https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Lk1aJuoPUlc
Well, what what’s the role of a mother if she’s awake I? Had a client come see me a while back not very long ago Woman in about who’s about 30 and trying to make decisions about her life She was pretty career oriented and so I asked her about Although maybe having a bit of trouble with her career. I’ve seen this many many times, so this is an amalgam This is a story that’s an amalgam And I talked to her about the other elements of her life. It’s like well, you know There’s only five things you do in life, so you’ve got your career down You know what do you do outside of your career? That’s meaningful and engaging How are things going with your family could be your family of origin your siblings? Whatever you have an intimate relationship and like what’s your plan for your own family? And apart from those five things there’s sort of something like get some exercise now And then don’t eat too badly and try to stay away from the drugs You know that that that kind of and the crime that kind of lays out life and if you miss any of those five things or If you do any of those other things wrong then you’re in trouble And you can get away with missing a couple of them But not all of them you know and she said something along the lines of well I’m not sure I should bring a child into this world And I thought oh God Christ you got to come up with something better than that such a bloody cliche Which is what I told her I said you know you must have thought that up when you were 16 It’s like really that’s your you can’t do any better. This was a very very smart woman It’s like really you can’t do any better than that. It’s like yes Obviously this is a veil of tears and you know a well of suffering and all of that you know if you ask 30 people who are Wondering about having children why they’re wondering 20 of them will say that and so that that tells you how original it is It’s not original at all. It’s not a thought It’s like this little it’s like it’s like a it’s a meme. It’s something that lives in your mind It’s not a thought and it’s certainly not something It’s certainly not something that you should just take it face value and say oh well I’m not having a family then it’s like no no you kind of look at that and you criticize it a little bit It’s like well the pop the it’s the other one. That’s the other one. That’s very common There’s too many people on the planet already I Really don’t like that statement It’s like just who are you gonna ask to leave just how are you gonna get them to leave? You know it’s a serious question, and who says there’s too many people what the hell’s wrong with people anyways Sort of or running around ruining the planet yeah It’s like I think it was the club of Rome who? prophesied by the way that there would be so many people on the planet by the year 2000 that there would be widespread Starvation and they were completely and utterly wrong about that And I think it was the club of Rome who either compared us to a virus or a cancer on the face of the planet It’s like oh really that’s what you think about people a hmm aren’t you something isn’t that something to think about human beings? Viruses and cancer what do you do with viruses and cancer invite them in and make them at home? It’s like no you try to eradicate them If you got a bloody well watch your metaphors folks Because it isn’t clear that you come up with them or that they run you so you better watch them So anyways Mary you know and Mary’s the great mother right that she’s the mother That’s what Mary is whether she existed or not is not the point she exists at least as a hyper reality She exists as the mother well. What’s the sacrifice of the mother well? That’s easy if you’re a mother and you if you’re a mother who’s worth her salt You offer your son to be destroyed by the world. That’s what you do. I mean. That’s what’s going to happen, right? He’s gonna be born. He’s gonna suffer. He’s gonna have his trouble in life. He’s going to have his illnesses He’s going to face his failures and catastrophes, and he’s going to die That’s what’s going to happen, and if you’re awake you know that and then you say well Perhaps he will live in a way that will justify that and then you try to have that happen And that’s what makes you worthy of a statue like that But still the sacrifice of the mother Is it right to bring a baby into this terrible world Well every woman asks herself that question some say no and they have the reasons Mary answers yes voluntarily Mary is the archetype of the woman who answers yes to life Voluntarily that’s what that image means and not because she’s blind She knows what’s going to happen, and so she’s the archetypal representation of the woman who says yes to life knowing full Well, what what life is not naive not someone who got pregnant in the backseat of a 1957 Chevy You know in what in a one night of? half drunk idiocy not that but consciously Consciously knowing what’s to come and then also allows it to happen because that’s another thing that’s a Testament to the courage of mothers my mother was good at this my mother is a very agreeable person too agreeable for her own good But that’s what happens if you’re agreeable because you’re too agreeable if your own good That’s the definition of agreeable and so she’s a nice person and it still is luckily She’s still alive, and we’ve had a very good relationship, and I have always Being able to make her laugh which is which is a good thing and but she was tough cookie that woman you know if if Remember once she came across I was out playing in this spet baseball diamond little diamond and empty lot really in this little town I grew up in and I Was about 10 and she walked by I was there with a bunch of my friends And I was about to have a fistfight with this little tough kid that I hung around with and There were half girls on the team and the fistfight had some relationship to status maneuvering You know in relationship to that anyways. We’re gonna have a fight and my mom walked by she took a look and I could see from her demeanor that she knew exactly what was about to happen and she looked for a second and then she walked by and I thought Whoa good work mom No kidding. It’s like last bloody thing I needed at that moment was for her to come charging up and say you boys aren’t planning to have a fight Are you it’s like well? Yeah, mom? We’re actually planning to have a fight and now that you came and intervened I actually lost before the goddamn thing even started So Two thumbs up for mom she was also the person that said because I had some trouble with my dad when I was You know adolescent he had some trouble with me, so you know It was 50 50. That’s for now It’s probably 70 30 with me on the 70 end of being the trouble and anyways I left home when I was about 17 and She said something really interesting when I left home She said it was too good at home you’d never leave I thought hey mom That’s pretty good you know for for an agreeable person you’ve got a real spine man, so that was pretty good so So you know mother that says this the mother is the person who also says Get out there take your goddamn lumps because you’re tough enough so that you can handle it She doesn’t say You just stay down there in your bedroom brooding away because the world is unfair and treating you badly and Your suffering is too much. She says yeah, there’s a lot of suffering out there, but you’re a hell of a lot tougher than you think you are so In turn Mary’s son Christ offers himself to God So completely that his faith and trust in the world is not broken by betrayal torture or death That’s the model for the honorable man, so You know you have an interesting dynamic there you have the woman who’s willing to make the sacrifice Lays the groundwork for the son who is willing to make the sacrifice That works out pretty nicely, and it’s a good thing to know In Christ’s case however as he sacrifices himself God his father is Simultaneously sacrificing his son right that’s one of the oddities of the trinitarian model is that God Sacrifices himself to himself same thing happens in Norse mythology right? Norse Zeus Germanic mythology Zeus sacrifices himself to himself he actually hangs on a tree He’s actually wounded in his side But I think part of the idea is well The human race is trying to work out. Well. What’s the ultimate sacrifice? It’s something like that the ultimate sacrifice of value well the Passion story and I told you I was foreshadowing. I’m bringing this into Consideration things we won’t talk about for a long time. Maybe not at all in this lecture series I don’t know because I don’t know how far I’ll get is that well There’s a supreme sacrifice and I’m not going to go into that in this lecture series There’s a supreme sacrifice demanded on the part of the mother and there’s a supreme sacrifice Demanded on the part of the son and there’s a supreme sacrifice Demanded on the part of the father all at the same time and then that makes the supreme sacrifice possible and hypothetically That’s the one that renews. That’s the sacrifice that renews and redeems it’s a hell of an idea man, and the thing about it is that I Don’t know if it’s true, but I know that its opposite is false and Generally the opposite of something that’s false is true It’s it’s opposite is false is because if the mother doesn’t make the sacrifice Then you get the horrible eatable situation or something like that in the household which is just its own absolute catastrophic hell And if you want a really good insight into that I would say watch the documentary crumb C-r-u-m-b a man that’s been rated by some critics as the best documentary ever made and it is some piece of work man It is the only thing I’ve ever seen that actually lays out the eatable catastrophe in its full nightmare You know so you could you could look at that So if the maternal sacrifice isn’t there then that doesn’t work if the paternal sacrifice isn’t there You know if you’re if the father isn’t willing to put his son out into the world Let’s say to be broken and betrayed and all of those things Then that’s a non-starter because the kid doesn’t grow up And then if the son isn’t willing to do that well then who the hell is going to shoulder the responsibility? So if those three things don’t happen then it’s cataclysmic it’s chaotic it’s hell If they do happen is it the opposite of that well you could say well Maybe it depends on the degree to which they happen and and it’s a continuum how thoroughly can they happen? Well, we don’t know you know because you might say How good a job do you do of encouraging your children to live in truth? Let’s say Well that’s part of the answer to this question and the answer likely is well not You don’t do as good a job of it as you could So it works out quite well, but you don’t know how well it could work if you did it really well or spectacularly well or ultimately Well or something like that you don’t know and you know people have an intimation of this because one of the things that’s really cool About having a young baby. This is something you don’t know till you have it. There’s two things you don’t know There’s a lot more than two There’s three things you don’t know Until you have a baby the one is that you didn’t grow up yet Because you actually don’t grow up until someone else is more important than you you can’t so people think they grow up if they don’t Have children, but they don’t they just think they do now there are some people who make sacrifices of other sorts, but This is a whole different ball of wax as far as I’m concerned It’s not a big deal You learn that it’s kind of a relief not to be the center of attention That’s cool that you can sit back because of course your child in your family and in Society is immediately the center of attention and so unless you’re narcissistic Then you allow that to happen And then you learn all sorts of really good things about other people because other people really like to be in society And so you learn that you’re not just a child And then you learn all sorts of really good things about other people because other people really like babies. It’s so cool I lived in Montreal when we had our first child and I lived in a pretty rough neighborhood by Montreal standards, right? It’s like you know Montreal is such a great city like Toronto. It’s like even the rough neighborhoods Or they’re more like charming with a little you know dark underbelly something like that But there were some rough characters in our neighborhood And we’d we’d push her around in her stroller and these like grizzled wrecked old guys would come by They’d look at her and they just light up and they come over and like smile at her And you know you just saw their the positive element of their humanity just well forth You have to there has to be something seriously wrong with you if you don’t respond that way to a baby You know I mean That’s that’s not good. That’s not good But it was so cool to see these people you kind of give them generally sort of walk four feet around them on the street You know and yet they were all of a sudden all that The layers that were on them would just fall off And they’d be so and the babies are sort of like public property weirdly enough to sort of like pregnant women You know because people often treat pregnant women sort of like their public property too. I mean in a positive way Oh, wow, you’re gonna have a baby. Yeah, you know they they well they do all sorts of cute things