On Profanity

**Image credit goes to www.marriedtothesea.com**

“True hospitality is welcoming the stranger on her own terms. This kind of hospitality can only be offered by those who’ve found the center of their lives in their own hearts.” – Henri Nouwen

This week on the Momastery Facebook page I posted a few links to The Bloggess. I believe her to be one of the funniest persons on our sweet little planet. Some Lovies did not think so. Some Lovies wrote to me concerned that I’d endorsed a writer who uses so much profanity.

This happens sometimes. I disappoint conservative people and liberal people both, because I don’t often stand still long enough to take a stand. I’m a restless wanderer.

I’m so grateful that this has happened, though. Conflict is the good stuff. Conflict is what helps us stretch and grow. But only when we are honest and kind about it . . . like these Lovies were. They didn’t sit at home and feel angry and confused and give up on our community. They reached out, respectfully and honestly. And now I owe it to them to do the same. What we are trying to do here is to learn how to live well in community, how to love and try to understand all kinds of people . . . and that’s hard. But we can do hard things.

I’m glad we brought up the profanity issue, because it’s something I think about a whole lot.

The profanity that raised concern was the four-letter-word kind. Luckily these Lovies didn’t nose around the Bloggess’ site long enough to discover that she also writes a WOWZA sex column. I haven’t read it, though, because I don’t want to discover even more things to feel guilty about never doing for Craig.

But back to the four-letter-words kind of profanity.

You know, maybe God is up in heaven keeping lists of bad words and tallying how many times who’s saying each one. Maybe those arbitrary four letter words that are different in every country, culture, and era are the unwholesome, crude talk that the Bible insists we avoid. Maybe.

Or maybe God’s actually referring to the most harmful kind of talk in which people of light can participate… gossip talk and ungrateful talk and racist and sexist and classist talk and sarcasm and snide, dismissive, apathetic remarks and maybe even nasty phrases like more and not my problem and us/them and looking out for number one and the scariest phrase of all - the deserving poor. As if there is any other kind?

Or maybe He’s talking about language intended to exclude people. Religious talk does that sometimes. Religious words can be used to make people feel in and other people feel out and if they’re used that way, to suggest that some people are “God people” and others aren’t, then I think religious words become profane.

And you know, if four letter words are used in a way that helps a Sister express herself, tell her truth, make her art, relate to other people, get it OUT, then I think Jesus would dig it. I really do. I think Jesus likes REAL, whatever form it comes in. I guess I just think it’s not as black and white as it seems. I think we’ve each got deep wells of profanity inside us. Deep enough to keep us busy bailing our own wells before dipping into anybody else’s.

While we’re on the subject, sort of….I heard a sermon on the radio recently, given by the minister of one of the largest churches in the country. He was passionately insisting that Christians should protect themselves from secular music. He used the example of rap and discussed with disgust its profanity. He said that Christians, adult Christians, should stay away from it at all costs, or it could corrupt them.

It really got to me, that sermon.

I sometimes listen to gangster rap. Don’t laugh. I like art, any art that is true and raw and real and sometimes rap fits the bill. And sometimes as I listen to a song, an angry song, about poverty and dead ends and the hopelessness and the violence that are the inevitable results I think . . . Jesus would love this song. I don’t think he’d cover his ears and turn up his nose and run away because of the crudeness. I don’t think the coarseness would offend him. As a matter of fact, the people who were a little rough around the edges never offended Jesus. The shiny perfect Pharisees did, though. He called them vipers and white washed tombs. Poisonous. Perfect and shiny outside, decaying on the inside.

You know, if Jesus were that pastor, I don’t think he’d tell his people to turn off the radio. I think he’d tell them to turn it up and listen, even if it made them uncomfortable. He’d tell them to Listen to the stories of people who’ve been oppressed and marginalized and are crying out for someone to hear them and step in. He’d say…sounds a lot like the Psalms, doesn’t it? And instead of allowing his followers to comfort themselves by creating false groups of us/them (they are so bad…we are so good…we must not become contaminated!) I think Jesus might ask them to listen to the despair and anger and to ask themselves, how am I part of this problem? What can I, as their neighbor, do to help level the playing field? Jesus didn’t say: “Love your neighbor, unless they offend you.” I’m not sure that being easily offended is a luxury that people who’ve been commanded to love each other can enjoy. Otherwise we are in danger of becoming people who were born on third base, peeved that those not issued a ticket into the ballpark refuse to complain sweetly enough.

I just think that if this pastor was so very upset by poverty and the agony it causes, maybe instead of suggesting that his well-off congregation flee from it, he might have suggested that they skip the mall and lunch after church and use the time and money to serve some meals to the poor instead? Maybe go meet some of these gangsters…maybe head to the prisons, to the homeless shelters…To Samaria, like Jesus did, instead of walking around it or away from it.

There was this town is Jesus’ day called Samaria. Jews did NOT go to Samaria. Samarians were dirty. Morally questionable. Samaria was the wrong side of the tracks. Jews would add lots and lots of time to their trips to walk around Samaria. But in the gospels, whenever they mention Jesus’ travels, they are careful to include that he walks through Samaria.

Always right through it, that Jesus. Rolling deep with his entourage, the twelve disciples. Laaaaiiiid back. With their minds on their sandals and their sandals on their minds.

Jesus enjoyed Samaria, and the people there. He actually met one of his favorite people there . . . someone he used as an example of how to love your neighbor. The Good Samaritan. Maybe gangster rap is like Samaria. Maybe “profane” blogs are. Maybe a lot of places we avoid are. Maybe there’s really good people we can learn from in these places. The whole world is God's, and everything in it.

But all of this is beside the point. Some of you will agree with these thoughts of mine and some will find them ridiculous. And the point is that that’s okay. We can disagree and still love each other.

My real point is this: There are these monks called the Benedictines, and they live in monasteries all over the world and follow the Rule, which is a set of ideas about living in community written by St Benedict a long, long time ago. I actually study this Rule often to decide to handle situations in my heart and on this blog and in my friendships and my home. And here’s one of my favorite parts:

“Persevere. Bear with great patience each other’s infirmities of body or behavior. And when the thorns of contention arise, daily forgive, and be ready to accept forgiveness.”

So if you are someone who considers cursing to be a weakness, please bear with us cursers with great patience, and daily forgive us. And if you are someone who considers intolerance for cursing a weakness, please bear with us with great patience and daily forgive us. Persevere. Try to see through to the God in us. As St. Benedictine says . . . "Listen with the ear of the heart.”