Seems pretty straightforward - since Socrates, enlightened minds have taught that to be of true value, what we do must mirror for what we think & believe. It's a core belief of my birth faith.
I can remember the example that was drummed into us from our earliest years - If you give a mega contribution to some worthy organization but you knew it was from ill-gotten gains, the contribution might get you a plaque somewhere but there's no deeper WORTH to your "good" deed.
That's what I grew up being taught. That's what most, if not all, of us were.
So it was interesting, in my Mom's final weeks, to discover that SHE had that basic message twisted 'round. In her mind, she'd been taught the polar opposite, that what you thought was all important, what you did was inconsequential (literally).
To reinforce - Mom believed she'd been taught, at school & in her home, that if you thought a certain, commendable way, it was okay to do the opposite, because what you thought was right was what mattered, even if you did what you thought was wrong. To this day, it intrigues me that my response wasn't horror or disbelief, just the ponder - "How interesting..."
That first response was reflected in my reaction - "Excuse me?"
At my request, Mom repeat her comment, in fuller detail, because I sure wasn't going to assume the astonishing thing she'd said was actually what she meant. Several times. Each time, the message was the same - she'd flipped the core teaching.
"Astonished" doesn't begin to describe how I felt - and enlightened to the core of my being about a behavior that had forever baffled me.
All these years, my Mom thought that her religion (let that sink in) thought it was okay to do whatever, as long as she actually thought another way was best.
Again, what interests me, looking back eleven years, is that not so much as a smidgen of upset or rebuke set in on hearing that simply said statement. This core misunderstanding had brought more misery & frustration to my life than can be imagined. Yet my sole response was amazement & illumination. I'm really proud of that 49-year old me!
How could I be upset?. I'd messed up big time, too, on something really simple & basic. It's easy to do, and not something you figure out talking to others about over a cuppa. Because you THINK you get it. It's not an issue. You blithely go along, living life the way you think it's meant to be.
Understanding & even a sense of the camaraderie of the clueless was possible because of a beloved hymn.
Like many little girls (& grown up women) in my church, I absolutely LOVE the hymn, O Precious Sign, sung at so many weddings.
My birth faith teaches that in heaven, an angel consists of a man & woman united in true marriage love. They don't physically become one angel, but seen a distance off, they'd appear as one angel, their hearts & minds united. The very last line of the beloved hymn, talking about a married couple, notes, "Behold one angel when its work is done."
Now, up until my mid 30s (let that sink in - well into my 30s), I completely misread that line.
I totally messed up the meaning of that simple pronoun, "its" Maybe because I knew the words so well from when I was a very little girl, the editor in me never caught the difference. Thought it referred to the angel, not to the work. So there I was, happily singing the song, year after year, wedding after wedding, envisioning an angel looking down at the now married couple standing at the altar, accepting congrats on a job well done.
COMPLETELY messed up, blind to the actual point - when a marriage runs an ideal course, the result is an angel, husband & wife conjoined in spirit as well in flesh (the whole idea would have been hard to make work as a lyric).
If I could so thoroughly mess up a really simple, basic phrase, how could I fault Mom for messing up a simple, basic teaching? (FYI - to this day I find myself wondering what other "simple, basic teachings" I've gotten completely wrong.)
Upset? No. Illuminated? Yes. In spite of all the harm that was done to so many lives due to the misunderstanding, in spite of all the decades of wondering how Mom could behave in massively confounding ways ways - yes.
As messed up as it was, Mom's heart was always in the right place. And THAT - I know for sure - is what matters.
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