The cheapest room in the house

I began last week’s posting with Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. Let’s just pick up that concern again briefly. If you haven’t heard of the Avaaz website it’s worth a visit. Having organised a petition against Sakineh’s stoning, they are following it up with more pressure on the Iranians to try and stop this medieval punishment altogether.

Is there an onward flow of human progress: a growth in right brain consciousness? This blog, The Now Show, arose out of my discovery that there is much more to life than left brain, ‘logical’ thinking. I am just one among many thousands (millions?) who are making a similar discovery, but it isn’t clear yet whether enough of us humans will develop this discipline soon enough to stem the tide of madness which sometimes threatens to engulf us.

People get frightened when the rules, as they understand them, are being challenged (the elder son for example in last week’s post about Jesus’ parable). Fear drives people to tighten the rules: to be less compassionate: less aware of our solidarity with all other humans on the planet: less able to exercise wisdom. It’s all perfectly logical of course; that’s the power of left brain thinking and it is essential for our humanity to survive and flourish. It’s just very dangerous when it isn’t tempered by right brain disciplined insight and wisdom.

The Vatican has just amended the Roman Catholic Church’s code of canon law. Law codes are left brain documents by definition: very logical. So now, apparently, it is a crime for any Roman Catholic priest to be involved in the ordination of a woman. What is it with religion and women?!! I know, I know – it’s just sex and us men have always had a problem with it. So maybe this is another example of men getting frightened and tightening up the rules.

The first example in Christian history came within fifteen years of the birth of the church. Jewish law said that all males must be circumcised and at first all converts were Jewish, so there was no problem. Paul, however, was making Gentile converts without demanding that they comply with Jewish law. Fortunately he won the argument with Peter and the rest of the new community in Jerusalem. Not that Paul was without prejudice: women, he thought, should not speak in church and should keep their heads covered ‘for fear of the angels’!

In Christianity, and I suspect in most religions, there has always been tension between law and grace: between left brain and right brain disciplines. I hope that we are living through a period of profound readjustment of the balance between the two. Christina Feldman, in her book, ‘Compassion’ quotes a Sufi saying,

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house and I’d like to see you in better accommodation.”

Well, amen to that.