Michael Seiler

Tag: Racism

  • Can You Hear Me Now?

    The dictionary defines “social status” as “a person’s standing or importance in relation to other people within a society.” That is, a person’s social standing – my standing, your standing – is based on how important other people think we are. And the flip-side is also true. In fact, humans have an incredible capacity to stratify and categorize people in society; that is, we like to fit people within a hierarchy, based on the perceived importance we place upon them. And we use existing words and give them new meaning. 

    Words like colors: “yellow,” or “red.” Words like plants: “pansy,” or “buttercup.” Words like food: “fruit,” “nut,” “vegetable,” or “kraut.”  Words like insects and crawling things: “cockroach,” “butterfly,” “slug,” or “leech.” But the worst words seem to come when we give new meaning to animals: “pig,” “cow,” “donkey,” “rat,” or “snake.”

    All of this is intended to place people into a social hierarchy, to define their status. Psychologists tell us that we do this, not because we feel superior, but because we are afraid. Afraid, most often, of what could happen – that is, our fears that come to life in our own imaginations.

    The American horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft, said this: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear, is the fear of the unknown.”  

    This fear of the unknown is why our strongest words are often reserved for those who are the least like us, and our enemies, those that wish to do us harm.

    Here’s a bit of the background for today’s reading. Tyre and Sidon were Gentile territories. And in fact, they weren’t just territories that belonged to people who didn’t believe in the Jewish God, but they were considered “enemy territory.” The listeners of Mark’s Gospel would have understood this. The city of Tyre is considered a World Heritage Site, because so much of the world’s history stemmed from this area. In fact, it is connected to the construction of the Temple of Solomon. It wasn’t just a small, out of the way, gentile town. It was a big deal.

    The people there, the Syrophoenicians, were the landowners, and business owners, they were those that would have provided the jobs to others because they were wealthy, and well connected. 

    And the Gospel goes out of the way to make sure that we know that the person who came to talk to Jesus is a woman, a Gentile, and not only any Gentile, but a Syrophoenician. This is a woman of standing, in what Jesus and his disciples could call “enemy territory.” 

    Over the years, we have all probably used some slurs when speaking of others. But also, over the years, we have matured, and we have come to understand others better, and more importantly, we understand ourselves and our own insecurities and fears better, so that we no longer use these slurs. 

    Which makes Jesus using this term “dog” to describe not only the Syrophoenician woman, but all her countryfolk sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to us when we hear it. And it demands that we figure out an answer to what is happening. We certainly don’t want to think of Jesus as a bigot, nor do we want to see Jesus as a jerk, or worse, afraid of the unknown. 

    What is going on?

    The most common explanation given is that Jesus was just testing the woman’s faith, to see how strong it was, so that he could then heal her child and bless her. But if you think about this, you realize that this is just as mean as calling the woman and her countryfolk “dogs.” Here is a woman that has a demon possessed daughter, and she is afraid for her daughter’s life. She is coming to a foreigner, and, as a woman, going against this foreigner’s culture and religious laws, asking to speak with him and beg him for mercy to heal her daughter. And Jesus says, “Sure, but first, let me test your faith to see how strong it is. And if you pass this test, then I will show you mercy.” Not exactly a kind gesture toward a woman suffering from the fear of the loss of her child.

    What we need to realize is that all we have here are the written words. We do not have the tone of Jesus’ voice, nor do we have the look on his face when he said these words. But, given the context of these passages within the Gospel of Mark, we can make some assumptions about what was really happening here.

    Last week, we had Jesus telling the Pharisees and the leaders of the people that they are teaching people to follow their rules, rather than the commandments of God. He calls them hypocrites. And then, he leaves the comfort of his own region, and goes into enemy territory. It is unlikely that Jesus went in and with malicious intent called these people “dogs.”

    For those that were following the adventures of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, they would have had no issue with Jesus calling this woman a “dog.” In fact, they would have expected it; they would have expected the name calling and the dehumanizing, because these people were “enemies of the Jews,” and not to be trusted. Even the gentiles listening to this Gospel would have expected the people of Israel to behave like this.

    And then Mark’s Gospel turns their expectations back on them, because Jesus grants the woman what she asks. He has essentially said, “Look, my children are the children of Israel. You are a mother, so you understand that I cannot feed you until my children have been fed.” And her response shows that she gets it, and she says, “Yes, but while we’re waiting for that, show me a scrap of mercy, since your children have an abundance.” The conversation is less of one intended to insult the woman or test her faith, but more of one intended to help the listeners understand.

    The people listening to this would have been more shocked by Jesus’ response to this gentile woman than they would have been by Jesus calling her a dog. 

    Over the course of Jesus’ ministry we have seen that when he heals people, he doesn’t just heal their physical ailments, but he restores them to their community, meaning that he restores their social status. A young girl who was demon possessed would have been a social outcast. This Gospel has gone out of its way to tell us that the mother is a woman, a gentile, and an enemy. Any one of those elements of this woman’s identity could have made Jesus ritually unclean, and yet, he speaks to the mother, and not only does he speak to her, but he answers her request, and her daughter is healed. In effect, Jesus has told the people that she has been granted the same love and mercy that his own children have received, and that the salvation of Israel is open to the Gentiles. That is, he had changed this woman, this mother’s social status, from one deserving hatred to one who deserves respect. She had gone from a “dog,” to a “child of God.”

    As if to underscore this, the very next story takes us to the region of the Decapolis, which, itself, is still in Gentile territory. And Jesus encounters a man who is deaf, and who has a speech impediment. This man would also have been lower on the social hierarchy because of his ailment, and Jesus says – to the man’s ears – “Be opened.” 

    Some of you may remember a commercial a few years ago for a major cell-phone provider. The spokesperson pops up in various locations around the country and in places that are remote and out of the way. And in each place, he holds a phone to his ear, and he says, “Can you hear me now?”

    This is where context is important. After this story of the interaction between Jesus and this Gentile woman – and Jesus and the deaf/mute Gentile man – the Gospel of Mark shows that Jesus’ ministry is expanded to include the Gentiles. That is, before this story, the Gospel focuses on the Children of Israel, and after this interaction between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman with a demon possessed daughter, the Gospel focuses on all the Children of God.

    A quick recap. Mark’s Gospel calls those who would focus on the teachings of men rather than the teaching of God “hypocrites.” Then, Jesus enters enemy territory, and heals a demon possessed girl because her mother was willing to push forward and speak with Jesus against all cultural boundaries. Then Jesus heals a man who cannot hear, essentially saying, “Can you hear me now?”. And then, finally, the Gospel of Mark takes a turn to include not just the Children of Israel, but all of God’s Children, including the Gentiles, those very people that would have been called “dogs.”

    And that is the question for the listener’s of Mark’s Gospel, just as much as it is a question for us today: What do we hear Jesus saying? And can we hear him now?

    This interaction between Jesus and this Syrophoenician Gentile woman often brings up two types of reactions. For the first one, we get hung up on the idea that Jesus was a jerk, that Jesus used a derogatory slur, and that Jesus is a hypocrite himself. The Second is that we want to make this all about the woman herself, and her strong faith, so that we can feel good about Jesus and how he responded to this woman. 

    And both of those responses show us that we would rather not internalize the teachings of Jesus, but externalize them. We want to see Jesus as a bigot, or the woman as a woman of strong faith. Both of them allow us to step back from the shocking nature of the stories, and focus our minds on anything but our own relationship to Jesus, because to do so would require us to change our ways.

    The fact is, just as this story was intended to hit the listener’s of Mark’s Gospel with the truth of their own biases regarding social status and hierarchy, it is intended to hit us the same way. After all, unless you have Jewish ancestry, we are the “dogs” that this passage speaks about. You and I are only here because Jesus’ ministry turned from the Children of Israel, and opened his arms to all the Children of God.

    Jesus has come to save the pigs, the cows and the slugs. He has come to save the fruits, the vegetables, the butterflies and the snakes. And more importantly, he has come to save even those demon dogs, our enemies.

    Each time we find a way to denigrate others, to place them in a hierarchy, to define their Social Status based on the importance we give them, we need to remember that Jesus is looking at us, holding those same people in his arms and whispering:

    “Can you hear me now?”

    [This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on September 8, 2024.]

  • Children of God

    Several years ago, there were protests in our country that were evidence of the racial tensions that are still prominent in our country. During that time, there was a video shared on Facebook, which you might have seen. The video shows two little boys who see each other from a distance, and start running toward each other, huge smiles on their faces, and their arms spread out in order to give each other a hug. They can’t be more than two years old. And when they finally get to each other, they fall down in a puddle of joy, laughing and giggling.

    It’s a heartwarming little video. It makes us smile, because their happiness at seeing each other is so infectious, so palpable that you can feel it pouring out of the screen while you’re watching it. 

    What I haven’t told you about the video yet, is that one of the boys is white, and the other is black. But, of course, when you’re watching the video, the only thing you think of is how happy they are. We see that they are the best of friends, they are closer than family. There’s just pure joy at seeing each other, and we begin to feel that same joy because it just pours out of them, through the screen, right into our very core. It’s a feeling we all love to feel, and long to feel, and intrinsically, we understand the purity of their joy and love for each other. It really is a beautiful little video.

    Some of you may have already learned this life-lesson, which is to NEVER READ THE COMMENT SECTION on Facebook posts if the post is from someone you don’t know. I, unfortunately, keep returning to the comment section like a vulture to a road-kill party.

    The most heartbreaking comment that I found under this little video was this:

    “Yeah, they’re happy now. But give them 10 to 15 years, and they will learn to fear and hate each other. That’s what this world will teach them. Our society is broken.”

    You might be wondering why I started out with something like this today. After all, our Gospel is about the disciples, afraid, hiding from the authorities that might come to arrest them because of their association with Jesus. But Jesus shows up, shows them his scars, eats with them, and opens up the scriptures for them, so that they might understand everything they need to know about the Messiah.

    Jesus has shared these things with them so that they understand that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

    “To All Nations.”

    This phrase in the Bible has more meaning than just “other countries.” In fact, it routinely is used in both the Old and New Testament to mean, “people of different races and ethnicities.” In short, you are to preach the gospel to strangers, those you don’t understand, those whom you might fear, those unlike you in many ways.

    The disciples were given the task of proclaiming the Gospel to all the world, to all nations, to everyone, to strangers – no exceptions. And that is what the disciples in that room did, eventually. 

    And thanks to them, you and I stand here today, disciples of that same Jesus. And so, by extension, we are called to proclaim that very same Gospel to all people, of all nations, of all races and ethnicities, to strangers – no exceptions.

    Several years ago, while still in seminary – so actually, quite a lot of years ago – I went to a workshop that proclaimed that it would help you to live life to the fullest, to help you break through those things that were holding you back from being your best you. You know the type, I’m sure you’ve all seen one of these workshops advertised before. Because it had been recommended to me, and out of curiosity, I went.

    At one point, those leading the workshop had the entire crowd do a thought exercise, in which we were told to envision ourselves walking down an empty street, as the day is coming to an end, and the light is beginning to dim. On that street, we see a stranger approaching us, and then we are guided through several questions, like “What are they wearing?” “Where are they looking?” “Where do you think they are going?” “Why do you think they are out this time of night?” You know, all the questions that you would ask yourself if you were walking down a street and came across a stranger. What we discovered is that everyone’s mind came to the conclusion that the other person could not be trusted, and that we had to protect ourselves from the possible evil they might wish to do to us. In short, everyone realized that the image we had created in our minds expressed our deepest fears. 

    And then the instructors asked us to put ourselves into the shoes of the other person. To imagine seeing ourselves through their eyes, and what they might be thinking. It took a while, but slowly people started having an aha moment, because we realized that the stranger was asking the same exact questions, and coming to the same conclusion about us: that we are people who might do evil, and we are people who could not be trusted. To them, we were the construct of their fear.

    We fear what we do not understand. We fear what we do not seek to understand. We fear what we refuse to understand. And we will never be able to love what we fear.

    The question the instructors asked afterward was this: “What would it change if you approached each stranger on the street by trying to understand them and view their life through their eyes and experience, rather than a person to be mistrusted and feared? What would your life look like then? How might your life be shaped for the better?” 

    The lesson learned was straightforward: we need to be able to separate fact from fiction, because most of our fear is learned behavior. Learned through our families, our friends, our neighborhoods, our communities, our cultures.

    That understanding of learned behavior can easily be summed up in the phrase, “Like Father, Like Son,” “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” or “Like parent, like child.”

    Our New Testament reading today begins with the words, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” Through our baptism, we have been made a part of a heavenly family: we have been adopted into the family of God. And, as Children of God, we have now inherited all the benefits that are due to those who look to God as a parent, and Christ as a brother. We are no longer just Americans, or Chinese, Brazilian or Latvian, German or Canadian. We are first, and foremost, citizens of the New Jerusalem, citizens of heaven, the Holy City of God. We are children of a family that transcends time and space, race and ethnicity, boundaries and borders.

    The ideal, of course, is that the phrase, “Like parent, like child” would apply to each of us. That we would look to the example of Christ, and become like our brother, who is one with the Father. That in all of our actions, the humility, the grace, the passion, and, of course, the Love of Jesus would be evident in each of us.

    That is the ideal. 

    That is what we hope for. 

    Mahatma Gandhi, whom I’m sure you’ve all heard about, led a successful campaign for India’s independence from England, by employing non-violent protests as a form of resistance to British rule. He was born into a Hindu family, but at some point found himself reading the Gospels, and he wanted to know more about Jesus, whom he found intriguing. So, one Sunday morning he set out to go to a Christian Church in Calcutta, but was turned away at the door, because, he was told, the church was only open to Whites and Indians born into the High Castes. Since he was of a lower caste, he could not enter, and was sent away. He never pursued Christianity again, and told people that “If it weren’t for Christians, I would be a Christian.”

    “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

    The Church in Calcutta lost an opportunity to share the Good News of Love with a man that later went on to gain freedom for not only his own people, but inspired work among people throughout the world in similar situations. Think of the amazing witness that was lost through Gandhi’s work in the world, only because that church’s learned behaviors caused them to express their fear and pride at allowing a commoner to enter into their community and worship the God of Love with them.

    If Jesus gave his dsiciples the commandment to preach the Good News of repentance and forgiveness to all nations, then by extension, that includes us. So the next question is “How do we do that?” Not all of us are preachers, or writers, or have the opportunity to express our beliefs to people through some form of mass media. 

    St. Francis of Assissi is known for this saying: “Preach the gospel at all times. … And when necessary, use words.”

    When necessary. Use words.

    What St. Francis knew, is that the language of Love is the loudest form of communication that the world has ever seen. From the beginning of written history, we have stories of greed, selfishness, war, hate, anger all growing out of the fear of the unknown. The need to keep ourselves safe, to acquire more, to put ourselves and our own above everyone else has been written into our cultural DNA. To fear the outsider, to be selfish, and to look out for one’s own interests – those things are culturally accepted behaviors. And fear plays itself out in the form of anger and hate.

    But Love, and peace, and understanding – those behaviors are countercultural. Which is why we enjoy videos like the two best friends running toward each other that I mentioned earlier. Those videos remind us of the humanity that we long for, yet overlook for the sake of securing for ourselves those things which make us feel less afraid, make us feel more in control, and feel like we have some power. 

    When we behave like the world expects us to behave, no one ever asks us: What makes you so different? And, How can I find what you have found?

    People ask that question when they see us behaving in a way that expresses the what John was declaring in the New Testament passage:

    “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.”

    What makes us different?

    What makes us different from the culture around us?

    When we find the answer to that question, when the answer to that question takes root in our hearts and minds, that is when we begin to live into the commandment Jesus gave us to share the good news of repentance and forgiveness to all nations.

    And that is when we begin to preach the Gospel without words.

    When we find the answer to that question, that is when we might see a fearful stranger on a dark road not as someone to be feared and hated, but as a potential Child of God, to whom we can run toward with open arms, and fall into a puddle of joy, laughing and giggling.

    [This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on April 14, 2024.]

  • Father Abraham Had Many Children

    You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so much for nothing? — if it really was for nothing. Well then, does God supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.” For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

    Galatians 3:1-9

    When I was still in grade school, one of the songs we sang in Sunday school and vacation bible school was “Father Abraham.” The song was a a few short verses, and went like this:

    “Father Abraham had many sons.
    Many sons had Father Abraham.
    And I am one of them.
    And so are you.
    Many Sons had Father Abraham.
    So let’s just praise the Lord.”

    Father Abraham

    Granted, the language might need some updating to be a bit more inclusive, but the simple truth that was passed on to little ones like me and my friends was that we were part of the tribe of Abraham, part of his spiritual family, brought about by the promise that God had made to Abraham. And this truth is what Paul is trying to convey to the people of Galatia. He is continuing the argument he began with the story of Peter failing to live up to his own convictions, attempting to show the difference between faith and works.

    The reason Paul is so perplexed by the Galatians is that they had already understood that they were accepted as members of God’s family, and that this status as members of the family was attained through their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. And so now, when people come along telling them that they need to first become Jews and follow all the rules and regulations of the Jewish faith before they can consider themselves followers of Christ, Paul thinks that they must be bewitched. What else could explain going from already being accepted in the family of God to suddenly trying to attain something they already had by doing work that they didn’t need to do? “Mind-boggling. It must be that someone has put a spell on them.”

    But why bring up Abraham at all? N.T. Wright, and others, think that those demanding the gentiles follow the Jewish law were probably throwing around Abraham’s name, because God had made the covenant with Abraham, and had demanded circumcision as part of that covenant (Genesis 17). This would seem like a logical argument, and would explain why they are demanding that everyone need to get circumcised. But Paul reminds them that not even Abraham had been circumcised only after God had deemed him righteous (Genesis 15:1-6). So it was not works that justified Abram in the eyes of God, but his faith in God’s promise of his future lineage that did so.

    And if that wasn’t enough to remind the Galatians that they were already justified before God through their faith and belief in the work of the messiah, then Paul throws in an extra little reminder: God had promised that all nations would be blessed through Abraham (“or all gentiles shall be blessed in you”). This really draws home Paul’s argument, that even from the beginning of the covenant, God had the gentiles in mind. God had planned that the sons of Abraham would be the people from whom would come the blessing that would save the world (Genesis 22:1-18). And, if we follow the opening recitations of lineage in the Gospel according to Matthew, we see that Jesus, the Christ, was in the direct lineage of Abraham. And from him came the salvation of the world; through him all nations were blessed; through him all gentiles were blessed and became children of Abraham.

    Divisions, Divisions

    What’s interesting here, is the word that Paul uses here to describe the Gentiles is ethnos (pl. ethne), meaning “a race, a nation” and implying any nation other than Israel. It is also the word from which we get the English word Ethnic. Generally, this word, in current usage, tends not to refer to other nations. Instead, it takes on the meaning more closely related to it’s original implied meaning of “anything other than Israel,” with the new implication being that anyone who is ethnic is not like us. It is usually uttered by those who are trying to make the distinction between themselves and others, often with the intention of separating themselves from those others; in short, it often has racist overtones, even among those who would call themselves believers. It would be more akin to Peter’s attempt to remove himself from the gentiles in Galatians 2:11-24, and less like Paul’s reminder that all are welcome in the family of God, if only they believe.

    In fact, it seems that over the centuries, Christians have proven that they are more adept at finding reasons for division than for unity. According to recent numbers, there are roughly 200 denominations in the United States alone, and roughly 45,000 different denominations globally1. These all represent some form of division and disagreement.

    When I was in seminary, several of the people in our cohort joked about their denominations’ ability to have church splits over seemingly inconsequential things. “We’ll have a split over whether to use an organ or a piano,” one of them joked. “It’s not even a theological issue. More of a preference. But you’ll get all the righteous indignation and proof-texting to show that this is how God wanted it.” We all had a chuckle about that, but the reality is that all of these disagreements, and the resulting church splits, are damaging both to the believers in the church, and especially to the faith itself. Because who, when watching this in-fighting unfold can truly say that these believers are following The Way of Love?

    Important Words and Phrases

    ἀνόητοι – anontoi, from anoetos– “unswise, irrational, or foolish,” not so much in the sense of stupid, but more along the lines of lacking in wisdom, failing to reason through something with proper logic, and has overtones of a lack of moral wisdom. 2

    ἐβάσκανεν – “has bewitched” – from βασκαίνω – baskaino – To “hurt by words,” slander, and then, to bewitch. The use here in Galatians 3:1 is the only use in the New Testament. “The use is figurative, but not without some realism insofar as the power of falsehood stands behind magic. In yielding to these ‘magicians’ the Galatians have come under the power of untruth.” 3

    ἐπιτελεῖσθε – “being perfected, completed” – from ἐπιτελέω – epiteleo – I finish, I complete, I accomplish. 4 The idea here is to contrast it to the “starting” with the spirit, drawing together the idea that they are trying to complete things through their own power.

    ἔθνη – “the nations” – from ἔθνος, ους, τό – ethnos – a race, a nation, the nations (as distinct from Israel). 5

    Notes

    1. https://www.livescience.com/christianity-denominations.html
    2. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), Abridged in 1 Vol., pp 638
    3. TDNT, pp 102
    4. TDNT, pp 1163
    5. TDNT, pp 201-202

  • The Heavy Burden

    Daily Office Readings – Gospel ( Luke 13:10-17 )

    These past few weeks have seen a lot of protests concerning the persistent racism in this country. Those protesting have pointed out that the amount of racism hasn’t changed, but what has changed is that technology has helped to bring it to the light.

    One of the posts on my Facebook feed recently was an article about three police officers who were fired after their patrol car camera recorded their discussions about wanting to kill black people in a coming civil war, and denigrating fellow officers who were black. After they were dismissed and the situation came to light, one of them said that he is “not a racist,” and “doesn’t normally speak like that,” but that he was just “feeding off of” the other officer.

    This police officer jumped head first into self-justification, making the claim that essentially amounts to “but it wasn’t my fault, because __________________.” This captures the essence of what we all jump at when confronted with our own shortcomings.

    After last week’s post, I decided to reread “Desert Wisdom” and ran across a saying from Abba John, the Little:

    “We have abandoned a light burden, namely self-criticism, and taken up a heavy burden, namely self-justification.”

    Desert Wisdom, Sayings From the Desert Fathers, p 7

    We attempt to diminish our own responsibility for the things we have done. We expect people to understand our situations because we have explained away our behavior as something caused by external forces and by things beyond our control.

    This is that heavy burden. Because when we seek to justify ourselves we have to look at the truth of the situation and are confronted with the very real and stark truth that we screwed up. Our moral compass has decided to spin like a fan, when instead it should have been pointing diligently in the direction of the right, and the good.

    When we choose to justify, we are required to ignore the truth. Every justification becomes another little lie, a lie of omission, that we pile upon our backs, to be dealt with on another day. And we don’t dare put down the pack to look at these things, because then we will need to confront them all over again. And the more we justify, the heavier the burden becomes, until at some point all of our actions and decisions in life are guided by these untruths we tell ourselves in order to feel better.

    When the Jewish leaders called out Jesus for healing a woman on the Sabbath, he simply looked at them and called them hypocrites, because they too were used to working on the sabbath by taking their livestock to feed and to drink. To their credit, rather than giving him some sort of excuse as to why they did these things, they were “put to shame.” In other words, they realized their guilt.

    Will we be caught? Will we be called out for the heavy burden we carry, or will we choose to pull them down off of our backs and examine them until we come to an understanding of our own shortcomings and wrestle with them until we have defeated them? More often than not, it takes being caught, or being called out, before we even realize the little lies we have been telling ourselves.

    But once we have been made aware, once we have come to accept this criticism of our very selves, then we can move on, and the load we carry will truly be lighter.