Mtr Mary Trainor

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we our underlings…*

Dear friend,

So I introduce this Daily Bread with one of the most famous lines from Shakespeare, and even as I do, I am wondering where I will go with it. Me. The person more likely to quote Willie Nelson than William Shakespeare, nonetheless connect immediately with these words from Julius Caesar.

It might help to say right up front that the word “underling” is not in vogue today. Nobody wants to be one. No parent wants that for their child.

Even so, for me this Shakespeare quote pushed its way to the surface from an old file drawer in my brain—in response to a Daily Office reading for October 22.

While at first Cassius’ words may seem limiting, harsh, More, they feeI blaming, accusatory, projecting shortcomings onto us all. In actuality I now fee that they offer us agency, control in the face of uncontrollable events.

Similarly, Ecclesiasticus makes clear that we have choice, at once a huge gift and at times a heavy responsibility.

From the scripture we read that “it was [God] who created humankind in the beginning, and…left them in the power of their own free will.” I think that is worth repeating:

It was  [God] who created humankind in the beginning, and … left them in the power of their own free will.***

I think most of us want to stay out of “trouble.” Get to work on time. Pay our taxes. And so on. This was important even in childhood.

My brother and I, as children, were the best of friends. Even so, in our early days we had many altercations in the backseat of a 1946 Ford coupe. A friendly exchange quickly turned to quarreling, followed by a parental voice from the front seat: ‘You kids stop that right now.” What followed from us was “s/he started it.” The parental voice said, “I don’t  care.”

For Jim and me, it mattered very much who “started” it. I suppose I thought if I could convince people that he started it, it was tantamount to absolution. I could not be held responsible for aggression if, in fact, I was merely defending myself.

But our parents insisted we both bore the responsibility for our own bad decisions. We don’t have control over what comes at us. We do have choice over our responses. That is where our God-given strength lies.

Mtr Mary