From the Bottom of the Well

One of the more disturbing thoughts for me is how easy it is to become an oppressor. Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment at Yale in 1961 revealed a frightening fact. It appears following some fairly easy steps the majority of people will move from administering a slight electric shock to administering what they understand to be lethal shocks to people seen as unwilling to obey instructions. Similarly, a decade later Philip Zimbardo ran an experiment at Stanford where people were divided into prisoners and guards. I think most people are aware of how quickly decency and even rationality evaporated and how a reign of terror against the “prisoners” by the “guards” became so extreme the experiment collapsed in six days.

Evidence for some sort of original sin, I fear.

And that notorious banality of evil… 


Sometimes it feels like I’m at the bottom of a well. 


The Buddhist observation of the human mind’s endlessly arising greed, hatred and the boundless contortions of certainty appear to be a pretty clear observation of the situation…


Thank goodness the Buddhist way also discerns some original blessing, and points us toward it.

There is also good news, whispered in the rain, in the shining sun, in a child playing in the sand…  

It is found in presence.

It is a sense of joy in the midst of all the sadness.


It is a beam of light that reaches even to the bottom of the well.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xV8xgWlZy0


Of course even the story is contaminated…


No doubt a rather more mundane thing happened.

The well is very dark and dank, it stinks and that beam is slight and wavering…


But, actually, that should be good news, as well.

If its really all about the ordinary, this life, the one you and I live…


It means you and I can achieve, as well.

I’ve often said I would like Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah sung at my funeral. It summarized the whole project for me. That’s why I’ve probably posted one version or another of this song a dozen or more times since I began this blog.


A friend from the congregation I last served recently died, terribly out of time, much too young.


He beat me to it. Last month it was sung at his funeral…





Still works…


In the face of it all.


Without turning away.

From the bottom of the well…


Hallelujah!