I can’t sleep. Again. Tonight I’m thinking about how, in the city where I live, the police shot and killed a 34-year-old unarmed woman today, with her 1-year-old in the back seat of her 2-door sedan. I’m thinking about how I’ve driven those very streets, gotten stuck in tourist traffic on those avenues, turned around with frustration and exasperation at those barricades. I don’t know what will be revealed in the days ahead about this particular person and what she was hypothetically going through, but we’ll never know for certain, will we? She was killed, in her car, with her daughter in the back seat.

As usual, I appreciate Petula Dvorak’s quick and thoughtful column on the craziness in this world. I noted one commenter in particular on this column who observed that “If she [the driver] had been a moose, or a bear, they would have used a tranquilizer dart.” Yep. We are so threatened by one another, these days, that we take each other out first, ask questions later, questions that are mostly unanswerable when the subject in question has been taken out of the equation, out of any possible conversation.

What is going on in our country? Our elected leaders can’t pass a budget, can’t resolve a conflict that is negatively impacting thousands, if not millions, of lives. But when the police “successfully” manage to work together to kill a woman in a car without first stopping her and assessing her in any way, this is celebrated. “Police said the incident showed the success of the huge security apparatus that Washington has built since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ‘The security perimeters worked’ at both the White House and the Capitol, Lanier said. ‘They did exactly what they were supposed to do.'”

They did? This is exactly what was supposed to happen? America, I say, (recognizing that by that moniker I mean the United States of America, in a Ginsberg way, not all of North America, not Central or South America. I can speak only for this country, the one in which I was born, my parents were born, and my grandparents were born, including my 90-year-old grandmother who laments that this is a country she “used to be proud of.”) America: is this who we are, now? A country which refuses to pay our bills because we don’t want to have to provide health care to our citizens, a country which shoots people first and asks why they went “off-the-rails” later—when it’s long past too late to do anything about it, a country which imprisons people indefinitely who have never been convicted of anything (Guantanamo Bay, remember? Anyone?)?

How did we get to this point? Was it always this way, or has there truly been a shift in our country? Do people like me (thirtysomething, middle-class, white, overly-educated, engaged-citizen but busy-with-my-own-life) feel a sense of ownership of “our” country anymore, or do we mostly tune it out? If we did want to do something about the violence in our country today, where would we begin? If we wanted to create some space for healing, where do we begin? Where do we begin?

I have no idea what the police officer who shot the person who may indeed have been Miriam Carey is feeling tonight. But I wonder if he or she isn’t feeling some remorse. Was it really necessary to shoot-to-kill? Maybe that’s where we could all start: some remorse. Some wondering if there isn’t a better way. A better way than scoffing or sarcasm or throwing up our hands in disgust (yes, I too watched this week’s popular Jon Stewart clip critiquing the GOP Shutdown, and I laughed. But afterwards, honestly, I felt a little…bored. I mean, hasn’t Stewart been doing various versions of this same routine for years now? How long can we keep scoffing at each other and have it be entertaining?).

There have got to be some other ways. I don’t yet know what they are. But as I try again to get some sleep, I’m going to conjure up Jill Bolte Taylor’s hands lifted up into the air in the TED talk that I watched tonight while doing the dishes. I was compelled by the feeling in her voice to set down the dishes midway, turn off the water, and come over to my computer and watch her—speaking, feeling, expressing, hoping…that her experience, her vision might impact the world. Her experience was an experience of our genuine interconnectedness. Her experience affirms for me what keeps me awake tonight: it does impact me, and it should impact me, that there are people being held as prisoners by my country without being tried, and that other citizens of my country are force-feeding them because they are on a hunger strike to demand their rights. It does impact me that a woman my age-ish, with a daughter the age of my daughter, perhaps did not receive the attention or care that she should have and, thus, lost control of herself in the nation’s capitol and was shot to death in her car. 

Jill Bolte Taylor: “We have the power to choose, moment-by-moment, who and how we want to be in the world. …I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”

Let peace begin with me. Let lament begin with me. Let a refusal to rush-to-blame begin with me. Let the practice of non-reactivity begin with me. Let new ways of being, of engaging, of listening, of questioning, of reacting, of feeling, of persisting, begin with all of us. Let us reach out and ask one another what we need in our lives, if we need help, how we can help. Let us assume not that everyone we know is well, but that everyone we know is struggling, struggling deeply, with something. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Whoever said this, whenever it was said, it echoes through the ages with truth. Perhaps this truth is one place we can start when we wake up tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, to a new day.

The government has come screeching to a halt because Speaker Boehner, under pressure from the Tea Party Republicans, will not allow the House to simply vote up or down on a continuing resolution to fund the government. (Since having an actual budget has bizarrely gone the way of the politically impossible.) Unless the Democrats agree to undo the Affordable Care Act, which has passed the House and Senate, and been affirmed as constitutional by the Supreme Court, not to mention the American people who re-elected Obama by a significant margin knowing that the ACA was an important part of his platform—unless they undo what has already been done and throw in a random selection of Stuff Republicans Want, then they will not vote to fund the government.

It boggles my mind, and only becomes explainable when you recognize that these folks are not only playing for political gain (Look! I’m important! I talked for the better part of a day about things like “Green Eggs and Ham”!), they are operating out of an ideology that declares that by definition, less government is better. If less government is better, then no government must be great. Especially since they get to keep their paychecks for no governing. At the center of their ideology is the conviction that each of us is in this life for ourselves, and that the best thing our neighbors can do is get out of our way.

Now, the temptation is always there to declare those with whom you disagree to be ideologues, while you, yourself, are free from prejudice. But the fact is that each of us is operating out of our own ideology. Just in case you were wondering, here’s a bit of mine:

1. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. Not one of us can get through this life entirely on our own power, and we shouldn’t even try. Life is better when we care for one another, when we pool our resources so that we can accomplish things that no one of us could do alone, when those who have much carry a sense of obligation toward those who have little.
2. Facts are not negotiable. People can, and should, have a wide and creative variety of ideas about how we should address any given fact, but they are not entitled to just make stuff up. Life works better if you make choices based on reality, rather than what you think reality should be. This means that putting significant effort into gathering the facts about any given situation is almost certainly worth it. This applies to climate change, abuse of Medicare, the effects of immigration, everything. Science is a methodology for finding things out. It produces knowledge. It is not optional.
3. No one person, group, religion or nation is really that exceptional. We all matter. We all have different gifts and challenges. And if you think that you or your group or your religion or your nation is uniquely wonderful you are likely to miss out on the great things that others have figured out. Really, why not look around and see who has the most effective, cost-efficient health care system and try to create something like that? Why not look and see where education is working the best in the world and see what we might learn from them? Sure, be proud of who you are, but not to the exclusion of learning from others who have just as much reason to be proud of themselves, and maybe more.
4. We are all connected. That is a theological statement. It is also a fact. Every choice you make affects someone else. We share one planet, we breathe one atmosphere. There is no such thing as an individual outside the context of that person’s life, and we forget this at our peril.

 

OK, call me prejudiced, but I’m pretty well convinced that a government with a commitment to my own personal ideology would be off to a pretty good start. But I’d be more than happy to hear what kind of ideology you’d like as the basis for our government. Plenty of room in the comments section below.

So, evening fell on

you, didn’t it? And

you did not know

 

what day. Did not

know what had

broken. You had

 

not expected it to

have gone so far,

the year. Did not

 

expect to have

rounded again from

light to dark on

 

this day. And it’s

surely some saint’s

day or other. Some

 

thing recurrent to

mark life’s measured

beat. To mark how

 

life, in some long

and startling

pattern, goes on.

 

 

The British social anthropologist Mary Douglas had this to say about institutions:

Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other.

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

Douglas is most famous for her theory of dirt: She claimed that human groups form solidarity by what we consider disgusting. For example, if your group considers eating sheep’s eyes disgusting, you’re unlikely to become very intimate with the group next door that considers sheep’s eyes a delicacy.

Douglas claims that human groups, or “institutions,” allow those inside the institution to point fingers at those outside the institution. As we stand inside and point fingers, we develop group cohesion: there’s an inside and an outside.

But, it doesn’t stop there.

Douglas thought that first we off-load responsibility for our actions onto an institution, then we begin to allow the institution to think for us. As a matter of fact, Douglas believed that our institutions operate exactly opposite from the way we generally think they do: we think institutions make small, rote decisions for us; but, actually, we allow institutions to do the big thinking for us, and we stick to the small stuff (–you know, such as consuming too many calories and avoiding exercise. Stuff like that.)

Because . . . it’s not easy bearing personal responsibility for the things that institutions such as government do. Yet, if we intend to lead an examined life, we must look in the mirror and ask ourselves what benefits we get from those things we off-load onto institutions.

Let’s think about government . . . oh, say, the United States government: bad immigration policy; institutionalized racism; millions of working poor; gun “freedom” that kills thousands per year, and poorly regulated industry, to name a few problems. Now, ask yourself, What benefits do I get by being in that group?

It’s disturbing.

It’s disturbing because Dr. Douglas is not saying, human beings form institutions and then wag their fingers at outsiders when they aren’t thinking about it or when we get lazy or when we fail to change wrongs. She isn’t saying those other people do that. She’s saying that’s what ALL institutions do. It’s disturbing because a basic fact of human nature is that we form groups, then we lose any ability to act morally concerning those things we have given away to an institution. Then we benefit from the immoral actions.

Now, you can say, “Oh, well, she’s just a crazy leftist feminist postmodernist, so, you know how THEY are!”

Or we can say, “hmm, that’s interesting! How can we use that human propensity both to better understand institutions that we don’t like, and those we do?

How can we use that idea to create institutions that encourage the sort of human action that we see as positive, rather than the sort that we see as negative?

I know you’re already way ahead of me on this . . . ideally, Unitarian Universalist congregations are places where people are not only encouraged, but required to question assumptions. Places where we encourage finger-pointing at systemic injustices, not at the people who may or may not be perpetrating the injustices, for whatever reasons . . .

If we look at Mary Douglas’s ideas from this perspective, they aren’t quite as crazy. Or quite as ivory tower!

Take, for example, immigration.

Consider for a moment that, as nations go, Mexico is not a a poor one. As nations go, the average Mexican is somewhere in the mid-range of income and social well-being for human beings on the planet. It isn’t that Mexico is poor, by international standards, but rather that the income disparity between Mexicans and North Americans is large–as a matter of fact, the disparity is the largest of any two bordering nations on earth.

That goes a long way toward explaining why people might consider crossing a border. To me, anyway, it’s hard to point my finger at a group of people trying to do that.

How have we–and let’s listen to Mary Douglas and include all of us–how have WE—the institution called the USA–responded to the immigration issue? Rather than facilitating the flow of people back and forth across the border, we have tried to stop the flow–we are still following that policy.

Now, I’m old enough to remember when the border was porous. People came here for summer work, then went back to Mexico–they went back home–for the winter. People can’t do that anymore. Because we have spent billions of dollars to stop them. They’re stuck here.

What would you do, if you found yourself stuck in a foreign country, no way out?

First you would go to the embassy, right?

Then you would start calling on your support network . . . family and friends.

Then you would get out your credit cards . . . see if throwing money around might help . . .

What if your loved ones were across the border?

How long would it take before you just took off walking . . . ?

I have a challenge for you: listen to Mary Douglas and get outside your comfort zone. Call yourself on one of your prejudices . . . . Call your own bluff on one of the “institutions” where you sit comfortably and point fingers from . . .

Maybe it’s the institution called race. Maybe it’s the institution called social class. Perhaps it’s the institution called education. Perhaps you wag your finger at close-minded people.

Whatever.

Try reminding yourself this week that, as psychologist Steven Pinker puts it,

“Our minds are organs (like the lungs), not pipelines to the truth.”

Our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth.

Try it. Actually realize that your brain is an evolved organ and has its limitations. And your brain is NOT an institution.

This week, call yourself on one of your prejudices. Call yourself on one of the things you get away with because of an institution you belong to. Step outside your comfort zone. Actually listen to someone who your prejudice tells you can’t have ANYTHING valuable to say.

Instead of pointing a finger and even wagging it a little, sit back and listen.

Try it.

Reflecting on his experience as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, the International Military Tribunal established at the end of WWII, Bernard Meltzer wrote, “When you forgive, you in no way change the past – but you sure do change the future.”

The spiritual practice of atonement, asking and offering forgiveness, is a practice that actively builds and sustains a robust and healthy beloved community.

When we are willing to take the risk of showing up to each other in all of our gloriously imperfect humanity and begin again and again in love – we are being faithful.

When we are willing to go deeper with our friends and family and neighbors, willing to understand their fears and difficulties – to do more than work with them side by side for years without knowing what causes them pain or brings them joy– we are being faithful.

In Jewish tradition, the Book of Life is sealed on Yom Kippur, not to be reopened for another year at Rosh Hashanah.  For Unitarian Universalists, the book is never sealed.  Each day is an opportunity to begin again in love, repenting and offering forgiveness as often as is required for the health and well-being of this beloved community.

What harm have you caused in the past year that requires repentance?  What do you need to forgive yourself for?  Who needs your forgiveness?