Profundity

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” – Rumi

I probably would not have paid one iota of attention to this quote by Rumi if I hadn’t read it just after I came home from sacrament meeting where the high councilman talked about how if you follow the prophet you will never be lead astray.  He even quoted the primary song:

1. Adam was a prophet, first one that we know.

In a place called Eden, he helped things to grow.

Adam served the Lord by following his ways.

We are his descendants in the latter days.

2. Enoch was a prophet; he taught what was good.

People in his city did just what they should.

When they were so righteous that there was no sin,

Heav'nly Father took them up to live with him.

3. Noah was a prophet called to preach the word,

Tried to cry repentance, but nobody heard.

They were busy sinning-Noah preached in vain.

They wished they had listened when they saw the rain.

4. Abraham the prophet prayed to have a son,

So the Lord sent Isaac as the chosen one.

Isaac begat Jacob, known as Israel;

Jacob's sons were twelve tribes, so the Bible tells.

5. Moses was a prophet sent to Israel.

He would lead them to the promised land to dwell.

They were slow to follow, or so it appears.

They were in the wilderness for forty years.

6. Samuel was a prophet chosen as a boy.

Hannah promised God her son would serve with joy.

In the tabernacle, Samuel heard his name;

He was called by God and answered, "Here I am!"

7. Jonah was a prophet, tried to run away,

But he later learned to listen and obey.

When we really try, the Lord won't let us fail:

That's what Jonah learned deep down inside the whale.

8. Daniel was a prophet. He refused to sin;

So the king threw Daniel in the lion's den.

Angels calmed the lions, and the king soon saw

Daniel's pow'r was great, for he obeyed God's law.

9. Now we have a world where people are confused.

If you don't believe it, go and watch the news.

We can get direction all along our way,

If we heed the prophets-follow what they say.

Chorus

Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,

Follow the prophet; don't go astray.

Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,

Follow the prophet; he knows the way.

Follow the prophet not just on the big issues but in every facet of our lives, he preaches. He gave examples of what some of the prophets had said throughout the years. I wonder what the brother sitting in front of me thought when he dwelled on the Proclamation on the Family, emphasizing it was marriage between one man and one woman. He was there with his mother, whom he tenderly takes care of in her senility and fragility. Others have excluded other groups of people.

Maybe a child unthinkingly should follow the prophet but as adults we need to search our souls to know how to be inclusive, loving, kind, caring to all of God’s children in individual circumstances.

By chance, later in the day, I listened to a Doug Fabrizio podcast with Roman Krznaric who wrote a book entitled  “Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It”. In this lively and engaging book, he argues that our brains are wired for social connection. Empathy, not apathy or self-centeredness, is at the heart of who we are. By looking outward and attempting to identify with the experiences of others, Krznaric argues, we can become not only a more equal society, but also a happier and more creative one. Empathy, Krznaric tells us, is “the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that understanding to guide your actions.”

He utilizes some pretty impressive case studies to argue that it is possible; from Oskar Schindler to Beecher Stowe - author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin - to Gandhi and Mandela. All people who without doubt developed very strong empathetic skills.

Krznaric identifies numerous tools to deploy to increase empathy: babies in classrooms; joining a choir; considering the full potential lifecycle of the jumper you are wearing; chatting to strangers; and immersing yourself in the role of somebody else for a period, as George Orwell did in Down and Out in Paris and London. Reading books, looking at photographs and watching films can also help build empathy.

The 21st century needs to see significant boosts in empathy, says Krznaric - empathy with the victims of flooding, including in far-away countries; empathy with future generations to spur action on cutting carbon pollution; and even developing a kind of empathy for the natural world.

In his book he mentions four things that can kill empathy:

Prejudice

Authority

Distance

Denial

We need to overcome these four barriers if we are to boost our empathy skills, he says.

Our tendency to obey authority is our greatest obstacle to empathy.

He talks about the Milgram Tests around 1960 where people were invited into a lab and told by a man in very official looking lab coat to administer shock if someone in the next room got a memory test question wrong.

If he got another question wrong, the subject was supposed to administer even greater electric shock.

The shocking results were that 65% of the people would administer electric shock that would kill another person if they were told by an authority person to do so.

The way we obey authority so readily can overcome any empathic instincts that we have.

This was at the time of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders?

In Milburg’s experiment, when he brought the person who was getting shocked into the same room, then only 20% of the people would do the shocks.

And if there were people in the room with you who are refusing to do the tests and disobeying authority, almost nobody will administer the tests.

So in solidarity our empathy comes out.

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

For me personally, I’m with Rumi. I would much rather be drawn by the strange pull of what I really love, for I know it will not lead me astray. I have to figure these things out for myself and decide how to live an empathetic life with equality and acceptance for all. It helps to have a son with special needs, a neighbor who is gay, a friend with a transgender grandchild, interracial marriages in the family; and I don't live in an ivory tower. 
     Rules are to be broken, not hearts. (A prophet said that.)