In the Mennonite world, we have a long history of wanting to be peaceful people; sometimes we’re even peacemakers. I’m not sure that as a people we’re any better at this than anyone else, but we do point to it in our statements of faith, and in our institutional vision statements. So, yes. We think about peace. At least.
Our mother had the job of managing a bunch of kids when dad was away, which was often. That she survived us is something! We were exasperating and unreasonable! So I remember her saying, after we boys had become pig-headed and intransigent with each other, usually over nothing, that ‘one of you has to give in’. That never made good sense to me because if I was the one giving in, even if for the sake of a desperate peace and some quiet, somehow I felt cheated … and how could that be fair?
For the last week or so, the world has seen a lot of Prince Harry. He’s published a 400-page book about his life – Spare – that seems like a book, as someone said, mostly about revenge. Harry has lived in the shadows of his brother and his dad and he feels like an extra. The one who could become king if something happened to his dad and his older brother and his nephew, but it’s not likely. The investment of the monarchy has been more in his brother than in him. He feels this and he seems to resent his place and the many things that have happened to him growing up and now, with a young family. But did he really want that other life? The heir thing? They (the heirs) have long, exhausting lives to live, with endless commitments to duty for which they get little thanks. So, was that really it?
I haven’t read the book, but I’ve seen and read some of the news releases and interviews Harry has given about it. He seems a little stuck. Interview after interview has the same focus. He’s a victim of a system, of his family, of the British press, and of quite a few ‘isms’. Life has been unfair to him and so he’s written the book slamming and exposing his family, the British media, and remembering all the wrongs – real and perceived – done to him. He’s kept a long list, for a long time. Harry does say it’s all about making peace and he ‘wants his dad and his brother back’ but he adds that it’s really up to them to make it happen. He, apparently, has done his part by telling the world what he calls the truth, exposing things most families might appropriately have kept at home.
‘I don’t think we can ever have peace with my family unless the truth is out there’, he says, and he’s pretty convinced that his truth is ‘the truth’. Even a little bit of reflection will usually point to there being a bit more to most stories, but Harry insists, ‘If you can’t rely on truth’ (presumably his) ‘then I just don’t see how peace is possible’. Even when asked how he thinks his mother would feel about what is now a serious trust issue between him and his brother, Harry tosses the blame to his brother. ‘She would be heartbroken that William and his staff were part of these stories’, he says, referring to stories he says were leaked to the press about him and Meghan, his wife.
My reaction is that a more thoughtful person would be a bit wary of exposing all those wrongs; they might be equally angry about many of them, might even write a book about some of them, but I wonder if they would be a bit more reflective. If he was, Harry, maybe, by now, would be wondering if he is still the victim, or if he has also become an offender. And were he to reach that moment of self-doubt, well, then making peace with his family would have a chance. Self-doubt is about humility and being curious enough to know that whenever we think we have figured something out and understood all there is, we keep looking and listening because, well, most always, there will be more. The most dangerous political and religious leaders are those who with no capacity for self-doubt.
Last Sunday we heard a sermon about curiosity and our capacity to change and to grow. Even Jesus, said the pastor, was self-reflective. Matthew 5 is the sermon on the mount. Probably the most often referenced Jesus sermon, it’s all about behaviour. How we treat each other. But after that, Jesus moves from teaching wisdom to speaking mostly in riddles and parables. By the time he preaches another sermon in chapter 13, Jesus seems to realize that he can’t teach people into the kingdom. They have to be invited. Just sensible, cognitive teaching won’t do it, attractive and stimulating as that often is. Said the pastor in his conclusions, what this means for us all is that what we earlier were is an essential part of who we are now. Even Jesus was different at 30 than he was at, say, 25 or 18.
We evangelicals and progressives are sometimes a little proud of what we are not. What we once were, we are not now, and sometimes we prefer to define ourselves in only that way. No longer bound by earlier traditions perhaps, we are now, abundantly something else. Except, what we once were may be the bricks and mortar to what we now are. We didn’t get here from nowhere. When I think of Jesus, or Gandhi or Mandela or Mother Theresa, I have an image of them that usually doesn’t wonder about their life experience. But I should. Were they always the whole package? All mature and amazing? Not likely. There is always what came before.
So Harry, now that you’ve put so much of yourself and your family out there – the truth, as you call it – maybe the ball is really in your court. Give in a little, my mother might say. Your always careful grandmother, I’m quite sure, would say the same. Look back at what you were, at what your family was, and who you are all becoming. Don’t beat on the memories with so much anger and vengeance, maybe? They can and will shape you and your young family. You might be surprized. And when you are 65, write another book.
And also … the poet Samuel Coleridge is to have said, in a lecture about education: ‘little is taught by contest or dispute. Everything by sympathy and love.’
Messy Notes 