The Cry of the Orphan, Part Two
As human persons, we are born with an innate incapacity for self-regulation. Our initial understanding of self exists only in reference to our mothers; we are inescapably relational creatures from the first stirrings of conception. An infant can no more control his or her emotions than cause the sun to rise and set at will. He relies instead upon his mother to train his brain to this necessary regulation; the future of his capacity to manage his emotions depends almost entirely on his mother’s ability to respond to his needs throughout his first few years of life.
Born with a fully undeveloped neocortex, a child has no ability to rationalize his emotions; he is literally enslaved by the experiences that his dominant reptilian and mammalian brains perceive as threats to existence. A parent needs to help the child put language to the emotion consuming his right brain by using his left brain, thereby building integration and carving out a path for future self-regulation. If, however, a parent chooses instead to silence, shame, or ignore the child’s emotions, these critical pathways remain uncarved, predisposing the child to a lifetime of feeling unseen, unheard, and unaccepted, often manifesting in physical symptoms such as anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, disorders, and self-harm.
What message do we send our children when we only accept or welcome them in their best moments? Is there an implicit communication present by which our children conclude that their deepest selves are fundamentally unacceptable to those most responsible for loving them unconditionally? When we, as parents, cannot accept a child’s rage or hatred or despair, do we merely send the message that we do not know how to cope with such emotions–that we are as terribly powerless as they fear us to be?
As I discussed in Part One, if a parent is a parent by virtue of standing in between the child and the chasm of meaninglessness and non-existence, then it follows that a parent represents a bulwark of control, stability, and trustworthiness in the utter chaos of the lived world. A child must trust a parent to know what to do, how to solve problems–how to make everything okay. A child must trust in this or surrender to existential terror. And yet, if a child’s very emotions are capable of frightening or destabilizing his parents, then perhaps the world is exactly as chaotic and terrible as the child fears it to be.
I wonder what you will think of me when I tell you one of the worst thoughts I have ever had. It is a recurring thought, and it returns no matter how often I banish it. I often consider that I cannot claim to love Lizzy as I do and also will her to return to this world–this world that is so crushingly abominable and the humans within it capable of such undisguised evil. How can I, as her mother, want to rip her out of heaven to return to this cesspit of bodily experience only to save me from facing my pitiable existence without her? Am I just that selfish? Or must I acknowledge that Lizzy is better off dead . . . that it is basically better that she died?
How can I say either of these things? Each conclusion leads me to certain damnation. More terrible still, if I allow myself to follow out this logic, it invariably ends in the moral and ethical good of Cecilia’s death. That is–in order for me to be a good mother to Cecilia, I must will her freedom from the suffering this world undoubtedly holds for her and allow her to join Lizzy. This is where a fundamentally disordered logic ends. And at the end of this logic, I collapse, shuddering in the mud, hating my own existence.
Shall I fear to admit such things to you? Shall I fear enforced medication, hospitalization, or removal of my legal right to parent Cecilia? Or shall I admit the worst of myself, bring it into the light of day, and trust that I will be accepted in all my wretchedness? This is the dilemma every child faces. Can her parents accept that which is most terrible and frightening within her, or must she hide her deepest self away in perpetual fear and shame?
Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man’s moral faculties and, without being in itself an offence, inclines man to commit sins.
(Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 2515)
I have said before that I believe an orphan dwells within each one of us. I will say now that I think a psychopath also dwells within each one of us. I think the basic state of being human gives us the capacity to play out scenarios inside our head, whether it be that of the saint, the robot, the hero, or the tyrant. I think every father who holds the fragile skull of his newborn child in his palm understands the infinitesimal degree of force it would require to dash that baby’s brains out against a rock. He understands this, internalizes it, and then makes a conscious choice to cradle the newborn’s head and press to it a kiss so light and fluttering that it barely warrants the word.
Is this rational capacity that which we inherited from consumption of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? I’m beginning to think so. We know at any moment that we could choose to humiliate our younger siblings, to lie and steal from our parents, to cheat on our spouses, to kill a kitten or toad or even a child just to see if we can. We constantly conduct accelerated dramas in our heads, playing out our choices like a chess game, determining if we will be pawn or knight, queen or rook–if today we shall victimize or be the victim, if we shall fight or freeze, finally speak out or perpetuate the silence.
You may find that if you attend to these moral obligations, once you have placed “make the world better” at the top of your value hierarchy, you experience ever-deepening meaning. It’s not bliss. It’s not happiness. It is something more like atonement for the criminal fact of your fractured and damaged Being. It’s payment of the debt you owe for the insane and horrible mistake of your existence. It’s how you remember the Holocaust. It’s how you make amends for the pathology of history. It’s adoption of the responsibility for being a potential denizen of Hell. It is willingness to serve as an angel of Paradise.
– Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: an Antidote to Chaos, page 200
Is every human person trapped on a seesaw between self-reflection and self-indulgence? Are we inherently prone towards emotional and mental masturbation–acts which can only result in the exhausted sterility of desire? Can desire itself only find its fulfillment when we begin to shift our focus from this concupsicent promotion of self and begin to pay attention to those we have trampled along the way?
There is a fear gnawing inside of me that every human being is fundamentally incapable of respecting and honoring the agency of other human beings. That human existence itself involves a constant violation of the freedoms of others and that the self-focus with which we are born must be tempered and restrained lest it devour everyone and everything in its path. How does one accept the brutal truth of one’s existence? And how can we choose to actively combat the worst within us for the sake of our children?
I have been asking myself lately if I am the type of mother who cannot bear Cecilia’s pain or despair because it reminds me too much of my own. Am I capable of standing between Cecilia and her existential despair, or does the very act of standing cause me to drown in my own? When the orphan inside Cecilia begs for my attention, do I respond by lifting that filthy urchin to my chest and allowing it to claw my face, or do I turn away in disgust and shame, knowing a far more filthy and desperate wretch lies inside of me, waiting?
The cry of the orphan is heard in moments of existential despair. When my mother first walked into the hospital, I fell into her arms, sob-screaming, “My baby is dying; my baby is dying,” and she could only hold me and cry with me, attempting to silence her own orphan so as to focus on mine. No matter how warm her embrace or how sheltering the arms of my father, neither of my parents could stop what was happening to Lizzy. They could not save the orphan within me from realizing all of her deepest fears. And I could neither save Lizzy nor the orphan inside of her from death.
Rage. Hatred. Despair. These are the things that make our children unacceptable to us. And these are the things I felt for God–that Being who is supposed to be my Father, who is supposed to save me from orphanhood, who is supposed to heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, and bring the dead back to life. Does God accept me in all the ugliness of my urchin soul? Does God receive my hatred and despair and hold me through the pain as my parents did? Does God stand between me and the chasm of my own meaninglessness?
I have no answers to these questions, but I believe they are the same kind of questions that were asked by those entering the gas chambers at Auschwitz or pursued by blood-stained machetes across the plains of Rwanda. This world, this cesspit of existence–this dwelling-place of child molesters, murderers, and rapists–this place is unbearable. My own tendency towards self-priority, my own inclination to despair and rage and hatred–are unbearable. I cannot, at the bottom of all things, bear the weight of my own existence. So how can I believe in a God who will not only bear that weight, but bear it eternally, for all living beings, accepting their weakness and vulnerability and tendency to sin, and more incredibly still–transform all of this suffering into life, hope, and beauty? This is either a wonderland and a fantasy or it is a reality too real to perceive with mortal vision–a reality that we must instead approach with fear and trembling, like shielding our eyes before looking directly into the sun.
I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.
Deuteronomy 30:19
Is faith, at its essence, this basic choice between life and death? A choice that we must make again and again and again? Perhaps it is the same choice I make every time I put down what I am doing to respond to Cecilia. Is God a parent or a tyrant? I could argue both, likely driving myself into insanity. Still, I invariably end with this question: how can I know anything of parenthood if God is not a parent? The structure of a human infant and his mother must mirror the relationship between God and human beings; if it does not, then there is very little in this world that is rational.
I wonder often how I can teach faith to Cecilia when my own faith is so fractured and stumbling. I wonder how I can embrace her rage and despair without enabling the choices she makes as a result of that emotion. I don’t know how to navigate the depths of parenthood or how to preserve her from the brokenness of the world or the suffering that waits inside of her genetic code. I don’t know how to admit to her that a part of me will always be waiting–and wishing–for the day when I can be freed from my body to seek Lizzy.
I’m beginning to think that the task of being a parent is an impossible one and the orphans within each of us are immortal creatures. I’m beginning to question the kind of Creator who would ordain us to an impossible task to ensure our propagation and simultaneously damn us to the despair of not knowing if our Father who art in Heaven is parent or tyrant.
The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.
Genesis 2:16-17
Here’s the thing; it all comes down to choice. If a Creator God forced our love, we would be slaves. If a Creator God programmed our love, we would be robots. The only option that leaves us free to love or to reject love, to choose life or death–was to create children. I have to believe this, because not believing it will literally break my capacity for reason. And if free will is the answer to it all, then it is also the answer to my question.
I must choose to believe that God is a parent. I must affirm that I am neither slave nor robot. I must believe that it is better that Lizzy lived and died than for her to never have lived at all. And I must conclude that even if Cecilia dies ten years from now, it is better for myself and for the world to have known her than for her to have never existed.
I cannot help my tendency to perceive the worst in myself and in the world, but I can choose to suppress the worst and direct the best. This, at least, is within my power and within my freedom. This moves me from victim to agent, from orphan to parent. And if I can teach Cecilia to do the same, then we can both face her suffering with the knowledge that it makes her powerful. Her power lies in the heart of a child who does not know that she is blind or her sister is dead or her mother is a fractured ghost. This child invariably lifts her head to gaze at the blazing sun, mimics the sounds of the chickens clucking outside, and kicks one leg in perfect rhythm to “Into the Unknown” from Frozen 2.
Sometimes, she looks at me in utter betrayal when I have not allowed her to walk down concrete steps or slam the door on someone’s fingers. She screams her rage at me, pushes me away, and throws her body backwards violently. I hold her through the pain, protect her head from injury, and tell her that I understand she’s feeling angry, but I won’t allow her to do something that will hurt herself or others. After some time, I then ask, “Would you like me to hold you?” and wait patiently for her to indicate her assent. I then pick her up, and she begins to stroke the line of my jaw, the curve of my ear, and the pulse at my throat in endless repetition, as if reassuring herself that life still pumps strongly through my veins. I kiss her soft, doe-brown hair and tell her, “I love you.” She smiles widely in response and begins to play a sniffing game, giggling.
These moments happen almost daily and grant me a brief glimpse into the necessity of being the person in Cecilia’s life who will love her through her darkest moments and restore equilibrium to her world once the darkness has passed. It is a power that feels too big for me and a responsibility I constantly fear I will misuse. But it also serves as a reminder of what the world looks like when the cry of the orphan is answered. And it gives me hope that my own cry will not go forever unheeded.
In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.
Ephesians 1:4-6
It seems to me that my faith is honest about our status as orphans. It’s honest about our tendency to sin. It’s honest about how human life is rife with work, suffering, and death. As Catholics, we keep the corpus on the cross to remind us of precisely what love looks like. We remember the Passion of the Christ and advocate compassion–a suffering with–for widows and orphans. Matthew 5:4 tells us, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We acknowledge that grief is first an act of love and, second, that it has the power to make us holy.
The cry of the orphan is first and always a cry of grief, a question echoing to the thundering skies, pleading for a response. The orphan knows that she faces certain death if that answer never comes. And then entered a man into history who said, “Let the little children come to me,” and walked unafraid into the hordes of lepers desperate to touch His sandals. And while plague and famine swept northern Italy in the early 1500s, Jerome Emiliani tended to the sick and fed the hungry, establishing three orphanages, a hospital, and a shelter for reformed prostitutes. And Mother Teresa knelt down in the stews of Calcutta to tend lovingly to the festering sores of men, women, and children who had been despairing that they would surely die without ever again knowing human touch that contained a mere fraction of kindness.
For me, grief has forced an encounter with my orphanhood, and much like Scrooge witnessing the children, Ignorance and Want, beneath the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present, I am forever changed by this encounter. But if grief is first an act of love, and second a path to holiness, then it does not follow that this encounter must damn me to hide my orphan in perpetual shame and fear. I rather think there is freedom in acknowledging its existence and in giving voice to the orphanhood that cries in the heart of every human person.
If we are honest enough with ourselves to acknowledge our status as orphans, then perhaps we can begin to acknowledge that an answer to our homelessness has been offered, and all that is left wanting is our acceptance. Like so many wide-eyed and starving children before us, we wait hungrily for the adoption that will come one day to rescue us from ourselves and transform our loneliness into belonging. What may be missing, however, is the acknowledgement that unlike children in an orphanage, all that is lacking for us is our willingness to be adopted: to admit that there may be a way home for us, after all.
No one can force this choice, just as no one can compel hope in the existence of a home that surpasses our most outlandish fantasies. It requires from us an affirmation of life over death, blessing over curse, adoption over orphanhood. It requires nothing less than the absolute terror of submitting ourselves to the possibility–without the guarantee–that maybe we belong more fully than we can possibly conceive–that maybe our lives as children are worth so much that the Creator was willing to give His only begotten Son to redeem them–that maybe we are only orphans so long as we continue to choose to be . . .
Is this a mere fantasy? A wonderland? Or is it so real that we cannot bear its reality without the protection offered by skepticism? Do we need to put on the darkest sunglasses we can find to gaze into this light of this sun? Or will we find that when take off these glasses, we will not be blinded as we fear, but instead be granted the kind of vision capable of registering light beyond light? What do blind people see when they dream? What do orphans know of belonging? What does Cecilia see when she looks at the sun? What did Lizzy mean when she asked me, “Forever”?
In my mind’s eye, I can still see Lizzy in her Pooh Bear nightgown, sleepily stumbling towards me in the middle of the night when I had risen to get more water. Last night, Cecilia got out of bed to search for me, but unlike Lizzy, she cannot see in the dark, so she ran into several walls, bumping her head, before I could get to her and lift her into my arms. She began to cry, saying again and again, heartbrokenly, “Up, up . . . up, up.”
“Mama’s got you up, darling. Mama’s here. Do you want some water?” I offered as her little mouth came around the stem to the water bottle, sucking greedily. Cradling her, I climbed back into bed, wrapping my body tightly around hers, as though to shut out the darkness that had caused her such pain. Like so many nights before, I traced the sign of the cross on her forehead and watched her breathe herself down into a dreamless sleep.
“Lizzy, be our light,” I whispered, “Shine for us the way home.” Wordlessly, I touched my lips again and again to her brow, marveling for the millionth time at the softness of her skin. “Mama’s here,” I said almost soundlessly to the silent and pulsing night and then closed my eyes, willfully choosing to believe in my own fantasy.