Origins

We are far too self assured.
Truth is, in fact, approached in the darkness.
-Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Perplexity Project began over a decade ago in the Diocese of Northern Michigan as a way to explore moral and ethical issues in congregations. I recall the first meeting of this project in a church basement in St. Ignace.

The theory, as is true of the mission of that diocese, is to discover from the midst of the community of faith just what it is that the divine word might be. It starts with the particular. It starts with disciplined attention. So many efforts at ethics in the Christian context begin with “telling.” I am reminded of the comment of a wise grandfather who, when confronted with a particularly unsettled adolescent, remarked, “that boy needs a good listening to.”

We talk too much in our moral discourse. Such conversations begin at the end, the se lling of the proponent’s conclusions. Perplexity mounts a quest for the appropriate answer. We begin in listening, in the Quaker model of a Clearness Community. Such conversations are, first of all, rooted in what is happening now. Disciplined listening then leads to a more universal perspective. One begins in the place of perplexity. A fabricated ethic begins in assertion, in self assurance, in an end point. Perplexity ethics begin in that place of darkness, even embarrassment, where human beings embark on the difficult questions we face in our lives.

This blog seeks first to listen to the culture in which it swims. Then, some shapes might emerge from the listening, some things that could be said to be true. There is plenty on our minds at the moment, political and cultural streams, each of which have deep moral and ethical implications. I hope that this endeavor will have the quality of a walk in the forest, noticing what is going on, making connections.

I do not know where this listening might lead. If it is done well, we may glimpse something of the deepest reaches of our souls. So, I begin this continuation of the Perplexity Project with great expectation. And because the subject matters so deeply to each of us, I hope that these thoughts might have the quality of conversation.

A word about opinion. “Opinions are like noses, everyone has one.” What the perplexity project is about is not the formation of opinion or their expression. Rather, we look for something a good deal more focused than simply “positions and statements.” We will have arrived at moral discourse insofar as we can place aside pure opinion and begin to piece together the “divine ecology” of the way we ourselves make meaning in our lives.

Beginning

I heard this story a long time ago — of the tribal elder who was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging inside himself. He said, “It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: Anger, envy, sorrow, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is the good wolf: Joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The boy thought this over for a minute, and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee replied simply: “The one I feed.”

–As retold by Bill Moyers, National Conference for Media Reform, June 7, 2008