on extreme opinions & the middle place

with too many metaphors but how do I let go of metaphors?

I’ve been working on Part 3 of the series I’ve been sharing here on Substack. It’s still not ready, I’m getting there. Hours and hours of editing, but I think it needed that. And alas, I’m not quite ready to share it yet. Allow me to riff on something in the meantime.

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Every day I get up with our four dogs, very early. I do the feeding and the letting out and back in and then they settle to nap. Except for our Yellow Lab named Ruff, born one-eyed, who sits very close and stares at me while I sit on the couch with my laptop. Yes, somehow I’ve grown fond of the one-eyed stare. He’s too gentle of a soul for me to feel creeped out by this.

Before I begin to write, I sit in silence, pretend I'm good at meditation and sometimes I am. My brain fights against my body as I try to breathe in and lower my shoulders. I breathe again and imagine every part of me, body and soul, extending hands to the divine, to a spiritual mystery that connects us all. Let’s call that Love with a capital L. Or call it whatever you want. Some of us call it an attempt to live in conscious contact with God.

I didn't learn, until not that long ago, relatively speaking, to "listen to my body,” not just my mind. Which should not be confused with the approach in the new Netflix hit docu-series, "Apple Cider Vinegar". If you've watched it, you know that the story revolves around people taking their diagnosis of cancer into their own hands entirely, choosing to “listen to their bodies” while ignoring western medicine completely. These women were online influencers and their strict messages were quickly believed and upheld by others who are sick, which, as you can guess, became problematic.

These women could not bring themselves to set down their certainty and listen to any other perspective but the one and only way they had chosen. Of course it reminded me of what so many of us are doing in response to our current political and religious landscape.

Watching this docu-series got me thinking about how often we humans go to extremes, and get stuck, like we’re in quicksand.

There’s a scale, from one to ten; a 1 sits on the left side of extreme ways of seeing a thing, and a 10 sits on the the opposite far right way of seeing something.

Most of us love a one or a ten, and do not appreciate a five, the most rational space. Five is too unclear for our fears and certainties, and also, it’s boring. A five requires surrender of sorts to the experiences and opinions of others.

We clearly don’t like that, so we bite on something on one extreme or the other, and refuse to let go until that "something", no matter how big or damaging, is ruling us, like my generally hyper-fixated Lab with his favorite toy between his clenched teeth.

Many of us are mostly cerebral people; detaching ourselves from other people and ourselves. What we think is what we live by; nothing else, whether we can see that or not.

Too often, the opinions, biases and brain habits we have are so engrained, we don't have any space left to listen to our heart-gut insides, or to concern ourselves with the experiences, stories, and perspectives of others around us.

Some of us will not allow those stories to soften the boundaries of our certainties. So we stay nearest to people close to our same number on the scale. Are you a 10? No? Okay. Um but are you at least a 7 or 8? Okay, close enough. I like you. I’m just so glad you’re not an idiot 1 or 3.

The divides in this country, among differing political and religious sides, make it so easy to blame each other all day long every day forever, never getting anywhere, but we're doing it anyway.

It doesn’t really matter if you’re right or wrong when you’ve bitten down on something so hard your voice isn’t yours anymore.

If we will not let go, we are just like this sweet one-eyed Labrador staring at me while I write this. He’s apparently unable to move. He’s focused only on my hand, begging it to move from the keyboard back to scratching his neck and ears, while also hoping I will throw his toy for him. He is so hyper-focused on what he wants, I’m not sure he’d notice if the house was on fire around him.

You see?

He is accomplishing exactly nothing else. He sees no one else around him, not even his three dog friends, trying to snuggle up next to him, looking for their morning playtime. He’s drooling with anticipation over getting his way and sure, I’ll take breaks and pet the dog; what kind of monster would I be if I did not? And then I will say, “Now go lie down” and he will, for a moment, and then he’ll come right back. Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

This is the thing that both sides are doing, One side is railing against democrats, liberals, people of other religions, people whose “lifestyles” they don’t agree with, etc., wanting their party and policies to include a moral code that all people must adhere to, complete with expecting people to obtain their personal religious views, believing this is how you “save the lost.”

They are living at a 10 on the scale, or maybe a 7 or 8, and loving that their guy is in charge, along with his billionaires and other personalities appointed to positions they have no experience with at all. Right now, they have the power, or so it would seem, by way of these over-reaching executive orders, one after another, meant to keep us spinning in fear.

It’s a game of cruelty run by Labradors gone bad, but who asked me?

The other side (living somewhere in the 1-5 range) is watching the overtaking of our government by this gaggle of characters, like this is a Shakespeare play, and we want to fight tooth and nail to keep our fellow citizens safe from harm.

The ones and tens, or those near one extreme or the other, are screaming at each other what seems like all the time, and wiling away their days with hours and hours of arguing, trying to prove something to the other side, when the other side is clicking the laugh emoji-”you stupid ridiculous sheep”.

Sometimes I want to scream SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, but I would be doing that into a void, obviously. Sometimes I want to look at someone who is clenching their teeth and staring at me, one-eyed and say, Can you please back off? You are over-stepping my boundaries, thank you kindly.

We are in such a mess. What are we doing?

Spoiler alert: Whatever it is we are doing, it’s not working. These cancers are growing and we’re over here attempting to cure ourselves with apple cider vinegar.

I am not saying we should never get focused and organized and stand up for what we believe in. Maybe what I’m saying is that the way most of us are functioning while doing that is fruitless because we are scared and confused and overwhelmed. We are reacting to these big protective feelings we can’t make sense of with our minds, which is normal. But then we clench down and fight people that don’t deserve a response to their quicksand clenched jaw disregard for the consequences this administration is making us all live.

Standing up and speaking truth to power however you see fit is your business. I am only admitting here that I keep swaying back and forth between shouting and silence. I am simply looking for a middle place 5, or at least a 4, for my behavior and thought life, because that is the only place I’ve ever produced anything true and good.

This “middle place” holds the ways that I want to love and behave in the world, right now, and it’s a lonely space. We middlers are the quieter ones, even as we do stand up for what we believe in our own ways. We are judged by both sides.

Does middle place living mean bending my convictions to align with and please both sides? No. Does it mean bending my convictions to keep the peace? No. The middle place doesn’t have anything to do with sitting in neutral or believing two sides of a coin are the same.

(the next paragraph needs a sort of kind of spoiler alert for Apple Cider Vinegar, in case you haven’t watched, but want to.)

What if people could get honest with themselves, especially those that have become Labradors like mine, forgetting to be himself while clenching down and stubbornly refusing to move? Or like the influencers in Apple Cider Vinegar, who were forgoing the greater good middle place way, for One Stubborn Way, and demanding people believe their way is the only way. You guessed it, that caused much more harm than good, leading to destruction and death.

This may seem like a random thing to share, but I have received ONE note. From ONE Evangelical Christian Trump supporter, who set aside Being Totally Right and said, Thank you for making me think. Whatever triggered that gentle response from them was probably not me yelling and saying how vile and evil all Trump voters are.

What I know is that returning hate with hate won’t work and never has. It will only make me feel a little bit better for about five seconds, then worse. I just can’t do it.

And yet, in my experience, Christian people that have told me off and called me names, through their clenched teeth, don’t seem to mind what they’ve done. I can see they have bitten down on Religion and “Policy” and then…quicksand, I watch them sink. They claim Jesus as their very own; he’s not even for Lutherans, you guys, unless those Lutherans get saved in their theological right way. He’s only for evangelicals who are born again enough.

The Jesus of my understanding never was and should never be a pawn in a political game.

From my heart and soul places, from where my writing comes, in hundreds of different phrases, I have asked for Christians to see, to stop, to let go. To please stop using any of the bible when speaking about government and politics. I try to say this, to ask it, with grace, and I am sure I get it wrong a lot, but I cannot stop trying. Because I believe in the separation of church and state for good reason—we’ve learned the hard way about this very thing so many times through history. Spoiler alert: A government that forces a particular religion on all people does nothing but cause destruction and death.

That is not love. Any extreme is not love. As Anne Lamott says,

"Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal".

I have to ask myself, is Love what I’m doing? I have to ask myself that a lot.

Inside and outside my very own like-minded circles, is Love what I’m living? Can you see evidence of it?

Living in community is messy and difficult and beautiful. Unity is harder than division. Letting go of the clenched teeth way silences our egos, and that can feel a lot like giving in, but maybe that’s what a soulful surrender is.

Every morning, when my one-eyed sweet Ruff lets go of his selfish hyper-focus, he awakens to the love and life around him. You know what he does? He goes to gnaw gently on the neck of our Yorkie, Scott, who leans in and makes those sounds like he’s getting the best massage. These weirdo dogs, they are far more capable of letting go. Sooner or later they turn toward each other, to run and play, to fight and quickly forgive, to stretch and sigh; no quicksand, no clenched teeth, just…family. The unified body. Whole again.

If only, my friends. If only.

The people at a five, where I strive to be; this is what we long for as we watch unity disappear in exchange for clenched teeth, power, and disregard. We also see the apathy and indifference. All of it, quicksand. People at a one or a ten on the scale of extremes, they go back and forth, back and forth, teeter-totter, never-ending, slamming each other to the ground and laughing. And in the end, producing nothing but a distraction.

Maybe all I’m asking is that we try to do better, even just a little bit better.

Peace.