Courage for the Resistance…and the Relationships
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I was a fearful child. And frankly, most of those fears stayed with me into young adulthood. I was scared of…let’s see: Dogs. The dark. Matches (that was a hard one for someone training to be a minister—lots of candle lighting involved). Driving on highways (that was a hard one when I moved to the DC area…it took several years and a lot of early morning practice on the George Washington Parkway).
In fact, I had a whole understanding of myself as Someone Who Was Afraid of Things. A fearful person. Someone without a lot of courage, I guess. Of course, eventually I got wiser than that. You are probably already that wise: you realize that being afraid is in no ways counter to having courage.
Really, most people who act courageously do so full of fear; frankly, if you weren’t afraid, I’m not really sure it would count as courage. For me, that realization came when I decided that I could be near a dog and be afraid and not run away (which, incidentally, isn’t a great choice if you don’t want the dog to chase you). I learned I could stay there and just sit with, and hold the fear. That was the courageous thing for me.
So how do we manage this? How do we find the courage to be with our fear, to face it by walking alongside it, to do the hard things in our lives and in the world?
Because the world seems to require a lot of courage these days, doesn’t it? We are called to work against oppression and injustice all the time, and I know that some of the courage we may be looking for is the courage to respond to the world around us, to go to the march, to shut down the traffic, to resist hate speech, to intervene and de-escalate. Or maybe just the courage to go on, to feel as though there are reasons to bother fighting, rather than hiding away with our heads in the sand. We need a lot of courage these days.
I find that courage is contagious. Consider penguins. Penguins line up, you know, at the edge of a cliff of ice, to jump into the water below and fish. But the thing is, none of the penguins want to be first. They all waddle forward—you can just imagine their little waddles—peering over and pulling back, jostling for position, wondering who will take the dive. Eventually, one of them loses their footing and…swoop! They dive down to the water below. Their penguin friends watch, and wait, and finally see them, surfacing in the water, full of fish. Then suddenly all the penguins want to go, tipping themselves forward to fish together. Sometimes, courage is like that: like penguins, unsure who will be the first to fall, waiting until someone tips over and then…swoop! They find the courage together.
This is what we do for each other, in a community like this one: we inspire each other, we face fears together, we convince each other that we have the power to be courageous. Courage is contagious.
But is courage to resist the only kind of courage there is?
My congregation hasn’t been shy in its criticism of the policies enacted by this US administration, or the values that the administration and some of its supporters espouse, and I don’t regret that. To my mind, that’s not being overly political; that’s continuing our values, including our core value, the idea of the worth of every person.
But how does that value—the worth of every person—come into play when we are fighting for justice…fighting, perhaps, against those we think are creating injustice in the world? It seems to me sometimes that being courageous for the resistance is the easy part. Having the courage to also stay in relationship, to honor our deepest value of inherent worth, is harder…and if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not always sure I want to have that kind of courage.
Does it even take courage? I think so, because I know at least for me, I carry plenty of fear when I think about talking with relatives and friends who believe very differently than I do. I’m afraid I won’t be able to maintain the relationship at all…or that I’ll maintain it, but I’ll do so by betraying my values and not speaking up when they say something I disagree with…or that I’ll try to talk with them and it will all go horribly wrong…or, worst of all, that I won’t want to maintain the relationship, and I’ll decide they aren’t worth the relationship and walk away.
The word courage comes from Latin, by way of Old French, and the word for heart. Hidden in that root may be the key to facing the fears that come with relationships, the courage that is needed to stay connected with all, to be a space where “only love is welcome.” We hold on to those fears with heart.
For me, heart, and courage, are about faith, too. One of the things we say in Ethical Culture specifically is that we don’t find worth in all people (sometimes, indeed, it’s really hard to see it there!) but rather we attribute worth to all people. We believe it’s there, even when we can’t see it.
My colleague Jone Johnson Lewis says it this way:
Here in this community, we value the actions that come from beliefs, more than we value the beliefs. We have no common creed. We have some commitments to act…We say…that we will attribute worth to every person. We admit that we don’t know whether there is such a “thing” as worth, but we will take an action, anyway—attributing worth.
That action, that attribution, is a kind of courage to me.
I’d like to end with a story, one about the football player Colin Kaepernick. I thought he had one kind of courage, the standing up to injustice kind—which he did, and faced harsh consequences for his career. It turns out, though, that Kaepernick also has the other kind of courage, the using your heart as you approach relationships, and seeking to bring out their best.
I found this on Facebook, so I don’t know the author—but I did verify that the story is true:
Why Kaepernick kneels instead of sits:
Do you wanna know how Kaepernick came to the decision to #Kneel #TakeAKnee?
Aug 14, 2016—Colin Kaepernick sat for the national anthem. No one noticed.
Aug 20th, 2016—Colin again sat and again, no one noticed.
Aug 26th, 2016—Colin sat and this time he was met with a level of vitriol unseen against an athlete.
Then on Aug 30th, 2016 Nate Boyer, a former Army Green Beret turned NFL long snapper, penned an open letter to Colin in the Army Times. In it he expressed how Colin’s sitting affected him. Then a strange thing happened. Colin was able to do what most Americans to date have not… He listened.
In his letter Mr. Boyer writes:
“I’m not judging you for standing up for what you believe in. It’s your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes. I’ve never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what you’ve gone through is as ignorant as someone who’s never been in a combat zone telling me they understand what it’s like to go to war. Even though my initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it.”
Mr. Boyer goes on to write “There are already plenty of people fighting fire with fire, and it’s just not helping anyone or anything. So I’m just going to keep listening, with an open mind. I look forward to the day you’re inspired to once again stand during our national anthem. I’ll be standing right there next to you.”
Mr. Boyer showed empathy and understanding…and Mr. Kaepernick reciprocated. Colin invited Nate to San Diego where the two had a 90-minute discussion, and Nate proposed Colin kneel instead of sit.
But why kneel? In a military funeral, after the flag is taken off the casket of the fallen military member, it is smartly folded 13 times and then presented to the parents, spouse or child of the fallen member by a fellow service member while kneeling.
The two decided that kneeling for the flag would symbolize his reverence for those that paid the ultimate sacrifice while still allowing Colin to peacefully protest the injustices he saw.
Empathy, not zealotry under the guise of patriotism, is the only way meaningful discussion can be had.
May we all be so courageous.
More interestingly that all of that, though, Amanda is a country music fan, a mother of two daughters, married to a government lawyer, and an avid enjoyer of coloring books. She uses colored pencils only, because the permanence of markers scares her.
- Courage for the Resistance…and the Relationships - February 1, 2020
- Inhabiting Ourselves (Excerpt) - February 1, 2017
