Who does your heart break for?
Last month I had the joy of participating in the first Life on Fire un-conference (https://www.facebook.com/LifeOnFireTribe).
I was drawn to the gathering by the questions being asked, as well as by the beloveds who were convening us.
• Do you want to transform the world into the beloved community?
• Do you want to live a committed life that takes you to third places, abandoned places, and secular places?
• Do you believe in radical integrity?
• Do you want to live as if you are who you say you are?
• Do you know who your heart breaks for?
Do you know who your heart breaks for?
I know who my heart breaks for. My heart breaks for the neighbor who has nothing and the neighbor who lives in fear that what he has will be taken from him.
My heart breaks for the creatures of the disappearing wetlands and for the communities destroyed because the wetlands are no longer there to protect them.
My heart breaks for the transgender woman who has no shelter to accept her in New Orleans as a woman “because she hasn’t had the operation yet” and for the shelter director whose compassion has been destroyed by the unceasing need that shows up on her doorstep every day.
My heart breaks for everyone dehumanized and treated as less than by the evil of oppression, and for those so blinded by their own hate that they do not realize they have given up their own humanity in the process of denying it to others.
Who does your heart break for, beloveds?
When we find what breaks our hearts open, we can begin to live with a sense of purpose, with a mission, as a compassionate community of faith.
The ABCs of Extortion
A.
Thucydides–that Greek
telling his story, human
doings with nary
a nod to the gods–said
the powerful extort
what they can;
the weak pay
what they must.
True enough to
make a bon mot.
The powerful
take,
the weak
give.
Person to person;
city to state; and
the empires
the worse for it.
B.
Nothing golden
in that rule. More
murder and steel,
more grab and run.
More of that little
story, David and his
giant, how the wry
win, by god, by
ignoring rules.
C.
Kant–that German
naming his absolutes
with nary a nod to gods–
said what I do
I must do
as if I give
that freedom to
everyone.
No treating others
as means
to an end
but the end
themselves.
And we’re golden.
(Buy that, David?
Buy that, Goliath?)
Together
Beloveds, I believe that we are all in this together – and together, we can shift a culture that is dehumanizing us all –
- A culture that prioritizes paper with imaginary value over oxygen, clean water, livable communities,
- A culture that tells some of us we are better than others, tells some of us we are inferior,
- A dominant culture that sacrifices the many for the few and lays the blame for the destruction squarely upon those who are being destroyed…
- A dominant culture that resists even being named, but which much be named to be changed…
Singer activist Ani DiFranco sang in 1995 (Not a Pretty Girl)
I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I’ve got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
Sometimes I am an angry white woman. And sometimes, I am afraid. I am angry that children are not eating this week because human beings elected to govern the resources of this nation have decided that ideology is more important than people. I am afraid of how much harm is being done, how many lives without safety nets are crashing to the ground even as I write these words today.
And always, always, I am grateful to be a part of a faith on fire – on fire for love, mercy, and justice, a faith that walks the talk, not perfectly, but with a broken open heart of commitment. A faith that says it is okay to be angry and afraid and keep going, keep going… beloveds, let us turn toward each other in this vulnerable moment in our nation’s history.
Let us change the story together.
America…Where Do We Begin?
I can’t sleep. Again. Tonight I’m thinking about how, in the city where I live, the police shot and killed a 34-year-old unarmed woman today, with her 1-year-old in the back seat of her 2-door sedan. I’m thinking about how I’ve driven those very streets, gotten stuck in tourist traffic on those avenues, turned around with frustration and exasperation at those barricades. I don’t know what will be revealed in the days ahead about this particular person and what she was hypothetically going through, but we’ll never know for certain, will we? She was killed, in her car, with her daughter in the back seat.
As usual, I appreciate Petula Dvorak’s quick and thoughtful column on the craziness in this world. I noted one commenter in particular on this column who observed that “If she [the driver] had been a moose, or a bear, they would have used a tranquilizer dart.” Yep. We are so threatened by one another, these days, that we take each other out first, ask questions later, questions that are mostly unanswerable when the subject in question has been taken out of the equation, out of any possible conversation.
What is going on in our country? Our elected leaders can’t pass a budget, can’t resolve a conflict that is negatively impacting thousands, if not millions, of lives. But when the police “successfully” manage to work together to kill a woman in a car without first stopping her and assessing her in any way, this is celebrated. “Police said the incident showed the success of the huge security apparatus that Washington has built since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ‘The security perimeters worked’ at both the White House and the Capitol, Lanier said. ‘They did exactly what they were supposed to do.'”
Guantanamo Bay prisoners
They did? This is exactly what was supposed to happen? America, I say, (recognizing that by that moniker I mean the United States of America, in a Ginsberg way, not all of North America, not Central or South America. I can speak only for this country, the one in which I was born, my parents were born, and my grandparents were born, including my 90-year-old grandmother who laments that this is a country she “used to be proud of.”) America: is this who we are, now? A country which refuses to pay our bills because we don’t want to have to provide health care to our citizens, a country which shoots people first and asks why they went “off-the-rails” later—when it’s long past too late to do anything about it, a country which imprisons people indefinitely who have never been convicted of anything (Guantanamo Bay, remember? Anyone?)?
How did we get to this point? Was it always this way, or has there truly been a shift in our country? Do people like me (thirtysomething, middle-class, white, overly-educated, engaged-citizen but busy-with-my-own-life) feel a sense of ownership of “our” country anymore, or do we mostly tune it out? If we did want to do something about the violence in our country today, where would we begin? If we wanted to create some space for healing, where do we begin? Where do we begin?
I have no idea what the police officer who shot the person who may indeed have been Miriam Carey is feeling tonight. But I wonder if he or she isn’t feeling some remorse. Was it really necessary to shoot-to-kill? Maybe that’s where we could all start: some remorse. Some wondering if there isn’t a better way. A better way than scoffing or sarcasm or throwing up our hands in disgust (yes, I too watched this week’s popular Jon Stewart clip critiquing the GOP Shutdown, and I laughed. But afterwards, honestly, I felt a little…bored. I mean, hasn’t Stewart been doing various versions of this same routine for years now? How long can we keep scoffing at each other and have it be entertaining?).
There have got to be some other ways. I don’t yet know what they are. But as I try again to get some sleep, I’m going to conjure up Jill Bolte Taylor’s hands lifted up into the air in the TED talk that I watched tonight while doing the dishes. I was compelled by the feeling in her voice to set down the dishes midway, turn off the water, and come over to my computer and watch her—speaking, feeling, expressing, hoping…that her experience, her vision might impact the world. Her experience was an experience of our genuine interconnectedness. Her experience affirms for me what keeps me awake tonight: it does impact me, and it should impact me, that there are people being held as prisoners by my country without being tried, and that other citizens of my country are force-feeding them because they are on a hunger strike to demand their rights. It does impact me that a woman my age-ish, with a daughter the age of my daughter, perhaps did not receive the attention or care that she should have and, thus, lost control of herself in the nation’s capitol and was shot to death in her car.
Jill Bolte Taylor: “We have the power to choose, moment-by-moment, who and how we want to be in the world. …I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”
Let peace begin with me. Let lament begin with me. Let a refusal to rush-to-blame begin with me. Let the practice of non-reactivity begin with me. Let new ways of being, of engaging, of listening, of questioning, of reacting, of feeling, of persisting, begin with all of us. Let us reach out and ask one another what we need in our lives, if we need help, how we can help. Let us assume not that everyone we know is well, but that everyone we know is struggling, struggling deeply, with something. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Whoever said this, whenever it was said, it echoes through the ages with truth. Perhaps this truth is one place we can start when we wake up tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, to a new day.
Swimming in the Christian Waters (or: Beware, You May be a Humanist)
Let’s say you find yourself living in, oh, let’s say the United States. It’s a country where something on the order of seventy-five percent of the population claims to be Christian. Let’s say you don’t believe in any other religion, either: you aren’t Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Baha’i, or any other of the myriad religions brought to the US by immigration or popular books. Perhaps you were even raised Christian. What do you do? How do you get through the year, filled as it is with Christian holidays and tsunamis of piety every time there’s another mass shooting or terrorist act?
Then there is the eternal question: how do you communicate with co-workers and–horror of horrors–the family at Thanksgiving?
I think there are five options:
Convert
Pretend
Reinterpret
Admit you don’t believe but allow for doubt
Resist
Conversion is your easiest course. If it’s an option, go for it. Then you won’t bristle at Federal holidays built around a particular religion. You won’t roll your eyes at each proclamation of every politician concerning her or his Christianity. Convert. It makes swimming in the US waters warm and clear.
Conscience won’t let you do that? Then try pretending. Just tell grandma and Aunt Betty Lou that you love the new pope and you’ve been planning to go back, really you have. Any day now . . .
Conscience won’t let you pretend? Reinterpret. Get yourself to the nearest bookstore (NOT a Christian one) and find writers such as John Shelby Spong, Cynthia Bourgeault, Brian McLaren, and a whole–excuse the pun–host of others. These writers swim in the Christian tradition, yet reinterpret the old metaphors. For many people this is a comfortably place. After all, you can still tell your mom that you’re Christian. And the denizens of Washington, DC won’t get on your nerves quite as badly.
Then there are those who just can’t believe in the whole bloody business anymore. What then? Face it: you’re probably a humanist. You have two options. The first is admitting you don’t believe but allowing for doubt. After all, you probably don’t know how particle accelerators really work either, so it appears that the human brain doesn’t comprehend everything. You’re agnostic! When Uncle Jim mentions how atheists are ruining the country, you can go “um” and then try to change the subject.
If all else fails, resist. I don’t recommend this final option, unless you just feel that you have to do it in order to be true to your conscience. Resistance is perhaps not futile, but it is uncomfortable. You will be joining the beleaguered folks who sue the state of Texas (maybe even Rhode Island) for its latest enormity. You won’t win any popularity contests (and you won’t be elected President). Perhaps Aunt Betty won’t even invite you over for apple pie.
But, hey, the benighted ones hated Jesus too, didn’t they?
The waters of America. Not so easy to swim in for some of us. Oh, and there’s a turning leaf. Almost time for that “controversy” over Halloween. And then a snowflake will bring us a whole new chapter of the War on Christmas . . . . Keep swimming!
Ideology
The government has come screeching to a halt because Speaker Boehner, under pressure from the Tea Party Republicans, will not allow the House to simply vote up or down on a continuing resolution to fund the government. (Since having an actual budget has bizarrely gone the way of the politically impossible.) Unless the Democrats agree to undo the Affordable Care Act, which has passed the House and Senate, and been affirmed as constitutional by the Supreme Court, not to mention the American people who re-elected Obama by a significant margin knowing that the ACA was an important part of his platform—unless they undo what has already been done and throw in a random selection of Stuff Republicans Want, then they will not vote to fund the government.
It boggles my mind, and only becomes explainable when you recognize that these folks are not only playing for political gain (Look! I’m important! I talked for the better part of a day about things like “Green Eggs and Ham”!), they are operating out of an ideology that declares that by definition, less government is better. If less government is better, then no government must be great. Especially since they get to keep their paychecks for no governing. At the center of their ideology is the conviction that each of us is in this life for ourselves, and that the best thing our neighbors can do is get out of our way.
Now, the temptation is always there to declare those with whom you disagree to be ideologues, while you, yourself, are free from prejudice. But the fact is that each of us is operating out of our own ideology. Just in case you were wondering, here’s a bit of mine:
- We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. Not one of us can get through this life entirely on our own power, and we shouldn’t even try. Life is better when we care for one another, when we pool our resources so that we can accomplish things that no one of us could do alone, when those who have much carry a sense of obligation toward those who have little.
- Facts are not negotiable. People can, and should, have a wide and creative variety of ideas about how we should address any given fact, but they are not entitled to just make stuff up. Life works better if you make choices based on reality, rather than what you think reality should be. This means that putting significant effort into gathering the facts about any given situation is almost certainly worth it. This applies to climate change, abuse of Medicare, the effects of immigration, everything. Science is a methodology for finding things out. It produces knowledge. It is not optional.
- No one person, group, religion or nation is really that exceptional. We all matter. We all have different gifts and challenges. And if you think that you or your group or your religion or your nation is uniquely wonderful you are likely to miss out on the great things that others have figured out. Really, why not look around and see who has the most effective, cost-efficient health care system and try to create something like that? Why not look and see where education is working the best in the world and see what we might learn from them? Sure, be proud of who you are, but not to the exclusion of learning from others who have just as much reason to be proud of themselves, and maybe more.
- We are all connected. That is a theological statement. It is also a fact. Every choice you make affects someone else. We share one planet, we breathe one atmosphere. There is no such thing as an individual outside the context of that person’s life, and we forget this at our peril.
OK, call me prejudiced, but I’m pretty well convinced that a government with a commitment to my own personal ideology would be off to a pretty good start. But I’d be more than happy to hear what kind of ideology you’d like as the basis for our government. Plenty of room in the comments section below.
Do You Remember When?
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The whole time between Thanksgiving and Kwanzaa is filled with days of remembrance.
In the weeks around the winter solstice those of us in the Northern Hemisphere remind ourselves that we live in a universe where light will push aside the dark, where seedlings will sprout after their long cold sleep, where hope springs into the world unexpectedly, unlooked-for. It is a season of gathering for many, and a season of memories.
Sustainable Empathy
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Traveling home at the end of a really hot day, I got to Grand Central Terminal and made my way down to the 7 train like I always do. There was obviously a problem with the train because the platform was packed solid with commuters waiting, tight like sardines, sweating in the intense heat.
I could barely get onto the platform there were so many people. I asked around and nobody knew what was going on and there were no announcements forthcoming and no station agents in sight. So we all just waited uncomfortably, absorbed in our smartphones.
On the Mend: Brokenness and Healing
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A friend of mine slipped on the ice and broke her ankle one winter and was laid up for weeks and weeks. As I expressed my sympathy for her misfortune and suffering, a surprising phrase slipped out of my mouth. I said to her, “I didn’t realize you were breakable!”
But of course, we all are: our breakability comes with being human. Even the strong ones among us—the ones who, like my friend, are always there taking care of others—even the strong ones are breakable.
Vulnerability and Compassion
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The pragmatist philosopher-activist Jane Addams in her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), examined the great gap that she believed was then opening up between “old” and “new” ways of thinking about poverty.
Addams gave witness to the moral compassion within what she called “the neighborhood mind.” She attributed this compassion, in part, to the recognition among the poor of their common material precariousness.
