For about a year, I have been arriving at work a little peeved. I listen to a favorite radio show in the evenings, which leaves Dr. Laura on my dial for my morning commute. So on my way to work, I hear Dr. Laura telling another man he is "nothing but a sperm donor," or after a ten-second conversation with a caller, informing a woman that her daughter is a "slut." I admit it. Dr. Laura had become a target of contempt in my mental universe. One day, I pictured Jesus sitting next to me as I listened to Dr. Laura. I turned to him and asked, "Can you believe how absolutely insensitive this person is? Do you hear the tone of judgment in her every utterance?" I lamented. I was having the ultimate fantasy: Jesus Christ (no less than the guy who said, "Judge not lest you be judged") listening to Dr. Laura! I could barely wait to see the expression on his face. Perfectly on cue, Dr. Laura asked a crying woman, "Am I going too fast for you?" and moments later shamed a man for divorcing his habitually unfaithful wife. Turning to me, Jesus asked, "Whose anger are you feeling?" This is where my relationship with the Dr. Laura Show took a left turn. With no signal. I began seeing her presence in my life as a gift. Dr. Laura was placing me face to face with my own anger, just when I was getting comfortable with my "honor all" approach to life and others. I didn't need to see where I am stuck! I just wanted her to be flat wrong and an embarrassment to the correct-minded folks in the world. Feeling this kind of toxic anger course through my veins, I have gained insight into the "senseless" shootings that we hear about every day. My hostile feelings have shown me the thought processes that lead to much of the violence in the world, whether the annihilation of cultures or gang bangs. Newspaper headlines are filled with people who have traveled the same road of anger, but were unable to turn back before it was too late. Rage can flow like a river through any of us, insisting that another person's view is obviously rooted in ignorance, that you or I would be doing the whole world a favor if we hurt them or shut them up or worse. Or that a person or group of people is so wrong that they must be stopped, in the name of God, for the good of mankind and all that is right. After all, we Americans were thumping the Bible and talking about God as we decimated the Native Americans and sold African natives into lives of slavery and unspeakable suffering. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. For the educated. For the upstanding folks. For those touting "high morals." For those who led churches in prayer, and for those who have the same propensity to be swept away by fear and judgment as you and I. And Dr. Laura. When I see in myself the same elements I criticize in others, it is not so easy to point the finger. The Dr. Laura Show has helped me to see how important it is that I forgive myself for the many times, when blinded by judgment, I have been insensitive or hurtful to others. I see that without that self-forgiveness, I will continue to find places in the world where my anger makes me blind and full of blame. Without self-forgiveness, I become the judgment I despise the most in Dr. Laura. With her help, I can see how clever anger can be, especially when backed by a rationalizing mind. Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, and Martin Luther King Jr. speak of a love that is beyond pushing away those who are different. Heaven, or for that matter, life, cannot be as mundane as the "right" and the "wrong" pitted against each other while God silently cheers on the home team. The love Jesus challenged us to experience defies this kind of "football team" spirituality. Jesus' teaching that "the kingdom of heaven is within" isn’t about a hierarchy of "rightness." It isn’t about separation or exclusivity either. Jesus was asking that each of us recognize in ourselves and each other beauty and God, even if we aren’t the same. If there is anything we can learn from our past as a species, it is that there are always people who are vastly different. Each encounter with behaviors, traditions, or orientations that we do not understand presents us with a gift: the opportunity to deepen our love, faith, and trust; a challenge to "live in the world but not of the world." Recently, I have been listening for common ground between Laura and me, which has proved far less taxing on an emotional level. I am finding a woman different from the one posted on my mental dartboard. I have discovered that by getting past my own anger and judgment, I seem to be able to get past hers. My guess is that this Dr. Laura has endured excruciating childhood experiences of betrayal and loss. To her credit, she attaches a deep importance to family, especially to the protection and rights of children. Who would argue with the importance of family? She is not yet able to see that gay people are as beautiful as bald people or blacks or puppies or mountains or sunsets or any of God's assorted creations, but my own life has been tainted with errors of judgment too. To be painfully accurate, my life seems to be a series of wrong judgments (i.e. daily). As I recall my own judgmental intolerance, I see that Dr. Laura and I are not so different. After the massacre at Columbine in 1999, parents gathered outside the high school with signs that read, "WE FORGIVE YOU." Dr. Laura broadcast to the nation that those people made her "want to puke." My guess is that she has become accustomed to carrying the pain of judgment and anger. My guess is that she encounters the same harshly judgmental self every time she looks in the mirror. I know all about that sick feeling inside. I know about carrying it with me, and trying to forget that it is there. I remember what it is like to wonder why I am being endlessly punished, and to pretend that I am fine. After all this remembering, and after my teeth and fists have unclenched, I do not pray that God remove Dr. Laura from the cosmos. I do not pray that she be sent to hell, or even that she be banished from the radio airwaves. If I claim to believe that everyone deserves the experience of love and that everyone contains God's beauty, then I must face the truth that Dr. Laura shows me where I have work to do. Perfectly. Now that I have created a little breathing room in the world for people who judge, I see that she has chosen an excruciatingly difficult path for herself. And I know that in her own way, she is doing the best she can, learning the truth of love in her own way. I cannot expect her to offer others what she cannot yet give herself. Dr. Laura demonstrates to the world what history has proven time and again: When we make blanket judgments about who is "right" or "flawed" or "deviant" in the eyes of God, the truth is left behind, regardless of whether the message is delivered through public shaming, bullets, or gas chambers. What a cold slap in the face this has been. The person who effortlessly reduced my "universal compassion" to the anger of a first grader is who? Someone who needs love. Maybe more than I. I cannot claim to know love until I am able to hear Dr. Laura's voice while remembering the larger truth: that she wishes to be happy and free of suffering. Like me. In my most difficult times, I find myself wishing others could see that beneath my hurtful blunders, I am only trying to do what is right — a rather ordinary sentiment among us humans. Far less common is the determination to find beneath the differences in others the same innocent intention to do the right thing. A road less traveled, to be sure. In Buddhism, it is said that the Buddha enters our lives wearing the mask of those we most despise. In this way, he waits behind the most important doors in our lives: the opportunities to love more. In the theater of life, behind the curtains, and after the lines we speak, gay people and blacks and Jews are part of a bigger truth: Each of us is a student in the curriculum of love. When my life is over, I will say to the soul playing the part of Dr. Laura, "You really had me fooled, and after the anger, I really grew! Thank you! Thank you!" Of course, in heaven there are no words for "thank you." You just hug. Like family. Daniel Christopherson is a writer and musician with a new CD release titled One Zillion Guitars, available at <Zillionguitars.com>. |