive state of mind and spirit\u2013we see gestures of kneeling, bowing, and kissing. (Kissing is more of an Orthodox thing these days, sadly, but we still do it with the Cross and in some churches at the Kiss of Peace.) These are gestures which make us childlike\u2013physically smaller, closer to the ground\u2013and they\u2019re expressions of relationship: a relationship marked by tender affection as well as respect. If we were speaking Russian, the Catholic gestures of obedience would be verbs of the dative case.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a bit in Adam Foulds\u2019s novel The Quickening Maze<\/em><\/a> which plays on\u00a0Ps 123<\/a> to say that when the mistress points, the maidservant looks at her hand, not what the hand is pointing to. This can obviously be just an image of power, not authority\u2013you look at the hand because it\u2019s what the mistress might hit you with!\u2013but in the psalm it\u2019s an image of authority and of willing, loving obedience. In this image the command is important because of the person<\/em> who commands it. The rules and duties become part of how we show our love for the One who gives them to us. They\u2019re important because of their origin in Him, and don\u2019t necessarily make any sense<\/a> apart from our relationship to Him.<\/p>\n

This is just a very tentative start and I don\u2019t think I\u2019m really saying very much here; but I\u2019m pretty intensely interested in this idea of revivifying the way we talk about obedience, allowing it to be a category of beauty and not solely<\/em> a moral danger. I know people have all kinds of associations with this word, obedience; if I were playing a word-association game I think I\u2019d come up with humility, trust, submission<\/a>, acceptance, openness, as possible synonyms or related concepts. This is such a half-baked post and I apologize for that, but I figured if I got these unformed mini-thoughts out there, somebody else might develop them into actual whole thoughts\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"