The spiritual life is, first of all, a life, wrote Thomas Merton. “It is not merely something to be known and studied; it is to be lived.”
From the first, Donald Trump and the people around him – people like Rudy Guiliani – have challenged my idea of the spiritual self- and taught me who I don’t want to be and what I don’t want to be.
They traffic in hatred and cruelty, they draw hatred and cruelty in return. Our better angels hide in closets and wait until it’s safe to come out.
Many of us are pulled down when we wish to climb up.
So when Rudy Guiliani was rushed to a Washington hospital after being diagnosed with Covid-19, yesterday my first thought was to wish him dead.
My second thought was to realize this was not who I wanted to be, not what I wanted to feel or think.
And there, within that macro-second, was the drama of the spiritual life and it’s a challenge. We know what we are, we want to be better.
People like me have sometimes given up on a spiritual life because I can’t be a saint. But that, I’ve learned, misses the point. You don’t have to be a saint to be spiritual or to do good. Us non-saintly pilgrims are about the search, not the final destination.
It isn’t about being holy or perfect; it’s about wanting to be a better person than you are and never giving up on that wish.
I launched the Army of Good because it was the complete opposite of what Trumpism is about – anger, grievance, cruelty, and selfishness.
When I heard that Rudy Guiliani, whose sad decline I have witnessed for some years now, has been rushed to Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, I definitely had visions of justice and vengeance.
I thought this is what he deserved; this is God’s payback for the indifference and callousness he has shown to the many people and their families who have suffered so much and died so often from a disease he dismisses and ridicules as a conspiracy theory for weaklings.
How many people, I have wondered, did Trump and Guiliani kill in their wicked alliance?
I’ve sought a spiritual life all of my life. In 2000 I bought a cabin in upstate New York and spent the year studying the writings of Thomas Merton. I work hard at it, and sometimes, I even succeed.
I understand this is the Promised Land; people like me never get there; the meaning comes from trying.
I understood that spiritual life is difficult, a life-long journey, a tough path of twists and turns. All you can do is keep trying and advance in small and often painful steps, forward and back.
I know now I’ll never quite get there; I know I’ll never stop trying.
Guiliani’s illness offered me yet another opportunity to grow spirituality and take the notion of empathy and compassion a step farther. Compassion is not only for people I like.
Of course, I almost blew it.
This often happens on the spiritual path. You stumble and fall; you have to dust yourself off, get off, and keep walking.
I wouldn’t say I like much of anything about Guiliani, who has run to the dark side in his later years. In many ways, he was a great mayor, in part because of the genuine empathy he felt for those who died in 911. Where I wonder, has that empathy gone?
How can one man live on such opposite poles?
Might it come back? I wondered if he suffers from the virus himself? It didn’t seem to help Donald Trump much.
Like his mentor and leader, Guiliani has ridiculed people who wear masks and avoided wearing one almost all the time.
Last week, he spent several days in the Arizona State House pushing conspiracy theories and lies.
When his illness was announced, the entire State House shut down for a week because he was so close to so many people while completely unprotected.
It might be that he has killed some of them. Here, I pray for him if he feels no remorse.
His rush to the hospital seemed almost biblical to me. How should I feel about it? The first thought was decidedly aspiritual: I thought, I hope he suffers greatly. I apologized in my head to Merton, who would have disapproved, but also understood.
He taught the monastery’s novitiates to curse in their Latin prayers at the prior to get even for some slight or disagreement.
A very spiritual friend wrote to me and said, “I hope Guiliani dies, slowly, and painfully.” A bell went off in my head. I didn’t want to feel this way or share this feeling. This isn’t the person I want to be and am working so hard to be.
Where is the justice in becoming something you hate?
But what should I wish for a man who has frightened and harmed and lied to so many people in so many different ways?
A man who seems to have lost any sense of morality or decency. A former U.S. Attorney, Guiliani knows a lie from a truth. What sort of punishment does he deserve for what he has done?
I couldn’t find any guidance in my Merton books; I think Merton might well have fled the monastery altogether if he’d run across a President Trump and seen all those Christian fellating over him.
I called Sue Silverstein, the theology teacher at Bishop Maginn High School and a close friend.
She is a truly spiritual person who does good and is a person of great faith, and she lives very much in the real world. She is the kind of person I’ve started calling “a good Christian,” one who actually follows and lives the teachings of Christ.
“Sue,” I asked, “it is okay for someone to hope that Guiliani suffers pain and even death because of his hypocrisy and dishonesty?”
Sue sighed as she always did in such situations and tried to let me down gently.
“No,” she said, “not really.”
“What should I want for him?” I asked, “in the spiritual sense?”
“What we want for him is peaceful healing of his heart and body,” she said. “That is the spiritual path. To wish that he awakens to any harm he might have done.”
This felt right. I knew this was true and accepted her wisdom.
Once again, my challenge was to close the gap between the person I am and the person I want to be. Sometimes, the heart has to follow the mouth.
I don’t wish pain and death on anyone, not even hypocrites, the lowest form of human life to me. I don’t wish anyone dead.
Sue suggested that I wish for Guiliani’s body to heal so that perhaps he will understand the plight of all those afflicted by a pandemic he dismisses and denies.
I would add that I wish for mercy for the hundreds, if not thousands of people he may have sickened, even killed, in his mad travels across the country.
So I wish for Guiliani to heal, and I wish the virus teaches him humility rather than arrogance. I wish him peaceful healing in his heart and body.
I hope his illness connects him to the many suffering people while powerful people like him show no feeling for other victims at all.
I wish for the day to come when this is my first response, when my idea of spirituality becomes ingrained and a part of me, not something I must be reminded to go.
I wonder if that gap will close, and I will walk closer until the person I wish to come face to face with the person I am.
(Okay, I wouldn’t mind if it hurts him for a day or two.)
The struggle is real.
Years ago, My spiritual advisor taught me that the spiritual life is always going to be a destination and never a resting point. Never a fait accompli.
My spiritual endeavors have been sorely tested this past few years and never more-so than since COVID became a reality.
I hate that l feel hate and spite for those who traffic in more hate and lies. I am physically, mentally, and spiritually drained and feel like I’m trying to refill a bucket with a big hole in the bottom.
When Trump got covid, I did not want him to die, as I knew it would create too much chaos and we have too much of that already, thanks to him. But as one of my friends said, “I want him to suffer and to be scared, the way so many who’ve had this horrible disease have felt, since he did nothing to help people or make people understand that this is serious”. Alas, he got over it quickly, and went right back to acting like an idiot. Ditto my own MO governor, who did absolutely nothing to get people to take this seriously, and who traveled the state constantly. He and his wife got it, and he did not even have any symptoms. As too often happens, the good people who do not deserve it, suffer, and the awful ones seem impervious to any illness or problems. So, while I try to be a good person, or to at least DO good, as you say, I do not pretend to have reached the place where I can wish well to dreadful people like Trump or all of his enablers. Maybe someday I’ll reach that level, but not yet.
This is so true Melissa: “As too often happens, the good people who do not deserve it, suffer, and the awful ones seem impervious to any illness or problems.” I think I might ‘ve figured out why: God wants to keep the evil selfish ignorant out of heaven as long as possible.
I read one theoligian who wrote our job as spiritual beings is to “bend evil to good.”
(I can’t believe someone was empathic in 911 but loses empathy later. There must be something else going on.)
This is what I needed to read today and will read again. I have had the same thoughts and now I will use Sue’s wisdom to help me form the response I want to have. Your honesty always touches me and this piece is especially meaningful.
Thank you for your wisdom, too.
Hi, Jon, This post is right on. I, too, struggle against wishing someone dead. Instead, I have decided I don’t wish them to die, just be sick enough for awhile to wish they would. Sue is right, but the path is not easy to follow.
God will punish me but I want Rudy Giuliani to suffer for weeks. To say anything less would make me a hypocrite. But he probably won’t. He’ll get the best care. Meanwhile people like the gentle soul who clears my snow every winter and gives me a generous senior discount got Covid at the beginning of February. The virus was here way before March. He didn’t have the luxury of taking off work. When it snows he works. He was deathly sick and still had to plow and shovel. His wife ordered him pizza one snowy day so he could have something to eat because he called her and said he was starving. Unfortunately, he lost his sense of taste and that resulted in him not eating the pizza or probably much else. He was sick for weeks. If he was Trump or Giuliani he could have gotten medication that might have saved him from weeks of misery. What has happened to Giuliani is a question. After 911, I respected him. My only guess is Trump is holding something over his head or he is just as insane as Trump. I do love my country and Giuliani has been undermining our Democracy. I call that treason. Why should or anyone feel sympathy for these people who refuse to wear a mask and take no precautions at all. Meanwhile they continually take up hospital space while our doctors and nurses are literally dying of Covid. Have they no respect for their fellow human beings? I think not.
Thank you for this. I am afraid I need to re-read this and reboot my heart on a regular basis. I don’t want to be the person my internet ego tempts me to be.
Jon…
I don’t wish harm to anyone; those decisions are above my pay grade. However, our country has been given a justice system. I hope it can be equitably applied.
Rudy’s transformation is mystifying because the ex-mayor was a NYC 911 hero. If he has a character weakness, how was it exploited? (Is this another Greek drama?)
If we ask this question of Rudy, we should ask it of other enablers. I don’t wish harm on them either, just an ability to discern reality.
My first thought was this is poetic justice. In Rudy’s case, experiencing a serious illness might prove beneficial. There’s nothing like a scary brush with death to make you reflect on your life. If he gets sick enough maybe he’ll have an epiphany and decide to leave the dark side. Everyone deserves a chance at redemption.
so glad you wrote this…. I struggled back & forth with this all day myself. My fear is that many around Trump who have gotten COVID seemed to have mild cases which further fuels the conspiracy theories. I just settled on, I want him to get ill, to be forced to feel what so many Americans are experiencing, that maybe this will convince some of Trumps followers that the virus is real, that it keeps him out of commission to cause more chaos & spread disinformation. In prayer, I admitted that I wish I was more spiritually fit, but alas I am not.
Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen said Rudy is drunk all the time.
Nuff said.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and struggles, Jon. I have gone thru much of the same process (and did when tRUmp supposedly had it, and the others) I’ve wished that McConnell (who I see as an equally arrogant, deceptive, corrupt and hypocritical man) would face some sort of comeuppance/lesson in humility, but he seems to be skating through unscathed thus far. I try not to hate but that’s hard in the face of people whose policies bring such pain on others. I don’t want to wish anyone dead. (Afterall we all die sometime). I agree entirely with Deb’s comments above. I am reminded of some of Jewish liturgy: on Yom Kippur we say : God does not want to punish the sinner, but rather that the sinner turn from (his) ways and turn towards good. As a somewhat agnostic Jew, I don’t know about God’s intent, if it exists, but I do believe that redemption is possible for some people – if they are capable of empathy and remorse. I don’t think that people like tRUmp and McConnell are capable of that. In your discussion of a spiritual life, I am also reminded once again of the similarity to Merton in this prayer/poem by Rabbi Alvin Fine. It begins:
Birth is a beginning
and death a destination,
and life is a journey….
….We see that victory lies not
At some high point along the way
But in having made the journey
Step by step,
A sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
And life is a journey.