“I’ve got a feeling”

It has been hard to be anywhere in South Africa, or possibly the world, in recent months and not be bombarded by the wonderfully multi-coloured band, Black Eyed Peas, singing: “I’ve got a feeling. That tonight’s gonna be a good night. That tonight’s gonna be a good, good night. A feeling….”

As the playwright Noel Coward put it: “Strange how insistent cheap music can be!”.

We live in a culture in which we are constantly being asked to get in touch with our feelings, to talk about our feelings, to move ‘from the head to the heart’. “Yes” the friend/ doctor/ therapist/ boss says, “But how did that make you feel?”. And it is true that feelings are an important part of who we are and a way of testing where we are.

Many of us are experiencing strong feelings as we read revelations about clergy abuse. We probably also have strong feelings about Malema or ET or Zuma. This week marks the 5th anniversary of the election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. I am sure that many people had strong feelings about that choice – across a whole range of reactions. No doubt he had strong feelings as well!

The challenge is what do we do with these feelings? I am not a psychologist but I am an observer of human beings. I see some people who shy away from their feelings and never admit to themselves, or to others, how they feel about something. And I see others who connect with their feelings and luxuriate in them, presenting their subjective reaction to a situation as an unchallengeable analysis that must be treated objectively by everyone else. I suggest that neither of these is adequate as a way of understanding and living with complexity whether in South Africa or in the Church or even in our own families.

A wise Jesuit once told me that the mark of Catholicism is to find the ‘both/and’ position rather than the ‘either/or’. We should not be trying to choose either the reaction of our hearts or the analysis of our heads. Instead, we should be able to recognise that they are both created by God and both given to us by God to better know him, love him and serve him.
No doubt the disciples, 2 weeks after the death and resurrection of Christ had very mixed feelings. The feeling of joy at seeing Christ again, the feeling of fear that the authorities were still out to get them, the feeling of confusion of what was going on, the feeling of anxiety of not knowing what would happen next. But I hope that they, like us, also remembered the words of Christ’s reassurance that he would be with them (and us) till the end of time.

Sometimes, like the pop singers, we do have a feeling that tonight’s going to be a good, good night. But sometimes we have to trust that, even when we don’t feel it, we believe that God is working in our world. The English 14th century mystic, Dame Julian of Norwich, captured this in her famous words – an affirmation not a feeling:
“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”