By Scott Graber
It is Friday, early, and cool enough to linger on our reconditioned deck and contemplate the wrens taking their complimentary breakfast at our bird feeder. This is also the opportunity to contemplate Beaufort’s Water Festival.
This year the Water Festival was challenged by not having an actual waterfront — the iconic promenade is largely roped-off as precaution against its collapse.
Nonetheless, this 69th edition featured a raft race held just off the Sands Beach in Port Royal; not to mention bocce, badminton, all the while sidestepping the anger that is circulating through the stenotic veins of our Republic.
In effort to bring some personal understanding to the fever that has descended upon our tribe I’ve turned to Richard Rohr — a Franciscan priest who was recently interviewed on a PBS program called “Wisdom Seekers.”
Ray Suarez began his interview by asking Rohr about the anger currently convulsing our country. Rohr answered saying anger is a natural, unavoidable condition; but one that should be “closed down at sundown.”
“After a lifetime of counseling and retreat work — not to mention my own spiritual direction — I have become convinced that most anger comes, first of all, from a place of deep sadness.”
“There is an inherent sadness and tragedy in almost all situations; in our relationships, our mistakes, our failures large and small, even our victories. We must develop a very real empathy for this reality, knowing we can’t fully fix things, entirely change them, or make them to our liking.”
Rohr then moved to tears.
He said that tears are a part of life. In fact, there are more tears and more sadness than joy — and that one must somehow navigate the darkness in order to find and understand the wonder and the joy.
Now I know the belief that the world is mostly a sad place is subscribed to by many of my readers. It is, however, a philosophy that runs counter to my own life-long optimism.
As a child, I was raised to believe tomorrow would be better than today. And I worked hard to hand-deliver this message of a mostly happy life to my own son. But now, after listening to Rohr talk, I may have been wrong on that score.
I’m wondering if I was naive.
Rohr goes on to say that most philosophers and “wisdom seekers” understand that we are, fundamentally, imperfect. He says the vernacular term is “broken.” He goes on to say we spend our lives building our resume around superficial things like wealth — or the fact that we’ve acquired a condo in Vail, graduated from a top-tier law school, or are American as opposed to, say, Nicaraguan. We believe we are better, exceptional, and take pride in the fact we are white or Black or, more daringly, Christian.
And Rohr says this works for a time.
Then there comes a reckoning when we realize a vacation condo is not the key to happiness. That, actually, we are the victims of our greed, of our relentless resume building; of our self-centeredness.
And this is when the self-loathing kicks in.
It is at that point that some us begin to contemplate a form of consciousness that gets beyond the superficial baggage and embraces the “authentic” person inside. Rohr says you’ve get to and get through the self-loathing phase to a point where you understand that somewhere, down-deep there is another person who is made in God’s image.
Now, I know that many of you are saying, “Jesus Christ, Scott has finally wandered off the reservation and into the ‘woo-woo world’ of the mystics. Why couldn’t he have just written a provocative piece about the Waterfront Park and its problems?”
The fact that the Waterfront Park needs rebuilding is sad; but it may not be anybody’s fault. Maybe those shifting piers have given us 45 years of support and it’s time to send these now-leaning pilings to the landfill in Jasper County.
But the real tragedy is the pervasiveness of our anger — and the fact that it’s being used over and over again to bring voting groups into the fray — and the fact that it’s not being “closed down at sundown.”
If we believe Rohr, we must move out of this phase; and into self-examination; then, maybe, revisit those long forgotten virtues like empathy, compassion, generosity and forgiveness.
In the meantime, a thousand heat-impaired people found momentary deliverance from their anger at the Commodore’s Ball.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
