Hating Hateful Haters
Last week, advertisements began appearing at commuter train stations in the county where I live that, it would seem, blame all of Islam for the actions of violent extremists who are Muslim. Debate over the ads here in Westchester, including in the congregation I serve as minister, has centered on the question of “hate speech.” Similar debate is happening elsewhere around other current events as well, including senseless violence against our Sikh siblings, the denial of equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, and the persistence of misogyny in our political arena.
What, we’re asking ourselves, is “hate speech,” and what is the proper response of moral, loving, spiritual people to it?
I should be clear at the outset that I am not seeking a legal definition of hate or hate speech. Im not a lawyer or a judge. Rather, I am asking for a spiritual definition of it. Whether something is right or wrong has little do do with whether it is legal. (This is, interestingly, something on which the religious right and the religious left can agree–even if we differ on what is right and what is wrong.) What is acceptable in a compassionate society is a smaller set of things than what is not punishable by law.
To me, demonizing an entire group for the actions of a few is the epitome of hate speech. The impulse that leads some to vilify all of Islam because there are Muslim terrorists who justify their actions with a misunderstanding of their religion is the same impulse that makes communities protest the building of mosques and deny some among us their freedom of religion. The more we accept dehumanization, stereotypes and lies about groups of people, the more likely we are to accept violence against them–or people who look like the stereotypical images we have of them stored in our narrow minds.
Recent public debate about rape is another example of speech that, frankly, should be unacceptable to all people who seek to shape our society in an image of love and compassion. If we deem it acceptable for anyone to create a category of “legitimate rape,” we are implicitly condoning a culture in which survivors of sexual violence are stigmatized, doubted, and shamed. Women who live in fear of violence should not be verbally assaulted by those seeking to make political points with their “base.”
Finally, if we use our freedom of speech to block another from having the same rights we enjoy, have we not crossed a line that no religion should accept? I believe so. My impending marriage here in New York has no impact on your relationship or relationships with your past, current and future partners. Don’t blame me for the moral decay of our society–blame our increasing tolerance for hate. Take the twig out of your eye before you reach for the speck in mine.
Unitarian Universalist congregations covenant to affirm and promote, among other things, a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” in my faith, freedom comes with responsibility. It should be so in our society as well.
Just because certain speech is protected by the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution does not make all speech responsible speech.
If you’d like to engage in a meaningful dialogue about Jewish-Muslim relations with respect to Israel and Palestine, you’re not going to get there by calling everyone who disagrees with you a terrorist.
If you’re trying to instruct your followers on the specific ways taught by your faith to lead a moral life, you don’t need to violate my freedom of religion or make me a second-class citizen to do so.
If you’d like to open a dialogue on the sanctity of life, denigrating the lives of women isn’t an appropriate place to begin.
Those of us who believe in compassion, equality and love cannot remain silent in the face of such unacceptable hate. Our goal should not be to silence the haters, but rather to drown out their hate with our love. Where ten people show up to call a group of people nasty names, a hundred others should be present with a message of love and acceptance. Little by little, those who choose to hate will get the message.
All’s Fair
Here in Minnesota, where I live, the State Fair is the main thing going on. It upstages even the dreaded back-to-school days which are also dominant in hearts and minds.
In other places where I have lived, State Fairs are about as central to life as, say, roller coasters, or ferret ownership, or balloon rides. That is to say, some people like it enough to spend time seeking it out, most people don’t, and life goes on swimmingly. That’s not the way it is in Minnesota.
I don’t know why it is, but it would never occur to me, or anyone I know, to miss our state fair in Minnesota. Why? We spend too much money, eat too many calories, stand in too many lines. For those of us who are urban, we see animals that we have no interest in seeing the rest of the year, ogle farm machinery we will never in our lifetimes use, and stare at strange things ranging from seed art to butterheads—Princess Kay of the Milky Way, carved live out of butter as she shivers in a refrigerator in her dress and tiara.
And we get so excited about it! I’ve already been twice, and plan to go back at least once more, with friends who like to see and do different parts of the fair. I begin looking forward to it in early August, and begin to plot out trips, buying early tickets to save a few bucks. I like to go once when the fair is just opening in the morning, primarily to see the barns and animals. I go once during the afternoon, to go to the Midway and ride some rides, play a little whack-a-mole, try to win a useless prize with skeeball tickets. And then I like to go once at night to enjoy some kind of concert. This year it was Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples—pure heaven!
Truthfully, I think that looking forward to the fair is about as much fun as going. As the nights get colder and the sky is dark later in the morning, as the back to school sales crank up into full swing, the fair gives us something to think about besides the end of summer. How can you dread the end of August when you get to eat a pickle on a stick? How can September be a bad thing when it comes in with seed art?
This year, when I went with a friend on opening day, the two of us were so excited we could hardly concentrate enough to pick a starting place. Eventually we strode over to the horticulture building. The vegetables on display were no better looking than the ones I see every week at the farmers’ market, but seeing them with judges’ ribbons next to them enhanced their importance.
This year, ‘the great get together’ has a sad shadow side. Elections loom. We have, in addition to the bitterly divisive Presidential election, two ballot initiatives introduced by the Republicans to crank up voter turnout in Minnesota: A constitutional amendment that limits marriage to opposite sex couples, and a voter suppression bill which disallows same day registration and demands government issued IDs—disproportionally disenfranchising the poor, people of color, transgender people, and other marginalized folks.
So at the fair, in addition to the universal experiences of food on a stick and gaping at farm animals, there was also an undercurrent of divisiveness. Plenty of people, like me, picked up bright orange fans that screamed “VOTE NO: Don’t Limit the Freedom to Marry” at the Minnesotans United for All Families booth. Meanwhile, I saw many people sporting “Protect My Vote” backpacks. I’m sure they felt as sad and helpless seeing my fan as I felt seeing their backpacks. Trying to figure out how to have a real conversation about it was an insurmountable challenge as we jostled one another in the crowded streets and competed against each other in Midway games.
Despite those differences, the fair was a good place to remember that we have more in common than what separates us. I pray that I will still feel like that the second week of November, when my stuffed animal prizes will have long since been turned into dog toys and cheese curds are but a distant memory.
Legitimacy
The furor over Rep. Todd Akin’s astonishingly irresponsible and oft-quoted remarks this week has once again thrown a complex moral, religious, legal and personal controversy in our country into stark relief, the question of abortion.
It seems to me that the burning question about abortion in the United States is not primarily about whether or not any given woman or teenage girl should or can have one, but about whether or not such actions should be lawful: the crux of the matter in this country is around the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade, which cleared the way for abortions to be performed legally in the United States. The language of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” is deliberately inflammatory. I’m not against language that inflames per se (perhaps this essay will demonstrate that), but I prefer to frame this not as an issue of life versus choice, but as an issue of legal access to abortion versus its legal abolition. It is an issue of maintaining the legal strictures in place as a result of Roe v. Wade (RvW), or intentionally altering the Constitution to remove those strictures. So may I suggest an experiment: instead of “pro-life,” I propose “anti-RvW,” and “pro-RvW” in place of “pro-choice.”
There are some positions that I disagree with and don’t understand. Same-sex marriage, for instance: intellectually, I suppose I can generally grasp the opposition to it, but deep in my heart, in the tenderest parts of my innards, I just don’t get it. Abortion is different. I disagree with the propositions and stances of the anti-RvW camp. But I get it. The intentional termination of a pregnancy through medical intervention is indeed a complex and difficult moral issue. Nevertheless, as a religious leader, a citizen-voter, and as a human being, I have to take a stand on what I think is right.
While I applaud the GOP for demanding that Rep. Akin drop his Senate bid, this occurred during the same week that Republicans approved party platform language that calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I strongly disagree with this move, but I will openly and freely admit it contains a stroke of internally consistent logic. If one truly believes abortion is murder, then what difference does it make how conception took place? I always felt there was an inherent hypocrisy or cowardice in the political posture of abolishing all abortions “except in cases of rape or incest.” It seems as if those who strike this pose are acknowledging that there are circumstances in which a woman should have a right to choose — just exceedingly narrow ones. “Abortion is murder,” this seems to declare, “but if, say, you’re a thirteen-year-old girl and your father raped you — well, okay then, you can go ahead and get an abortion.” In other words, for a woman or girl to have the right to choose, she can only earn it by unimaginable suffering and humiliation. Why do political conservatives grouse endlessly about reducing the role of government in our lives while endorsing positions that are so aggressively intrusive into the lives of women and girls? If we are going to promote that kind of government meddling in our personal lives, perhaps it would be fairer for both males and females to share the burden. Perhaps what’s needed is a move for a Constitutional amendment to prohibit males from having sexual intercourse with females, unless 1) procreative intent on the part of both parties has been firmly established (and of course the government would need us to fill out government-approved forms and such to declare such intent) , or 2) the male is required to wear a condom or provide legally verifiable proof of his being 100% infertile. If such a law could be passed and enforced, that would diminish the number of abortions spectacularly. If the passing and enforcement of such laws would seem preposterously invasive, why is the imposition of laws that restrict women’s sexual activity considered acceptable?
I do wonder why there doesn’t seem to be far more vigorous preaching and teaching from anti-RvW religious leaders urging men and teenage boys to refrain from having sex, or that we males should at least use birth control fastidiously. Never have I seen a pro-life bumper sticker or talked with an anti-RvW person who has mentioned, in my hearing, the role of males in the whole abortion question. Where is the anti-RvW religious voice calling men and teenage boys to sexual responsibility? Is pregnancy just regarded as a thing that just happens, like cancer or hurricanes, and what follows is all that’s important? What we seem to get from the religious right is the promotion of “education” which urges abstinence. I am not aware that any evidence has ever been offered by anyone to show that such programs achieve their aims.
The religious voices that are anti-RvW come from diverse traditions. What many of these traditions have in common, it seems to me, is an absence of female leadership. There are no female Roman Catholic priests, bishops, cardinals or popes. One person I know and love very much is a Pentecostal Christian and very much anti-RvW; there are no female pastors in this person’s church. I am not saying that religious institutions that bar women from professional leadership positions are not entitled to opinions on the issue of abortion, or any other issue, whether it pertains to women or not. I am saying that the absence of women in leadership roles in those religious communities is not irrelevant — especially if that absence is the result of a deliberate and tenaciously guarded policy.
The anti-RvW movement appears to be motivated by a dream of a world in which abortion disappears. But there is no reason to believe that abortion would disappear if the anti-RvW movement achieved its objectives. Women and girls had abortions before RvW; they just had to take far greater risks to their health and safety. I need not reprise the back-alley, coat-hanger refrains of the pro-RvW movement, but those assertions are correct. Some political and social conservatives claim that if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns; I wonder why more conservatives don’t also argue that if abortions are outlawed, only outlaws will perform them — outlaws regulated by no professional medical organization, licensed by no government, accountable to no one for their training, their competence, the fees they charge, the sanitary conditions (or lack thereof) they provide, or the survival rates of the women and teens upon whom they perform abortions. These are circumstances in which women and teenage girls are maimed and killed. We know this is true because this is what happened in the United States before 1973. It is not clear how a return to such conditions would promote the sanctity of human life.
I saw a bumper sticker recently that said something like:
Africans didn’t choose slavery
Jews didn’t choose the Holocaust
Babies don’t choose abortion
I couldn’t help but think: But that’s the whole point. Babies don’t choose abortion; they don’t choose anything at all. The pregnant woman or teenage girl is the one who has to make all the choices — not just about abortion, but about what to eat and whether or not to quit smoking or what kind of prenatal medical care she is going to receive. Many women and teenage girls have very limited choices around many of those things, but the point is, the above bumper sticker leaves pregnant women and teens entirely out of the equation. And any argument about abortion which leaves pregnant women and girls out of the equation is not only irrelevant and morally suspect, it’s dangerous.
Real vs. Manufactured Outrage
I was going to write a post very much like the one that Peter Friedrichs shared yesterday. One in which I bemoaned the barrage of outrage from all sides of the political spectrum: “President Obama thinks that small business owners don’t actually accomplish anything by their own hands!” “Republican lawmakers swam naked in the sea of Galilee!” Surely people on all sides of the political spectrum can find real and substantive differences to argue about rather than hollering “OMG! OMG!” about the latest manufactured crisis or media-hyped “gaffe.” Surely there is a way for people to discuss genuine differences in a way that allows people to vote for a vision of the future that inspires them.
All the manufactured outrage keeps us from treating one another with respect, and prevents our listening for both our genuine differences and our genuine commonalities. But it also does something else. It makes it harder to determine when something really, genuinely is outrageous. As much as I hate the media pouncing on a single sentence or paragraph casually uttered by a politician (let alone the deliberate spin of what a politician says), some too-frank utterances provide insight into genuinely outrageous beliefs that are more often sugar-coated.
When Todd Akin says that women don’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” he lets slip the seamy underside of a world view that declares that women not only do not deserve control over their own bodies, they don’t even have the ability to name their own experience. The concept of “legitimate rape,” or “forcible rape,” assumes that women are not really able to name the experience of rape, that there are kinds of rape that somehow don’t count, aren’t real rape. As when Republican lawmakers convened a panel made up entirely of men to discuss women’s health care, this attitude declares that men, and only men, have access to the real reality, and that women are not qualified to define the needs and the violations of their own lives, their own bodies.
My religion affirms “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” To write into law the notion that women not only don’t have the right to control their own bodies but, worse yet, don’t have the ability to understand and articulate their own experience, is, in fact, an outrage, and an offense against my core beliefs. It isn’t just a gaffe, it’s a world view, a world view that conservatives have built into the party platform. So this time, yes, I am outraged.
The Mean Season
Like many of you, I am already bemoaning the tone and tenor of the Presidential campaign. I’m not surprised, mind you, nor are you, I’m sure. While we might have hoped that the candidates and their surrogates would “take the high road” and focus on issues in substantive ways, this fall promises to be the meanest, nastiest, most vitriolic campaign in our nation’s history. I am sick of it already, and it’s not even Labor Day, the traditional “kick-off” date for the campaigns.
To make matters worse, I find many of my friends, both real and “virtual,” pouring gasoline on the flames of division and divisiveness. No sooner are words out of the mouths of the candidates (or some talking head supporting one or the other of them) and – BAM! – social media is riddled with outrage. My friends (who tend to be left-leaning) are quick to both create and forward postings about the latest affront or indignity uttered by their conservative counterparts, often without taking the time to step away from the keyboard, much less to check the facts.
Why, I wonder, do people who ordinarily behave in compassionate ways, support and perpetuate the vitriol that we’re so quick to bemoan? Is it just too easy to pass along a degrading comment about a political opponent with the push of a button? Are we trying to come across as “hip” or clever to our friends, most of whom are already aligned with our position already? We’re certainly not seeking to lift the political discourse out of the gutter that it’s in. Many of us wouldn’t dream of uttering in public many of the accusations we hurl online, yet we hit the “like” or “share” button with reckless abandon. And that makes us participants in, and part of, the problem
As people of faith (no matter what faith you subscribe to), we are called to seek out the best in ourselves and in others. That doesn’t just apply to our flesh and blood selves, but to our online identities as well. In our lives we stand in solidarity against schoolyard bullying. We march for human rights and the doctrine of inclusion. Some of us proclaim loudly and proudly that we “Stand on the Side of Love.” Yet behind the protection of our keyboards and our computers we don’t think twice about “othering” and even demonizing those who don’t share our political viewpoint or who see the solutions to our problems differently than we do.
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against moral outrage and indignation. We need to voice, both loudly and clearly, our concerns and our solutions. We should advocate for our positions and our candidates. But when we mock, degrade and vilify those who think differently than we do, we debase not just them, but ourselves and the very democracy that we all so dearly treasure.
As we become inevitably immersed in this mean season, I invite you to join me in striving to live up to the principles of our faith, of your faith (whatever it is), no matter how hard that might be. In the language of Unitarian Universalism, let’s ask ourselves how might we continue to “affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity” of our political opponents? How might we remember to strengthen, rather than degrade, the strands of the interdependent web of which we’re all a part? Let’s consider how we might, in the words of Jesus, love not just our friends, but our “enemies” as well? Perhaps it begins by simply taking a breath before we hit “share” or “like” on our Facebook page. May that be our spiritual practice in the weeks and months ahead.
This day, and every day, I wish you peace.
Peter
What’s Behind the Spin?
I’ve become curious about the way that Romney and those in support of his campaign have been accusing Obama of “hatred” and “division.” Is it just a throw it out and see what sticks tactic to assault his character, or is there something deeper going on?
Here’s my best guess. Obama, both by policy and by the mere fact of his existence, violates the world-view of the most privileged. Because white people have traditionally held the vast majority of the power in this country, we are raised with an assumption that white people in power is “normal.” A Black man in the Oval Office violates that deep-rooted sense of “how things are.” It’s “divisive” in the sense that it puts a wedge between the more rational side of the white psyche that articulates that of course we don’t have an issue with Black people and the gut-level sense that things we have always been able to count on are shifting, and so the world is somehow threatening or unsafe.
Similarly, Obama’s stand in favor of gay marriage is “divisive” in that it forces those opposed to same-sex marriage to acknowledge that their point of view is not necessarily “normal,” that the heteronormative society in which we were all raised might not be the society in which our children come of age. Same-sex marriage is in fact a threat to society as we know it—in the sense that it demands of us the flexibility to embrace a society that is slightly different than what we had assumed it to be.
Of course, if you are Black or gay then you have no choice whether to grapple with that division. You can either decide that you are “not normal” or you can decide that society needs to change to make a place for you at the table. But if you have gone through your whole life assuming that the people who are already at the table are the ones who deserve to be there, then a President who wants to bring up some more chairs to let others in is crashing the party.
If you are extremely wealthy and someone says that you aren’t contributing your fair share to society, it’s easier to believe that the person issuing that call is filled with jealousy and hatred than to deeply examine what you owe to the common good, or what compassion and justice demands of each of us.
Which is why I’m talking here about religion and not just politics. Because, really, it is the job of religion to call us beyond our assumptions, beyond our privileges, beyond our narrow worlds to something far bolder. Because it is the job of religion to divide us from our prejudices and sense of entitlement and push us toward the rigorous work of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Games Without Frontiers
Like so many people I’ve been talking to these past two weeks, I am a complete Olympics junkie. You can only guess what has been occupying most of my nights for the past two weeks. For me, though, the experience of this year’s Olympic Summer Games has been missing something, and I struggled early on to figure out what it was.
And then I realized one night, the day after Usain Bolt’s amazing win in the men’s 100 meter race, that his medal ceremony was the very first time all week that I had heard a national anthem for a country other than the U.S. or Great Britain. “The Jamaican National Anthem,” I cried with glee. And suddenly, I knew what I was missing.
When Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the modern Olympic games, he did so with an understanding that nations that meet in battle on the sporting field would develop relationships with one another than might make them less likely to meet in battle in war. Athletes are sent representing their country of origin and asked to be in community with their colleagues from all over the world. Spectators are afforded the chance to marvel when people from other nations excel at their sports.
The world sat transfixed as Usain Bolt ran at these Olympics. It mattered very little whether one was Jamaican or not—his speed and ability were worthy of admiration. Similarly, I imagine people all over the world looking on in wonder as Gabby Douglas flew above the uneven parallel bars or as Rebecca Soni set a world record (and then broke it again the next day).
And while the United States did win a whole lot of medals at these games, the “Star Spangled Banner” was not the only anthem to be played in London. It was marvelous to see Usain Bolt singing along to “Jamaica, Land We Love.” I would have loved to see some others. Kazakhstan’s for example (did you know it was played six times at these Olympics?)—a web search for their anthem turns up the fake one from “Borat” more easily than their actual national song.
Maybe, just maybe, we could have learned something about these amazing athletes and the countries they call home, too. What was it like being the first women representing Saudi Arabia? We missed a golden chance to interview the two people who could have answered that question. How do the people of Malaysia feel about winning a diving medal for the very first time? Or the people of Grenada about their nation’s first medal ever?
Maybe we could have found out how the wars our own nation has fought for the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq have changed the lives of the athletes from those nations. Or learned from Japanese athletes about their country’s recovery from natural and nuclear disaster. Perhaps we could have developed some compassion for athletes from places where poverty and disease run rampant, where many people don’t know the source of their next meal, or simply where millions of dollars are not available for athletic training programs.
“Do you remember when Jim McKay did the coverage and they used to do a piece about an athlete from another country and something about the place they lived? It was a great way to learn about the world,” my friend Patricia wrote on my Facebook wall this week.
Yes, Patricia, it was a great way to learn about the world. It was a great way to break down the divisions we humans put up so often. It was a great way to cross the borders of difference and understanding. It was a great way to move us one step closer to the Olympic ideal of world peace, where nationalism is reserved for silly games and not war.
Imperfect Being, Seeking Balance
For several weeks now, I have been walking around my garden first thing each morning, ignoring its beautiful blooms, walking by the vine ready vegetables and herbs, with one thing on my mind. Murder.
Yes, it’s those Japanese beetles that have me seeing with such tunnel vision. I walk around with a bucket of soapy water in my left hand, a plastic lid from a quart of yogurt in my right hand, and seek to knock the little bugs into the soapy water. When I’m lucky, three or four of them are cavorting on one leaf and I can get them all in at once. Most days I end up with around 20 or 30 of them writhing in the suds.
It is a little scary to find this ruthless side of myself, taking delight in the death of other beings. Well, not delight exactly…but, yeh, joy. I want them dead. I want them gone. Every last one of them. I WANT THEM OFF MY GREEN BEANS!
Someone told me—erroneously, as far as I can see, that the stench from the dead bugs, if they are left sitting in the yard, discourages more of these beetles from coming into the garden. So not only am I constantly murdering these little bugs, I am then leaving them to make a kind of dead bug sun tea, sitting on my little meditation bench right by my three foot garden statue of Kwan Yin, the Buddhist Boddhisatva of compassion. I imagine that Kwan Yin is not delighted with my behavior, but suspect she has seen much worse.
It’s funny how we all –well, most of us anyway–make peace with the violence in our lives. For the most part, I eat meat that’s local, organic and where the animal had a good quality of life…does that make the violence any less when the animals’ lives are taken? I use all kinds of leather products without a bit of guilt, but would never consider a fur coat or hat.
And, aside from the damage of those chewed up leaves, and the stench of that sun tea, my garden is a place of joy, beauty, and sustenance, not only for me but for many neighbors who walk or drive by just to savor it. After I’ve done my murder detail, I relax and weed, harvest, and take delight in the color, texture, and life that makes a garden.
In the garden, in my house, in my car, I have no illusions that all of my contributions to the planet bring peace and love for all. With my behavior towards the Japanese beetles, I can’t say this keeps me up at night (though I do wish the beetles had a different name. A name which is also a human nationality makes me think of people who are Japanese, and I hope that I am not somehow participating in hurtful behavior towards them by using the name Japanese beetle, but it’s the only name I know!)
I’m keeping a quiet tally in pretty much every area of my life—I drive a hybrid car so I can feel good about using less gas (as I drive pretty much anywhere I feel like going, whenever I feel like going). I have central air conditioning, but I only use it when it’s going to be over 90. I mostly shop at thrift stores (for whatever on earth I feel like consumingI) I am constantly balancing. Bargaining, balancing, tallying, and always wondering what the score really is that measures what I am contributing to the planet.
I remember a New Yorker cartoon from some years ago. Two men are in a very fancy restaurant, in suits. One says, “I do a lot of pro bono work to make up for all of the anti bono work that I do.” And for some reason, I feel better when I remember the movie made a few years ago about Al Gore, back when he was traveling around warning all of us about global climate change. As compelling as his talks were, as frightening as his predictions were, there he was boarding plane after plane, being driven around in giant cars, guzzling up the world’s resources to tell us. There he was.
And here we are! As I make my way, seeking to find balance in an imbalanced world, I am grateful for friends who accept me just as I am, and who remind me to have a sense of humor about myself. Yes, I only bank at a local credit union with great politics, but I never turn down a Diet Coke. Sure, I try to live from a place of love, but I can be right there for whining or for gossip. And while spiritual community means the world to me, don’t take away my computer solitaire!
Good luck to you, my fellow earthlings seeking balance. May our care and respect for one another, even in our deep inconsistency and imperfection, keep us ever seeking the path where we can find more life together as a people on this beautiful and fragile planet!
In solidarity with our Sikh sisters and brothers
This past Sunday’s horrific shooting at the Oak Creek Sikh Temple just outside Milwaukee is more than just news headlines to Unitarian Universalists. It took place just a week after the four-year anniversary of an unnervingly similar crime, the killing of two and wounding of seven on July 27, 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church by a lone gunman whose perception of reality was warped by hate.
There is much we may never know about Wade Michael Page, the apparent gunman in the Oak Creek shootings, as he was among the dead in the violence he unleashed (apparently by his own hand after being wounded in a shootout with police). Why did he do what he did? Why did he choose that site for this awful deed? We do know that Page apparently participated for years in the so-called “hatecore” music scene, playing in a band called End Apathy that spouted a violent white-supremacist message. Like Adkisson, he imbibed a fearful message of suspicion and denigration of others; like Adkisson, Page’s life appeared to be spiraling into a frightening maelstrom of frustration, discouragement, and despair — none of which justifies their dreadful acts, of course, but once again we see a life unraveling into monstrous violence. Could any compassionate intervention have saved these deeply troubled men from themselves? We will probably never know, yet the question haunts.
Sikhism, not well known in the United States, in many ways embodies a polar opposite of the evil rage that assaulted our sisters and brothers in Oak Creek: it teaches compassion, the equality of women and men and indeed of all people, and emphasizes social justice and activism. Perhaps those of us who embrace Unitarian Universalism should reach out to the Sikh community not only with compassion for what they have endured, but because we might find ourselves allies with common goals.
It’s trite to point out how so many of the world’s religions point toward the universality of love and compassion; equally tiresome are the clichés about how religion divides us and creates enmity, from the Crusades of old to the conflicts of modern times: partition in south Asia following Indian independence, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Northern Ireland, et cetera, et al., ad nauseam. These observations are overused because they both contain truths, and they are wearisome because neither of these simplistic sets of perspectives really helps us identify the ways in which we can be authentically religious and also lead constructive lives dedicated to progress, fairness and decency. Likewise, though our love of justice demands that we condemn these deranged acts of violence, that is never enough. Indeed, everything feels inadequate in response to something like the horrors that unfolded at Oak Creek and Knoxville.
So what can we do?
We can form and sustain alliances with other religious peoples and work together toward common constructive goals.
If we know an individual whose life appears to be plummeting toward destruction and self-destruction, we can try to offer support and point him or her toward help.
In a world full of suspicion, meanness and violence, we can try to live each day with compassion, patience, knowledge and open-mindedness.
No, it won’t bring back those who died in Oak Creek or Knoxville, or anywhere else that hate has left its deadly mark. But it is something.
Olympics Fever
I have had to tear myself away from my television to write this post. After all, the gold medal match in women’s doubles table tennis is on, and I hate to miss it. That may sound tongue-in-cheek, but I’m serious. In the past 10 days I have been consumed by the Olympics. While others criticize the strangle-hold NBC has on the games, I’ve enjoyed watching wrestling on my phone, sailing on my computer, and all manner of racquet sports on the various cable television outlets.
While I consider myself somewhat athletic, or at least active, I’ve been wondering why I’m so consumed by the “Games of the XXX Olympiad.” Yes, I watched the Olympics as a kid, and every four years they catch my attention. And I enjoy watching sports on television as much as the next person. But my experience of the Games is qualitatively different this year.
Like most, I’m drawn by the amazing achievement and ability of the athletes. The things they can do with their bodies, as well as their minds, is truly astounding. And the competition itself is compelling. Watching an individual or team progress from the early rounds to trying for a gold medal, we’re drawn into the battle ourselves. And while sometimes the “back story” that the network tells us about the athletes feels forced or rehearsed, there is genuine human drama involved in each stroke of the oar and each smash of the shuttlecock. I also enjoy the complete surprises, the “no-name” athletes from small countries who shock us with spectacular performances and unexpected victories.
But beyond all of this, what has captivated me this year as it never has in the past, is the pursuit, and sometimes realization, of human potential that Olympic competition represents. One of the sponsors of the broadcast runs a commercial showing the swimmer, Ryan Lochte, swimming across an ocean. His voice-over says that dreaming did not get him to the Olympics. That imagination didn’t get him there. That hope didn’t get him there. “I had to swim there,” he tells us. It was, he says, simply hard work that got him to the Olympics. And I think that’s the most egregious misrepresentation of what it takes to excel at athletics and, for that matter, any human endeavor.
Work without dreaming is drudgery. Work without hope is slavery. To toil without imagination is to repeat by rote, wearing down a rut that eventually will become a grave. It is imagination, dreams, and hopes that fuel our efforts, that inspire our achievements. And what has inspired me during these Olympics are the dreams of these athletes, along with their commitment to pursue them.
I watched a young American table tennis player named Ariel Hsing progress through the early rounds of the singles tournament. At age 16, Ariel was playing on the world’s biggest stage. We were told that, at the age of 8, Ariel dreamed of playing ping pong at the Olympics, that she wrote that dream down on a piece of paper that she kept in a box in her room. And there she was. She eventually lost to the number two seed in the tournament, but her dream had become a reality.
And as I watched Ariel I wondered what my life might have been, had I had such a dream and had I pursued it with such dogged determination from such a young age? Or what any of our lives might have been had we done so? And then I realized that we needn’t ask that question in the past-tense, like only our youthful dreaming matters. Each day, as long as we’re still breathing, we have the chance to dream, to imagine, to hope. And each day we have the chance to work to make that dream a reality.
What is your dream for yourself? What do you imagine doing, or being, or becoming? What is your hope for the future? How and when will you (and will I) start the work of making them a reality?