The Wheel Keeps Turning
As I’m pondering the story of Herod and the magi and the epiphany season I was called to a particular 2024 Richard Rohr reflection on the theme of radical resilience. Rohr first refers to Carl Jung’s words on how “much suffering occurs unnecessarily because people won’t accept the “legitimate suffering” that comes from being human. …Behind [mental conflict] there is so often concealed all the natural and necessary suffering the patient has been unwilling to bear.” Rohr also reflects on priest and researcher Alice Updike Scannell’s thoughts on resilience: “We usually think of resilience as the ability to recover from an adverse experience and pick up our lives where we left off. It is that too.… But there are times when adversity permanently changes our reality and we can’t go back to the way things were.…Resilience then becomes the work of coming through the adversity so that, at least on most days, we see our life as still worth living. With this kind of resilience, we come through the adversity knowing that we’re still ourselves, even though things are very different for us now.” Richard ties this together saying that while suffering is inherent in all of reality, only humans have the choice to accept or deny it, and that ironically, refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings a person ten times more suffering in the long run.
This resonated for me not only from personal experiences I’ve had extending my troubles by either ignoring or resenting them, but also when considering King Herod. It must have been scary for him, to think that a new king had been foretold and that many people were joyful about this. I can imagine some of the thoughts that might have run through his head “what will happen to me and my family?,” “why don’t they want me to be king?,” “how dare they?,” and on and on. Questions of worthiness, fear of the future, defensiveness for himself and his family, until the anxiety, fear, and anger were completely in control. And this story tells us how badly things can go when anxiety and fear are driving us and we have power over others.
What if…what if Herod could have had more trust, been assured through love and faith, that there could be a path forward for him while still accepting this prophecy and what he was learning about wishes of the people he ruled. Can the powerful ever willingly relinquish their power, and do so with love rather than bloodshed? A Herod who could become a teacher or advisor or something else yet? A Herod who would know that, even if no longer a king, his worth would never change in the eyes of God.
Much love Pilgrims,
Felix (she/her)