Watching
Mary Trump’s interview by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last Thursday about her book on the shaping and misshaping of her uncle, the President (Too Much—Never Enough: How My Family Created the
World’s Most Dangerous Man), I remembered a post I wrote on Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein October 26, 2011. Our society has minted a number
of “Frankensteins” who are underdeveloped in compassion, the trait that unites
us with God. As I wrote then:
The Christian teacher Abelard of the twelfth
century explained the atonement this way: witnessing Jesus suffering on the
cross awakens in us that which makes us one with God: our compassion.
Compassion is our link to divinity. To witness suffering—whether firsthand or
through the media—may draw out our divine urge to hold and help the
vulnerable.
My
concern in re-presenting this reflection is not, per se, political, but rather,
to remind us how “Frankensteins” are made, not born. I take the Celtic
Christian view of original innocence—that yes, we may be marred by sin, but we are
not sinful at birth, as the concept of Original Sin would have it.
From
my 2011 post:
A few years ago I watched for the first time the
Kenneth Branagh film, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It prompted
me to read Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, discovering that the film reflects many
of its insights. The creature who has been given his creator’s name in the
public mind is not the monosyllabic grunter of gay director James Whale’s 1931
film classic (whose own story is the content of another worthy film, Gods
and Monsters), but an eloquent philosopher on being a creature abandoned by
his creator and rejected by fellow creatures.
Asking for a mate “as hideous as himself,” the
creature explains to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, “If any being felt
emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an
hundred fold; for that one creature’s sake, I would make peace with the whole
kind!” His creator writes, “His words had a strange effect upon me. I
compassionated him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked
upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened,
and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred.”
Branagh’s movie version of the creature’s words
captures the sinister consequence of being denied: “I have love in me the likes
of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not
believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” And only then
concludes, “For the sympathy of one human being, I would make peace with all.”
I
concluded my post with this pastoral illustration:
I attended an ordination in San Francisco which
featured two pastors giving “the charge” to one who would be serving as a
chaplain and director of a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program at a local
hospital. The Presbyterian pastor gave an eloquent but long commendation whose
content I do not remember. The MCC pastor gave a memorable two-point counsel.
“The people you’ll be serving,” she said simply, “Basically want to know ‘Am I
alone?’ and ‘Am I loved?’”
“For the sympathy of one human being, I would make
peace with all.”
We are all creatures. We each have love in us the
likes of which can scarcely be imagined and rage the likes of which can hardly
be believed. If we cannot satisfy the one, we might indulge the other.
I
will be leading a virtual, at-home retreat open to the public for Columbia
Seminary’s Spiritual Formation Program September 17-19, 2020 entitled An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality. You are invited!
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Copyright
© 2011 and 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with
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