Setting Ego aside

I am trying to remember how it was I went to all the trouble to borrow Honor Moore: The Bishop’s Daughter. The local Rodney library system didn’t have it, so it had to be ordered on Interloan, which cost me $5.00. Honor Moore is the daughter of Paul Moore, who was the Episcopalian (Anglican) Bishop of New York. She is still locked in battle with her father, who died in 2003 – and also with her mother who died of colon cancer – and this book is a tedious tour around most of her major dysfunctions.

Both Paul Moore and his wife Jenny were products of privilege and great wealth. Paul served in the US Marines and came home a World War II hero, with a bullet hole right through his chest and out the back. It had my name on it, but I guess they must have spelled it wrong. Anglo-Catholic, tall and handsome, all the right connections... it was inevitable that Paul Moore would romp up the hierarchical ladder in the church. He also fathered some nine children with Jenny – and Honor, who writes this book, is the first.

Father Moore got stuck into innovative inner-city ministry, in Newark, in Indianapolis, in Washington, and New York. This is muscular theology, and Fr/Bishop Paul could certainly raise the funds. It’s all very admirable, but you know all the time that none of this tribe will ever lack for a dime. They can always retreat to their mountain pad in the Adirondacks. Mother Jenny was sliding seriously downhill... but hell! it’s a jungle out there. I’m sure I don’t know how you remain sane when the babies keep coming, and your husband is poncing around in medieval gear accompanied by choir and organ and acolytes. Honor, our writer, flees the family nest to live in New York as a poet, dramatist, and whatnot. So we have drugs, dedicated promiscuity, pregnancy and abortion, regular visits to the therapist... You do have to wonder about these Manhattan therapists.

Then it turns out that Paul the Bishop, all along, indeed right from his days in the Marines, has had another life as homosexual. Not bad when you’ve fathered nine kids. At this point, gathering together all my renowned willingness to understand and appreciate human difference, I start to struggle with the dependence of these people on image and narcissism, pills, therapy, sexual adventure, relentless combat with each other and with their massive cosseted highly expensive Egos. I suppose Honor’s written reflections on all this are lucid to her. They are largely incomprehensible to me. Get a life, is what I say.

Those years, the 1960s and 70s onwards, were when we discovered and carefully nurtured the Ego. I’m OK, You’re OK. Millions of westerners went looking for themselves. How I feel became the measure of everything. That is what this book depicts. It also depicts the sad, chronic juvenilism of people who have never grasped that Ego is what really has to go. Love and freedom tend to be in proportion to the receding of the voracious demanding Ego. Letting it go is a product of contemplative prayer. And what is left? The person God has always seen and known and loved.