Wednesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Butterfly

The prophet Jeremiah may be the first self-identified individual in literary history. He experienced a calling to be not only a prophet, but a solitary prophet without the support of a prophetic guild. Ordinarily, if a prophet must stand up and rebuke his contemporaries, he wants someone to back him up. The people will look for “the testimony of two or more witnesses.” Why would anyone listen to one peculiar crackpot when no one agrees with him?
Jeremiah never found such support. He must speak the words that God gives to him alone. His loneliness is palpable, almost pathetic:
     Woe to me, mother, that you gave me birth!
      a man of strife and contention to all the land!
      I neither borrow nor lend,
      yet all curse me.

Three thousand years later, in a nation that cultivates individuality with all its boldness, energy and creativity we should remember how much it costs. The teenager who wants to stand against her family and her peers will know the agonizing, crushing loneliness of Jeremiah. He was probably a teen when he started prophesying.
The scientist or engineer who comes up with a brilliant new idea will meet opposition from the establishment. They will mock him and his notions as crazy or idiotic. New ideas often make progress only when the old generation has retired or died. The next generation, driven by an impulse to make a difference by being different, welcomes and utilizes new ideas – until they are challenged by the next generation.

Deep in the woods

Becoming oneself is a lonely task, and yet vital to the spiritual life. As each one negotiates the life we’re given, society hands the person a role, with its own list of expectations. “You are a husband, father, mother or wife and here is what we expect of you.” Or, “You’re a grandmother now; here is what grandmothers are supposed to do. Here is how they feel about their grandchildren; here is how they treat them; and here are the sacrifices they make for them.”
Refusing or even modifying the role can be painful. Perhaps grandmother decides she wants to travel, go back to school, start a new career, or take up some artistic expression. “Well, that’s very nice, so long as you don’t compromise your duty to your children and grandchildren.”
The individual who thinks she has finally attained the life and situation where she can make her own decisions and experience her own uniqueness may be astonished by loneliness. She may have to cultivate a whole new set of relationships, a new “support system,” if she wants to continue.
The Christian, stepping out of the expectations of family, career and (very likely) church, who is willing to pay the price, will discover new depths of reality. Her life will be painted with darker and brighter tones. Her feelings will be more intense; her experience, more palpable; and her faith, more dynamic.

Daisies

Jeremiah may have been the pioneer in the territory of individuality, but it’s still an uncharted wilderness of perilous adventures and stark beauty.