the middleman

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Several days and several posts ago, I was talking with Bill, an abiding Catholic (relax, I'm not going off on another Vatican rant) who said that he viewed the Vatican-sanctioned sex abuses as comparatively small potatoes.

Bill's concern, as a Catholic, was his relation with God. "I cut out the middleman," he said.

I wasn't talking to Bill as a means of asserting my point of view but rather as a means of learning his. As a result, I didn't push or bully or point out what I imagined might be holes in his position. I didn't ask him, for example, "Do you still go to church?" ... a question, which, in retrospect, I wish I had.

But the line stuck with me: "I cut out the middleman."

Conversationally, the line rings deliciously, self-assertively true. It has a rabble-rousing desire woven into it ... cut out the middleman ... that'll show the greedy bastards ... bastards who help to raise the prices of Rice Krispies, gasoline, automobiles, tooth paste, electricity, banking, snow plowing, shoe laces, sporting gear, clothing, air fares, stocks ... the list is almost endless. There's the product then the steps it takes to get to the market in which I buy it ... the steps that demand payment for services rendered ... the middlemen. How delicious it might be to buy a designer-label polo shirt for the $2 it costs to produce in Thailand instead of the $50 a consumer might pay at Bloomingdale's.

Cut out the middleman. Yes, I'll take some of that!

But middlemen are as tenacious about their income as anyone else and will do their best to maintain the paying status they have achieved. The middlemen are not pushovers.

In spiritual life, things can be much the same. Whether honest or dishonest, spiritual institutions are the middlemen between the constituent and his or her deepest desire. Second-rate institutions refuse to relinquish their 'essential' middleman role. First-rate institutions recognize and even emphasize their tentative roles.

The constituent, of course, might like to cut out the middleman, whether at Bloomingdale's or in his preferred temple, but the fact of the matter is that he needs a middleman in order to do away with a well-nurtured and tenacious middleman within. Hopefully, the spiritual persuasion of the middleman he chooses will have his best interests at heart and push him further towards rather than further away from a world full of middlemen.

And who are the middlemen who keep a man or woman from their fondest desire? Aren't they just the judgments and beliefs and emotional caterwauling and bliss-hungry appetites that brought the constituent to seek out a different and perhaps more healthy middleman in the first place?

Spiritual students who claim to be cutting out the middleman by eschewing all middlemen are whistling past the graveyard. It may sound good, but like as not, there is no 'there' there -- no substance, no experienced understanding ... just hopeful posturing.

Yes, that's right -- I am my own most greedy middleman. I may dance and sing from dawn until dusk about "cutting out the middleman," but the fact of the matter is that no one is stopping me from achieving my heart's desire except me. The fact that I seek out a spiritual institution to act as my middleman -- to get a convincing handle on the middleman I nourish at every turn -- is testimony to how difficult the task may be. I could use some help getting rid of this middleman and what is the first human and yet nutty thing I do? I go find another middleman. Talk is cheap and "getting rid of the middleman" may sound good over a glass of beer, but it's a tough nut when it's up close and personal. I could use some help.

Second-string spiritual middlemen are tenacious. They hold on tight and inform the constituent in a hundred ways, "your heart's desire is unattainable without me." And many constituents, having forgotten their heart's desire, collude in this presentation. First-stringers don't put up with this guff. OK, they seem to say, I'll play the tentative middleman, but don't expect me to believe it.

Expose trolls grab their pitchforks and poke holes in the notion of middlemen. Their observations are often true as far as they go, but they leave out any credible, concrete means of attaining the heart's desire. This is understandable because any credible, concrete means invariably creates the world of the middleman, a world of fabrications and fabulousness and potential corruption. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Maybe things just boil down to dumb luck or the passage of time. Find a middleman to help evict the middleman within and then ... well, then, perhaps, the best anyone can do is to keep going and cross their fingers.

Does any of it help?

Say "yes" and risk being credibly branded as a liar.

Say "no" and risk being credibly branded as a liar.

The only thing to do is to find out.
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