I was surprised to hear of David Petraeus? affair.? I think it could have been a really big deal.? He could have had an affair with a foreign spy?national security could have been compromised.? His affair could have been used to manipulate him or the information and the lives he protected.? I think.
As this story unfolds (unceasingly) on tv and in the news I?m realizing, though, that this story isn?t about the potential security breach.? This story is juicy?like Justin Bieber breaking up with Selena Gomez juicy.? And that?s it.? This high-powered official had an affair.
I?m sad, of course, for the whole situation because I imagine there to have been long-standing brokenness in all of these relationships, but really, I don?t need to know all of this.? I get why the guy quit, but I?m not mad.? I?m not ?enraged,? or ?righteously indignant? about this guy and his affair. A lot of people have affairs and I don?t have strong compunction about that. I just don?t.
For me,? being in relationship is a mysterious affair.? How two people work out their own inter-being is between them.? Being in an intimate relationship is the hardest work I think we humans do, so I tend to err on the side of gentleness rather than judgement.? I am not so good at it myself, having walked through the carnage and devastation of divorce.
I am not so bothered by affairs, although I do have my feminist rants (do NOT get me started on men).?? Some couples do stay together for decades?60 years or more.? I think that is amazing!? Some couples stay together for 60 years or more even with the presence of an affair.? I think that is amazing, too.? I like the story of George Burns and Gracie Allen.? When he cheated on her with a Vegas showgirl, George in his guilt bought Gracie an expensive coffee table she wanted.? Years later, she quipped to one of her friends that she wished George would cheat on her again; she needed a new coffee table.? A relationship is mysterious and bitter and sweet, and such a gift.? we learn to be human by being human together, sometimes naked, and sometimes with more than one person.? It takes a lot of courage to spend your life on one path and realize that you have to turn and go a different way.
So, it is not this illustrious General,? who has ?let us down? or ?betrayed us? with his affair.
He has betrayed us with his normal, ?model life.?
A few days before the Petraeus affair hit the news, the Minneapolis paper published articles of a local, ?pray away the gay,? pastor being changed with molesting the men he was counseling,* and the story of another priest molesting young men in his parish.? I am more devastated and outraged by these stories (and there are a lot of them) than I am by people who act out of the norm and admit it.?? I am righteously outraged by people who cripple other people with the vice grip of moral standards they themselves cannot uphold.?? May we not hide, for in our hiding, I think our hearts turn hard.
It is a truth, I have come to see, that Life is so complicated, messy if you will, that those who gleam with clean living, are probably lying.? Don?t lie, Petraeus people.? Don?t lie to other people and don?t lie to yourself.
As for me, one of my parishioners, told me the other day that I am a ?strange duck.?? I laughed.? She laughed, because it was true!? I am a strange duck, to whom strange and perplexing things happen.? I know it!? and she knows it, too.
*http://www.startribune.com/local/north/177906901.html
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Source: http://godchocolate.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/betraeus/
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