I’ve been thinking about opinions, lately. I’ve noticed how time has altered many of my own.

If we have nothing else in life, we have opinions, hundreds if not thousands of them. Sharing our opinions is one of the ways that we affiliate with one another, get fresh perspectives, gain a feeling of the personality we may be dealing with, or just catching up.   Take a dinner party; there will be typically more opinions expressed around the table than there is food on it. If you are unfortunate, you will have been seated next to a person who is opinionated. Such people don’t just have opinions, they have answers. They have answers for questions you’ve never asked or even more for some you’ve never even considered. They never entertain questions of their own that indicate they have any doubts. I’ve found such people possess the remarkable ability to hold court nonstop while showing no physical signs that indicate they have ever taken a breath.

Newspapers and magazines welcome our opinions. They thrive on them. The press sets aside space for readers to text their opinions on just about anything. Opinions are also heard on the air and seen on TV regularly. Politics is particularly popular in opinion pieces. Since politics occupy such a significant place in our common lives, it’s a subject about which almost everyone has an opinion and, I would add, for at least the average citizen like me, marginal knowledge of how it all works.

Of the many blessings of American democracy, one is that we are not expected to actually know anything about the opinions we express, and particularly the issues where politics and religion are concerned. Has not folk wisdom warned us regularly not to discuss religion or politics in polite society? It has always been regarded as perilous terrain: abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Years ago, I remember a couple came to my office seeking help for their marriage. Their complaint: All we can talk about any more is religion and politics. Although I remained cautiously hopeful, their complaint did not suggest an encouraging prognosis for a happy reconciliation.

I have been writing essays since 2002. I have written op-ed pieces in righteous anger only later to cringe when some new data appeared which made it clear to me that I had only a minimal grasp of the complexities expressed in my rant; I’d gone off half-cocked. I must confess there is a kind of fleeting intoxication that occurs, especially if the opinion – at least while I’m expressing it – is as right as rain. The need to be right can be hazardous to our health.

The kind of opinions being expressed can often be identified by the tone and the volume by which they are delivered. Opinions that share general observations are delivered in well-modulated tones that are collegial and inviting. If the opinions being shared are in the service of correcting what somebody sees as my misguided opinion, or trying in some way to win a point, the volume steadily rises while the tone loses any lyrical quality and grows increasingly dissonant.  

Anyone who has raised children, gone through their adolescent years and survived to tell the story, knows that being right has limited value in maintaining a happy family. This truism has found expression in the playful quip: Would you rather be right or stay married? The point here is that there are some things that are critical for our ongoing happiness and being right is rarely one of them.

Not long ago among the letters to the editors in the Star Democrat, there appeared a heated exchange of opinions on whether trickle-down economics works. For a few days, letters shot back and forth as each delivered his opinion with the measured authority and profound conviction. One letter explained that the policy was a success during the Regan era, while marshaling facts and figures to prove it. Another opinion piece quoted facts and figures that demonstrated how it had clearly not succeeded. Who knows the truth of the matter? We are so often left only with opinions, some interesting, some tedious, each defended fiercely, eloquently documented, and at the end of the day, hardly any are reconcilable.

It is both a blessing and a curse in how differently we can see the same things.

I do not propose that any of us should refrain from expressing opinions.  I do suggest that the wise treat their opinions tentatively, the way I once plotted courses during my sailing days. In determining the course, I chose to follow. I’d remain alert to any changes in the atmosphere that may indicate that maintaining my present course will be hazardous. In exchanging opinions without creating a storm and for safe sailing, Miss Manners and Bowditch’s, American Practical Navigator, are a must read.

Opinions, should have an element of flexibility and never be doggedly clung to as if they are eternal. Change is at the heart of all existence.

An old tale tells of the student who went to his meditation teacher and said, “My meditation is horrible! I feel distracted; I can’t focus, I’m constantly falling asleep. It’s just horrible!” “It will pass,” the teacher said. A week later, the student came back to his teacher. “My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so focused, so peaceful!” “It will pass,” the teacher replied.

Time and experience, if our minds remain pliable, are supposed to change our opinions and if not, at least modify them for no other reason that everything is changing. An inability to change them suggests a kind of psycho-spiritual paralysis, or worse still, that rigor mortis has finally set in. American poet, James Russel Lowell, said of such intransigent folk: “The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.”

It’s really ok to change our minds.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist.  A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

Confucius, the story goes, once dreamt he was visiting the damned who’d been consigned to Hell. But Hell was a beautiful banquet room, with all the damned sitting around a table piled high with delectable foods. These poor souls were allowed to eat anything they liked, but they had to use chopsticks, and the chopsticks were five-feet long. The damned were starving, staring despondently at the uneaten food before them knowing that even with all eternity in which to solve the problem, it could not be done.

Then, Confucius was taken to Heaven to see those accommodations. It was an identical banquet hall, with a table full of delicious food. The people seated around the table, however, were happy and well fed, but they, too, had to obey the same rule. The food could only be eaten with chopsticks that are five-feet long. The blest were blessed because they had learned to use the same chopsticks, not to feed themselves, but to feed one another.

For many years we have been close friends with two Roman Catholic missionaries. They are, a nun and priest, who belong to a missionary order known as the Maryknolls. They have traveled extensively serving the needs of many disenfranchised people in the third world. They were witnesses to the countries living with poverty and political oppression. The level of deprivation in which many inhabitants in those countries lived was heart rending.

Our friends would tell us story after story about how the indigenous people invited them into their squalid shacks to offer them shelter, food and water, all of which the natives had little to spare. But it was how they offered hospitality that was so moving. They gave no evidence that they were doing this begrudgingly and even though they gave from their scarcity, you’d never know it. They gave willingly and with lots of warmth and laughter. My missionary friends had repeatedly been the recipients of one of the most ancient virtues in the history of the human race, the virtue of hospitality. As the poor extended their hospitality to their guests, it was apparent they were having fun doing it. It’s an odd thing that by surrendering what little they had, the act of giving away satisfied some primal need. It’s a timeless truth, but it seems that it’s harder for some privileged individuals to experience this joy in giving. Many seem mostly invested in protecting their assets and making sure they increase.

Jesus spoke about the mire that the wealthy and privileged get caught in: “Again I say to you it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Does amassing great wealth necessarily poison the soul of its beneficiary? It depends on the character of the beneficiary. I do think that there are millionaire men and women of character who see their wealth an opportunity to do for others, no, maybe even more than that; they see their wealth as an obligation to do for others. I suspect the character of the successful millionaire is more the issue than the amount of the wealth he or she has accrued. I would imagine Warren Buffet, Bill and Melinda Gates, would probably be as gracious if they had only little as they are with plenty.

I find Confucius’ Heaven and Hell allegory instructive, specifically in how it speaks to question of how we regard our responsibility to others. In the allegory, I notice Hell is not defined by how much food is available for its inhabitants, or by how little; it’s defined by the way inhabitants in each realm think of and use the resources they have in relationship to each other. In Hell, the residents are concerned mostly about how to feed themselves with no apparent interest in the needs of any others around the table. In Heaven, everyone is engaged in taking care of each other and not only are they well fed, they are happy.

Is it then, more blessed to give than to receive? Our pastor, just before the offertory, invites us to say those words with him. Most everyone joins in, but who knows who may feel that way. It’s hard to tell how anyone deals with such paradoxical issues from the outside looking in, especially where one’s economic worth is one the table. Putting money where the mouth is, has always been be a defining issue of character.

Apparently, in Biblical times, in Damascus and in Jerusalem, there were gates known as The Eye of the Needle. Because they had narrow passages and the rocky paths, getting a camel through the portals loaded with goods was challenging, if not impossible.

One interpretation of the Jesus saying is that the merchant would have to unload all the goods first for the camel to make passage to the other side of the gate. Would that mean that if the man was able to get the unencumbered camel through the gate, on the other side could he then reload the camel with the goods, like at the airport when we get our carryon back after going through security?

Personally, I believe that Jesus was playing hardball on this one. I also say that because as almost everyone knows, you may leave what’s left of your bundle to the kids but there’s no way you’re taking any of it with you.

I do not know if this is a fact, but I’ve wondered whether as we get older, we’re more aware that we’re not taking anything where we’re going and so we become more charitable with our resources than we might have been in our youth. There’s an optimum time in life when shedding our acquisitions feels even better than the excitement we had when we first acquired them.

“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good to all peoples,” as Paul writes in Galatians.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist.  A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.