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HANG ON TO “WILD THOUGHT” FRIENDS
6-6-10
Always keep at least one friend who enjoys sharing your wildest
thoughts.
One of my favorite ‘wild thought friends” is Al
Harvey. Long ago I wrote in my journal, “Al has one of those expansive
gourds that can entertain any of my thoughts without taking offense, We
both know we can say anything we think (or think we think!) on any
subject. We both have an iron confidence in each other. I know I can
unload any wild thought that has ever tantalized my brain. What a
blessing the man is to me!”
What are the blessings a “wild
thought friend” bestows on us?
For one thing, they keep us from
repressing. Freud taught that anything we repress pops up like a cork
out of our deep unconscious mind and often expresses in an unhealthy
way. Shame or some similar negative emotion has kept it submerged and
those negative emotions taint it’s expression when it does come up.
When I attended a denominational college, the son of a church leader
began making shocking statements like “God is a pain in the ass.”
Actually, that was one of his less shocking statements!
My
amateur diagnosis at the time was that he had never been allowed to put
his honest doubts on the table for discussion so he just rejected the
whole theological system he had been asked to digest. If he had to shock
everyone in that college, he was determined to get his doubts out in the
open.
Honest doubts are healthy. Everyone but an idiot has honest
doubts and I have even seen a few idiots who did! Doubts arise from
mental indigestion. Someone crams something down you throat and it just
sits there like a brick in your stomach.
My father was so
orthodox that he didn’t seem to want to hear honest doubs. But mother
loved them. She had so many honest doubts that Dad accused her of having
“a home-made religion.” One of her best and funniest poems was titled
“Home-made Relagion.”
The actiual truth is that no other kind of
religion is real. Only those things you work out for yourself can ever
be real to you. You can try to swallow the whole church manual over and
over again but you will always end up with indigestion.
Having a
friend like Al who is unshockable is important. You can share your
honest doubts and you sometimes resolve an honest doubt and turn it into
a fresh spiritual insight.
Anther value of a “wild thoughts
friend” is fun. Nothing is more fun to me that a free-wheeling
discussion of sacred and controversial things.
My brother Blaine
is a lifelong agnostic. “Agnostic” literally means “don’t know.” I
remember the first time he grappled with a big theological issue.
He was a small child and we were riding our bicycles around the
house. Blaine used a dirty work and mother came running.
“No, no,
Blainey. It’s not nice to use that word.” Being a budding engineer, he
asked “Why?”
She said, “God can hear you.”
“What if I just
thought it,” he asked.
“God could still hear you.”
Blaine
got quiet for a moment and said, “My .. God sure has sharp ears.”
That’s why he’s always been one of my “wild thought buddies.”
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