Thursday, June 12, 2025
Department chairs in higher education are “the complaints department.” I know it well. People needed me to move heaven and earth to fix their complaint. That meant I was to “bend” school policy, finagle rules to fit “extenuating circumstances,” slide deadlines, make money appear out of nowhere, rewind time, or make exceptions “this once.” I never moved heaven and earth in the way I was asked to – I couldn’t! My heaven-and-earth-moving was to creatively explain that their crises were self-made.
The role of the court jester was to deliver “tough news” to His Majesty. If the war was lost, the coffers bare, or if the king was a royal screw up, the jester had to tell him with a song and dance, or a crafty story. That softened the harsh edges of truth.
You reap what you sow; cause and effect are one; you got yourself in, you’ll yourself out. It’s not the circumstance, others or God. It is I and I alone. Why is that hard to swallow? We wonder how every one of our choices leads us to this moment, the one where something seems to have “gone awry.”
Jesus delivered the medicine sometimes abrasively, but often sweetly hidden in parables, you know, “for the kids.” Point the finger at the culprit, tell the emperor he’s buck naked, powerless, and foolish, and that his problems can be solved by himself even if the circumstances can’t change. The sugar-coating helps deliver the news, making the king self-reflect and become self-aware. Not many of us are ready for Truth, however. It’s much too harsh. The medicine goes down eventually. Once is does, it’s the sweetest victory you’ll ever taste, but it’s bitter at first, to see yourself in the mirror. For some, it’s just a spoonful. For others, it takes heaps of karma to figure out who the finger points to.