Who’s In and Who’s Out of Institutions (and the immigrants between)
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.
Season of Forgiveness
“I am sorry”
Burning Man 2013
photo by Jim Urquhart
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?
Today
Today I am going to try and live into the simplicity and struggle of this covenant (co-created by junior high UU youth at camp this summer):
Respect, Kindness, Forgiveness, Focus.
Today I am going to aspire to be the human being I wish others would be to me and my neighbors.
Maybe tomorrow too. So much is possible.
And when (not if) I miss the mark, I will begin again in love.
For myself, for you, for all that is possible when we choose compassion over judgment, hope over harm…
Today.
Culture Shift
There is an old and often told story of a child walking along a beach, picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the ocean. In this story, an adult encounters the child and proclaims, “you can’t save them all. Your work doesn’t make a difference.” Replies the child, continuing in her labor “I made a difference in this one’s life. And this one’s life. And this one’s life.”
It is a powerful story about the importance of small acts.
And.
And it is cultural cover for a big lie. If that child doesn’t look beyond the stranded starfish to the re-graded shoreline, she cannot realize that the starfish are being stranded because the new vacation development changed the inflow and outflow of the tide. She cannot see the new drainage line funneling the city’s contaminated runoff into the sea to which she is returning the starfish.
Beloveds, let us commit to looking beyond the need presented in front of us and ask “why is this happening? What is going unquestioned in the larger system that allows people to be hungry, wetland to be destroyed, water to become scarce?”
And while we feed those who are hungry, let those of us who are not hungry recognize that we, too, are benefitting from a system that creates hungry people. Let us wonder, together, why this is – and then begin to work with those who are hungry to change the system that creates hungry people.
It is time for a culture shift, beloveds.
And.
And we are called to be a part of the change. Let the organizing begin.
UU Verbs
I had the honor of spending this week with a dozen youth who chose to spend the first week of August in New Orleans. So you already know that they are brave. You should also know that they are leaders and followers, conveners and collaborators, organizers and educators. But this isn’t a note about nouns. This is a note about verbs. Unitarian Universalist Verbs.
My colleague, Rev. Paul, showed up (consistently, faithfully) this week wearing these verbs around his neck:
CARE
SHARE
GROW
LEARN
HEAR
HOPE
LOVE
I want to take a moment and affirm the National Youth Justice Training UU youth for embodying these verbs with courage and kindness beyond measure. Let us join Jessica, Emma, Emily, Emily, Meiling, Alex, Ellie, Ian, Sam, Sam, Anais, and Leah in transforming the injustices of this world into Beloved Community that both is and is becoming.
May it ever be so, beloveds.
Keep the Faith!
art by Kristi of Barn Owl Primitives
In his story of a man with a sneering wife, Sufi master Rumi begins:
A special guest was coming to visit and the man worked 200 days to earn the price for the quality lamb kabob he wished to serve this guest. On the appointed day, the man bought the meat and brought it home for his wife to cook and then went to fetch the guest.
While he was gone, the wife cooked the kabob and
ate
every
bite
of
it.
When the man returned with the special guest, she greeted them at the door, saying “the cat has eaten the kabob. You’ll have to buy more, if you have any more money.”
The husband asks a servant to bring the scales and the cat. The cat weighed three pounds. “The meat was 3 pounds and one once. If this is the cat, where is the meat?” “If this is the meat, where is the cat?” Start looking for one or the other!
Sometimes truth can be found on a scale. Usually, it is a more complex endeavor for us human beings. The recent trial of George Zimmerman for the death of teenager Trayvon Martin revealed a plethora of truths in the lived experiences of the people of United States. Some have an expectation of justice within the justice system. Others have no expectation of justice within what they consider a criminal system – one that actively perpetuates crimes against humanity.
What you look like, where you grew up, who you live with – all of these are complex predictors of how you experience truth and what truth you experience.
Walking away from the Justice for Trayvon Vigil in New Orleans last week, I met up with a history professor from Tulane University. She brought up the Jena Six, which some of you may remember as a time when the criminal justice system in Jena, Louisiana revealed to the nation its deep roots in the Reconstruction Era, built after the abolition of slavery to maintain control over black bodies. In 2007, a nationwide protest against the mockery of justice there descended upon the town of Jena, population 2,500, with an estimated 50,000 protesters.
There were so many people – and so few white people. The professor I was walking with said, “if you took all the Unitarians out of the crowd, I could have put the white people present in my car.”
Author activist Jordan Flaherty, in his book Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six reports that “perhaps one to three percent of the crowd was white, in what amounted to a disturbing silence from the white Left and liberals.”
I would call it a disturbing silence from white people, regardless of their political stance. When children of color are demonized by a criminal justice system created for and by white people, we cannot be silent. We cannot be absent.
What was faithful was the profession of divine living by the white Unitarian Universalists who showed up, were called out as allies, people living into the truth of beloved community with their bodies, their whole and holy beings.
What was faithful was the profession of divine living by the Unitarian Universalists of color who walk in this faith with trust that we are going to live into our collective covenant with more and more anti-oppressive skill, more and more respect for the inherent worth and dignity of each person, more and more beloved community.
When we show up as our whole and holy selves, lives are transformed, systems are changed, beloved community becomes possible. Keep the faith, beloveds. Keep showing up on the side of love in this world.
_________________
References:
The Essential Rumi, 1995 (translated by Coleman Barks).
Flaherty, Jordan. Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six, 2010.
Embodied Justice, Embodied Speech
Beloveds, let us have a common vocabulary. In the midst of the conversation on race prompted by the verdict of the Zimmerman trial, allow me to point us toward the 4 I’s of Oppression, spelled out clearly here by YouthBuild USA: – https://youthbuild.org/sites/youthbuild.org/files/Four%20Is.pdf Ideological, Institutional, Interpersonal, and Internalize Oppression. Recognize that racism operates on many levels in this country. If you do not know this, please take the time to learn about it before joining loudly in the conversation. This matters.
Let us hear truth when it is spoken to power. Let us keep the dialogue grounded in the realities of oppression. And if you are white, keep showing up in solidarity with all who call for Justice for Trayvon. It is beyond time for more than a handful of white people to stand on the side of love in this country.
Dear ones, let us live into the possibility of Beloved Community with courage and grace.
My Covenant with All That Is
I pledge to follow
The earth’s gentle curve
As I go;
I pledge to breathe only air as I am able;
I pledge to breathe often;
I pledge to eat of the earth;
Nothing other shall pass my lips.
I pledge to wend along the ways,
Trodding earth, never air,
Clouds and sun above,
What rocks are there under foot.
I pledge to see as best I can in bright sun;
I pledge to squint as I am able in dark;
I pledge to remain
Upright at times
When I am able;
To lie prone when the need arises.
I pledge to find flames hot;
To find snow cold;
To find water according to its fashion;
I pledge to love as best I can;
To hate sparingly;
To mock seldom;
To judge not;
To jump to few conclusions;
To subscribe to few illusions.
I pledge to be
As I am able
And to cease
As the rules require.
Storms and Solidarity
All day Thursday I wore my Standing on the Side of Love t-shirt, through meetings with academia, organizers, congregants, and staff. A day of solidarity, a day of grief and a day of joy. Solidarity with the Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, who stood on the side of love (without eating, drinking, using the bathroom, speaking off-topic or leaning against any furniture) for all families for eleven hours. Solidarity with communities of color and anti-racist allies grieving the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Solidarity with beloveds all across the nation celebrating the end of the mis-named Defense of Marriage Act and the first step in the passage of a national immigration reform bill.
It is a lot to hold, beloveds. And this doesn’t even begin to take in the illness of the beloved elder Nelson Mandela or the floods and the fires around the world. Or my dear friends who are moving away from New Orleans this week or the beloveds going through a second round of chemo.
This morning, I sat and watched a summer thunderstorm crash through my neighborhood and gave thanks for this precious moment of unscheduled time, a chance to be fully present to the storms within and without. May you, too, have time to bear witness to your own storms with gentleness and compassion. May you feel companioned by a host of thousands standing in solidarity with you on your life journey.
When Worlds Collide
I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day about a controversy in her church. A member raised the question to the congregation about what their policy should be about bringing guns to church. This was not a question that had ever crossed my friend’s mind in the course of many years of church-going in Chicago, but she’s in another part of the country now, and the question is real. And, if you’ll forgive the pun, loaded.
There are members of the congregation who cannot fathom why anyone would carry a gun anywhere other than a shooting range or a hunting trip, and maybe not even then. They feel threatened knowing that there is a deadly weapon in their midst, and offended by the idea of bringing an instrument of violence into a place of peace.
There are also members of the congregation who, it turns out, have been bringing their guns to church all along. They see carrying a gun as an act of community service, a way to keep the community safe should it be threatened from the outside. Carrying a gun makes them feel safe, and makes them feel like they can contribute to the safety of loved ones around them.
It does not help that these two opposed and mutually contradictory views are also associated with differences of class and culture, making any conversation deeply fraught. It’s the kind of situation that doesn’t have a clear, correct solution, and the opportunities for offending people, for misunderstanding motives and assumptions, are rampant. There is no compromise. You can’t “sort of” bring a gun to church. You allow it or you don’t, and saying, “Well, just don’t bring a gun if you don’t want to” is not much consolation to a person who feels that they can’t settle into the prayers of the community knowing that a person next to them is armed and prepared to kill.
My friend wasn’t asking for advice, but if she was, here’s what I would have said—and I think it applies to the unsolvable issues that each of us has to decide on throughout our lives. When there is no way to answer a question, it is probably time for a deeper question. There’s no good way for this congregation to answer the question: “Should people be allowed to bring guns into our sanctuary?” But maybe it would be helpful for congregants to be in conversation with one another, taking turns answering the questions “What frightens you?” and “What makes you feel safe?” It might not provide a clear-cut answer to the original question, but it would provide a way for people to tell their stories, to approach one another less from a place of knowing what is right and wrong and more from a perspective of what Nelle Morton called “hearing each other into speech.” People could relate dreams they’d had about guns, tell of their own experiences with guns, tell the stories their parents or grandparents related to them in which guns meant terror or survival. These conversations might not lead to a clear answer as to whether or not guns should be allowed in worship, but they would help to weave the fabric of the community together rather than tearing thread from thread in a pitched battle over who is right and who is wrong.
There are plenty of subjects in this country which have become that kind of battleground: abortion, gay marriage, gun control, aid to the poor, climate change, etc., etc., etc. And it’s pretty much impossible to have a conversation amongst 300 million mostly unrelated people. Which is why it is so important to grab onto these conversations wherever we can: in our churches, on Facebook, with relatives and friends. As we slip ever more deeply into a culture in which differing opinions descend into obscenities and name-calling in the comments sections of news sites or YouTube, it matters more and more that we find ways to turn to the questions behind the unsolvable questions, that we hear each other into speech. If there’s one thing that most of us can agree on, it’s that society and government based in mud-slinging and sheer contrariness gets us nowhere. We need questions that demand that we put our full humanity into the answers.