Witness

As I wrote last, I’ve been writing about how I’ve navigated the experience of being cheated in order to illustrate how depth psychology and faith can combine to help a person get through difficult circumstances and grow. Approximately seven months into the experience of being on the short end of the deal stick, I was vacuuming one day and a still, small voice inside me told me that one of the principals in an agreement my husband and I had made had the “spirit of Esau.”

Though tedious to write about, this personal situation is useful. As I untie the knot of this story, you’ll be able to see what I saw, as I saw it, in much the same way as I saw it. Seeing is everything. St. Paul wrote that everything that becomes manifest is light; it’s good to see what’s what.

When Spirit gave me Esau, it was a clue. Like all clues of legendary proportion, it would lead to a buried treasure; but I didn’t know this at the time. In fact, I actively resisted thinking about Esau and assumed this knowledge had come out of me. After all, I’m no fan of Esau and Jacob. Theirs has been one of my least favorite Bible stories because of its nearly complete incomprehensibility to me. I have to admit that until recently I hadn’t even bothered to decipher the meaning of my dislike for the story, which also kept me from looking at it in symbolic ways.

Thinking that my own prejudice had brought Esau up in this thought-while-vacuuming, I concluded that I must be bitter. Though I wasn’t feeling bitter, I nevertheless diagnosed myself as bitter and unforgiving. A Bible verse from the book of Hebrews came to mind, one that warns Christians to “see to it that no root of bitterness spring up, and by it many be defiled.” I certainly didn’t want to be bitter, much less ‘defile’ everyone around me with my bitterness against our treacherous partners. “You’d better do something with your bad attitude,” I scolded myself. “You’d better get with the program!”

Like any good Catholic girl being scolded by her stern inner Sister Perpetually Judgmental, I snapped to attention and went to my Bible. “I’d better read that verse in context,” I said to myself. “So I can check myself out and see what this verse actually means.” And go to the Bible I did, to the book of Hebrews, chapter 12 and verse 14, which says:

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. (Hebrews 12:14-17)

As I’ve written before, God speaks to each one according to his or her own symbolic language. Buddhists get Buddhist hints and roadsigns, Christians another. A devout Muslim hears and sees God one way, while an atheist gets his sychronous insights another. The Spirit does not stop moving in the world or in our lives simply because we disbelieve. “Love never ends,” St. Paul wrote. God by every name or by no name at all never stops loving, and never stops giving.

So it was that I, a Christian, was led along the way to my true self through Christian words and symbols. But I have no doubt at all that I would have been led by every means available regardless of my faith, because everyone who seeks shall find. It is a spiritual law that seekers are also finders. This is just how good God is. God is very good.

THE LAW OF WITNESSES

One of the most boring books in the Bible has got to be the book of Leviticus, called the Vayikra by Jews. The third of the five books of Moses, Leviticus is full of laws. Laws of the Temple, laws of cleanliness, laws of birth and death, giving and taking, working and not working. Along with Numbers and Deuteronomy, it is tedious and almost entirely uninspiring. I avoided reading Leviticus as much as I could as a younger Christian. For every one time I’ve read Leviticus, I’ve read Psalms or Song of Solomon or even Isaiah as many as five or ten times.

One year, though, when I was much younger than I am now, I felt strongly impressed to read Leviticus. I felt I was to read it with love and the sort of attentiveness that expects a blessing. And so I did. I read Leviticus and thought about the book in present-day terms rather than relegating my head and the book to the ancient past. I began to see patterns and deep truths in the laws of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and even the counting and classifying of the book of Numbers. I saw that laws had purpose and meaning and were not merely constructs of an ancient, backward people.

One law of which I’m especially fond is the rule of witnesses in Deuteronomy, which states that no one can be condemned on the testimony of only one witness. All facts, this law says, are to be established “out of the mouths of two or three witnesses” (Deuteronomy 17:6). This law is also applied to New Testament church discipline, since St. Paul taught that a church elder or pastor should not be accepted unless “two or three witnesses” were willing to testify. Two or three witnesses; keep this in mind.

The year I saw that these ancient laws can have meaning here and now was a very good year, for one of the primary things I learned was from this law of witnesses: Facts come with two or three. What this means, among other things, is that whenever truth is welling up within me, or coming at me from the outside, it will come in two or three ways. I may miss it if it comes only once, and since the universe is bountiful and God is good and giving, He will give me more than one chance to get a clue.

The day I was vacuuming and Spirit mentioned Esau, I balked and did not go there. But Holy Spirit loves me and knows how to get me to where I need to go. Holy Spirit knows that I willingly go down the “I’m wrong and I’d better straighten up” path. I will follow Sister Perpetually Judgmental when she is pointing out my own flaws, but if I have the idea that someone I love has a “spirit of Esau,” I’ll recoil from that idea. I don’t want to think such a terrible thought about someone else, for deep down inside I’m afraid of Esau. He’s a wicked, godless person. I surely don’t want anyone in my life to be wicked and godless.

So I followed Sister Perpetually Judgmental to the place where I would not look at my cheating partner, but would look at my real or imagined root of bitterness instead. I went straight to the book of Hebrews where in the very passage about bitterness that I so needed to read was yet another witness of (you guessed it) ESAU.

I still often miss first witnesses; but I rarely miss the second one. I can’t recall the last time I had to be given three or more wake-up calls before I woke up. So the day I read that passage from Hebrews, I knew I’d have to deal with Esau. Esau and his brother Jacob and what they meant on many different levels.

So this is my gift to you today, dear reader: the law of witnesses. Try it out. See how it works for you. How many times of seeing something does it take before you see that you see it?