My how you've grown!

Religious fanaticism, beheadings, the killing of all the men, women and children in a single village, religious zealots trying to take over cities, large scale retaliation by the authorities, regime change and war. Sound like I've been watching CNN or the BBC news. The truth is for the last several weeks I've had my head buried in the early sixteenth century, puzzling over when the good of a pluralistic, tolerant society began to take hold. I have found the seeds of it planted then. But, in the process, studying the turmoil of European society 500 years ago, it's easy to draw the conclusion that not much has changed. Has humanity grown up, changed for the better, become more mature in these 500 years? Have we learned anything at all? What a silly question! Of course we have. We know so much more. We can do so much more. We can fix so many more broken things. Yet, the human capacity for doing really awful things seems to have changed little.
To grow up is to lose our innocence. The word innocent comes from the Latin innocentia, literally "not harming" (based on nocere "injure"). It  usually means something like lack of guile or corruption, or purity. Babies are born innocent. Young children often have an innocence about them, we say. In much philosophy and theology, east and west, the "natural state" is the state of innocence. Not all philosophers have thought that, to be sure—some have the natural state as totally depraved, or a war of all against all. But if the natural state is that of the newborn, then it's hard to find depravity and war there. It is perhaps the beauty and innocence of the newborn that draws us toward it. Social media are littered with pictures and videos of big eyed puppies, cute kittens and baby elephants. New born innocence makes us feel good. And that's not a bad thing when you turn to look at Facebook puppies after watching the news of the latest human violent outburst.
But, in some sense, to grow up is to lose the innocence of the child, to see things more clearly, to realize that all is not sweetness and light, to become more realistic, to encounter evil, and to be more pragmatic about possibilities for good. Childish innocence in an adult is seen as naivety. And so we let go of innocence, for who wants to be told, "You're so naive!"
There is a third way (there is always a third way!). It is to find that natural quality of innocence in the face of the complexities and harshness of life. It is not to close the mind to the the harsh realities of violence and harm, but it is to find innocence in the "adult" world—innocence in it's original sense of "not harming," "not causing injury." To find innocence in the midst of entanglements is to realize what is ours to affect and what is not.
One of the dangers for sensitive souls in our 24/7 global news world is to take on board the problems of the whole world—problems that you didn't cause and problems that you can't fix. It can overwhelm the spirit, crush the soul, and burden the mind. To find innocence is not to pretend the "news" is unreal, but to allow it to pass by. If you pray, to offer it to G-d—but not in the prayers of fretful worrying. Rather the prayer of holding in the light in the cloud of unknowing.
To return to the natural way of inocere, is to know which are the problems to find answers to, and which to leave alone. The natural way of inocere is to seek the good for all, and the good in all, to refuse to cause harm, as your small part on our small planet.
If you can manage that you may well find someone say of you, "My how you've grown!"
+Ab. Andy