Justice, Elections, and Whiteness
Brits By the Boatload
When that boatload of Brits showed up in Massachusetts, they quite literally considered themselves god’s gift to the continent. Subsequently, they decided which religions were acceptable; which ethnicities and countries of origin were acceptable; who could vote; who would be enslaved; who lived and who died.
This norm has functioned continuously since, letting some in and refusing entrance to others. This normative power is what Professor Ignatiev meant by “white” in her book How the Irish Became White.
A look at the election results this past Tuesday demonstrates that white skin and male gender are still the tickets to power in the United States, the power of whiteness.
That boatload of British Anglo Saxon Protestants declared themselves the baseline. The arbiters of all things worthy. And they vote.
US history shows that some groups were able to get into the club relatively easily. Descendants of German immigrants, for example, now outnumber descendants of British immigrants. George Washington was half German, though it took until 1890 for a full-blooded German to be elected to national office . . .
Germans became white in 1890.
Professor Ignatiev argues that the Irish became white by becoming more racist than the British and Germans. One piece of evidence: is it a coincidence that the great haters on Fox News are generally of Irish extraction?
Whiteness. It’s a club.
Tuesday’s election demonstrated that whiteness hasn’t given up. I suspect it will become more overt in the next several years.
Here’s a hero many haven’t heard of: A. Philip Randolph. Randolph was African American, born in 1889. He organized a union called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. One of the first African American unions. He was also president of the Negro American Labor Council and vice-president of the AFL-CIO.
Whether it’s right or wrong, the Marxist analysis of race that Randolph believed is very simple: the ruling class (read: that boat load of Brits) uses racial prejudice to divide and conquer the poor. In other words, Marxists say that “whiteness”—and allowing some into the club of whiteness—is a manipulative tool for controlling the poor, the majority.
True or untrue, this analysis of race is why humanists, Unitarians, Universalists, and other progressives were once at the forefront of anti-racism work and nowadays are not. True or untrue, the Marxist story marked a path that could be usefully followed.
A. Philip Randolph was a Socialist. An atheist. And a humanist. He signed the second Humanist Manifesto in 1973. (As did Betty Friedan.) The second manifesto was a child of the more explicitly socialist first Humanist Manifesto, written when the New Deal was a heady dream.
Humanism has socialism in its DNA. After all, if you believe in the inherent worth and dignity of each person, it’s hard to argue that “white” America and its engine, Capitalism, offer a level playing field. Facts on the ground point the other direction. Far from being a statement of individualism, the inherent worth and dignity of every person implies communal action toward communal good.
After all, after you’ve asked how a nation can create a level playing field, you have gone down the road of redistributive justice. The most extreme of un-individualistic ideals.
There are two ways to redistribute wealth: revolution and taxes. Sane people tend to suggest that taxes are the way to go . . .
But back to A. Philip Randolph, who helped plan (along with nonviolence theorist, gay rights activist, and socialist Bayard Rustin) the 1963 March on Washington, where MLK gave his greatest speech. That march was the culmination of a way of thinking outside the norm.
And that was then. Isn’t it almost unthinkable in today’s US? Where would the Civil Rights Movement have been without labor halls to speak in and union money?
We are the stories we tell ourselves. “True” or not, some narratives bear richer fruit than others. The idea that race is a construct used by the oppressors to oppress was the fuel of the Civil Rights Movement. Nothing since has borne so much fruit.
I’m just sayin’ . . .
A Phillip Randolph put it this way:
Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.
Election Day, November 4, 2014
(photo by D.Vandiver)
Today is the day, friends. The day to VOTE.
This is the day when we get a chance to be citizens and constituents, rather than just consumers. Today is the day this nation decides party control over the House and Senate, decides who will address the looming issues of raising the minimum wage, immigration reform, equal pay, and – let us not forget – going back to war.
In New Orleans, many judicial races will be decided today – criminal court, domestic court, juvenile court… Today we elect the people who will decide who goes to jail, who gets custody in a domestic violence case, whether or not your child gets a second chance… Beloveds, in a state that incarcerates more people per capita than any other state in the country, this election matters.
Wherever you live, it is the local elections that will most immediately shape your community. What happens in Washington, DC certainly impacts us, but rarely as intimately as local policy and enforcement.
If you are young – please vote! If you are an elder – please vote! If you are in the sandwich generation – please vote!
If you can vote, please vote.
If you voted early, well done!
If you, like me, plan to vote today – don’t forget!
Vote today.
There are 2,867,473 registered voters in the state of Louisiana. Almost 2.9 million possible voters! Let’s see what it looks like when we all show up to choose the people who will make the decisions that shape our schools and our families, our courts and our country.
With gratitude to everyone who can vote today and grief for all of those denied the right to vote through the gutting of the Voters’ Rights Act and other egregious practices, I wish each of you well. May this election day end with leaders elected who care about you, your families, and our planet.
Go forth in peace and vote!
PS: In Orleans Parish, mark your calendar to vote on Dec. 6th, too! The state legislature has tried to do an end run around the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and give away its money and control to the Recovery School District (RSD) through a millage vote that doesn’t even list the RSD in the summary that will appear on the ballot. It is slick, my friends, and it is as wrong as having to work on Mardi Gras day. Mark your calendars for Dec. 6th and vote NO on the grand theft masquerading as an education millage.
Conscience and Choosing the Hill to Die On
As of this writing, Maine nurse Kaci Hickox is under house arrest for her resistance to what she considers a fear-based, anti-scientific, and politically-motivated quarantine.
In 2012, the US military experienced a odd occurrence: for the first time in US history during time of war, more active duty troops died as a result of suicide than combat.
Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhiseng disappeared in 2009. He reappeared recently, in prison, with no charges against him, and no release date.
Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, risked torture, imprisonment, and death fighting in the courts for the rights of women and children in Iran.
All these stepped out of line. They disobeyed their governments. Some disobeyed the dictates or their religions. Most are disliked by a majority of their fellow citizens. Some of them chose death rather than a life of guilt and shame.
Why do people do things that sometimes get them killed; sometimes imprisoned; sometimes demoted or fired or exposed to the scorn of millions of their fellow citizens?
What drives all of this crazy, counter-intuitive, behavior?
Conscience. And the mental punishment inflicted by conscience, guilt.
Conscience. The feeling that some actions cannot be condoned, no matter how “legal” they are.
The feeling that enables we human beings to take actions for the good of others rather than ourselves.
The Great Leap into Sapiens
Why do human beings have a conscience? Isn’t a conscience merely a drag on getting ahead?
Henry David Thoreau said in his handbook for rebellion, Civil Disobedience: “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”
Despite the fact that Thoreau’s thoughts have become the template for those acting on conscience, notice that word “machine.” Thoreau saw conscience as an individual attribute against a deterministic mass. But it isn’t always, is it? Sometimes, as in the case of Edward Snowden, the machine is ambiguous.
We still don’t know why homo sapiens sapiens—the “wise man,” as scientists have (perhaps over-confidently) called our species—began to have a conscience. My vote for best hypothesis goes to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar.
Dunbar theorizes that human language developed as a result of the need to socially interact in larger groups. Neanderthal, for example—also known as homo sapiens neanderthalensis—traveled in very small bands—and were for the most part inbred. They didn’t use a whole lot a gray matter figuring out what other people were thinking or trying to get along with an extended group.
They didn’t use their words much, and so didn’t have a need for a great many. They probably didn’t have much of a conscience, either.
Navigating the deep and often stormy waters of multiple relationships, however, required a good many words and concepts. And this may be why the children of homo sapiens sapiens—the “wise man”—developed complex language. It was a matter of talking about it or dying. It was also a matter of considering multiple goods in the gray shades that human existence swims in.
Emotions are in the gut. But it takes gray matter and complex language to make the complex decisions a Solomon or an Edward Snowden have to make.
The Critical Mind
Philosopher Peter Singer says there are two types of conscience—the traditional and the critical. This goes some way into an important distinction. Most people have that traditional form of conscience. It’s the stuff of traditional religions. It’s the level of confidence in others that allows us to work in offices and live in communities. Almost all human beings have it.
The people who get the Nobel Peace Prize are of the critical variety. A Malala or Shirin Ebadi. They have considered the arguments of the majority. They have heard the arguments of traditional religion. And they have decided to act for a greater good.
The right thing to do isn’t always clear. Human governments aren’t faceless machines of conformity, as Thoreau appears to have thought. The individual isn’t always correct. (The deluded decision-making of Timothy McVeigh demonstrates that point.) Yet, homo sapiens sapiens gets wiser only though the actions of brave individuals risking themselves and thinking way outside the box.
It is that accumulation of brave thinkers that may, someday, made us truly wise.
Where Is the I in Me? Emotions, Self and Soul
A child falls down and begins screaming. It’s common. You did it as a child. I did it.
What happens next?
For me, my parents said, “Get up off the floor! Boys don’t cry!”
When this happens at an upscale pre-school nearby, I’m more likely to hear, “You feel sad!” Or, “That’s frustrating, isn’t it?” Or, “You’re so angry!”
What’s the difference between the two parental responses?
Fact is, any time I cried as a child, I got the same response: “Boys don’t cry.”
Consequently, I learned to suppress my emotions rather than expressing them.
That child outside the pre-school, on the other hand, is being taught the difference between anger and sadness and frustration and fear and embarrassment. That child is developing a palate of emotions with nuance. That child is developing “emotional intelligence.”
Kids treated as I was learn that emotions need to be suppressed. We learn “men don’t do that.” We learn “women are hysterical.”
And so the cliches go, ‘round and around.
And so does the drinking and drugs and physical violence and abuse that come as a consequence of the suppression of emotion.
Now, allow me to add that my parents were preparing me for the world that they lived in: working class people learn to be very careful about emotion. You can’t let the boss see your emotion.
My father was in the Boiler Makers Union. You don’t cry among your fellow Boiler Makers. And you don’t get angry when the boss yells at you.
We were also farmers, and farmers in traditional communities aren’t allowed to get angry either. You can’t show anger when the bank won’t give you a loan . . . and on and on. It’s a life of oppression and suppression in which a show of emotion can be interpreted as dangerous.
That’s the world I was prepared for. Everyone has a story.
We call the result “stable.” But at what cost to both the individual and society?
Professor George Rowan did a study called “A Multicultural Investigation of Masculinity Ideology and Alexithymia.” It wasn’t a best seller, but the study tells us what we already have intuited: In many social groups, men are afraid to express emotion, especially in the presence of other men.
“Alexitymia” describes the result of this suppression: an inability to describe emotions; an inability to sustain social connections; and an inability to sustain interpersonal relationships.
The result is a socially-created sociopath. The result is a dangerous person created by the desire to live up to the social definition of masculinity.
That pretty well describes the men in my extended family.
Think for a moment about how many—and different—lives you lead. Partner. Friend. Manager. Co-worker. Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy . . .
We learn to use different vocabularies in these different niches. We learn to express our emotions differently. In addition, as the dad of two children in the GLBTQ alphabet soup, I know that the gender binary is an inconvenient fiction. Men aren’t from Mars and women from Venus. We come from many planets.
Yes, there are differences in the emotional lives—and the ability to articulate—that can be called gender difference. Still, we have an obligation to try to use our words, no matter what planet we’re from.
The Twentieth Century writer Anais Nin started writing when she was eleven. She continued, obsessively writing of her inner life, for more than sixty years. She said this:
I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown . . . I create a myth and a legend, a lie, a fairy tale, a magical world, and one that collapses every day . . .
It isn’t that Nin had some super-complex emotional life. Or that she was mentally ill. Rather, she had the tenacity to pursue her many selves to the essence of the self. Much like the Buddha. And, like the Buddha, she discovered there isn’t one.
There is no constant self. The evidence is right before our eyes. And right behind them too. What we have instead is an ocean of sensation and reaction. We have emotions, some fleeting, some stable enough to be called moods. These add up to what we call a self. Yet it’s a fiction.
The dangerous and damaging idea behind this insistence on a stable self is what has been called “soul” in the Western tradition. That tradition tells us that the soul is incarnated. Lives in the flesh for a time. Then goes somewhere forever, still constituted as the self that lived on earth. In some traditions the soul is rewarded with heaven or hell. In others the soul blissfully resides . . . well, somewhere.
Such an idea is a dangerous illusion. The only constant is change. And the self and the soul it creates are stories we tell ourselves.
When we figure that out, the Buddha said we are enlightened. Anais Nin put it this way: “I see myself and my life each day differently. What can I say? The facts lie.”
Companions on the journey
“May beauty and passion and compassion be our companions. May we be fully alive. Amen.” ~Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie (Healing Places, 9/14/2014)
Keep the faith, beloveds.
Keep showing up.
Keep paying attention.
Keep speaking your truth.
Because we have changed,
the world is changed.
And you are not alone…
#blacklivesmatter
#FergusonOctober
#MoralMonday
#Not1More
#RaiseTheWage
#ClimateJustice
#bethechange
Razor Blades and Ebola: Processing Fear
Recently we have had a front row seat to observe low-level panic and smoldering fear. The headlines have been shrill:
“Ebola Spread to the US Inevitable.”
“Why America is Not Ready for an Ebola Outbreak.”
“My Daughter’s Ebola Scare.”
Polls show that forty-percent of Americans believe there will be an Ebola outbreak in the next twelve months, and twenty-five percent believe their family is in immediate danger. (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/08/26/3475698/americans-ebola-myths/)
Now, it’s probably a tip-off that the magazine with the vague but scary cover story “Ebola Spread to the US Inevitable” is called “Business Insider,” not “Physician Insider.” Furthermore, Ebola spreading to the US—inevitable in our interconnected world—does not mean that the scenes from Liberia will be repeated here.
But what’s a poor media source to do? It’s hard to catch our media-saturated, jaded eyes, and it’s all about “eyes on screens.” We all know “if it bleeds, it leads.” Fear sells.
Then there are the conspiracy theories, such as the emerging one that Al-Qaeda is spreading Ebola. I don’t doubt there will be—if there hasn’t already been—a headline such as “Biological Attack on US Soil Inevitable!” And I’m sure “ISIS” will be next on the conspiracy list.
I have provided a link to a great video that underlines how we misplace our fears.
The meme that toasters are much deadlier than sharks began at an aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa. The numbers are clear: 791 people killed by toasters worldwide, nine by sharks. But I suspect no one reading this will harpoon your toaster.
Fact is, far more people are killed by their toasters than by sharks. And far more Americans are crushed by their television sets than are killed by terrorists. Yet we fear sharks and terrorists. We fear Ebola but not Diabetes.
Baseless panic can change the way we live. Take, for example, Halloween. Once, Halloween was a community event. Kids ran around the neighborhood in the dark collecting homemade cookies and candy apples.
Then reports spread that people were putting razor blades in apples. Hospitals opened their doors offering to x-ray apples. Then reports went around that people were poisoning apples. And soon churches began to sponsor neighborhood Halloween parties so that kids wouldn’t have to go out in the dark.
Fact is, there has never been a single instance of a razor blade in an apple. There HAVE been two instances of poisoned apples given to kids at Halloween. In both cases it was a parent trying to kill their child and disguise the murder by pretending the poison came from Trick-or-Treating.
Fear.
Speaking of Halloween, how ‘bout those haunted houses?
Novelist Neil Gaimon says,
Fear is a wonderful thing, in small doses. You ride the ghost train into the darkness, knowing that eventually the doors will open and you will step out into the daylight once again. It’s always reassuring to know that you’re still here, still safe. That nothing strange has happened, not really. It’s good to be a child again, for a little while, and to fear—not governments, not regulations, not infidelities or accountants or distant wars, but ghosts and such things that don’t exist, and even if they do, can do nothing to hurt us.
An interesting insight from a writer who creates fear in small doses for a living. Could it be that haunted houses and scary rides function as relief valves? We don’t have to worry about terrorists when we are in a haunted house. Or looking for a ghost. (Though I’m quite sure some haunted houses will feature scary terrorists this Halloween season.)
It’s more comfortable to fear a shark than a toaster, isn’t it?
But what about Ebola? Like razor blades in Halloween apples, Ebola feels tangible, doesn’t it? Blood. Death. Something we can really sink our fear into.
As we’ve seen, it’s difficult to get a large number of people worked up about global climate change. Psychologists argue that the reason lies in how our brains picture danger. We can picture a tornado, so we are afraid of it, but when asked whether tornados or asthma kills more people, most people say tornadoes. That’s far from true.
I used to live near the Gulf coast and spent a lot of time on the beach. There are sharks out there. People do get bit. But getting an arm or leg torn off or getting swallowed just doesn’t happen. Even people who spend time in the water where sharks live are three hundred times more likely to be killed by a deer than a shark. But Jaws feels more scary than Bambi.
I like what entrepreneur Seth Godin has to say about fear: “Worry is not preparation, and anxiety doesn’t make you better . . . We dance with the Resistance, we don’t make it go away. You cannot make it go away—you cannot make the voice go away, you cannot make the fear go away, because it’s built in. What you can do is when it shows up, you say ‘Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. Let’s dance about this.’
Godin is getting at an important truth: Courage is not the opposite of fear. Courage is what you are able to do despite the fear.
Fear sells. Reason is slow and difficult. Chances are there will be frightened people attacking Liberians. It’s time for some courage and wisdom.
The Open and Shut (?) Case on Religious Thinking and Cognitive Closure
It isn’t news that there’s an inverse relation between religious piety and innovative thought. Religion is a handbrake—whether it stops humanity from going uphill or downhill is the real question.
When a new study comes out telling us what we already know about secularity, my secular acquaintances do the I-told-you-so as the religious squint and look for flaws in the statistics.
The latest study, “Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth,” is the most thorough study yet (see link below). Furthermore, it hits in the pocketbook: religion costs the economy.
Not to ruin the study’s punchline, but both internationally and in the US the secular spots are the innovative spots. And vise versa. In the US, religiosity drags down innovation in all but two of the old Confederate States of America.
What’s up with religion?
Full disclosure: I am a humanist. Most humanists don’t put much credence in the revelations of the various scriptures and traditions of religions. Many of us are agnostic or atheist. We tend to put our trust in reason and the scientific method, ways of thinking predicated on not knowing. We like mystery, because it gives us something to do on long afternoons. We like not knowing what we don’t know.
According to this latest study, the humanist brain is a good place to be if you happen to be an innovative idea. Why? Dr. Arie Kruglanski, a social psychologist, has created the theory of “cognitive closure.” His theory examines the fact that some people are more comfortable with ambiguity than others. Humanists eat ambiguity for breakfast. We love it. But some folks search for a definitive answer, even if that answer is . . . well, clearly wrong—an answer with flaws even the believer can see (but chooses to ignore or compartmentalize).
That’s why Dr. Kruglanski gets the call when we try to understand the minds of terrorists. Some of us don’t need closure all that much. But many of us do—whatever the cost to our own reasoning abilities.
Yet, yet. But . . . the question that generated the US portion of the study was this: “are you a religious person, not a religious person, a convinced atheist, or don’t know?”
Those who identify themselves with their (mainline) religions as a primary descriptor will clearly pick “religious person.” But what about those who identify as pagan? Buddhist? The spiritual but not religious? Unitarian Universalists . . .
I happened to grow up in a religious tradition that absolutely required cognitive closure—the sort of folks who build creationist museums. Yet, as an agnostic humanist, I also would tick the box for “religious person.” I think a lot about my values and actions and I work hard to live out my values. To me that’s a religious person.
Yes, there is value in the mounting heap of studies that indicate that religion can be bad for society. But, dear researchers, please avoid cognitive closure! Some of us are spiritual but not religious. And some of us are religious but humanist, drinking ambiguity like an ever-flowing stream.
“Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth” by
Roland Benabou, Davide Ticchi, Andrea Vindigni
https://openclipart.org/detail/87589/combination-lock-by-jhnri4
A Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin: So What’s Our Excuse? (A Humanist “Theology” of Radical Welcome)
Mystical and Scientific
The author of the Gospel of Matthew reports Jesus saying, “If you welcome your sisters and brothers only, what are you doing more than others? (5:47)
Monk and mystic Thomas Merton wrote about one of his mystical experiences:
“Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, I suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me.” He felt, “. . . as if waking from a dream—the dream of separateness.” He goes on to say, “Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them.”
The insistence of Jesus that more than just our friends deserve welcome and Merton’s mystical insight that “none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me,” and his awakening from “the dream of separateness,” describe the truth of the human condition.
Fact is, human procreation is exponential—two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents . . . Bill Bryson did the math in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything. Twenty generations ago the number of direct forebears for each of us is 1,048,576. Twenty-five generations ago the number jumps to 33,554,432 .Thirty generations ago the number jumps to over a billion.
It is demonstrably true: no person is alien to any other, at least on a physical level.
The Cut Worm Cries Out
As part of his enlightenment, the Buddha felt the pain of the earthworms cut by plows. As in Merton’s case, the Buddha’s is based in reality—human beings and earthworms share 98% of our DNA.
Animals, plants. The earth itself. As a humanist, I’m not allowed the fiction that human beings are the crown of creation. Human beings are part of a complex web, a web we still barely understand. We ignore the other parts at our peril. We consider ourselves better-than others—be they humans, animals, plants, or the planet itself—only out of ignorance of the facts that science teaches us.
Human beings share 99.9% of our DNA with each other. All the diversity we perceive—gender; race; ability; hair color . . . what-have-you . . . it all resides in that point-one percent of our DNA.
How can a humanist not welcome everyone?
And religion, that most divisive of issues—since we view scriptures and religions as products of the teeming human brain, it’s difficult to say one is better than another. All of them paint reality, albeit with a limited palette. Religions are fun . . . as long as nobody looses an eye. Or a tooth. As long as they do not interfere with human flourishing.
And politics. Since humanists know that human beings have made it up, and that there is no “invisible hand” guiding capitalism or any other economic system, we see economic disparity for what it is—not a reward or punishment from a deity or from hard work but as the effect of many causes, mostly of human design. Politics and economics are fun. As long as nobody’s eye gets put out. As long as politics and economics do not interfere with human flourishing.
Brothers, Sisters, and Others
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_Worm.JPG
Since humanists interrogate beliefs intensely—and are open to changing our beliefs when reason and evidence point in a new direction—we focus not on common beliefs but on common values.
Our highest value is human flourishing. Flourishing for each and every human being, because each has inherent worth and dignity, no matter about religion or national origin or social or economic location or what-have-you.
Humanists are human, and therefore full of prejudices, but we can’t hide behind those prejudices. If we do not welcome our sisters and brothers—and those questioning the gender binary—what are we doing more than others?”
Since religions and science are products of the human mind, one story, one truth, does not suffice—be it a scripture or science itself.
Since humanism considers religious thought as a product of the teeming human mind and human flourishing as a primary goal of human activity, our movement is uniquely able to pitch that “big tent” that Unitarian Universalists hope for.
Security
I remember, in the days that followed the 9/11 attack, hearing the endless trope from news reporters, who declared that “nothing would be the same again.” And I confess that my reaction to that repeated phrase was pretty much one of
annoyance. Terrible things happen over and over I thought, and people just get on with their lives as best they can. Nothing is ever the same as it was. Life changes. Sure, for the people who died, for the people who lost loved ones, everything is different, but the rest of us just go on. Why declare that everything is different now, but not for every other tragedy that strikes somewhere in the world?
I was, of course, wrong. Everything did change, if only in subtle ways. Not because we as Americans suffered a unique loss, beyond what folks in other parts of the world had known. But rather because for once we suffered the same kind of loss as countries who had been ravaged by all the various kinds of religious and nationalistic violence that have devastated communities across the centuries. All the years before we had read about Bosnia or Palestine or Libya and thought: those poor people, and gone on with our lives without anything much changing. Violence on that scale was a tragedy, but not our tragedy, not something that would that would touch our own lives.
That’s how we get through the immense hardships of the world. We all know people who have lost their dearest ones to murder, to heart attack, to the slow ravages of cancer or the sudden onslaught of an accident. And our heart aches for those people, but it doesn’t break, because we hold to the illusion that those things won’t happen to us, or to the ones we can’t imagine living without. We can’t afford for everything to be different any time that tragedy strikes around us, or we wouldn’t be able to function. And so our prayer for comfort for the bereaved is always secretly a prayer of thanks that this time we were spared.
But eventually that terrible lightning strikes close enough to home that we are singed. And it turns out that we are not immune, not protected by God or our virtue or our customary privilege. When the World Trade Center towers came down, many of us felt our own personal defenses crumble with them. And everything changed, because we had to come face to face with the reality that loss on such a grand scale really could camp out on our very doorstep.
And then we had to figure out how to respond. Would we build back our personal defenses through going on attack, following the illusion that we could simply exterminate everyone who was a possible threat? Would we declare that some set of people was “bad,” so that we could recreate the illusion of safety by locking those people literally or metaphorically away? Would we will build more walls, choose safety over freedom, aggression over attentive listening? Why yes, we would.
Because anything is better than simply dwelling in the knowledge that we are not safe, that the horrors which befall any one of us could befall all of us, that loss lurks around every corner. Of course we want to hold on to any measure of security we can find.
But after all these years, I hope that we can search for that security with a greater measure of rationality, and perhaps even a greater measure of compassion, than we were able to muster in the wake of the burning towers. I hope that we can remember some of the things that we have learned in painful experience of the intervening years: That striking back at the wrong target doesn’t help. That the enemy of the bad guys isn’t necessarily a good guy. That it is far easier to respond than to control the effect of your response. That complex problems don’t often have simple solutions.
And that, ultimately, our greatest security lies not in any of our attempts to make sure that tragedy never strikes, but rather in our ability to hold and help and care for one another when the hard times come.
The Courage for Compassion
Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe
Me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.
~Hafiz, 14th century Sufi poet
“It may be that we have lost sight of our mission. Primarily, the church is not for social or political pronouncements, nor for the fashioning and dissemination of erudite philosophical doctrines. It is for the generation of love. The church is the only institution in society so purposed. We strike at the heart of our very purpose for existence when we neglect that major aim.” ~ Albert Ziegler wrote, 20th century Universalist minister
Beloveds, each morning we are asked to take a moral stand on the side of love. May we find the courage and compassion to love like the sun, to generate love in abundance for a world that sorely needs it.
Each time that I facilitate conversations on systemic oppression and solidarity, I am struck anew at how programed we are to defensiveness and denial. Each time, my challenge is to love, simply love. We are not machines, broken and in need of fixing. We are wounded warriors in the struggle of life and we need, each of us, compassionate love to call us to our whole and holy selves.
May we wake each day with the mission to generate love in this world as humbly and faithfully as the sun generates light. May we trust that we can lean on each other for comfort when the struggle is relentless. May we know in the bones of our bones that we are not alone. May this knowledge give us the courage to shine the light of compassion on everyone. No exceptions.
