Authenticity or Bust

From the First Great Awakening of the 1740s that energized the North American colonists and eventually led to the American Revolution to the Transcendentalists to the Beats, Hippies, and What-Have-Yous, a frequent cry of Americans has been “authenticity.” Americans want it to be real; genuine; visceral; heartfelt; roughhewn . . . something like that.

Authenticity, I take it, has something to do with being yourself. Or finding yourself. Or getting out of your head and into your heart. Something like that.

In the US, finding one’s authentic self has often involved hitting the open road and going West. Or heading to the big city. Sometimes it’s the distance from the pew to the alter in a holy roller church. Or to the free air of an ashram after escape from the stale breath of a parish church.

It often involves both geographic space and psychic distance–the distance from of a Midwestern farm to Gay Paree or Hometown, USA to Greenwich Village or North Beach.

Whatever else it might be, it appears that the authentic self is open to new experience and fresh possibility. Open to taking advantage of options. And changing fundamental beliefs.

(It is also a marketing opportunity. The authentic individual often needs a particular look and particular accoutrements.)

Self Like a Sieve

I grew up in a farming community near the Ohio River. My parents rode farm wagons pulled by horses into the nearest town when they were kids. For those children of the farm and the Depression, the speed and power of a 185 horse power V8 Chevrolet engine on a paved road spoke to them of possibility and adventure.

My parents transformed themselves from farmers to factory workers. The sort of folks the Beats, also of their generation, found square. Authenticity, it appears, comes in many packages.

My farmer parents were what philosopher Charles Taylor termed “porous selves.” They lived fully aware of the difficulty and dangers of survival. This reinforced their faith in the Christianity of the lower Ohio River Valley.

My father was born prematurely in a two-room sharecropper’s shack. He survived because August without air conditioning is a great incubator. His family nearly starved during the Depression. Next, he survived house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat in Europe during the Second World War. Then he worked as a boilermaker, sometimes suspended high over the water, working on ships; sometimes he worked several stories up, on smoke stacks.

My parents qualified as “porous selves,” as philosopher Charles Taylor put it–the sort of people for whom life itself is as authentic and real as anybody could want. They weren’t out looking for authenticity . . . Nor did they seek new religious thinking.

As Charles Taylor puts it, “The porous self is vulnerable: to spirits, demons, cosmic forces. And along with this go certain fears that can grip it in certain circumstances. The buffered self has been taken out of the world of this kind of fear.”
http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/09/02/buffered-and-porous-selves/

This “buffered self,” according to Taylor, often becomes secular, or at least “believes” in received religions only insofar as they choose not to seek authenticity in that direction. “Buffered” people are free enough, in other words, from the fear of looming, immanent privation and death to–if they choose–begin examining cultural assumptions, including one’s religious ideas.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow had a similar idea, which he called a “hierarchy of needs.”

Boomers and the Big Bang of Authenticity

A very large shift in US consciousness occurred post-World War II. What became known as the Beat Generation served as catalyst. But it was more than one particular group of young people. I like Taylor’s distinction between porous and buffered because it helps grasp what happened.

Many Americans–like me–were able to move from a porous understanding to buffered understanding. Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac or Allan Ginsberg or Gregory Corso became models for our religious, spiritual, and artistic quests.

Remember what Charles Taylor said: “The buffered self has been taken out of the world . . . of fear.” Unlike my parents, I never faced starvation. Or war. Or educational deprivation. Or the feeling of being less-than because of my social location in US society.

For many like me, the Beats became models for this “buffered” sort of individualized “finding yourself.” They became the models for making choices.

Whose Yer Daddy?

Charles Taylor is trying with his distinction to explain why safety leads to secularity. Why it is that people who are not in constant want and fear choose to drop out of their childhood religions and question the norms they have been taught.

Immediately after the September 11th attacks, the churches and synagogues and mosques of the America were full. My supposition at the time was that the fear of the day would lead to a resurgence of piety of the sort that swept the nation during the Red Scare of the 1950s.

This did not happen.

As a matter of fact, the reverse has been true–attendance has dropped steadily ever since. It appears Americans felt “porous” for a short time but returned to “buffered” robustly. Why?

Perhaps it’s fairly easy to feel safe in the US of the 21st Century, despite constant low-level wars and rising debt and poverty. Perhaps a majority of Americans still feel that the likelihood of growing old is in our favor. Perhaps it’s always 9/11 now. But we have adjusted to that new normal.

After all, that “invisible hand” of Capitalism continues to pump out the calories and the iPhones.

So, we go on, wandering from one religion to another, one answer to another. We go on seeking authenticity. Whatever that means . . .

This past weekend I had the chance to do one of my favorite things. Presiding over friends’ weddings is a great perk of the ministry gig. This was a beautiful wedding, joining two families from very different backgrounds. Guests came from Milwaukee and Mumbai, wore brightly colored saris and sundresses, suits and cortas,On the dance floor, Bollywood mingled with Madonna and midwest polkas. And everyone ate and drank and danced as the skies opened and poured blessings on the barn roof.

At one point in the evening, I found myself standing in a doorway overlooking the dance floor. I took it in: the bride and groom surrounded by family and friends from all over the world, everyone moving, arms and legs and bodies, mouths open in delight, music echoing, laughter filling the air.

My daughter was asleep on my chest, wrapped tight against me in her sling. I held her close as I watched the joyous scene before us. I thought of how people have danced at weddings for thousands of years and still do — every day, everywhere, even as bombs fall and disease spreads, even as we mourn devastating losses, cradle our broken hearts and lift our heads high, even as we fear what might be and hold fast to hope for what could be. For all of human history people of every hue, every tongue, every nation have danced at weddings with joy and fear and pain and hope and love.

Love brought us all to the barn on a September evening. A gentle, kind-hearted, soul-rich, giving kind of love that is contagious in the best kind of way.

The bride and groom chose a poem from the 14th century Sufi poet, Hafiz, to preface their vows. I offer it here as a prayer that love might continue to do its work in our broken, hurting world.

Congratulations K&K.

˜

It happens all the time in heaven,
And some day

It will begin to happen
Again on earth –

That men and women who are married,
And men and men who are
Lovers,

And women and women
Who give each other
Light,

Often will get down on their knees

And while so tenderly
Holding their lover’s hand,

With tears in their eyes,
Will sincerely speak, saying,

My dear,
How can I be more loving to you;

How can I be more kind?

The Thursday following the fundamentalist disruption of worship service at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, a Pro-Woman, Pro-LBGTQ, Pro-Religious Freedom rally was planned for City Hall. It may not surprise you that the Unitarian Universalists showed up. Dozens of Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts, signs, and stoles were vividly on display. A small but exceedingly vocal counter-rally was staged on the hill above the rally by some who had apparently raced back to New Orleans from Baton Rouge for this very purpose. Even with the bullhorn, it was difficult to hear what was being said at the rally over the yelling of the anti-choice protesters.

And so a group of people, mostly UUs, turned toward the hill, forming a sound barrier between the those speaking their truth in the center of the safe circle and those screaming their truth from the hill, and began to sing (to the tune of Siyahamba, a South African freedom song,) We are standing on the side love, we are standing on the side of love. The singing continued until everyone had had a chance to speak their truth in the Pro-woman, Pro-LBGTQ, Pro-Religious Freedom space.

As the rally drew to a close, everyone not on the hill joined hands, forming a gigantic circle, and sang together: We are standing on the side love, we are standing on the side of love. Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger blessed us all, sending us off with the wisdom to “Go Now in Peace.”

The police were on alert and surrounded the park – subtly…We were allowed to protest injustice in peace.  Our right to do so was affirmed by the community and by the powers that be.

Friends, that’s a privilege we have not extended to #Ferguson or the many communities of color protesting the extrajudicial killings of children and young adults.  Please, before you say “they just need to calm down,” consider the humane and human need to protest injustice.  May you tender the communities’ outrage with mercy, with compassion, perhaps even, with love and holy curiosity.

May you withhold your judgment.  In times of grief, there is no room for our shoulda, woulda, coulda…. only room for compassion.

If you cannot find your compassion in this time, please still yourself until you can.  And if you wonder where it went, spend some time thinking about how systems of oppression steal the humanity of the oppressor as well as the oppressed.  If you cannot find compassion for the human grief of others, you may have lost touch with your own humanity.  Beloveds, it is worth the work of undoing oppression to reclaim it.

{Editor’s Note: Due to technical difficulties, this post, originally scheduled for August 19th, was delayed – posting now!}

I spent two weeks out of state, mostly away from the internet, TV, and newspapers – enjoying some much needed study leave.  Returning to the news of the world on Thursday, August 14th was, I confess, quite an incredibly jarring experience.

The depth and the breadth of the systemic racism in Ferguson, Missouri revealed both in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the assault on the protesters demanding accountability for his murder at the hands of the law, the ongoing deaths in Gaza even in the midst of cease-fires, the President’s announcement that we are reentering Iraq, increasing violent deaths in the Ukraine, Syria, Honduras…  and at home, the second weekend of August was an especially bloody one in New Orleans, as six shootings across the city left five people dead and wounded 11 human beings, including a 2 year old, a 4 year old and a 13 year old…

Dear Ones, today my heart is broken and I am trying to do the faithful work of making sure that it is broken open, to make room for more and more love.

…

In my time away, I finished reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder’s portrait of doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer. Dr. Farmer is an extraordinary human being who has spent much of his life both among the most profoundly poor people in the world and in the halls of ‘the Brigham’ and Harvard in Boston.   Haiti is where the organization he founded, Partners in Health, did its first work and where it still maintains its flagship project, the hospital called Zanmi Lasante, (Haitian Creole for Partners in Health).

As the book concludes, author Tracy Kidder “notes Farmer’s fondness for a particular phrase: “the long defeat.” At one point he quotes Dr. Farmer:

 “I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory. . . . You know, people from our background — like you, like most Partners In Health-ers, like me — we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.”

Commenting on Kidder’s work, Professor Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College wrote:

 “It seems to me that this philosophy of history, if we may call it that, is the ideal one for anyone who has exceptionally difficult, frustrating, even agonizing, but nevertheless vitally important work to do. For such people, the expectation of victory can be a terrible thing — it can raise hopes in (relatively) good times only to shatter them when the inevitable downturn comes. Conversely, the one who fights the long defeat can be all the more thankful for victories, even small ones, precisely because (as St. Augustine said about ecstatic religious experiences) he or she does not expect them and is prepared to live without them….”

Now I have been recently described as ruthlessly optimistic –and while I’m still not quite sure how I feel about that description — it did highlight for me the need to be explicit about our call to do the work of justice.  Friends, we do not work for justice because we know that we are going to win.  We work for justice because it is the ethical thing to do, the loving thing to do, the merciful, compassionate, and faithful thing to do.

If and when you feel overwhelmed by all the healing that must be done, by the sheer volume of injustice present in any one news cycle – I invite you to breathe in and breathe out.  Remember that you are not alone. We who have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, let us not give up if we are comfortably devastated and can afford to despair.  Let us be in solidarity with those whom the dominant culture treats as losers, let us join in the fighting the long defeat with love, compassion, courage and peace that passes understanding.

Together we bend the long arc of the universe toward justice that we may not live to see, but which we must struggle for because it is the faithful thing to do.

{PS – There is a gathering in New Orleans planned for September 26-28, 2014 for those wanting to live missional, justice-making lives and who are looking for a beloved community to connect with on the journey.  Learn more here https://www.facebook.com/LifeOnFireTribe and here http://lifeonfirenola2014.wordpress.com/ }

It seems to me that the outpouring of emotion on the death of Robin Williams was not only for a beloved celebrity, although goodness knows he was that and more. His struggle with mental illness and addiction became an opportunity for the rest of us to talk about our struggles—with our own illness, or the illness of those we love, with our thoughts of suicide or our experiences of the aftermath when someone we love has taken their life. It all hits so close to home, and there are so few opportunities to talk about the pain that so often remains hidden.

Which makes me think about how we respond to the horrors going on in Ferguson, MO. Now, I certainly live nowhere near Missouri—I’m culturally and geographically thousands of miles away, in the liberal, integrated, diverse San Francisco Bay. A handful of BART stops away from where Oscar Grant was killed not so long ago. So close to home.

Now, you may think that “those people” are asking for police in riot gear—they’re rioting, aren’t they? But if the phrase “those people” has floated through your brain, then it is time to sit down and think. Because it is entirely possible that you have never personally experienced the police as a threat to your safety, rather than the essence of those who create safety. It’s possible that you have never been followed in a store or pulled over while driving because of the color of your skin. It’s possible that you have never considered your skin color to be a factor in getting a job or hailing a cab or renting a house. And if, like me, you have lived in the world of that privileged possibility, then the rage of “those people” in Ferguson, MO might seem very distant.

One of the common threads that I have noticed in the discussions of depression in the wake of Robin Williams’s suicide has been people who are or have been clinically depressed explaining that if you haven’t been there, you don’t know. You don’t know what it is like to have the disordered thoughts, the black hole sucking you down. And so you might be tempted to cheer the depressed person up, or blame them for giving in when they have so much to live for. Because you haven’t been there, and you don’t know.

And if, like me, you live within the comfortable bounds of white privilege, you might be tempted to think that the folks in Ferguson, or the growing number of people who are supporting their protest, should move on, should behave better, should treat the police as the friends and community supporters that you know them to be. Because you haven’t been there, and you don’t know.

But, as with mental illness, the fact that you might not suffer from it personally doesn’t mean that it dwells only in some distant land. Of course, it is possible that you have no family members of color, no friends, no co-workers—although I would find it hard to imagine. Certainly, in any case, you belong to this human family that we are all called to love and care for.

If it doesn’t feel close to home—the assumption that Black men are armed and dangerous, the notion that Black people need to be controlled and subdued, the premise that police in riot gear are here to “keep the peace”—if the reality of racism feels like someone else’s problem, or even a “race card” that people of color use to cover up their own inadequacies, well then it might be time to sit down for a moment. It might be time to remember that what you personally have experienced is not all that there is. It might be time to listen. It might be time to remember that in a world that we all build together, every struggle for justice is close to home.