If you can, use this link to see our old, dear friend, Bugs Bunny. If you can’t, a summary follows (Bugs is funnier):

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1DU4DinDVD/

Bugs Bunny approaches a small, weird guy in a helmet and cylinder, standing atop a red stand on a  blue, frozen surface of a strange planet, who has just lit a match to light up a huge rocket: “Pardon me for boddering you, Marconi, but did you say you was going to blow up the oith?”

“Oh, yes, I did.”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

Bugs walks away: “Well, adios. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, I always say. It’s his business if he wants to blow up the oith.” He comes to a sudden stop. “Wohh!” Bugs dashes back while Marconi is lighting up the rocket and whips away the big match. “You can’t do dat! All the people I know are on the oith.” He starts walking away. “The noive of this character.”

All the people I know are on the earth. Do you know people anywhere else?

Pope Leo said we’re getting too accustomed to violence. We are indeed greatly conditioned to violence inside, in relationships and families, not to mention between communities and countries. Since slowly reading Kazu Haga‘s Healing Resistance, his book on nonviolence, I’m paying more and more attention to even subtle manifestations of violence.

Nonviolence, as Haga points out, is not non-violence, an absence of fighting or getting into combat, but rather an entire way of life which asks of us to let go of our conditioning towards violence and explore other ways of relating and working. Like so many other worthwhile things, it takes lots of training and practice.

I was conditioned towards violence from childhood. Getting into a fight, I got no guidance on how to work with anger or dissatisfaction other than You mustn’t fight, Say you’re sorry, etc. My mother would often say to me: “You’re too smart to do those things,” and would then add: “When you’re older, you’ll show them.”

Show them what?

And what was I supposed to do with the fear masked by the anger, the resentment at being excluded, or my shame at someone else’s remarks? I’m not talking about bullying but rather about many “normal” interactions between children. Take that into our teens and, let’s face it, we can be merciless. That’s not a nice thing to say is cringe-worthy, not a serious antidote to the anxiety that besets so many of us in the doorway to adulthood.

Grown-ups? Don’t even take me there.

Lately, in the evenings, I contemplate the interactions of the day. Most of the time I can think of at least one conversation that saddens me. Did I shut someone down? Did I interrupt instead of letting her speak? If I listened, did I listen with only half an ear? It may not feel like violence, but at the very least, I know I shut the door on someone else’s needs or experience. I denied people their deepest layers of humanity, the opportunity for self-revelation.

Maria Popova writes: “We encounter each other as surfaces, yet yearn to meet as souls.” And that’s where I go at night: What souls have I touched or been touched by today? How surface-deep have been my words and actions, carrying only information or connected only to some transaction or other, nothing more?

Being human implies that, for the most part, we live out some self-referential drama. We become more aware of it as we grow older, especially if we practice; I also don’t beat myself up for being human. But oh, the subtleties of that ego! In my case, the temptation to show strength, intelligence, and clarity. The difficulty of showing uncertainty, loneliness, or struggle.

Underneath my surface and yours, there is so much soul. In fact, we’re all soulmates on Bugs Bunny’s oith. We think the surface we stand and build on is the whole thing, but for the most part, it’s the outermost crust of the outermost crust.

Sometime last week, perhaps in connection with Easter, I read the following passage in the Gospel of Mark:

“They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, ‘Do you see anything?’ He looked up and said, ‘I see people; they look like trees walking around.’ Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”

Would I like to be a tree walking around, I wondered. I’d have mobility, go in search of sun and rain and run from bugs and disease, but there would be no roots. I could grow tall and blog about everything I see, but without roots connecting with other roots …

“All the people I know are on the oith.”