Little freezer meatballs

Hello friends,

I hadn’t been thinking about childless cat ladies until a video of J.D. Vance from 2021 brought the subject to mind. I won’t engage in responses, other than to say that the micro-scripts running in my head tended to be angry, outraged, and generally reactive. This debasing and prejudicial comment provoked an in-kind response. It’s natural to be outraged by something outrageous! But the residue left by that exchange of provocation and response feels toxic and fatiguing. And Lord knows, there will be plenty more such provocations to come. I hate to say it, but it won’t stop after Nov. 5, whatever the outcome. If we are so provokable, so quick to react with angry thinking or speaking…. gosh; that is an unhappy prospect as we look down the road in front of us. It seems that a spiritual practice of some kind is required, one that will enable us to sidestep all that anger and outrage, a practice that keeps us engaged in the struggle, but that prevents us from getting drenched in negative emotions. Somehow, we need to become “un-out-rageable” without becoming simply numb or inactive. 

There are probably many different answers, drawn from religious or contemplative traditions, or from our own experience. I would love to hear your ideas on this point so we could share them around and help each other. 

This last week, Pete Buttigieg gave a master class on how one might respond to an outrageous remark from a position of strength, not based on the negative whiplash energy of simple reaction. He was on the Colbert Show, and at one point Colbert asked him, with reference to Speaker Mike Johnson, “So, how do you work with a guy who argued that ‘same sex relations are the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest Republic.'” 

Here was Pete’s answer: “Look. I’ll work with anyone who can help us get good transportation available to the American people. I dunno; maybe we’ll just have him over… our little house isn’t all that far from the Capitol, and, if you could see what it’s like when I come home from work and Chasten is bringing the kids home from daycare, or vice versa, and one of us is getting the mac and cheese ready, and the other one is microwaving those little freezer meatballs that are a great cheat code if you’ve got toddlers and you need to feed ’em quickly, and they won’t take their shoes off, and one of them needs a diaper change. Everything about that is chaos, but nothing about that is dark. The love of God is in that household.”

This strikes me as a marvelous example of rising above, of transcending provocation. There’s a light in this answer that points to a different way of being in the world. We’re going to need this going forward. 

In the video (here), you can also see from his intonation and body language that giving this answer was a little costly to him. It wasn’t glib or smug or easy; he had to muster something. But he found his way to an elevated response that simply lifted him (and the audience and us) above the harsh and dark spirit at work in Johnson’s remark. That is where the evil lies. It was a marvelous enactment of a phrase from the Apostle Paul, “do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”  

Thanks, Pete, for giving us this luminous signpost on the way forward. As Secretary of Transportation, you have transported us.

Have a splendid week,

Greg

P.S. I learned of Buttigieg’s interview with Colbert from Charlotte Clymer’s newsletter, “Charlotte’s Web Thoughts.” As a transgender woman, a veteran, a Roman Catholic, and a patriot, she brings a lot of interesting perspectives.