Good things are easily corrupted. The old line, "Lilies that fester smell much worse than weeds," may be applied to some of our most cherished experiences.
For me the relational lifestyle (freedom to be me, vulnerability, affirmation, love, caring, honesty, confrontation, reconciliation, and celebration) was a mind-boggling sunburst - a miracle I thought impossible in a world frozen into rationality and control. I had accepted love as a theological possibility and I had cherished the imagined worlds of C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Charles Williams: Perelandra, Narnia, Hobbiton, and Logres. But I did not believe that I would see roses blooming in the snow of an ordinary town with a supermarket and a fine house.
That, however, happened and I did see life and love around me -- the primavera I had dreamed of in one Narnian winter. I met people who were aware of me under all the maskings and who accepted and even delighted in that me. And I began to find other people in a new way. I no longer needed to assess them by the measure of their wit or wisdom, their power or their status, but could delight in their humanity and uniqueness as created beings.
But because this lifestyle was so valid for me and had so many payoffs, I found myself wanting to rush the process and even to counterfeit it where it did not exist. In that frenzy my human warpedness produced an untruth which I call Cuckooland -- a state in which reality is not affirmed and transcended as in a true miracle, but is simply denied.
Cuckooland does strange things with the elements of the relational lifestyle but its most disastrous effect on its inhabitants is to destroy the very relationships which were intended by the process. But let me be specific:
1. Freedom to be me. This is a great blessing. It frees us from being tyrannized by dictums of our own and others' making; it releases us from responsibility for others and for their feelings; it recovers the unique quality of me-ness in a welter of usness and theyness.
But in Cuckooland the freedom to be me can result in a bizarre unawareness that I am wrapped up with others in a bundle of life (Cuckooland may obscure the fact), that I am never really alone, and that the contract of my existence calls for some relationships as well as accountability to those relationships.
2. Vulnerability and openness are my willingness to present
myself as I am, "warts and all," that is, to refuse to deny my shared
humanity (needs, feelings, history, and hope), to focus in on my areas of pain
and growth, and to invite you in to see where I am.
But in Cuckooland vulnerability becomes a number of things: artistic
vulnerability, which lets you focus on how well I tell my story, not its
meaning; archaic, which puts my weakness so far into the past that it now shines
like a virtue; manipulative, which uses my small weakness to blast loose your
big one; universal, which is so common that it is readily excused, viz., "I
don't like to see my wife's hair in curlers" (laughter).
3. Affirmation. Because we all need so much to feel
OK, affirmation of me as a person is essential to my relationships. I cannot
relate to myself, to others, or even to God unless my inner self is positively
charged (hence the popularity of concepts such as "positive thinking" and
"possibility thinking." They suggest that I can be my own center of power and
creativity.)
In Cuckooland affirmation turns into something else. It either becomes
flattery which means ascribing a quality to someone that he/ she simply does not
have or it means the creation of an atmosphere of general gullibility ("The
Emperor's Clothes") in which two and two no longer make four, in which everyone
puts on the bluebell hat.
Affirmation says, "I sensed your willingness to hear Mary out and to relate
to her helpfully." Flattery says, "The way you dealt with Mary made me wish you
were my psycho-therapist. You're head and shoulders above that clod."
Affirmation says, "You really look beautifully alive today." Flattery says, "You
never look any older," or "You are the most beautiful woman around," or "You are
special, special, special," when it's clear that the person is at most
"special."
But the more mischievous effect of Cuckooland affirmation is the creation of
a world in which ordinary laws have been suspended. In that world all things are
possible not because there is faith in the God of miracles but because illusion
has replaced reality. In that strange land the need for deception grows and
grows. Even if things are bad, I must proclaim them good. I must smile because
that is the style of Cuckooland. I must rush around loving and caring not
because I am committed to people but because I am expected to.
4. Confrontation. And in Cuckooland, because now all is
appearance, and true love and honesty have fled, I can't confront even when I
need to share honest feelings. I can't confront because fear has cast out love.
I am afraid that if I share my feelings, I'll be shot out of the water.
Everything will be used against me -- my freedom, my vulnerability, my
affirmation, even my love and my caring.
5. Reconciliation. And when truth and love are gone and I
lack the energy to confront, things go underground and wave crookedly like
earthworms. In Cuckooland there is no interface and hence no reconciliation.
There are only subterfuge, gentle-mindedness, and toothy good cheer.
6. Celebration. When freedom is bondage and vulnerability
performance, when affirmation phoniness, and love and caring manipulation, when
honesty and confrontation are deception, and reconciliation a treacherous
sliding past one another, then there can be no celebration, for there is no
victory to celebrate.
In Cuckooland there are beautiful cemeteries which proclaim the virtues (true
and false) of the dear departed, but there is no Easter morning; death is not
swallowed up in victory.
Hence if the lilies are not to fester, I need to pray that He who is the Spirit of truth will deliver me and my friends from Cuckooland, the place we create out of falsehood because we want so much the real thing that we are willing to pay any price -- even the loss of our integrity -- to get it.
Karl Olsson was the Director of Leadership Training Institutues for Faith@Work in the 1970s. He died in 1996. Karl's books are classics for understanding a relational theology and building healthy small groups.