tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89704526541472839652024-03-08T14:09:52.330-05:00Reconsidering Citizenship -- Healing Our DemocracyThis blog charts my assuredly inadequate yet earnest attempts to reconsider citizenship today in a fragile and imploding United States of America. What will be required of each of us to integrate our history(ies) and mature into a robust, viable democracy-republic? Is it even possible anymore to hold generously, rigorously, our We the People? I want to say yes...and am willing to listen, learn, work for the Universe to prove me right...Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-51929110233019472472022-10-10T16:23:00.004-04:002023-12-24T13:21:24.665-05:00Retracing the Steps of Freedom...Getting the Poisoned Arrow Out<span id="docs-internal-guid-e25709ae-7fff-cea0-7fb5-9f6f50d14961" style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This past week danced with the theme of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reconsidering citizenship</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A friend and colleague, <a href="http://www.canthonyhunt.com/" target="_blank">Dr. C. Anthony Hunt</a>, and I co-led an immersion-pilgrimage </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Retracing the Steps of Freedom</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in what he calls the <i>H</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oly Land</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of Alabama. We took 25 students & friends/family on a 6-day Civil Rights’ pilgrimage to Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery. I remember cocking my head a bit in disbelief when he named this South-land as </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">holy</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Huh? I’ve </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">never</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> previously felt any need to go to Alabama, and certainly didn’t consider it <i>holy</i>.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46l81cSW7vtcWujXbcvbUUUZqqzw3tZkLK1gkd2pBS2hKmXUl42ldMcLVWB6TSrTpq5mlWEG-wvNnELs4I2wvvQHxOtERHa5j7W1albHMYFdnFP56Zr98k4YoMWSYTVRAu66IUp1s4X-IBBtS6SYTgjOXG0k4byaJZjaQR2izJq6WlDW8keUggu1Qgw/s872/450BF821-8FC8-44BD-9F4B-34A74FBA70C9.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="872" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh46l81cSW7vtcWujXbcvbUUUZqqzw3tZkLK1gkd2pBS2hKmXUl42ldMcLVWB6TSrTpq5mlWEG-wvNnELs4I2wvvQHxOtERHa5j7W1albHMYFdnFP56Zr98k4YoMWSYTVRAu66IUp1s4X-IBBtS6SYTgjOXG0k4byaJZjaQR2izJq6WlDW8keUggu1Qgw/s320/450BF821-8FC8-44BD-9F4B-34A74FBA70C9.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This afternoon, having begun to rest & listen from the journey, I get more of what he was saying. I could even say I’m </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">just beginning</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to feel the truth of it. Which is probably part of the reason that on Thursday I purchased a rosemary plant from the Birmingham Botanical Gardens intended for him. She is a Holy Land plant-ally associated with Jerusalem for me. Of course, then I learned he’d <i>flown</i> to Birmingham, with </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no interest or capacity</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to lug along a fairly large plant. So now I tend this plant for him at my home in Ohio. Perhaps there’s something holy about <i>that</i>.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgns-tv5hrB0RCWC3uC8aFTIv0otKToJuBbQh5t1FCRPguS-5y5jD-CtXs7Fc038aKCp38OkUn9QV2_3NmIuhQrtIXQTK3RTzXM1CTSGr2K1KVC1HjfguqyDP9q_sedFq-_Ix34ckghFBx7WKsbFpdFo1MzXGV4NJdN5x5FG6Vq_wbQQ5M8tBJjDGyz0Q/s258/rosemary.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="195" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgns-tv5hrB0RCWC3uC8aFTIv0otKToJuBbQh5t1FCRPguS-5y5jD-CtXs7Fc038aKCp38OkUn9QV2_3NmIuhQrtIXQTK3RTzXM1CTSGr2K1KVC1HjfguqyDP9q_sedFq-_Ix34ckghFBx7WKsbFpdFo1MzXGV4NJdN5x5FG6Vq_wbQQ5M8tBJjDGyz0Q/s1600/rosemary.jpeg" width="195" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;">It was a trip of academic attention, quiet grace and (seemingly) unbearable paradox. Some of us were Masters of Divinity students, completing an Immersion Experience requirement for completion of the degree. Others were Doctor of Ministry students, completing their required <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">peer-sessions</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> always scheduled between August & January Intensives. A mother, a husband, a wife, a daughter also companioned the students and leaders, expanding the reach of the journey into more generations, more affiliation. We were an inter-racial community, held gently and graciously as we journeyed through highly racialized traumas and increasingly necessary remembrances. Grace abounded, even as wounds danced and selves had to be tended with care. A small band of beloved community pilgrims even walked across the Edmund Pettus bridge the same day that the first arguments were presented to the US Supreme Court to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Seemingly unbearable, though it also felt divinely coincidental, a walk of hope amidst a people&land plagued with hopelessness and fear.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading for my own soul-nourishment today, I came across a Buddhist story that seems prescient for whatever else might come here... <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Without-Buddha-Could-Not-Christian/dp/185168963X" target="_blank">Paul Knitter retells an oft-told parable</a> of a man shot with a poisoned arrow. “There he is, lying on the road with the arrow sticking out of him, when some friends come to his rescue. But before they can do anything, he starts plying them with all kinds of questions: </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who did this? Why did he do it? Where was he standing? What kind of arrow is it? …</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Gently but firmly, the man’s friends tell him to shut up. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stop all that talking. We have to get this arrow out</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.” (pg. 60)</span></span></p><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ironic for a blog-post of many words, but the truth of the parable beckons so forcefully in me. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stop all that talking. We have to get this arrow out</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Buddha’s wisdom brings attentions to </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">removing the arrow of suffering from our lives</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> more than the human propensity to speculate, argue, posture. Here I’m feeling all the media-driven hubbub about Critical Race Theory or policing educational settings where our country’s history is being taught or whatever ideological rights’ issue polls say will divide voters and disenchant suburban housewives. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> talk. The kind of talk that pretends to be about political reconciliation but which is still defined by the wounds, even continues the woundings, while refusing the humanity of so many of us. To honor diverse perspectives. To open hearts vulnerably into mysteries we'll never see/sense if we don't open our eyes and hearts to them...and the pain they bring.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The most basic wisdom of the pilgrimage was </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being Beloved Community</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as we <i>traveled through historically-represented racialized traumas</i>. Each of us experienced all we saw differently, with differing levels of consciousness and expression, but we were pilgrims </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">together</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, from start to finish. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being Beloved Community</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Practicing, learning, (re-)learning how… When one white woman named her experience in a way that was offensive to me, others could hold it with grace. When a black man vented about the wounds that simply run too deep to imagine it could be any other way, others could hold it with grace. The group held the experiences of each, even as the historical tragedies so often ignored today surely dampened the speech of each of us, at different times. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to get this arrow out</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Beloved Community was large enough, diffuse enough, to hold even my husband and me as we journeyed through these days together. He has a way of processing that is quite familiar to me but also one which I have had to refuse to hold in these last years. His work is not my own, nor even mine to hold at times. I love him fiercely </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it was a challenging week. He’s now felt things he cannot unfeel, things that will ‘cook’ in him for times to come. I’m so thankful he leaned into the journey AND we got to journey together, soul-partners that we are. I also need to own that I want him to be in new places, future places, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">right now</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I know I’m not in charge, nor do I know what he needs—only Godde knows that—and yet I want what I want. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to get this arrow out</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPE4m4uReDJE9ANImqClM51oI4hMJ71Cd9Zhdft3c8F8bcS6fPTTtHz8osMs2XGGTYvPMEIEd3hP8l-rMLUzRcOfDTgBhOL54rmV6T9b_aPRb00MW3ZbXjUzSyR-Fp0UFIJkjBlyQbYmyW0Gz3XoOcrusRLHjum5I27R2b0pHAuzCLOWmWo9xVwVRIQ/s275/sculpture1.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPE4m4uReDJE9ANImqClM51oI4hMJ71Cd9Zhdft3c8F8bcS6fPTTtHz8osMs2XGGTYvPMEIEd3hP8l-rMLUzRcOfDTgBhOL54rmV6T9b_aPRb00MW3ZbXjUzSyR-Fp0UFIJkjBlyQbYmyW0Gz3XoOcrusRLHjum5I27R2b0pHAuzCLOWmWo9xVwVRIQ/s1600/sculpture1.jpeg" width="275" /></span></a></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it was important for me to drive the first shift of our journey home to Ohio, to drive Brian and me back out of Alabama, as my work/path had taken us </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “I still don’t like the South,” Brian said as we crossed over into Tennessee. I can’t say that I disagree. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I did find myself saying something I’d not have said, but for this experience. “Yes, there’s so much to the South that needs healing, even confrontation. But some of the most courageous, persistent and soul-forced people I've ever learned about </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">also</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i> lived in the South</i>. Live in the South now. The Black church, the African-American leaders and civil rights’ laborers...<i>they are </i></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>also</i></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i> the South</i>, for me, now.” </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to get this arrow out</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My rosemary plant will continue to invite me to listen for all that is holy in the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fertile crescent</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of Civil Rights history, this Alabama. For now, learning about community-organizing and development from Mr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-m-cleveland-47053448" target="_blank">Brandon M. Cleveland</a> of the <a href="https://www.danielpayne.org/" target="_blank">Danial Payne Legacy Village Foundation</a>, hearing the stories of <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/joyce-parrish-oneal" target="_blank">Ms. Joyce Parrish O’Neal</a> (Selma march and movement ‘foot-solder’), walking the ritual-march to the capital at <a href="https://civilrightstrail.com/attraction/lowndes-interpretive-center/" target="_blank">the Interpretive Center with Rev/Mr. Trini L. Moye</a>, learning about </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">black ecclesial theology</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from Dr. <a href="https://esaumccaulley.com/about/" target="_blank">Esau McCauley</a>, and the countless formal and informal conversations with fellow pilgrims along the way…these things are holy now. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of them and our journeying, I can better <i>feel</i> the unbearable ironies so many live every day…amidst the enslavement of <i>white</i> or <i>power-over</i> minds to an idea of our country that has never quite existed, nor does it therefore need to be defended through blind acquiescence to stories we were told in grade school. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to get this arrow out</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of what feels holy is some answer to my own prayer. An idea is percolating in response to my question(s) surrounding </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What to do with all the toxic white masculinity</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that surrounds me/us so? </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How are we to love the ones who refuse love, those who profess love while entranced in fear-drenched hatreds that only masquerade as "Christian </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">love"</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>? And how to do this without judgment or projection</i>? Enacting MLK's Beloved Community is clearly an avenue, a practice, a path. Academic attention, quiet grace, unbearable paradox. Nonviolence, even as one could argue the moral conscience of the nation has eroded and publicizing media will offer little protection of classical civil disobedience unto reconciliation, peace. We need to enter in anyway...together.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within that, a concrete idea has begun to grow within me: i</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">dentifying and researching the documented lynchings in Ohio, so to work toward memorializing each one on the land on which it happened. It's already been done in Athens, Ohio, for instance, in the <a href="https://eji.org/news/athens-ohio-memorializes-lynching-of-christopher-davis/#:~:text=Christopher%20Davis%20Community%20Remembrance%20Project,-Early%20in%202019&text=Davis%20by%20collecting%20soil%20at,past%20to%20ongoing%20racial%20injustices." target="_blank">Christopher Davis Community Remembrance</a> Project.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguS6oXV2tD8EPRKLwlZ653TiPnrXk3dU6xds30sCtaOuEZGi5bCa0pfK9Nk5klRDLcdPorqzOauzIURDlgkRV1k7xD7a2r3m9Du_7BAMVOfgu__tFMB24rayhNFe6Z7qAMlIX_oWEpE5e4cZTjlBMaZiBNNqxScwtqPq6CAAKkdYoVjScUToDtbubtjQ/s259/memorial%20lynching.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguS6oXV2tD8EPRKLwlZ653TiPnrXk3dU6xds30sCtaOuEZGi5bCa0pfK9Nk5klRDLcdPorqzOauzIURDlgkRV1k7xD7a2r3m9Du_7BAMVOfgu__tFMB24rayhNFe6Z7qAMlIX_oWEpE5e4cZTjlBMaZiBNNqxScwtqPq6CAAKkdYoVjScUToDtbubtjQ/s1600/memorial%20lynching.jpeg" width="259" /></span></a></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps documenting and naming racialized terror that happened not that long ago...memorializing and honoring the innocent dead...perhaps these could be small steps toward awakening more of us in Dayton, Ohio to the racialized terror being ignored and refused, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">all around us</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or perhaps this researching-work is simply for me, so to visit the land(s), to sing over the aching dirt... I don't know. Yet.</span></p></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-32641792209750990262022-01-16T12:40:00.016-05:002023-12-24T13:22:19.649-05:00Tell This Story...<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Next time someone asks you for </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">your</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> story of race, tell this one.”</span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-c11a7ba2-7fff-2171-cd8f-79f455ec3ddd" style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These words have simmered in me for weeks now. Many aspects of a mid-December <a href="https://fireandwaterleadership.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Fire&Water</a> retreat have simmered in me, held in a patience-of-spirit to let them cook for a while. Sort themselves into wheat and chaff? Distill the unnecessary away from the necessary? Come to a sense of seasoning and slow-cooked flavors? I dunno, to be honest. This morning, these words converge with awareness of the weekend, the increasing yearning I feel each year to participate actively somehow in the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorialization, beyond a white-woman’s nod of respect and thanksgiving. </span></p></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not insignificant that a F&W friend’s interest in a previous post emerged this week, with resonances for her own writing/leadership work. A couple others have also now expressed interest in the intersections of Christian theology and white supremacy, to which I bring the work of Willie James Jennings and <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Imagination-Theology-Origins-Race/dp/0300171366" target="_blank">The Christian Imagination</a></i>. My naming this is clearly not an original observation, by any means...that there is a connection deep in the roots of the Christianity in the USA historically AND right now. I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> tended to observe from the sidelines, however, quite distrustful of the politicizing and the woundedness with which Americans in popular discourse engage 1) even the suggestion that Christian theology has, at its roots, a formative force in shaping white supremacy, and 2) race-reconciliation conversations in the cyberspace/social media worlds. I don’t engage in things I cannot digest healthily, and the toxicity and volume in media-discourse here are simply too overwhelming for healthy digestion, no matter your skin color.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So…this is not a “post” on “race,” though it is. It is not even a peg in the argument that Christian theology helped create the toxic brew that IS white supremacy, though I know it has. But these words </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a heart-felt response to the request and/or invitation of a new F&W friend to “tell the story” I first learned to be <i>one of “race”</i> on Saturday evening, December 11th, about 11:30 p.m. in a fire-placed living room, with a lively game of Spades going on with other friends in the kitchen. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">The antecedents that make this storytelling possible are too numerous to really recount here, but each contributed to one of the most honest discussions exploring <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being human together, </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">across-amidst </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">race in the USA,</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that I have ever had in a room with four white faces and four black faces. We were sitting in the living room, couches and comfy chairs, having played several rounds of a two-team game of <a href="https://www.target.com/p/culturetags-card-game/-/A-80673990?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=google_pla_df&fndsrc=tgtao&DFA=71700000012732838&CPNG=PLA_Toys%2BShopping_Local%7CToys_Ecomm_Hardlines&adgroup=SC_Toys&LID=700000001170770pgs&LNM=PRODUCT_GROUP&network=g&device=c&location=9015842&targetid=aud-1453399007976:pla-517349206223&ds_rl=1246978&ds_rl=1248099&gclid=Cj0KCQiAoY-PBhCNARIsABcz773LNteAGvVcmCX6RBTAqd4OuF8e1fyuASjTu85yCZZDFTcm3hFI5KoaAoC6EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds" target="_blank">#CultureTags</a>. We had spent days tending a communal fire outside, including amidst a tornado watch and severe thunderstorms that required us to “place a tent-top” over it for it to survive the onslaught of the waters. Yet eight of us (to my recollection) sat in the living room, just talking. No agenda. No place we were trying to get to…</span></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the white women in the group made an observation from her own work in anti-racist, now more integrative, reconciliatory work. She may have asked a question of us all which I’ve now forgotten. (As this is my re-telling, I’ll name how I’ve come to hold this…which differs from “what actually happened” and “who said what,” just to be clear. I’m renown for poor memory about specifics like that). She comes from an Italian lineage, with awareness of the stories of European ancestry. She used a phrase “left out in the cold.” She spoke of her own awareness of an ancestral wound in her own line: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you abide by and conform to the group’s norms, or literally, you can be left out in the cold to die</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />European ancestry, collective from before memory, dealt with cold-climate and the threats to survival by which such cold confronted the group’s survival. Unaware of anything special to come, we began to muse about this tension between “aligning with the community to survive” and “leading the community in new directions” of deeper evolution, more compassionate human being, greater awareness and consciousness.</span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another strand for me, seemingly unrelated, emerged when I shared my own befuddlement at the lack of judgment or anger, even rage, against the elders of these new friends, African American men and women who have faced crises and challenges I cannot begin to imagine. Things that I see as physical or emotional abandonment, even abuse. The vice-grip of poverty with addictions that result in persistent poverty, overcome only in faith and a tenacious will, communal wisdom. How can they not be enraged, furious, even accusatory of their parents, their elders?</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This question arose in me because of my own story, of course. While I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">know</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> my parents provided for me beyond reproach–materially, physically, in all the ways that can be seen and communally lauded–I yet reached adulthood as a deeply dissociated, disembodied little girl in a masculinized shell of a body, traumatized by shame and guilt given fuel within Protestant Puritan Christianity. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;">I was unable to name my desires as sacred, unable to imagine my own story mattered or could be seen as beautiful. That I could be loved for <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who I am</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> more than </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what I have accomplished, what I do</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That I am loveable </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as I am</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, regardless of whether my family is proud of me. The little girl I was, the full-throated fierce woman I am now, only came together amidst </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">years–</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and I mean</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> years</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">–of re-mothering (by two <i>anam cara</i> spirit-friends and countless circles of women) until I learned how to hold <i>myself</i> in that Love. This journey to myself as a conscious feminine woman who knows she has value beyond any of the giftings and failings of her family has taken decades. You can pray for my folks, my family...because it has also been one of seemingly unending anger and rage–anger at my parents for their refusals to learn their </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">own</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> emotional selves, work (though that is clearly not their first value/choice in this lifetime, which must be honored); at my family line for preferring our own myth of specialness instead of reality, a Hess-ness that can overshadow wounds and gifts alike; my religious tradition for choosing persistent ignorance and refusals to see a historical tradition canNOT be more important than one person wounded and in the corner, silenced and dying. I am a lava-eruption of anger when it gets nicked just right…[...and blessedly, the souls of my folks chose this way to be in my own life <i>so that I would do this soul-work now</i>....it's all precisely as it needed to be...] </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">…and yet... I named this decades-long experience of anger/rage in my own story…and how I am most befuddled how it is not the experience of those who have so much more to be furious about than I do from their elders. </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were other voices, other stories, that wove into this tension…but whatever all the strands were here converged into a braided strand that snapped the white faces in the room to attention in some way, to exchanged glances and eyes meeting eyes with recognition. Something about our shared European-ancestral lines where </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you align and conform or you are left out in the cold to die</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and (for me) this </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">weight of rage & judgment</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that I carry today snapped some energy into the room. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The black faces in the room SAW us, saw us white folks seeing something in one another that we all recognized but which was foreign to each of them as black. Each of us would describe this differently, of course, but this is what has been cooking in me…</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Judgment and rage against one’s own elders was incomprehensible for all the black people in the room. Again and again, I heard brothers and sisters of African-American descent speak their unconditional love and respect of their elders, not because they had earned it per se (though many obviously had and many obviously had not) but because they </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> their elders’ love for them was </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unconditional</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It was never even a question for them, to question, to ever consider as conceivable that "love" could be conditional. The four black voices in the room had spoken of the unconditional love they </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in their families. Their elders were doing the best they could do, in unimaginable and overwhelmingly difficult circumstances in Jim-Crow, civil-rights-era advocacy and plain living in hostile society(ies). Regardless of any failings–physical or emotional abandonment, neglect in back-breaking poverty, cycles of addiction and more–these four black human beings </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> their love shared in family was unconditional. There was sadness, outrage at injustice, so much necessary to grieve, but <i>no judgment or rage against their elders</i>.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is probably what poked my own disbelief and befuddlement, because I do </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> know that. I don't know what unconditional love feels like, as mixed up as it is with performances of all kinds. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of the four white people in the room said they didn't know that either, within their own families. And the four black voices spoke with shock and disbelief… </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surely we cannot have meant that?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> each asked in his/her own way. One white person after another told the story of having to perform so to be seen by their family, by the larger community as worthy, as loveable. One was from elementary school, required to behave a certain way or be shunned by her own mother, by her friends. Mine was from kindergarten and early elementary school. Another named how it plays out now in herself amidst her own family, being a mother and a wife and another as a religious leader. We might call it the overwhelming </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">poverty of the performative</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that drenches white communities, continuously remaining unconscious of the need to perform in order to be worthy, to have value, in society’s or family’s eyes. Continuously needing to remain unconscious of this </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lack</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, this </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">emptiness</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, with few to no collective-communal skills to actually face the unbearable shame, shaming, that will surely mean a dying of some kind.</span></span></p><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to return for a moment too, to the black shock and disbelief. Four black voices spoke with shock and disbelief…</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surely we cannot have meant that? We really </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">don’t know</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that our family loves us unconditionally?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I can still see my new friend’s face, trying to comprehend or put it together inside herself. <i>And I saw a wave of empathy and sadness cross her face, her entire body</i>. She sat back finally, and threw her hands up in the air. “If I had known </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I would have dealt with the white-woman boss in my previous job </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">totally differently</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” she said. “I cannot imagine…” she trailed off. There was an overwhelming sadness in me that I finally had access to…I could feel my own sadness as my own…and it was seen by someone I respect and yet do not know well. I grieved a little that night--welcomed this sadness, knowing that it was seen.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The eight of us sat in stunned disbelief, silence, even wonder, looking at one another, unsure of what had just happened. Earlier that week, we had been held in a tightly facilitated “tell your story of race” session, so my new friend of African descent said to me, “Next time someone asks you your own story of race, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tell this one</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.” This is one of my stories of race, whether politicized and civic debates on race and anti-racist work agree. Many of these voices would say it's not their white story or their black story. I'm not invested in those back-and-forths, here.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My own story would not be complete without deep belly gratitude for my own family that after fracturing, even shunning me for a time, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">did</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> return to a reconciling relationship for us, though we are really care-full and tender now with one another. The fact remains that we do not know unconditional love in our family, nor are we particularly emotionally adept with our frailties, shadows, broken-places. We sever, judge, try to rationalize it all, then perhaps come back into overt emotional connection. (I have learned that we're always emotionally connected, even if we have utterly no contact for long periods, so by overt I mean "intentional" and "practiced again." Connection-in-aversion is simply deep-attachment, but negative or painful, suffering, as Buddhists might say). </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With utter faithfulness and a genuinely deep heart, my father continues his struggles to receive love and know that he matters regardless of whether he does anything at all. I would say the same for my mother, though her own physical challenges have meant that she’s more practiced being just as she is, without obsessions over accomplishment. I don’t know my sister well enough to know where she would fall in this tension, but I’d guess she’s still imprisoned with it in some fashion, giving it intensely Conservative-Christian language. But maybe not. Her religious choices have meant she’s at a further periphery from the highly elitist, overly-intellectual norms of my extended Hess-ness family, whom I love and adore, and who do NOT know unconditional love very easily, if at all. My beloved husband is completely enthralled to this work-for-love-and-approval wound/reality, as he is a practicing pastor in a suburban, largely white congregation.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember: this is <i>my</i> retelling of <i>my</i> story–my own family would disagree, I’m sure, even refuse and want to push it away. </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I learned from my earliest years that achievement was more important than my little girl’s heart and embodied experiences, stories. Not out of malice or neglect from my folks, but because to succeed in our largely white, homogenous community meant achieving in school, achieving in music, becoming an establishment figure with great success in a sacred vocation. The woundedness in my folks and therefore in me here is this damning separation/being separated from unconditional love that other human beings on our planet actually DO know. I don’t know HOW they can know this–it is not my experience–but clearly, it is an act of Godde to KNOW it. Other white people won't have this story of race, but perhaps more of us will than can admit it openly...because to admit it means unconformity to their own white families, and a deep, vagrus-nerve fear of being left out in the cold.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiemojMYU4B4iE28fe4kUbd14MFlUs_kZGCOuz0nK_nE-qmDsrn0zmaAVuLgL0j425h3FLL6jA5zJ8kBdmsGqzA5mgCqfct2y4V740RGLXH4SnPRokZhpHVXCoW1ift6jnU6PTxjolent7m3jgUQjEQGVHv_XJ70TqEsiVm_vPaUeiji66jf0XUcDJhqg=s958" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="958" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiemojMYU4B4iE28fe4kUbd14MFlUs_kZGCOuz0nK_nE-qmDsrn0zmaAVuLgL0j425h3FLL6jA5zJ8kBdmsGqzA5mgCqfct2y4V740RGLXH4SnPRokZhpHVXCoW1ift6jnU6PTxjolent7m3jgUQjEQGVHv_XJ70TqEsiVm_vPaUeiji66jf0XUcDJhqg=s320" width="320" /></span></a></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And this is only my retelling of an event that changed my life because of commitment in Fire&Water, and the commitment of those who continue to walk together, complicated human beings on a sacred journey toward deeper healing, forgiveness, maybe even reconciliation some day (that I doubt any of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">us</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> will live long enough to see, truly, fully, but no matter…). I would name you by name, but hereby honor your privacy and intimacy until/or unless you ask me to name more. I do welcome the other lenses on this story, which is not just my own anymore. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is one of my own race stories then, emergent because it could unfold gently, after deep-belly laughter, with softened hearts and empathy across difference. Thank you, friend, for requesting me to tell it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzvF1khusbZY7j7QN6kgIqZCijXy-pNKZ9wqVYUn48fykkhlpeS2T3zfY206dpLtzsMFdzKNd337IzxPzLP1E0l1VWfGrg4UKim6rS4F6-WxdP3EyJ5oVlOxfykxiR6SCKrgxLArUcszRDoYmMmp5U9D8Ir7-6t2RjyOLgBzJ7pt4Fbt_4HL3mmYglKQ=s799" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="799" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzvF1khusbZY7j7QN6kgIqZCijXy-pNKZ9wqVYUn48fykkhlpeS2T3zfY206dpLtzsMFdzKNd337IzxPzLP1E0l1VWfGrg4UKim6rS4F6-WxdP3EyJ5oVlOxfykxiR6SCKrgxLArUcszRDoYmMmp5U9D8Ir7-6t2RjyOLgBzJ7pt4Fbt_4HL3mmYglKQ=s320" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;">I bow to the imagined, unbearable challenge that empathy can be, perhaps always is here in our fragmented and polarized world,<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> but again, with Godde, nothing is impossible. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trust the divine order of things, I hear (QR). Once you’ve already surrendered, all of this becomes available. To me. To You. To Us. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">We ARE one another; we belong to one another.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-73746388895466723932022-01-13T11:25:00.027-05:002023-12-24T13:22:42.941-05:00We Have Returned...<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">…even though we never physically left our homes.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0d94iPKwEWs-515q7OiNeKtBtbWVHisf58HaFLXWJYRBaQsdYIN3PqOLN0aG6ppaakCs4U-4DjKDgdS6YrNxs6qz7h2r_EqeQ3PDooOK18lziuE345Zr2miF7DIhyOqTPl0a4ishX0bmTAam6R_XrPqZl5AO03eaK7C9GFlz3HSjhUQblk7z_1r5HxQ=s982" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="982" data-original-width="982" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0d94iPKwEWs-515q7OiNeKtBtbWVHisf58HaFLXWJYRBaQsdYIN3PqOLN0aG6ppaakCs4U-4DjKDgdS6YrNxs6qz7h2r_EqeQ3PDooOK18lziuE345Zr2miF7DIhyOqTPl0a4ishX0bmTAam6R_XrPqZl5AO03eaK7C9GFlz3HSjhUQblk7z_1r5HxQ=w242-h242" width="242" /></a></span></div><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-56afc2af-7fff-8193-cb26-411efe31faf5"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As in my <a href="https://www.reconsideringcitizenship.com/2022/01/pilgrimage-learningsa-preliminary.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>, I want to offer in the same-immediacy-writing commitment a glimpse of where I am now sitting, how I am now sitting, and the hope I feel while being here in this fragmented and polarizing era we find ourselves in, in reconsidering citizenship. I honor that it will be, at some level, incomprehensible or easy-to-dismiss from outside the experience. I honor that only a percentage of the 24 students who engaged in this trip will share in what I have to say here. Large percentage? Small percentage? I don’t know. The post-immersion surveys are not all in yet, and even they will be shaped by the ‘authority-sensibilities’ that are inescapable in higher education today. Or in our collective systems. Many of us do not feel free to name our experience bluntly or openly; many of us do not have the skills or language to even name our own experience underneath the shoulds and should-nots of our own particular tribalisms. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am bowing to all of that, so to point to what is possible when religious leaders risk into the unknown, and “go out on a limb” for sacred callings in the world. These are the kinds of leaders we need today. Other friends will say </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://fireandwaterleadership.weebly.com/" target="_blank">wise and soulful</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which is also true here for me. I learned a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lot</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> about religious leadership guided by the Land of Israel/Palestinian Territories, as rooted in human beings deeply listening to the land, and to one another, made possible by the <i><a href="https://www.clal.org/project/israel-for-all/" target="_blank">Stand and See</a></i> initiative of <a href="http://www.clal.org" target="_blank">CLAL</a>, the Center for Learning and Leadership with whom I have been in various collaborations over the years. [Shout out here to spirit-friend <a href="https://www.clal.org/team/brad/" target="_blank">Brad Hirschfield</a>, btw (here below). The world is a better place because you're in it].</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzH3CeB2Hpy1X5Rg0y8cerxPdeB_Dq_wMdthGTXtORAEqvDtitDxrQFNkbF82Hdm54Jew4Ssfevl1zG-gJcg_cmlnYNm1gxeMOq1rk5axVviNXV_Oyh_mxoq3ZQ4Smc81sfb8caVnII_T18dX3MeSVm3QgauYeQiMBF9yhkC9oIWsgxMnV6UtEW19gJQ=s1024" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="693" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzH3CeB2Hpy1X5Rg0y8cerxPdeB_Dq_wMdthGTXtORAEqvDtitDxrQFNkbF82Hdm54Jew4Ssfevl1zG-gJcg_cmlnYNm1gxeMOq1rk5axVviNXV_Oyh_mxoq3ZQ4Smc81sfb8caVnII_T18dX3MeSVm3QgauYeQiMBF9yhkC9oIWsgxMnV6UtEW19gJQ=w135-h200" width="135" /></a></span></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Personally, I am relieved to be on </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this side</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the leadership-innovation risk and space-holding. I’m exhausted, with that good kind of post-workout or post-pilgrimage sense of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">home-coming</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. These 8-days crafted an intensive-immersion-experience for a faithful learning community, beginning in prayer and being intentional about prayer-postures throughout the 6 hours (or so) we were engaged with the Land and one another on Zoom. That’s at least 45 hours of Zoom in 8 days (as Sunday was optional and brief). It was a huge risk for CLAL, to be honest, to lean into the innovative idea in the first place. It was a huge risk for me as a practical theology professor, unable to feel her way into what it might be, yet trusting the passion and vision of her spirit friends. [Second shout-out here then to <a href="https://www.clal.org/team/irwin/" target="_blank">Irwin Kula</a> (pictured below), who wove me into CLAL's wisdom back in 2007, supporting my own work then, and continuing to encourage and confirm what rises in me today.]</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfyN1dbRecaFWoIukQhsbwDRbu2y9PqyqASaDeaFxGGw2LeinFaZ9J5YTSC7uVqJJi9sLPdaP8RAhgitKThEEzwtRXdRx9-wwqRNbW3zmJo5HfBDkk3yRA0EJ8zxjOxKZLLL9CVh-aeorxJQ7PfM8AsOqtw0Zyx5Z9hrvzhZS4Mn-B1BrGJOTLP9oT9A=s301" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="167" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfyN1dbRecaFWoIukQhsbwDRbu2y9PqyqASaDeaFxGGw2LeinFaZ9J5YTSC7uVqJJi9sLPdaP8RAhgitKThEEzwtRXdRx9-wwqRNbW3zmJo5HfBDkk3yRA0EJ8zxjOxKZLLL9CVh-aeorxJQ7PfM8AsOqtw0Zyx5Z9hrvzhZS4Mn-B1BrGJOTLP9oT9A" width="167" /></a></span></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From this side, I can see the familiar obstacles at the beginning of any pilgrimage–unmet expectations, frustrations, sadnesses, grief, anger, even crankiness. Normally, this plays out in airline frustrations, missed planes, lost luggage, fear of community members yet unknown, fear of the experience to come. This time, these obstacles played out in my own emotional weather, noted in the previous posting–uncertainty, self-doubt, sadness, grief, empathy, weariness. I’m often an ‘emotional kidney’ for these experiences, and I was in this virtual pilgrimage too.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then there were the familiar concluding waves of emotion and expression at the conclusion of any pilgrimage–deep gratitude, softening of eyes toward one another, closing-thought Torah/teachings, sadness, tears, lingering, acclamations of coming back together, and in this instance, of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">traveling to the Land in person</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, now more convicted of its lessons and opportunities available to all persons of faith, especially those of The Book (Jews, Christians, Muslims). Many of us lingered on screen, in that ancient, rabbinic-interpreted sacred-communal-time of wanting to linger with one another as one. I felt the loss of the energetic web I’d been holding the entire time, both with a sense of sadness, and with joy–grief, in other words. Relieved and sad/happy.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We were a large pilgrimage group for a Zoom platform event–made necessary by Covid and a bit of a back-log of students requiring immersion experiences to conclude their degree sequence. So the level of engagement with some </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be perceived as almost nonexistent. How much were they taking in, while multitasking and being about their ministry or family lives? How much </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> they engage from their own overwhelm of weariness and covid-era pastoring? No way to really know, except require screens be ‘on’. And I do empathize with the challenges, even as I note that this virtual option could be argued in old-school habits of mind to underserve those who for whatever reason cannot make the spaces in their lives so to fully engage in voice and focused attention. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Except we saw the level of engagement deepen and increase with more and more of the whole. And those who I expected would </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> engage for whatever reason, surprised me by engaging fully. The duration of the immersion meant there was a deepening more and more, witnessed in both those who regularly spoke but also in those who, in the words of Rabbi Brad, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will now not unsee what they’ve seen, nor unhear what they’ve heard</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This option complicates the faculty perception of engagement–no way to know how/what students are taking in–AND it provides a means for </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all of us</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, each of us, to be in a more diverse learning community, outside our denominational/traditional tribalisms of attention and welcome. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9opyHqFrzeaPLIMi6zLzQEGI4eyi74dvs7pdvf-cTIdikWedDyfq9oDGNpPQs6hBkD9mVtde9ah1CfCAoa1rDGW6e8AGazCmAm4MJADPXLSlZcF6zg14c3iWJTS7OxH2AqDM4MS4ogEnioaf1ebzaRENWlgsjo_eVHnwAEvq1EYHAXBq8wyRGKwHMUg=s4032" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9opyHqFrzeaPLIMi6zLzQEGI4eyi74dvs7pdvf-cTIdikWedDyfq9oDGNpPQs6hBkD9mVtde9ah1CfCAoa1rDGW6e8AGazCmAm4MJADPXLSlZcF6zg14c3iWJTS7OxH2AqDM4MS4ogEnioaf1ebzaRENWlgsjo_eVHnwAEvq1EYHAXBq8wyRGKwHMUg=s320" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of the deepening happened </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because The Land was speaking</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to participants of deep faith and passion </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> their faith, in their own tradition(s). [Here we were at Magdala, led by guide <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkPr5VofRN0cflZrsh8XZ5A" target="_blank">Sakher Rizkallah Peter</a>.] By Day Three, I heard participants speaking of the land </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as if we were physically there</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and I heard the leadership-team–including the two guides actually rooted IN the land, ON the land, as they taught–doing that too. The Land began to invite participants to see and hear their own scriptures in a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rooted, physically concrete fashion</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The theological traditions of the participants began their dance in the learning community–interpretations and questions, inquiries–but with a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">third presence</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which brought us all into an equanimity with one another: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the Land</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and its irrepressible realities analyzed and estimated with archaeological insight, actual artifacts, and historical narratives at play across traditions. The Land requires us to be in our deeply impassioned and human listening with one another, while more of us are looking in the same direction at the particular artifact. We don’t get completely lost in presumed facts or ideologies, though both of those realities dance their tunes in us while listening to the Land. This Land becomes Holy here by confronting and inviting us, simultaneously, to be rooted and grounded in the world while drawn forward in faith for the World to Come.</span></span><div><span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The learning community was also held and discussions guided by three Jews (of differing streams) within CLAL's team--two of them ordained rabbis (shout-out to <a href="https://eastendtemple.org/clergy-and-staff/" target="_blank">Rabbi Joshua Stanton</a>–and two Protestant ordained Christian teaching-elders (pastors, in Presbyterian-speak--Rev. Dr. <a href="https://fairmontchurch.org/rev-brian-maguire/" target="_blank">Brian Maguire</a> and myself), also companioned each day by a tour-guide on the ground–one Jewish (<a href="http://garytheguide.israel" target="_blank">Gary Kamen</a>) and the other Palestinian Christian (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkPr5VofRN0cflZrsh8XZ5A" target="_blank">Sakher Rizkalla Peter</a>). When the live-feed was too fuzzy for good-seeing, there were back-up images and videos to rely on, ably provided by a savvy administrator of CLAL (Shout-out to Shelli Aderman here!). Shabbat-night in Jerusalem was a discussion and reflection-exercise guided by the <a href="https://thekotel.org/en/western-wall/western-wall-cameras/" target="_blank">live-cam</a> image of the Western Wall. Each of us got to write a prayer that an Orthodox Jew would print out (sight unseen) and place into the wall for us (<a href="https://thekotel.org/en/send-a-note/" target="_blank">electronic website and global ministry offering</a>). Some of the “sites visited” were GoPro camera-videoed and then stewarded by the tour-guide. All had images which could be seen while discussion and questions emerged. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEir3TThcOHVwfZqgCEoadPbAUTNJ7j6iK5yjxcFT0vzEmznVyvEJiU72mQsYfWzT25MOs2Zp9ZUzR7qT3lcPgmoHUSnvLRDSqIQNvRLyNXFLJynncn_waOaIdW1fWOQB4KTtEAnp4nZMbxIdnrZXPZDNvHMAhIcyU46qw8-lklhkIOHmcnQvtdI9FB3Dw=s275" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEir3TThcOHVwfZqgCEoadPbAUTNJ7j6iK5yjxcFT0vzEmznVyvEJiU72mQsYfWzT25MOs2Zp9ZUzR7qT3lcPgmoHUSnvLRDSqIQNvRLyNXFLJynncn_waOaIdW1fWOQB4KTtEAnp4nZMbxIdnrZXPZDNvHMAhIcyU46qw8-lklhkIOHmcnQvtdI9FB3Dw=w133-h200" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />Live-Zoom chats were held with a variety of voices–a Father Nael who is a Palestinian-Arab-Israeli-Christian and Anglican priest in Nazareth (pictured to the right), an activist in Jerusalem tending to political and civic challenges in social justice (<a href="https://www.ccarpress.org/content.asp?tid=578" target="_blank">Rabbi Noa Sattah</a>, pictured below), two Israeli settlers with a religious calling to live on the land, and <a href="https://rabbihaviva.com/" target="_blank">Haviva Ner David</a>, a kibbutz-located interspiritualist and Jewish woman–ordained Orthodox rabbi (yes!) and spiritual companion whose ministry is centered in bread, bathing and brightening, within rituals alongside/within <a href="https://rabbihaviva.com/mikveh/" target="_blank">a non-denominational mikveh</a> in Israel. And of course, there were more voices missing than were present. It’s easy to take a legal-political habit of mind and critique how this pilgrimage framed the politics of peace and righteous unrest. I'm not neglecting that reality, but I'm also not letting it guide my experience coming into speech here.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTnxIk5yXtLohBMokRBphSmqyDmhJUubGZW7SuvqOffBQaGQ3-79OrTNdmutgzz_cpHcbg8n02xmO_FZgPuGn3bZPupVST0lnVuN4Zj-6mKqv8ClVpvnW3zhYeEyWWLe0HjdTaoa-ymjs2H8DF-lLHZqo6g3_rnDSz2D1-qn5ihIoRmUex6Plg2QzBJA=s550" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="550" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTnxIk5yXtLohBMokRBphSmqyDmhJUubGZW7SuvqOffBQaGQ3-79OrTNdmutgzz_cpHcbg8n02xmO_FZgPuGn3bZPupVST0lnVuN4Zj-6mKqv8ClVpvnW3zhYeEyWWLe0HjdTaoa-ymjs2H8DF-lLHZqo6g3_rnDSz2D1-qn5ihIoRmUex6Plg2QzBJA=w147-h146" width="147" /></a></div></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of my most significant learnings that I want my future students to trust me when I say...? Students are able to BE in their own traditions, honored and heart-felt, while also learning alongside and from Jews and Christians learning-teaching-together, alongside Israelis, Palestinians, Americans learning-teaching-listening together. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s always more complicated than we try to make it inside ourselves</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where we will always flatten and divide, so to hold onto our own worldviews. We Christians have inherited a schismatic and textually dualistic way of being in the world--always either/or, rarely both/and while holding the ambiguity. The difficulty is in how we see/expect/assume AND atrophied emotional muscles to surrender into the sovereignty of Godde. Our charism/yearning to connect with all the world so easily translates to complete mis-seeing of others, and a projection outward/onto them of what needs only to be welcomed inward to be assured--blessedly assured.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I teased my rabbi friend: I love teaching-learning with him because his Torah, his rabbinic heart and spirit, are so very Christlike--a term important to me, if potentially painful for him (but not in this case, as we talked about it). He is impassioned, curious, inviting, honoring, listening, challenging, traditionally rooted and even verbosely-obstinate for the wisdom of tradition(s). I recognize in him an energy of Wisdom I have known in my Christian journey, a recognizable sacred presence I have come to trust in my journey with the Risen One. It's a 'felt-sense' thing that sacred leaders like myself become willing to trust and learn to intuit, name when they have to, more often leave unnamed in the intimate smile of divine and human coming to Life in the world.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another participant from a Stand and See journey that my husband (Brian Maguire) helped lead named it well: <i>Sitting and learning with a rabbi who is often more Christian than the Christians on the trip was disorienting and</i> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">marvelous.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because Rabbi Brad is who he is, he’s made </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">completely uncomfortable</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by this description, and it IS uncomfortable in its Christian insider-ism...like the first faltering attempts of the 1960's Vatican to name others whose wisdom contributed to the world <i>anonymous Christians</i>. Makes me shudder today. Its these old Christian habits of mind there that make it so</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> important for Christians to hear: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some deeply rooted traditional folks living out of their own traditions can mirror Godde* to us in ways that we Christians cannot, for one another, for ourselves. And vice versa. We need one another; we belong to one another. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a personal charism and willingness to trust in the Good News, in a more compassionate future, in the World to Come, in the Kingdom of Godde, that lives a religious leadership in the world that Christians can recognize for themselves as </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Christian</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but which need not be named only</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in Christianity</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[For those of us who have invested in this work for decades, that is obvious and seems naive to have to name aloud. Like the underlying contrast of assumptions: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You mean wisdom can be in other traditions beyond my own?!</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> That’s what’s underlying some of this… So many Christians who come into my classroom simply assume that encountering another human being will somehow make them unfaithful in their own faith. So we/they divide and conquer, and miss the scandalous grace of Godde beyond our/their ken.] </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land got underneath how deeply religious tribalisms keep us a part from one another. We learned in a multitraditional community to be better and wiser in our own traditions. More of us–because certainly there were participants who just endured, so to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not be changed</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">–can now see we can honor Wisdom where’er she be found, not only in our own tribe. </span></p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which then opens the gate a bit toward softer hearts, more curious spirits, deepened minds. </span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But these Christian seminary students were also privy to the overwhelming demands of living a risked leadership life into public, into the unknown. They saw me unsure, uncertain, and challenged by my own decision to trust this rabbinic friend and his utter commitment to innovation during COVID. They saw the fruits that can come when they lean into the discomforts and unknowing, <i>requiring us all to learn together, vulnerably, in public</i>. Religious leaders need to develop spiritual muscles of <i>this </i>kind--a willingness to be foolish and make possible errors in public--instead of looking solely to how their traditions have been interpreted in the historic past, or even present, historically confined. </span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have now returned to our world as it is, to our lives as they will now unfold, and as is true with any physically-traveled pilgrimage, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am changed</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Many of us </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have been changed</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Thanks be to Godde.*</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>* I use ‘Godde’ as a spelling of ‘God’ that startles in its difference from expectation. It’s a middle ground way to honor both the masculine and feminine Divine, God/Goddess, while recognizing that the Feminine is largely eclipsed by patriarchal traditions and a toxic masculine in the word “God.” </i></span></p><i><br /></i><br /><br /><br /></span></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-70073632391686254762022-01-06T17:21:00.002-05:002023-12-24T13:23:20.901-05:00Pilgrimage Learnings...a Preliminary Glimpse to Counter Today<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To muse or not to muse? And will these words open into the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reconsidering citizenship</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of this blog-space? I hope so. This is my offering for today, January 6th, in the United States of America, 2022. Experimenting with wise-soulful leadership in public, in some contrast to the uncivil-civic spaces we'll see today.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-af5aafb2-7fff-8018-332f-2542637c80e1"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, context of writing and pilgrimage: I’m learning more and more in my later years that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sitting-with-something</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, refusing to write about it for a good long while, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ultimately bear fruit that is inaccessible while in the midst of the experience. I’ve been quiet on this blog-space for some of these reasons. </span></p>Yet there is something to be said for writing while </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the midst</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> too. The fruit of immediacy, vulnerability, glimpses on the way come with a willingness to write and be seen in the overwhelm or even incomprehensibility of an experience. The origins of this blog-project were mostly in-the-midst writings, after all. The </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">waiting-to-write</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> offers any reader the gifts of patience, integration, digestion over time, hopefully with fewer hiccups or burps or such metaphorical bodily discomforts. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> words are in the categories of immediacy, amidst only the first two days of a 7-day pilgrimage, virtual platform, synchronous with both live and video “sites” being seen. Thirty of us are gathering each morning, 8 a.m. to about 2 p.m., for a Virtual Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Israel/Palestinian Territories), guided by tour guides on the ground there (or in their own living rooms), and a teaching team of two Christian pastors/professors and two rabbis, plus a savvy administrator with her own direct and indirect contributions.</span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So much changes in just a day, for one thing. I wrestled last night, with Zoom-fatigue of course, but also with a roiling-wondering whether my institution’s students could really BE PRESENT amidst the pressures and demands I know are a part of their lives. Did I make a mistake in proceeding with this Intensive Immersion Experience so to deliver on our seminary’s curricular commitments? Should I have simply let it all go? Today, 24 hours later, I’m deeply moved and smiling with how so many of them </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">showed up</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> today–a bit of fire, a bit of push-back, a bit of reorientation and engagement </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">which is what the leadership team is desiring but cannot do alone</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxgjM1v4hQAk15ocTReiWvYH9CP8Um09BlCEWpyyyL4MmUyxkATI5my1Q4SB9t6LOnay8k32-LfEQpiLor01X_KRTa4l6UH5k-pIz1z_hjqHgxXqqPx5nsz9-h_DuJxxNx_wujHqgWs8L_rqZzovVhRpn6X_4we0m7zGgyEdsFrZtVTBoVnDGKnzYwZA=s982" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="982" data-original-width="982" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxgjM1v4hQAk15ocTReiWvYH9CP8Um09BlCEWpyyyL4MmUyxkATI5my1Q4SB9t6LOnay8k32-LfEQpiLor01X_KRTa4l6UH5k-pIz1z_hjqHgxXqqPx5nsz9-h_DuJxxNx_wujHqgWs8L_rqZzovVhRpn6X_4we0m7zGgyEdsFrZtVTBoVnDGKnzYwZA=s320" width="320" /></a></div>Today, I’m beginning to see how this Immersion Experience–even virtually–is an excellent capstone-like experience, necessary to place all the scriptural, historical, theological, practical disciplines into a living-learning-lab. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s hopelessly/hopefully power-structured and shaped by higher-education-norms of professor/student. I don’t know what Day 7 will feel like, beyond an assured relief to have been faithful to it all, but I’m convinced <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">today</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that this is a priceless opportunity for our Christian-pastoral students to learn with new voices, pluralist-valuing voices, that our students don’t get from ‘us faculty’ in one traditionally-identified institution. </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night’s fatigue and worry were real, though, and my heart still aches for our students. Working several jobs. Tending family members young and older. Serving their churches. Being a student in a Masters’ degree program at an accredited UMC seminary. Now being physically sick in a COVID era. My heart aches with </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">…and…we each </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">get to</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> play our part in the drama of deepening and accountability. My faculty colleagues and I wrestle regularly with the realities of theological education for preparation of religious leaders today, so much in contrast to our own experiences in more establishment times and institutions. We know seminary with more residential and physical-communal norms. And spacious time for exploratory reading, research and writing (though we always blamed scarcity amidst abundance). Lunch and dinnertime conversations in dining halls, with faculty and administrators dipping in to be part of the community that shapes a faith-filled leader. Regular in-person communal worship within traditional or historical liturgical practice(s). </span></p><br />Online education and the realities of the theological education market mean higher theological education today is a vastly different animal–no judgment of better or worse, just naming <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. We faculty regularly act out our own grief at how little contact we get to have with online students–refusals of emails, messages, etc. We learn to place our attentions where our own needs for connection through discipline can be met. (It’s not ideal, of course, particularly for our students, but it is understandable as a torrent of grief amidst so much change into online settings). So, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">our</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> students are stretched beyond capacity and we faculty do our best to create spaces for formation with integrity. And we both are getting it all done </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anyway</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As several students demonstrated today. It made holding the spaces more challenging and plans were changed on the fly…as they needed to be. As they always are in pilgrimages that happen after overseas travel.</span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I sit here this afternoon in a bit of weary astonishment, feeling SO DIFFERENT than I did last night. Much more hopeful. Much more curious about students who shine easily in online environments, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">those who don’t shine there but </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DO</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> shine in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> synchronous, interpersonal environment. A truism, clearly, but </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we can only see what we can see</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in online teaching. We </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">miss so very much</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And yes, students who learn in these environments are missing so very much of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">us</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and a more traditional way of being shaped in Christian faith leadership. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is what it is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I didn’t create this social field. I’m certainly not in charge, but only a steward, trusting in the divine order of things. In that light, then, what am I learning in the divine order of things?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> worth doing, and learning how to do again and again. The Virtual Pilgrimage makes available that which otherwise would not have been offered, to a student body needing more and more voices to help shape their best selves in Christian leadership. I cannot begin to describe the overwhelming awareness of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not being alone</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that kept me in tears for much of yesterday morning. More about that below, but even a virtual pilgrimage IS a community on the way, in prayer, learning to listen to and with one another, amidst all obstacles before us.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>The grief amongst and in us is overwhelming, or perhaps simply more obviously visible here. There is no escape from it–grief at so many losses of <i>not</i> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being there</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, of <i>not </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">walking where Jesus walked</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, of needing to complete the holy journey of seminary-formation in a virtual format that wearies and silences amidst intentions to empower and give new voice. All this on top of the covid-weariness of losses–loved ones, jobs, security, abilities to plan, to travel, to pursue dreams without assessing vaccination statuses of those involved (😜😜😜)…so very much more. The grief in the group is palpable, and easy to ‘nick’ in those with the most fire or capacity to speak their experience into the space. Blessedly, many are beginning to name their questions, their experiences, and take control of their own learning curves with the abundance(s) here. But we are grieving a LOT without much mention of it, or practices/tools in this kind of venture to address/resolve it healthily. </span><div><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[By which I mean…it’s more damaging to invite open-ended expressions of grief when the only spaces available for it are ‘end of site’ conversations, in a Zoom room. Speaking within the much larger educational ecology, higher education in general is not crafted to address or resolve grief in healthy ways, which means our civic spaces are uncivil, our religious spaces are polarized, and our discourse/media are angry/rageful with no redress, resolution. Healthy ways to grieve are immediate to the moment, responsive, communal, witnessed, tender and vulnerable, unknowing without tidying…letting be…until the one grieving is done, ready to move on. Higher ed doesn’t DO that kind of thing. Women’s circles can, but not always. Women’s ‘circles’ in religious traditions have often lost that holding wisdom too… Writing today may simply be to <i>name that openly</i>, so to honor it, as best I/we can.]</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So even though we are drenched in grief, with little immediate recourse beyond this naming of it, I’m still utterly convinced of the gifting of this, for </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> student body, even if only a portion of them decide to engage actively. Frustrating for us as leaders, sure, but it’s not about us or even that personal. Forcing engagement is damaging, dishonoring of defense mechanisms some online students require for themselves. We teacher-elders get to work with whomever shows up, and they are enough. I’m thrilled with who and how these are </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">showing up.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And even if that weren’t true, the gifts </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for me</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are emerging with greater clarity. The organization of theological disciplines in my home institution means that I’m “the one” slated to invite deepening or broadening of perspectives beyond a doctrinal/traditional lens into religious pluralism. No one else does interreligious-learning, in other words, though there </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> other faculty who address intercultural learning within preaching, and others with a missional or evangelizing frame of reference. Some of “us” shape it more and more toward proselytizing, with an increasingly global Pentecostal or Charismatic rigidity (in my experience/naming of this behavior/approach; his/her words would probably be different). That is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> my charism, nor calling, though I respect it in my devotion to my sister (longer story there) and my commitment to intellectual virtue. However we might name this "rigidity-I-experience-here", with each colleague granted irrepressible dignity and legitimacy, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have felt so very alone in this work, and been completely unaware of how alone I do feel</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Organizing ourselves institutionally this way means it’s easy for students to dismiss and disregard it, projecting their discomforts and judgments onto me–a woman, a non-Methodist, a “liberal” (whatever that may mean anymore, which I am not in most traditional uses of that word), etc. When there is only one faculty person “responsible for that part of the curriculum,” it’s easy to disregard, isolate, and dismiss. Even scapegoat in some institutional cultures, though that’s not a worry for me in mine. [I'm heading into my crone years, after all, and it's pretty common for older women to be disregarded, period. That I have the voice I do honors my institution and me both. I've found great freedom in this periphery, btw.] To be fair, we're actually a small faculty, really doing an incredible breadth and depth with all we have...AND...our institutional organization can underserve students in how to be better Christian leaders, with more savvy wisdom about a world needing more compassion and less suffering.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Sitting within a collaborative teaching team, with Christian and Jewish voices pitching into a complicated world’s invitations/demands for less-suffering and more-grace, <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I do not feel alone</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. There is value to this work, and even a greater moral force than I usually remember in a faculty meeting often necessarily focused upon solely Christian-shaped things, sometimes slipping into scarcity worries and decline, renewal. Sitting within a collaborative teaching team, learning and loving alongside familiar and new spirit-friends, I’m newly aware of an institutional and collegial ‘problem’ here I might address, redress, in some collegial discernment ways. Slowly. ... When you trust in the divine order of things, when you surrender to being where you are, where Spirit has planted you (and not pining for where you thought you should/would be), the impossible does become possible. </span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>And besides, I don’t think I’d ever have learned that the dissonance and discomfort of students and faculty colleagues, projected onto me, <i>is</i> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not about me anyway</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. There is incredible freedom in knowing the whole dynamic is so scripted by our overculture, Christian tribalisms, refusals to be seen precisely as we are–flawed, fragile, frail, vulnerable. When any human being feels dissonance or discomfort, it is second-nature now to project that onto a convenient ‘other’ instead of asking ‘why is this happening for me now?’ or ‘what is my own energy about, such that it rises so fiercely?’ There are few 'containers' for such reflection, so I’m often that convenient person. And that’s a faithful role for all of us still on the journey. Staying here, in this institution, has allowed me to learn that such disregard, even injury, is not personal. It can hurt me, yes, but as a new friend has taught me: I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> come to see another’s disregard of me as their own defensiveness, their own dissociated humanity, which is true of all of us. We all disregard that which we cannot perceive, digest, control, etc. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This friend also taught me: <i>I am God's favorite</i>, after all.. (appropriate pause...) <span style="font-size: 11pt;">...</span><i style="font-size: 11pt;">And so are <u>you</u></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">. (thanks, LaTanya Jackson Wilson 😆) I am an irreplaceable spark of the divine...God's favorite...and so is each one of us.</span><br /></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This journey of spirit-friendship and pilgrimage, virtual or not, has convinced me we are all interconnected, interdependent. Covid is showing us more and more how true that is. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To conclude for now, then: the lively ones in this seminary community </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> learn to engage and grow </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the discomfort, to stay with that which they disagree, to even learn to love those with whom they vehemently disagree. There is always at least 2-3 (sometimes more) in each semester class, so I celebrate the sacred Work </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they/we</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> get to do together. We get to support and nuance, deepen, invite each other, even in top-down higher ed structures that inhibit us. Those students who cannot engage will continue to not-engage, no matter what I/we may do anyway. Defenses are there for a reason, and I/we need to respect that. Said with an impish smile: each of us gets to be a thorn in the side of the other, until we’re ready to collegially but personally do-our-own-work-inside-ourselves...then </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pull it out and heal together</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thoughts on the journey…a deep belly gratitude for all Spirit has done in these days, and will continue to do with open-hearted, curious human beings, wearied and grieving but also showing up to stretch and discover.</span></p><br /></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-38796614785114196352021-11-07T08:17:00.004-05:002023-12-24T13:23:52.053-05:00Community is NOT Intimacy<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Community is not the same thing as intimacy, nor is intimacy what community brings as gift. Years of yearning and disappointment are packed into this statement, though I am also smiling, now on this side of things.</span></p><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-bf9a5f52-7fff-7a3d-edf0-38656da38bc3" style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A searing yearning has accompanied me most of my life. It’s really only been in the last years that I learned not everyone has this sensation inside of them. For me, it’s a waxing and waning emptiness within, met somehow in being seen, being deeply heard in who I am or what I have to say. Sometimes I’m acutely in touch with it, feeling its weight and drive to be met somehow, anyway, anyhow. More often than not, in these days, I’m less attuned to its urgencies and need. I know some of the stories underneath it, and can hold the ‘searing’ quality with a bit of watery ease. I also appreciate its contributions and gift in my life, the fruit of its drive.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Early on in my life, the searing yearning pushed me into some difficult situations--discounting my own worth so to be included in human groups that didn’t respect me nor have my best interest at heart. That happened a lot in college. Over the years, however, this part of me has led into diverse spiritual friendships, deepening relationships and a web of belonging that nourishes me as the creative contemplative I am. I cannot now imagine my life away from the busy intersection of widely divergent human beings with whom I have shared prayer, pleasure, practice, lament, laughter and more. Friends who are deeply committed to wisdom ways of being in the world and who held spaces for me to heal, grow, learn, and love anew. In the end, this searing yearning has made me a contemplative, a writer, a community organizer, a circle-way holder/keeper--all of which makes my life overwhelmingly rich, abundant. I am grateful. A long road to ‘here,’ wherever ‘here’ is, but worthwhile. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Community</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> did not provide for me what I have needed, however, nor was the intimacy I craved to be found in its valleys or mountaintops. Community is not the same thing as intimacy, nor is intimacy what community brings as gift. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parker Palmer’s essay articulated this for me in a way I could finally see it in my own experience. He names clearly that our culture today associates </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">intimacy</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which he points out is a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">trap</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;">“<span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When community is reduced to intimacy, our world shrinks to a vanishing point: with how many people can one be genuinely intimate in a lifetime?” A light bulb went off in my head when I read those words for the first time. I was both exhausted and exhilarated. The energy output in my life at the time, to craft a faith community for myself in which I could be seen and heard, in which I could feel safe, was </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">huge</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Ultimately unsustainable. I was attempting to be intimate with an increasing number of spiritual friends, across geography and even generations. I was seeking intimate </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or so I thought.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Palmer’s observation freed me to see my own finitude, accept my own limitations as gift. He was inviting me to relax into my created condition and be receptive to all around me apart from my intentions. Trust the gifts that would be given, that would emerge. Palmer crafts an image of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that resonated with me as soon as I read it, yet was also liberating me from this yearning that drove me so. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Community</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> must be an expansive web, he observes. It must be “capacious enough to embrace everything from my relation to strangers I will never meet (e.g., the poor around the world to whom I am accountable), to people with whom I share local resources and must learn to get along (e.g., immediate neighbors), to people I am related to for the purpose of getting a job done (e.g., coworkers and colleagues).” In this expansive sense of community, we are related to one another without any one of us being completely responsible for the relationship itself. I know that sounds arrogant and more--how is one person responsible for any relationship, after all?--but it’s how I was reared. It’s my natural (if unhealthy) way of feeling connected, important, valued in relationship. I assumed for decades that </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am responsible </span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to care for the other if I am to be connected, to serve others if I am to be seen, to expend my own energies for what the other desires I am not to be alone. In my unconscious need, I constantly "served others" out of my own need more than their own. Ego-driven ministry, which is not ministry at all. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Parker conceded what is now acutely obvious to me, after forty years of living into the responsibility paradigm: “Intimacy is neither possible nor necessary across this entire range of relationships.” His question is worth repeating: <span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With how many people can one be genuinely intimate in a lifetime?</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> For an extroverted introvert like myself--one who thrives on one-on-one connection in multiple, serial fashion--the number of folks may be larger than some others. But it’s still finite. It’s still limited to decreasing energies as I age. I had been working so very hard to create a scaffolding of spiritual friendships that could hold seekers across traditions, differentiating from norms and expectations. I had thought community simply needed to be more intimate to do its healing work in the world.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But to be freed of this increasingly heavy responsibility paradigm? To realize that community was not intimacy, nor intimacy community? </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Really</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? I found myself wondering. I don’t have to serve to be seen, caretake others to be connected? I can learn to trust connection that I have not </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">earned</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? Could my connectedness truly arise from a strengthened capacity for it, that <i>contemplation</i> strengthens in me? The invitation arrived at just the right time--enforced lockdown, in a global pandemic--and while I was terrified of being isolated and alone, I found myself more and more deeply connected. Somehow. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To begin to open my assumptions and learnings about </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sense of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> continues to unfold and challenge me. I’ve lived in my </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community is source of intimacy</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for so long that I find myself there often, even though I know it’s not liberating or even true. Strengthening my capacity for connectedness is what ultimately connects me inside...to the earth (my prayer tree outside, Mama Elm, for instance), to sentient beings who don’t speak in words (my heart-dog, Nala), to strangers I encounter in the grocery store, to human beings across the globe whose eyes and voices touch me now in ways new to me… Strengthening my capacity for connectedness continues to challenge me in specific areas of my life where I have felt hurt or unseen--so, with church colleagues, or higher education colleagues of all sorts. So many unhealthy habits from those environments, so now, many opportunities to practice health and differentiation while loving, strengthening capacity for connectedness even there. With ‘them.’</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">When <span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">intimacy</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> can be un-hinged from one another, I think there is also invitation to confront our habitual tribalisms--of nation, of church, of political party, etc.--with an increasingly larger web of relatedness that liberates. When you can pursue and participate in just a few of your most significant relationships that will deepen your own sense of intimacy--being seen, being heard, offering gifts of the same to those you love--then there is a freedom to broaden your sense of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...to include a whole slew of ‘others’ with whom you are related, whether you wish it were so, or not: strangers, colleagues, local-neighbors, more... You can begin to see all 'others' as part of a communal web, human being, belonging...being-longing...</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because like it or not, Parker names from the beginning of his essay, “we are embedded in community. Whether we think of ourselves as biological creatures or spiritual beings or both, the truth remains: we were created in and for a complex ecology of relatedness, and without it we wither and die.” So much of my life has been spent attempting to craft an intimate community around me, so be seen, heard, safe, loved. I’d like the remainder of my life to be spent honoring the community within which I’m clearly embedded, apart from my choice or preference, knowing now that those with whom I am blessed to be intimate will be fewer, sustainable, and free. <i>Connect, so you can connect again later...</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is great gift in finitude, as I often tell my students...to </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> not being in charge at all. Responsive, not responsible or reactive. Responsive, curious, receptive, free... It becomes feasible, then, for me to focus on what </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> mine to do: strengthen my capacity for connectedness through contemplation, delight, receptivity. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That</span><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> feels do-able, human, humane. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I invite you into that as well. Join me?</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-62710871933847489212021-11-04T12:36:00.003-04:002023-12-24T13:24:33.871-05:00Community? ies? What...?!?<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Connect, so you can connect again later…</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> These seven words have become an aphorism for me these days, a bit of a mantra as I go about my workaday world. They are surprisingly minimalist for a relational person like myself. I got into theological education a long time ago, guided by a deep desire for deepening relationships, spiritual growth, a sense of belonging in Something Larger Than Myself. In my family, that’s what </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">church </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was. Theological learning was a good connector with my father, and in an odd, negative-attraction sort of way, with a couple of my uncles. (One was a professed atheist, hence “negative” yet “engaging conversations” between us.) The pathway has been a beautiful one for me, now over decades, peppered with unexpected spiritual friendships and fascinating work across collaborative energies and multiple traditions (and no-tradition). I continue to struggle, however, in my understandings of and participation in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-4ee2c993-7fff-07ea-4440-59a5c15237c9"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What does that term truly signify today, given our global economies, political divisions, social-media algorhithms of fear, anger, hatred? How is it enlivening, life-giving, welcoming, even sacred? Can it even </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">be</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> any of those things anymore? How do we understand a community amidst the multiple-communities we can interact with now, every day?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As many who’ve traveled with me with know: In order to stay even remotely connected with my own root community of Protestant Christianity, I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">had</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to reach outward into other communities that valued faith and/or practice but were safe for a woman awakening to the Feminine long-denied within her own circles. I sat with Buddhist, Jewish, earth-centered spirituality, Muslim, secular-academic, Quaker/Friends, and more. The last 15 years have been an abundant buffet of welcome into webs of relationships that could hold the differentiation from my own root-tradition that was unfolding. This path of spiritual deepening required me to encounter and be broken open by the shadows of my own “community,” be it familial, marital, ecclesial. Shadows very few in my closest relationships were interested or willing to see, to be clear.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So now, I struggle to understand community as anything monolithic or unifying. While I only affiliate with maybe six distinct communities today (Presbyterian Church USA, United Seminary UMC, Women Writing for (a) Change, and now Awakening Women, Fire&Water Leadership cohorts, and CrossFit), I could point to my daily intersections with probably 10 more, in some fashion or another. These ones named are in addition to my own immediate family and families of origin (my own, and that of my husband). How is one to understand </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> when a life is built around several diverse communities, many of whom do NOT get along with each other…!? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Women Writing sisters downplay my seminary-prof-self; my Presbyterian community completely ignores my WWfaC self, or the woman deeply nourished by Awakening Women. CrossFit has a deep curiosity about my various selves, but our shared focus is fitness-in-community. Camaraderie and challenge go hand in hand, and we form a community together. But it also isn’t complicated or even bothered with all the ecclesial-feminine bits in the rest of my life. Curious, but not focused or necessary to name. Awakening Women and Fire&Water folks are the most distantly connected in my <i>daily</i> life, the first largely in online interactions and occasional retreats, the second in monthly contacts across an incredibly diverse (for me) learning community. I am committed and connected there, but not in the same “in-person” sorts of ways.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As such, all of this can be isolating for me. I can easily feel alone in each community because I am affiliated with all the others that no one in each community is ALSO affiliated with. I am sensitized to the judgments of internal-community-assumptions because I know and love folks who don’t fit within those assumptions, when spoken aloud. Regularly, I have to decide </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do I mirror this judgment</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to the one I love who is speaking? Do I share my experience of rudeness or malice, though I know it's not maliciously intended? Do I let it slide, honoring that s/he would have little reason to be so sensitized? And no one </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">needs</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to be connected to all of my communities as I am for me to feel like I belong...but it can get complicated all the same.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other times, I’m quietly astounded and delighted because of the overwhelmingly abundant web of connectedness I get to cherish, participate in, contribute to. I am regularly seen and connected with such a wide variety of human beings that I can feel the largeness of our own mysteries, the ways in which we ARE each other while being so vastly different. Human beings are fascinating creatures--of habit, of fragility, of humor--and each is so very lovable--no matter how hidden the divine spark may appear on any given day. Myself included. To encounter each human being as s/he is, when I’m open to it and curious, is a gift to me.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But is that encounter </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? I don’t think so…</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These questions sent me back to an old-familiar-essay I’ve cherished ever since I first learned of it: Parker Palmer’s 1998 essay, “<a href="https://couragerenewal.org/wpccr/parker/writings/13-ways-of-looking-at-community/" target="_blank">Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community...with a Fourteenth Thrown in for Free</a>.” [He wrote it late at night, with the Shopping Channel on in the background 😆] As I reread it a week ago, I startled to see some things anew, reframe some things within me based upon my own wrestlings here with </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what community signifies</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I’ll start with the opening two paragraphs, but I suspect there will be different observations rising here over the next several weeks and months. In reconsidering citizenship, I want all Americans to become more conscious of what we assume (or refuse) in our notions of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first observation by Palmer is that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community is not a goal to be achieved, but a gift to be received</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In previous readings of this work, I think I have cruised past this first paragraph with a sense of “yeah, yeah, yeah...we know that already.” This time through, I’m newly appreciative of the observation and the need to pause here, to stop and listen, to deeply consider more underneath the surface. It returned me to my opening aphorism: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">connect, so you can connect again later</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The practices underneath Palmer's opening observation are vastly different from how most of us are shaped, trained, even convicted </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to believe</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The way of being in my aphorism is more aligned with his observation... Hmmm...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of my inherited and earned assumptions about community rest in the idea that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we can be trained to form it</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Theological education and ecclesial communities are founded on this notion of being shaped in a tradition, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being formed for belonging </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in this particular </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><br />Folks come to seminary to become leaders in shaping Christian communities to be better Christians. <span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shaping</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Folks find themselves as members of churches when they know how they belong, what behaviors are expected, what we do together when we gather and serve. We belong when our community sees us, welcomes us. I have long heard </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community-organizing</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as the intentional, well-trained work of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">creating community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which has basically meant achieving it, to me anyway. And yet, Palmer opens: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community is not a goal to be achieved, but a gift to be received. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He writes, “</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we try to “make community happen,” driven by desire, design, and determination—places within us where the ego often lurks—we can make a good guess at the outcome: we will exhaust ourselves and alienate each other, snapping the connections we yearn for. Too many relationships have been diminished or destroyed by a drive toward “community-building” which evokes a grasping that is the opposite of what we need to do: relax into our created condition and receive the gift we have been given</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is writ-large in one of the communities in which I participate, contribute (who will remain nameless). All of us have shown up with a desire for our lives to be different in some fashion, more significance, deeper meaning, closer connections, whatever we might name for ourselves as our ‘heart’s desire’ in showing up. And it’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">precisely</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> those expectations that exhaust us, alienate us from one another, and snap the connections we say we yearn for. Very few of us came into the journey with the idea that we ought to</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> relax</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> together, accept our created condition as it is, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">receive</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. <i> </i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>My own version of "activity instead of receptivity" stemmed at first from the fact that I’m a white woman in a mixed-ethnicity group. I was <span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> going to be ‘one of those white women’ unwilling to do her own work. I had an urgency within me that I thought was nothing but virtuous, even prophetic. I now know it was masking a sadness inside of me, a deep frustration that I live in Ohio in the year I do. I’m surrounded by Trump Republicans (who I try to constantly humanize and honor, while sometimes failing in my own fear and frustration). I’m much more emotionally aware of the woundedness all around me, white, persons of color, economically-challenged, sick…and it hurts. Can make me afraid for who 'we' are becoming around one another. It’s exhausting to be around fearful white people when I’m fearful myself, as a white woman. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I relax, however, when I practice receptivity, there is an assurance that comes from elsewhere deep within me. I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">become patient with my urgency</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and honor its value within me, potentially for those around me, but surely for myself. </span><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The amusing part is that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was so consciously tending to learning in a racially-diverse community that I missed completely the much larger growth curve for myself: being in community with good-hearted people who serve in denominational structures. As I stay, I'm required to see "denominational executives" as living breathing human beings who matter. Very few people on the planet irritate me more than church denominational executives, by the way. Long, conflicted history in my own church travels...so of course, the universe has paired me now with </span><i style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">several. </i><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Winnie-the-Pooh says, "Oh <i>bother.</i>" 😆😆😆</span><div><p></p>Part of this history comes from my extensive work in theological education, preparing folks for church leadership.<span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Most of my work in theological education has pointed out the off-the-rails character of life in seminaries/div schools today, having little to no bearing on the relational skills of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shaping community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Faculty are hopelessly shaped in more and more disembodied, abstracted, and emotionally-neglected skills, which means they arrive to “teach fledgling Christian leaders” with little to no emotional intelligence or endurance to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">actually participate in Christian community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Which is messy, conflict-ridden, disruptive and ultimately transformative, when held well by those able to hold ambiguity, uncertainty, and compassion for many. This is NOT what theological faculty do today. Most, anyway. Many come into teaching precisely to escape this work of Christian community. And theological students Zoom in from online portals, which means it’s easy to step away from something that upsets them ‘on screen.’ I’ve had to grieve my previous sense of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">learning community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to allow the individuals that come to me from their separate portals to learn, be engaged by the words of their classmates, and weekly, by my own words in video-lecture, responding to their words. Vastly different animal than in-person Christian community. </span><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how to break the cycle of assumption then? How to begin to shape incoming seminary students so that community is not something they can create or achieve, but only something they can receive? No one likes the answer to this, which is part of why I love Palmer’s essay so much.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Practice receptivity</span></b>.<span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Do the inner work to learn how to become vulnerable in collective settings, such that you are receptive to whomever and whatever shows up there. Community will never emerge, be borne, until there is a “</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">capacity for connectedness</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” deepening all around us. And receptivity requires inner work more than any external structure building. </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Palmer states in his second paragraph: “Community begins not externally but in the recesses of the human heart. Long before community can be manifest in outward relationships, it must be present in the individual as “a capacity for connectedness”—a capacity to resist the forces of disconnection with which our culture and our psyches are riddled, forces with names like narcissism, egotism, jealousy, competition, empire-building, nationalism, and related forms of madness in which psychopathology and political pathology become powerfully intertwined.” Religious traditions today have lost more and more of the wisdom necessary for this "recess of the human heart" work. It's very challenging for traditional folks to get out of the way and relax, receive. Particularly when their sadness at apparent losses of tradition are so unconscious, so ungrieved.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Seems like next post invited is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">practicing receptivity</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in a world in which vulnerability can be penalized. How do we practice receptivity, so to develop our capacity for connectedness beyond what we’ve known in church, civic settings, family? </span></p><br />What is meant by <span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">inner work</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> here, in a world demonstrating little but advocacy and resistance, posturing and proclaiming? More to come... Until then...</span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Connect, so you can connect again later</i>. It may not seem like much, but it models a receptivity and a practice of connecting significant for what <i>community</i> might eventually come to mean.</span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></div></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-60881906564525216012021-11-01T10:15:00.002-04:002023-12-24T13:24:51.700-05:00Community Table...Not Yet<span id="docs-internal-guid-67260f08-7fff-7020-701f-3b3dcca7ef68"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I sat down at the community table of the local coffee shop, noting the African-American women and small girl sitting at the other end. I smiled, belatedly realizing through my mask they wouldn’t know that. As I waited for my coffee drink, a treat for me on this Monday morning, I set about making my list for the week. I wanted to clear the decks a little, in expectation and anticipation, to see what writing might come. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> expecting the rest of our friends to come soon,” said one of the women to me, motioning that she would need the space, the table. “Oh,” I said, with surprise. “This is usually the community table, so I didn’t know…” I let my voice trail off… “When will they be arriving then?” “In the next few minutes…” “Okay,” I said. I tried to attend to the words that might come before “they” arrived. Realizing the expectation was now disrupting getting my thoughts together, I packed up my stuff and headed to the back of the coffee shop. The corner booth had just opened up, as way would have it. I curled up in the corner chair, enjoying the quiet and the greater comfort around me.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The irony was not lost on me of course: the <i>Community Table</i>. </span></p><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is required, from each of us, all of us, to rebuild any sense of trust in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">community</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the American experiment? Is it even possible anymore? How do we rebuild something that has never truly been an expansive American phenomenon, made even more demanding now across differences exploited by late-era-global-capitalism and social-media algorithms bent upon fear, anger and hatred?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be clear, this is not about being asked to move from a community-table by the woman who asked for what she needed. Happy to, and we both landed in what we needed--her, space; me, quiet. And she would have no reason to know I had just left my car, after letting it run for a while so I could listen to the end of a chapter of a book that currently </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">has me</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It’s captured my heart, my mind, even in the times I have to turn it off because I feel nauseous and sad. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. The woman at the the table and I have every reason to see one another in the sculpted-wounded perspectives we’ve both inherited. Yet it begs the question for me, within the river of listening from another friend who is asking, “Is reconciliation even possible?” Reconciliation between…? we might ask…? Between white/color, masculine/feminine, wounded/wounding…? The questions are stomach-punches, to be sure, but there is strength and courage in asking them aloud… </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have to remember how difficult it is, what we ask of others…</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this friend also said. </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There will posts here to come, shaping what I mean by ‘community’ and what I am learning on my own journeying toward a more rigorous manifestation of that around me today. Enough for now to bow to the question, to move when asked, and to receive the graced quiet that comes when each of us receives what we need in the moment.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will also always bow to my own sensation, yearning, however patiently I need to sit with my own sadnesses in order to participate in it: </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want the world to be different, to heal...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to sit quietly for, or walk slowly toward, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the more frequent days when</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it feels possible for a moment at a time…</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;">this new/old story of reconciliation.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I say to all those who sit in direction: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">at your pace. Only when You’re ready.</span> </p>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-19721926781969712712021-07-13T10:49:00.006-04:002023-12-24T13:25:26.392-05:00Lemon of Internal Loneliness - Lemonade of Community, Earth, CrossFit<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Alone in my own body. </i></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-960aba6b-7fff-e000-f542-5de85cb9dff8" style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a phrase that I used to use to describe what it felt like inside of me, for most of my life. I don’t know how it will sound out loud, in the spaces where other human beings read their own experiences into the words. For me, this sensation has driven most of my need to connect, to be seen, to be heard. It’s a searing thing sometimes, with a panicky edginess that will not let me rest, sit still. Other times it will only be a dull ache that I hope no one notices while I go about my postures of purpose--thought projects, intellectual achievements, devotion to the divine as I had been shaped to know it/Him/the One. </span></p><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The source of most of my ‘not-enough-ness,’ this sense of being alone in my body, has also resulted in the depth and breadth of connections with friends I get to enjoy today. Without it, I would not have striven so hard for distinction amidst my intellectual pursuits, to be emotionally present for the mentors in my life who were drawn to my energies. I would not have persisted into new communities, then been driven further for women to gather in circle, for human beings to learn new ways to be more fully human with one another. In that sense, I have a blessedly overwhelming amount of lemonade for this lemon of an internal loneliness.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I muse here because I’m beginning to wonder if there are others in our civic spheres who feel bereft and alone in their own bodies. Could this </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">emptiness unknown</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be underneath much of the inhuman-acting-out I see writ large--both extremist Republicans and Democrats? Does an utter refusal of awareness drive our divisions? </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of the strategies the Westernized over-culture posits for redress of this existential condition have to do with sex of some kind. It could be as minimal as being a sexually desirable woman (for me, in my body), or an overtly macho-man in control and domination (the last gasp of the Patriarch? I wonder…). Or it could be as extensively beyond my ken as having multiple partners in sexual explorations, even co-habitation. (Could there be anything more exhausting or complicated, I wonder in myself? No shame no blame here, just observing my own visceral responses...). So much of our ideological politics has an either/or fulcrum around some body-characteristic...often with categories determined by the linear, categorizing habits of mind that are not holistic, integrative, synthesizing. Regardless, human beings are hincky about bodies, both as sites of ultimate self-expression and focal points of organized shame and moral condemnation(s). As a young woman growing up in small town Ohio, I chose to insure I was alone in my own body. Not only was it safer, but it seemed less complicated. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fast forward to today, with decades under my belt now of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reclaiming the human body as source and guide in sacred knowing</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It was not a conscious choice to focus my scholarship in this way, nor did I ever imagine I would be doing what I’m doing now in my vocational pursuits of seminary teaching and circle-way leadership. I was gifted with a transformative encounter with Something or Someone on November 11, 1993, singing Mendelssohn’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Elijah</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> oratorio in a huge choral concert. I was blessed with a mentor and companion who could steward my fledgling (and willfully stubborn) scholarship. The role of music in spiritual transformation, in the arrival of insights along the sacred journey--that became my quest. The gift was realizing the wholly </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">embodied</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> nature of musical experience, the role of the body in receiving insights and staying with Something or Someone long enough to be changed </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on the inside</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Reclaiming the body, I came to realize, undergirded everything driving me toward the sacred...</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...which ultimately had to become </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reclaiming my own body</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Note the abstraction in “reclaiming the body”? Divided. Separate from. Dissociated. Hmmm…. An essential shift in this sacred journey became the journey of reclaiming my own body, as fragile, fearful, and shame-ridden as I felt my own form to be. You cannot grow up in a feminine-demonizing, bastardizing-Christianized culture and not get marked by the embodied shaming/guilting of Eve. How does Dar Williams sing it? The story she was not meant to survive? </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having deflected and distanced myself for decades from any association with Eve’s shaming--it wouldn’t touch me if I took on the masculinized shield, I decided early on--I now see the terrible wounding of both men and women by this energy of demonization, this energy of dissociation or separation. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with it and disempower women consciously or unconsciously, or whether you decry it, deny it, refuse it voice. This energy of aversion, of separation, is internalized within each of us in some fashion. It shows up when men disavow their feelings, so to not get the shit kicked out of them for being weak or ‘too feminine,’ or to prevent losing face in a political debate or divide. It shows up when women achieve as much as men, taking on the masculine in the worlds where it will be the only thing heard or seen. All the while, our world careens out of balance, disconnected from the earth, from the feminine, from the body.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The strange thing that draws these reflections forth with a sense of contrast, with possibility, is that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am no longer alone in my own body today</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I find this befuddling in many ways, because it is independent of my sex life. I am blessed with a loving life partner, willing to grow along with me amidst his own quite distinct sacred journeying. We’ve had great sex, bad sex, and everything in between. This being no longer alone in my body is independent of that journey with him, though it now gifts us both, of course.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">The pieces that seem related have emerged from disparate but integrating directions. One clearly breathes new life here as our circle-way community was birthed and is evolving now in her own time, blessed by the shared labor with a dear spiritual friend. Another comes in deepening explorations in co-creation with nature, learning the voices and energies of what another friend calls the Plant Nation, the Mineral Kingdom, and more.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />A Sacred Mountain Quest in 2019 opened up awareness to invitations and energies I’d never noticed or truly felt before. Another piece comes in a relatively new circle-way community in my life, CrossFit, a community-organizing approach to fitness and health. </span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">This <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not being alone in my body</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> anymore suggests a way of being in the world rooted in nature, connected to the Earth in known and unknown ways. It is held by being in right relationship with a larger community that truly hears me, sees me, at regular intervals. Not only hears and sees me, but allows me to be as fragile and potentially shadowy as I may be at times, experiencing and even causing discomfort within which all of us (who are willing) will grow, be transformed. This not being alone in my body breathes again and again as I get to play and move and challenge myself with physical exertion alongside others on the same fitness commitment, discipline.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The emptiness unknown became apparent, began to ease, when a community formed with deep-listening, consciousness-raising practices in which those who show up can be seen and heard, in all light and shadow...when an inarticulate-intuitive connection to the Earth took root in my awakenings...when a community of fitness offered a way to move in concert while prioritizing individual health and fitness.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Body. Awakening Community. Earth. Moving Community. Body. Not resolving our political conflicts. Not ignoring our political divides and the very real pains in any and everyone I know. Body. Willing to awaken in community. Rootedness in the Earth. Becoming fit and healthy so to hear what is all around us.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enough for today. More than enough. Downright blessing and gratitude. Lemonade (without sugar for me), from this lemon of body loneliness. Perhaps lemon-infused water will be enough, refreshment for a warm day.</span></p>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-82597782243492787912021-07-12T13:16:00.005-04:002023-12-24T13:25:59.703-05:00Emptiness Unknown<span id="docs-internal-guid-9b0599c8-7fff-8f3c-bf4d-bc3bcf948d4d" style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There used to be a deep-belly emptiness in me, though for most of my life, I did not even know I felt empty. This may be because I insured I didn’t feel...or I didn’t feel what I wasn’t </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">supposed</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to feel...or at least I didn’t feel </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">too much</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, whatever that meant in my contexts. In the last 5-7 years, however, a fullness I never knew was possible found me, or was released within me, or…something...? Midlife awakening? Surely. Midlife crisis? For a time, yes. But I had been empty without knowing I was empty, and I’m a woman who is assumed to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">know a lot</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So now I’m curious about this emptiness unknown. One, how could I have </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not known</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I was empty? What were the assumptions and practices that filled my life but did not fill </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? The second reason is probably part of the first, in some way. Now that I can feel this overwhelming fullness, this grounded peaceableness that opens doors for me and holds spaces for me? </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I want everyone who will listen to know about it</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. To know about this groundedness, this fullness, this sacred abundance that is simply </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">everywhere</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, though hidden in plain sight in a consumerist, market-economy environment. It's like having a felt-sense of the best thing EVER but being basically mute, speechless.<br /><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t berate myself for not knowing, at least not as much anymore. I’m learning to trust there is a divine order to things, and life expands when I surrender into what is, just as it is, even as I get to learn and offer my part as I may. I also do NOT want to sound preachy or judgmental or presumptuous, because my own journeying need not parallel anyone else’s. I know that. Yet this yearning to share presses into me more and more... How to proceed? A bit of story context, perhaps.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">One rendition of this story is rooted in my own family lineages. I was born into a Pennsylvania-Deutsch Brethren/Scottish-British Baptist weave of family, with well-tended material needs and a highly relational extended family enamored with professional success and intellectual achievement. This means I have striven hard for and earned/been granted an establishment life--seminary professor married to an attorney-become-pastor in a mainline denominational church. We are double-income-no-kids dog-lovers with ease of a quiet life we love. The underbelly of this life however is an inordinate devaluing of emotional experience(s), a confinement of the heart within the categories available to the mind. Without shame or blame, the wisdom of the body and the inarticulate movements of the Heart simply do not factor into how my family connects with itself. Instead, it’s information, social-capital connections, books, movies, and achievements. And some of the most internally lonely people I know. There is a deep emptiness about which we never speak. To even allude to it will bring the conceptual violence of intellectual debate and refusals into speech. The shame and fears of unworthiness (or whatever the bindings may be) are simply too great, too intentionally unconscious. Unbearable. So I no longer speak of the emptiness deeply within my family to my family.</span><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Another rendition can come in terms of the rise of the feminine so apparent today, which expressed itself within my own life in the last 5-7 years. ‘Feminine’ was a bad word in my house, for various mostly unconscious reasons. I remember the sneer on my dad’s face when I was in high school, as he distanced himself from something <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feminine</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and my mother looked away. The implicit curriculum in my family line was clear: feminine is weak, disdained, avoided. Voice in my family was granted through connection to the father, the brothers, and I maximized that pathway to agency for at least four decades. Blessedly so, I might add--a great gift to me and to my life today. But something began to break open in me, at first gently and then more and more persistently: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was feminine</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am a woman in body and soul</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are different ways to be who I am than I first knew</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It took incredible strength to claim this part of me, the body wisdom so deep in me, so disdained in my family line. The pain of coming to voice in this way, audibly and visibly in my family, was extensive. No one in my immediate family or family of origin was interested in my newfound feminine. Particularly as I was enraged and reactive about its silencing, abuse, neglect. For </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">years</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I don’t actually blame them. It was no picnic.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another strand of this storyline could be explored in the cultural heritages within which I live and am perceived in my life and work: whiteness. My curiosity comes in this term last, latest, because admittedly it </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the newest framework within which I’m wondering things aloud. I’m </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> jumping onto the Critical Race Theory trains, nor am I interested in debating systemic racism (or not). I’m not interested in debates, so why would I be interested in </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">those?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;">But I <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">am</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> interested in this emptiness unknown, and its emergence in me, a white body. So many strands of European cultures divide the mind from the heart, the spirit from the flesh. A dualism entrenched in Holy Scripture, that gives an either/or habit of mind and a longstanding relationship with shame, guilt, judgment (of the other, or fear of judgment in the self). Any deep feeling that would arise in me? Sublimation into the cognitive. Reticence to feel too much, be too much, say too much. A numbness or a deadness that would be perceived an appropriate response for any societal disruption that makes 'those that be' uncomfortable. Do that every day for nearly fifty years, and you’d have an incapacity for feeling, and an inability to connect with basic human instincts of seeing another as yourself, loving another </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as oneself</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. No matter heritage, skin, culture, history...to see another person </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">always</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with the spark of the divine, however muted or dimmed it may seem </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. To realize when <i>I'm not seeing an other in this compassionate light</i>...even with my best intentions. When I'm encapsulated in a largely white environment, I know to not cross the streams, impose <i>too much</i> emotion into the space. Except I'm starting to play with that line, gently...in spaces that feel open to a little more emotional expression, in a setting that's already rife with emotion.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m sure there will be other storylines within which this emptiness unknown could be explored, but for now… As a result of this proclivity in me for deep feeling, I feel deeply and often, such beautifully awesome and sadly lamentable Life. Because of my tenacity </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to stay present in my body</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> amidst disregard, refusals, and the conceptual violence of my family, I know a fullness, a groundedness, a peaceableness that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I never knew was possible</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It does not depend upon my immediate family, nor upon my family of origin. It does not require anything from my extended family, nor does it need affirmation from beyond. It has a life of its own, always available to me, when I do not separate from it or isolate myself from it... </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">There used to be a deep-belly emptiness in me. For most of my life, I did not know I felt empty. And now I want everyone who will listen to know this groundedness, this fullness, this sacred abundance is available to one and all. But how do we begin? How do we let this fullness speak for itself, again and again, inviting us ever inward, outward, IN? I do not know, really. </span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consider this Post One of a series then. I invite the fullness to find me in these next days or weeks, and then offer the words it may, in its own time...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-74710066393734664692021-06-01T10:33:00.003-04:002023-12-24T13:26:36.847-05:00The Seeds of Hatred...?<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Do we always know hatred when we see it? Hear it?</span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-64a9a4c2-7fff-63d0-ec12-f3f19ddbca72" style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been sitting with this question for several days, digesting all that Howard Thurman describes about fear, deception, and hatred in </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus and the Disinherited</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I’m weary and ready for a little bit of a break before summer term starts. But the question keeps arising…</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The intensity of feeling associated with the word </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hatred</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> suggests that its expression would be obvious. Sneering facial expressions. Loud, aggressive language, directed toward another human being, often in public. Physical violence, like in a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hate crime</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This is the popularized understanding or expectation of hatred, I think. It’s obvious, visible, violent, and dangerous.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Thurman’s description doesn’t allow that as the only description of hate. Let’s remember his summary: “</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The outline is now complete and simple—contacts without fellowship developing hatred and expressing themselves in unsympathetic understanding; and unsympathetic understanding tending to express itself in the exercise of ill will; and ill will, dramatized in a man or woman, becoming hatred walking on the earth.” (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus and the Disinherited</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 68). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Contacts without fellowship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Developing</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Hatred emerges in unseen ways, in other words, from the inside. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unsympathetic understanding</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Having an understanding that does not allow the feelings of another, the experience of another...is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sympathetic.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exercise of ill will</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A feeling of animosity or anger, disregard of another human being, enacted in action or words spoken.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ill will dramatized in a human being</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. These words and/or actions expressed in outward ways in the world.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>These lenses on the matter suggest that hatred arises and develops way before the last stage, the outward exercise of ill will by a human being, onto another human being. </span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this sense, then, we don’t always see or hear hatred. It is present, operating, visceral when we are not necessarily aware of it in ourselves.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I found myself reflecting on this recently as I dipped into an online retreat gathering, hosted by two women whom I have appreciated deeply. One has crafted a communal space with her husband for circles of friends to gather in sacred practice--both in physical spaces and online. The other is new to me, but her work has already piqued my curiosity and tugged at my heart strings with an invitation into “structures for reverence” and into deeper listening for a “mystic family calling.” I will percolate with these gifts throughout this week, I’m sure, and I am already thankful to be in the flow of a new invitation with them both...</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So imagine my surprise when my body felt the above-named energies of hatred in our Zoom gathering event. I was so stunned it actually took me several hours beyond the event to begin to put words to my experience. The woman doing the primary teaching for the event spoke with such barely hidden rage that I struggled to drop into a prayerful space in which to listen, to receive. My body was pulling back, trying to get distance though I was simply in my own space at home. Part of it was the utter disdain she named for “all the books written on this subject,” with condemnation of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of them for upholding the establishment, the church, modernity. I’ve learned to sense an emotional source of such broad generalizations, I guess, which does not discount the statements but </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> invite awareness of more than is immediately spoken.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">She then delivered a critique against a totalitarian rule by the church (of the time in question) with a matching totalitarian refusal in her to consider not all the church was involved in the totalitarian rule. All churchmen/women of the time were evil, in her view. Claims made about the history of the matter at hand were delivered with little respect for how that knowledge was traditioned, received, digested, considered (by herself or others). Often, a brittle laugh would follow her words. Not an easy laughter. Not a laughter in which a community can share with ease. A laughter that shattered, was brittle, hard inside and outside. My body was seriously uncomfortable nearly the whole time this woman spoke.</span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then it dawned on me. <i>This</i> is what hatred feels like…</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...though surely this cannot be hatred? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was an online gathering in which contacts were present, but little to no time was possible for </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fellowship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Some of the participants knew one another well, others did not know anyone there. The </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">understanding</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the historical figure in question and the challenges of the time came across (to me) as </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unsympathetic</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Or at least unsympathetic to anyone but her own voice and view on the matter. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The gaping wounds inflicted on the human communities of the time--1400’s, to be clear--</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> horrifying, of course, particularly on the women. The anger, the rage, is understandable. Yet the understanding of the whole period she provided reeked with condemnation, judgment, even (ironically) damnation. Of them. Of the power-perpetrators. Then came repeated expressions of ill will toward all those who had borne this historical figure ill will and injury unto death. When these words were spoken, I knew it was hatred dramatized in a human being today.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So then I got curious about this hatred that is present but unforeseen, unsuspected, in persons who couldn’t possibly be haters. I mean, they’re simply so logical, rational, nice, polite, civil. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A neighbor down the hill from us with whom I’ve had polite chit-chat conversation. Contacts all around him named, but disdain and no sense of fellowship. Understanding? Within his allowances, sympathy, but outside those lines? Unsympathetic understanding. Did I experience ill will in him? He had experienced ill will during the pre-election season, he said, so he mirrored the ill will he had felt back to the neighbors who did not welcome his political solicitations. We had a neighborly conversation which I actually enjoyed, and yet its undercurrents have all the seeds of hatred.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And then, as ever, in the church…? In congregational settings then, today? Fellowship is a prime connector for congregational life. It’s one of the biggest reasons people join and stay connected within an ecclesial community. Contacts with fellowship. Understanding that sympathizes. Intentions to limit or lessen any sense of ill will. Except this seems to extend mostly to those already within the web of relationships known as the Fellowship, <i>my church</i>. Norms are usually well protected (Anyone ever heard “We’ve never done it that way before”?), and contacts </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">beyond</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the fellowship are not a part of the fellowship. Understanding beyond one’s own--community or expectations within that community--easily becomes unsympathetic to anyone or anything but one’s own perspective. I’ll never forget the ill will expressed in a church leadership meeting, when a vote didn’t appear to be going the way this particular leader needed it to. Seeds of hatred seem ready for sowing, almost with any wind.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">And what about within myself then? Where do I have contacts but without </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">fellowship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">? More and more at my day-job, where we serve our students online and gather via online-technology for meetings. Rarely does the community gather together for fellowship, for communal worship. I have very little sense of fellowship with my faculty colleagues. What understandings do I hold that are ultimately unsympathetic to those whose experience differs from mine, whose choices differ from mine, whose opportunities differ from mine? I could provide a laundry list, particularly including those I find rigid in their expressions of faith, judgmental of others in their own wounded righteousness, insular in their practice out of perceived fidelity to <i>their own</i>. Even naming the laundry list brings the whiff of judgment, does it not? I can<i>not</i> understand the rigid, the fundamentalist, the Evangelical whose refusals to see human beings beyond 'their categories' of sin and shame wounds so very many of us, for so very long...and I don't care to spend much time there <i>with them</i>. Exhausting, isn't it? So the seeds of hatred can emerge and multiply...in me.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not sure all that I want to invite or express in these musings, except to draw attention in myself and in those I love these seeds that can ripen so immediately within us, or nearly everywhere around me, given the fragmentation of our world, the expanding diversity of our associations with the Internet, social media, the opportunities to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">know about others</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> while not really </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knowing others</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in any fellowship kind of way. I want more and more of us to look for where we have contacts without fellowship, understanding that easily grows unsympathetic, ill will that can rise within us...all before any of us would ever <i>act it out</i>. It's still hatred, right within us.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These words are NOT to condemn this situation, in any of us. It’s all so understandable… Rage is collective grief refused, I’ve learned. The woman I describe above teaches from such raw pain, such urgent rage…Her anger--righteous and justified as it surely is--fires her urgency for new stories, different stories, to take hold in our world today. I share this anger, even this rage. Instead of the worn tropes of patriarchal religions and the horrific burnings of women in the middle ages, we both want a devotion to the feminine and to the Earth sorely lacking today. Instead of refusal and ill will experienced by my neighbor was his need for </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">his</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> world to be as he expected it to be. Congregations today are just as frail and flawed as any human collective has been over time. It’s easy to see contacts without fellowship, unsympathetic understanding and expressions of ill will arise when change happens or loss is regular, repeated, growing. This anger, even rage...this discontent or collective frailty is so very understandable...and I want to say </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">legitimate</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I know rage myself, after all.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But does rage legitimate hatred? Does hatred do the rage any good in the end? </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A familiar pathway at this point is to point out how hatred ravages the hater. In the end, this may well be true, but doesn’t answer the question. Thurman points out the fiery role that hate </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can play</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for the self-development of the hater, at least at first. If a woman is coming into her own voice for the first time, I dare say this intensity of feeling, this hatred, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can fire her own becoming</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> against systems slated to disregard her, disregard her experience. Hatred, in this instance, is not an unadulterated ‘bad’ thing. It’s a fire of self-becoming. [Ironically, a book I ordered weeks ago arrives just now: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rage Becomes Her: the Power of Women’s Anger</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...Soraya Chemaly].</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet hatred for prolonged periods of time, particularly as it becomes directed outward, only seems to create more hatred, more disconnect, more contact without fellowship, unsympathetic understanding, more ill will...round and round and round it goes. Ultimately, hatred doesn’t invite the hater to sit deeply with the gaping wound…the pain experienced… Which I understand, sympathetically. :) Speaking for myself, I’m always afraid the pain will completely undo me. I have good reason to fear this, because at two different times, it almost did. But clearly, since I’m here writing about it, it did not ultimately </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">undo me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Once hatred has worn a woman out, space may open for new approaches, different ways of holding and being held that suggest a different path, even a better way...</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I landed in a container strong enough to hold contradictory human experiences, side by side and all night long. And I was loved beyond my anger. I was loved </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> my anger. I was accepted and welcomed despite my anger. By warrior women and mothering women, by nourishing men and wounded men. All in time that was never determined by me, or by them. And then I began to learn the gentling power of the pain underneath the anger, the collective holding that could dispel the rage I felt…</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I guess I want to ask this woman-teacher, in her raw pain… And anyone who has read this far…</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">What grief have you not allowed expression? What sadness is driving the anger? Can we begin to learn practices of trusting a container to hold each of us while the pain comes? Can we even let ourselves <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">be held</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, letting the pain be transformed in us? For our civic settings then too… How do we learn together new containers beyond our current institutions of government-school-church, ones able to hold such volatile energies in streams of trust and fellowship? How do we invite each of us to sit with the pain that is ours, and ours alone, responsible only for our own pain? No blame, no shame, no guilt …?</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the counsel of hope? Of growth? Of transformation? How do we come to trust that each of us can withstand the pain of our inherited-lineage wounds? That allowing this pain is the only longterm relief to be had? What is the saying? </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pain not transformed is simply transmitted…</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> More to the point here, for this particular context, how does a woman in such pain, well-versed in honing it, directing it, relying on it to teach others, come to know it need not be like that inside of her?</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I dunno...but I’m listening, learning, wondering… I hope more and more will join me... </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /><br /></span><br />Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-5414860939649073792021-05-06T14:54:00.004-04:002023-12-24T13:27:22.905-05:00Sincerity, Deception, and Protection...Thurman's Second Teaching<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who knew class with Howard Thurman would be reconvened so soon? The second ‘hound of hell’ he names in his book is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">deception</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I actually stopped taking notes on this one, so I could get to his teachings on </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hate</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the lives of the disinherited. That was the obvious phenomenon to explore in our civic settings today. Then life brought a complex happening into my week in which measured reflection on </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">deception</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> now seems warranted. So here we are… How does deception play in our public spheres today, and what might we learn from its forms and functions toward deepening awareness and more intimate human relationships across difference(s)?</span></span></p><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-ea9d813e-7fff-fefc-c0b5-de60b24dce53"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Most of our news media outlets are focused upon deceptions surrounding The Big Lie--the former President’s continued grift-fest that he didn’t lose the election and his authoritarian demands for cultural and governmental power in utter disregard of the Constitution, shaking the pillars of our democracy. True to our broken political process, Liz Cheney--truth-teller and true patriot--may be the first Republican to pay any consequences for the Insurrection on January 6th. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">But there are scents and senses of deception that come with marketing in a capitalistic economy, with positive-life-portrayals in social media when life is actually much more complicated than unicorns and rainbows all the time. It’s inordinately difficult to encounter an area of our civic life today that is not rife with deception of some sort.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Let’s begin with “an active hypothetical” then… An educational institution requires an administrative review of its doctoral research practices, to insure the protection and safety of any human subjects to be engaged in such research. It’s a new process and very few have much clarity of the reach and scope of this new review process. Perfectly normal. All the actors in the evolving drama that unfolds are flawed human beings, doing their best to fulfill the responsibilities required by their roles, some long and established, others brand spankin’ new. Also perfectly normal. A student’s research project comes under review, not simply for protection of human subject ethical considerations, as it turns out, but toward a methodology and method not in alignment with the work or the project. Is that an institutional deception? Over a period of weeks, she becomes the casualty of the new and un-healed administrative process that cannot hear the integrity of her work, nor trust the 20-month journey of leadership and cohort that brought her there. What examples of deception unfolded here, or was it simply misunderstandings and impotence in a damaging process? An impasse forms over a period of several days. The student and cohort leadership finally relent so to move the work along, though now it has been altered and their goodwill has been damaged. The educational institution loses itself a bit more; the student’s effort and learning journey become eclipsed by institutional casualties in the process. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">My questions today: How does deception course through this entire narrative, if it does? Is the relenting to it an inevitable compromise, with little satisfaction for anyone involved? Is it too an act of deception? Do the parties involved live with their integrity intact?</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></span><b style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">DECEPTION</b><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><br /></b>Thurman’s chapter on </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">deception</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> opens: “Deception is perhaps the oldest of all the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves against the strong. Through the ages, at all stages of sentient activity, the weak have survived by fooling the strong.” (48) The power of his work here is his placement of the discussion to come in the vice-grip of strong-weak relationships. Nature demonstrates deception between predator and prey. He names several species in nature that use biological means to fool the predators. Children learn deception of their parents early, at least if they want to experiment and explore beyond imposed boundaries, or if they behave to get something as they desire. Women have learned over centuries that deception, or less pejoratively spoken, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">power that is indirect</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, is necessary to be heard, sometimes simply to survive. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Thurman then brings the scriptural wallop into view, specifically with Ezekiel. “When the children of Israel were in captivity in Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel could not give words of comfort and guidance by direct and overt statement. If he had, he would not have lasted very long...He would have been executed. What did the prophet do? He resorted to a form of deception. ... He used what we would now call “double talk.”” Thurman sketches a pretty familiar scene for someone living in a world in which the strong regularly overpower the weak, sometimes to overwhelming and violent ends.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">He recognizes that this question is not merely academic either. It is “profoundly ethical and spiritual, going to the very heart of all human relations. For it raises the issue of honesty, integrity, and the consequences thereof over against duplicity and deception and the attendant consequences.” (48) </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">THREE ALTERNATIVES FOR THE DISINHERITED</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">He charts three basic alternatives for the disinherited (which we should probably specify as people of color in our society, or queering folk, or the marginalized in poverty, language, etc. I’m considering it here as those with less standing-voice-recourse in academic settings, so again <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> per se, but...). </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first alternative is simply to accept the apparent fact that one’s situation (of disempowerment and even danger) being what it is,</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">there is no sensible choice offered.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There is no question of honesty because there is no sense of community, what he might call the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fellowship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> identified in yesterday’s piece. Which also means the questions of morality cannot invade here, because the power-relation creates an impossible immorality in human being, personhood. (see yesterday’s post on hatred).</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The second alternative is a bit more confusing (at least to me today), as it suggests both positive and negative deception. I’m not quite sure I understand which is which, to be honest. I think negative deception can be described as follows… Those with less power may decide “to juggle the various areas of compromise, on the assumption that the moral quality of compromise operates in an ascending-descending scale.” Not all issues require all-in response, in other words, so some interactions or challenges of lesser significance can become an inevitable “compromise.” It is still a deception from what is true and observable in experiences, but this deception aims to sustain connection over an irreconcilable divergence between strong/weak. Ordinary deception, that which can be regarded as “deliberate strategy,” has no scale to it, it would seem. It’s a clean deception, fooling the strong completely. The more negative deception, the compromise(s), is sliding down a slope of “picking one’s battles” in a losing war. I feel like my hypothetical might be demonstrated in this alternative, an inevitable compromise.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">The third alternative therefore startles, and challenges: <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">complete and devastating sincerity, </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">says Thurman. He quotes a letter from Gandhi to a Muriel Lester: </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Speak the truth, without fear and without exception, and see everyone whose work is related to your purpose. You are in God’s work, so you need not fear man’s scorn. If they listen to your requests and grant them, you will be satisfied. If they reject them, you must make their rejection your strength.”</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two facets draw my attention and wonder immediately. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...see everyone whose work is related to your purpose. You are in God’s work, so you need not fear man’s scorn</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.” This foundational charge has guided my footsteps through the trials and tribulations of higher theological education for over two decades. Thanks to a coach, an elder in my earlier professional life, I learned the freedom known in my Work when it is held to be quite distinct from my Job. The job is to serve the Work, not vice versa. Ever since, I’ve known to pursue my Sacred Work within the institutional-organizational containers that would serve it, serve me. I’ve learned to see all those whose work is related to my purpose...and, its corollary...to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not-see</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> all those whose work is not related to my purpose. Outgrowing containers over the years has been exquisitely painful, but those who will serve the Sacred Work always breathe and grow with me. Those who won’t or can’t? We part ways as amicably as possible. There is an incredible integrity, freedom, even passion that can breathe into the world in such a living understanding, held in communities willing to evolve, grow.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My hypothetical could also feasibly rest here, in this sense of utter sincerity. The relenting of the immediate ‘battle’ is a protective side-step so to move the truthful speaking into a collective channel, the institutional roles/responsibilities slated with resolving internal disputes or learning curves. Time will tell whether the individuals and colleagues will show up as collaborative voices, worthy of the conversation, or whether they will insist upon a power-over process that dehumanizes them and those within their care. But this protective side-step is also an act of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not-seeing</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> those who have proven themselves unworthy or irrelevant to the sacred Work at hand. This doctoral student’s project, in this case. Those who have rejected it cannot see or hear it, and their rejection will become a chosen strength in the end. The community has an opportunity to grow, evolve, or to defend and narrow. It is a gift on our part to offer our experience toward growth and evolution. Time will tell what the community decides to choose.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The second facet, however, is where the fire and challenge lie: “If they listen to your requests and grant them, you will be satisfied. If they reject them, you must make their rejection your strength.” And later… “In the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense, with the edge taken away from the sense of prerogative and from the status upon which the impregnability of their position rests. They are thrown back upon themselves…” The spiritual jujitsu movement required to make a rejection one’s strength is becoming more apparent, but still takes emotional effort and political-communal skill. Sadly, the more practice one gets, at least if held within supportive communities that can see you and hear you into stronger voice, then the better you get at this movement. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s the <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">utter sincerity</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">catch the dominant with no defense…</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? This is what feels too risky and even politically unlikely in my several decades of experience in both church and academy. Institutions bring all previous and collective resources to bear against those perceived as less powerful, or those who have less political-social capital in the system. Whatever Thurman may mean by </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">utter sincerity</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--and he lived within the currents of higher education while at Boston University, for sure--I cannot but imagine he grew savvy to how to be in God’s work, disregard “man’s scorn”, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> live the wisdom of serpents and the innocence of doves. I cannot imagine he intends by these words </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">literal honesty that would disempower someone</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the face of those who hold power over someone else’s academic process. In the seduction that it would be </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the act of integrity</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for her, for us.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I landed here because the really good question of integrity came up as we have labored in this whole process. Does relenting to a process that has damaged the work bear a fruit of lessened integrity? Does our integrity suffer because we discern to relent in order to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do no more harm than has already been done here</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? Perhaps it is an act of ordinary deception in an institutional culture that is both blind and deaf to the cohort’s relational norms and values? Therefore ‘positive’? Or is this the inevitable compromise in a world where connection is affirmed only when no one is truly satisfied with the outcome? I wonder…</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I’ve been thinking about my own doctoral dissertation defense, almost exactly 20 years ago this past month. I knew that my advisor was in support of the project. I knew that I had invited a powerful woman’s voice to help me defend this work that was a bit more creative than the traditional top-down, linear-argument kind of work the practical theology department expected or desired. I planned intentionally to finish before the other departmental colleague returned from sabbatical, as he and my advisor were renown for disagreements, with doctoral students as casualties of the discussion. I also knew that my comprehensives exams had been costly for my advisor to uphold, though he’d never said so directly. This set up a rather more antagonistic departmental interaction for my dissertation defense. Those who’d been talked down before would come with more ammunition to exact their view on my advisor, with me as the potential casualty. Though at the time I was completely insecure about my work, I also didn’t really have a choice but to proceed anyway. So I used the gifts I’d been given, which are primarily intuitive, perceptive and relational.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Knowing that most established professors at my doctoral institution on the East Coast are emotionally insecure, particularly in how their work may or may not actually contribute to the life of the church, <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I invited every single well-respected ecclesial leader and nationally renown Christian educator to my defense.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> These were always “open to the public,” so I brought every single feminine-fierce elder I knew into the room with me: Moderator of the PCUSA General Assembly, educators of the year, national curriculum writers, and more--each of whom </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">her work was useful to the church. I knew it was going to work when each department member entered the room of the defense, visibly startled, and made some nervous comment before sitting down. Most were men, and were not anticipating having to do their conceptual violence in front of a bunch of well respected church women. I also insured that the scheduling of the defense was about an hour and fifteen minutes before lunchtime. No one would want it to go overlong that way. And, of course, I prepared my responses to anticipated, expectable questions.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I know in that instance, so long ago, I was utterly sincere. I know I spoke the truth of what I knew of my work at the time, and I could see everyone whose work was related to my purpose. Not my departmental members, who were not intent upon my own contribution, but my advisor and all of the fierce-feminine elders who protected me by simply being present with me. There was no deception, in other words.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hypothetical happening, this week, have deception within it, or is there an utter sincerity accompanied by an advisor and a fierce-feminine elder presence of protection? I hope and pray for the latter. Sincerity within institutional processes is complicated, but so far so good, in my view. Time will tell.</span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-88018352129110408602021-05-05T15:40:00.004-04:002023-12-24T13:28:07.700-05:00Anyone Want to Talk about Hatred?<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who here </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wants</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to talk about </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hatred</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? In a loving manner…?</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3b877ea6-7fff-ee7f-c3a2-9b42ef156a05">Hate is not a topic ever covered directly in my classical seminary education as a clergywoman or as a theological scholar. There were glimpses of various sins, given by some mystics and some ethicists, but by and large, hatred itself was never considered a suitable topic for practical theological investigation. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a conspiracy of silence about hatred, its function and its meaning</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. (Howard Thurman). For something that is so everpresent in our world today--considering the utter lack of civility on social media or in the news, politics--I realized I’ve never really thought deeply about the anatomy and power of hatred. And perhaps it would behoove us all to do so...gently...lovingly...but honestly too.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a different stream of writing unrelated here, I wound up using the word </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hate</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to describe my own antipathy toward the phrase </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">child of God</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Wanting a rather sing-song kind of tone and cadence, I wrote: “I hate the phrase </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being a child of God</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I hate it in worship. I hate it in Sunday School. I hate it in scripture; I don’t care if it’s a Psalm or from Paul or straight out of “Jesus’s mouth.” I hate it in public prayer. I hate the phrase </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being a child of God</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Sam I am.” (a bit of Dr. Seuss smile here, lightening the mood). I have a whole seminary-professor rationale for this antipathy, of course, which my pastor-husband sadly knows all too well. 😆But...</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s patronizing. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s enabling and disempowering. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It centers the Patriarch and encourages childishness (refusal to grow, yearning for protection, etc.) , which is different than childlike-ness (wonder, curiosity, joy). </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But the gift in the piece for me was more an awakening to some energies of grief and sadness </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">underneath</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the rationale. The anger or rage that was driving the rationale (which is not really germane here). I rarely use the word </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hate</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> after all, but in this case, I had used it at least six times in one paragraph. When I asked a spirit-friend for feedback, she mirrored back what she saw and heard, which startled me into curiosity. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hate is a very real feeling in you that runs deep</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, she said. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It stung of course, to be seen so, and yet I could not really deny it, especially in the matter of that phrase. The word </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hate</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> had the energy I was feeling for such a rant, topic, observation.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">So imagine my surprise when in an incidence of book providence--a book that finds you right when you have an itch that it can scratch--Howard Thurman’s <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus and the Disinherited</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> landed in my heart, mind, soul. I’d read it a long time ago, for some purpose I’d been assigned to read it. But I did not receive it like I needed to receive it this time. I literally could not put it down. I highlighted. I took notes. I’ve sat with it for a couple weeks now. He breaks the Christian conspiracy of silence about hatred, its function and meaning. I cannot imagine a more timely wrestling-topic for reconsidering citizenship today…</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>HATRED UNDEFINED BUT DESCRIBED</b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thurman opens his overview with a blunt statement: “Hatred cannot be defined. It can only be described.” Over a couple pages, he begins to breakdown the anatomy of hatred into its constitutive elements:</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hatred often begins in a situation in which there is contact without fellowship, contact that is devoid of any of the primary overtures of warmth and fellow-feeling and genuineness.” (65) Here he is quick to clarify that there is such a thing as </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">false</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> fellowship, a kind of shallow nicety shared between human beings imprisoned into categories of weak and strong, dominant and minority, white and black. “It’s easy to have fellowship on your own terms,” he says, “and to repudiate it if your terms are not acceptable. It is this kind of fellowship that one finds often in the South between whites and Negroes” (sic, remember, he’s writing in 1949).</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Second, “contacts without fellowship tend to express themselves in the kind of understanding that is strikingly unsympathetic.” He continues with a remarkable point with impact beyond even my original desire to talk about hatred. Imagine you are an educator, reading these words: “It is a grievous blunder to assume that understanding is always sympathetic,” … [LIGHTBULB] He continues: “There is the kind of understanding that is hard, cold, minute, and deadly. It is the kind of understanding that one gives the enemy, or that is derived from an accurate knowledge of another’s power to injure. There is an understanding of another’s weakness, which may be used as a weapon of offense or defense. Understanding that is not the outgrowth of an essential fellow-feeling is likely to be unsympathetic. Of course, there may be pity in it--even compassion, sometimes--but sympathy, almost never. I can sympathize only when I see myself in another’s place.” (67) </span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The larger context in which this will now sing for me is in my own teaching settings. A popular Christian refrain is that you can love someone if you simply understand where they’re coming from. We presume understanding will lead to love, but that’s a false assumption. Clearly. Moreover, I find this ordering completely backwards for Christian devotion, in my experience. You will only come to understand that which you have already begun to love. Love has its own ‘insufficient reason’ or ‘rationality.’ (Jean Luc Marion). </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can I love first?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Am I loved?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are both elemental questions in a quest for assurance, not certainty. (see <a href="https://www.reconsideringcitizenship.com/2020/10/part-three-fake-newsfake-newswell.html" target="_blank">October posts</a>). What you decide to love, you will come to understand with sympathy, compassion, wisdom.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thurman’s point, however, is that hate can form in contacts without fellowship, which tend to express themselves in the kind of understanding that is strikingly unsympathetic. It is an understanding disconnected from any commitment or connection of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">relationship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, belonging, interdependence. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What happens to you happens to me.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Disconnection from all that. Unsympathetic understanding.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Third, ill will is not far behind an unsympathetic understanding. That which you are not connected to, those whom you see as other than yourself or your own, can easily become objects of ill will, unconscious injury. All who are held in unsympathetic understanding become other, therefore vulnerable to human ill will. And when all this “is dramatized in a human being”, you see “hatred walking on the earth.” (67)</span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thurman’s summary: “</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The outline is now complete and simple—contacts without fellowship developing hatred and expressing themselves in unsympathetic understanding; and unsympathetic understanding tending to express itself in the exercise of ill will; and ill will, dramatized in a man or woman, becoming hatred walking on the earth.” (68)</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HATRED IN CIVIC SETTINGS TODAY</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So let’s begin to flesh this out in terms that should seem familiar and even obvious by now. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Contacts without fellowship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Is there any better description of social media today? The range of contacts we human beings can have with one another have increased exponentially (it seems), yet there are few ‘containers’ within which to experience these contacts </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with fellowship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The fellowship we </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> know with one another is implicit or within previous historical-geographical containers: family, schools, churches, jobs/work, etc. Yet the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fellowship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> available overall in physical time-space has lessened. Even before the pandemic, but particularly in the pandemic too. Contacts without fellowship.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unsympathetic understanding</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This is not only visible within social media or news media outlets predisposed to the most salacious or violent kinds of portrayals, understandings. The divorce of reason from the humane, the technological from the scientific, the individual from the communal has crafted an understanding </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">valued </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when it is</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> most unsympathetic</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. When most objective. When least connected to the humanly subjective or anecdotal. Understanding today </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">aims</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for unsympathy. And we wonder why we feel so cold, separate, lost to one another?</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unsympathetic understanding tending to express itself in the exercise of ill will</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It has become second nature to see ill will everywhere today. Distrust of institutions. Distrust of leaders. Distrust of one another. The understandings we have lash out at those who do not share our experience, share our wound, share our outrage. We gather with those who agree with us, and portray as unsympathetic all those who differ from us.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At this point, Thurman’s description of hatred helped me to break the ingrained taboo against even considering the topic. I could begin to see hate everywhere. </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">DEEPENING EMPATHY THEN...</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thurman’s brilliant contribution for me, today, however, was beginning to see the positive underbelly of this phenomenon, even as it is ultimately destructive. He tracks hate in the violent dance of the strong and the weak. He pushes us further to inquire into the strength that hatred gives to the weak for self-realization, for survival. He mirrors one of the reasons that hatred can run so strong, appear so valiant, be so seductive in the violent, dangerous world in which we live, collectively. In his words:</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In many analyses of hatred it is customary to apply it only to the attitude of the strong toward the weak. … Such an assumption is quite ridiculous. Hatred,in the mind and spirit of the disinherited, is born out of great bitterness--a bitterness that is made possible by the sustained resentment which is bottled up until it distills an essence of vitality, giving to the individual in whom this is happening a radical and fundamental basis of self-realization.” (69) </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hatred makes (a) sort of profound contribution to the life of the disinherited, because it establishes a dimension of self-realization hammered out of the raw materials of injustice.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (italics mine)</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The vitality he describes expresses itself in the quality of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">endurance</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Hate gives an energy of survival that cannot be ignored or denied. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also, an illusion of righteousness can emerge, just over the cusp of the bitterness and resentment. For the disinherited (which it should be said is not ‘me’) to know the feelings and power of righteousness is no bad thing. Even if Thurman says it’s an illusion. To be unprotected and greatly at risk all the time in a particular society, yet know </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">righteousness</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> anyway can nourish, even protect.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The logic of the strong-weak relationships in society also places all moral judgment of behavior out of bounds. Behaviors that under normal circumstances would be questionable become perceivably necessary and defensible for self-realization, for survival. Thus hatred can become a device by which an individual seeks to protect himself against moral disintegration. He does to other human beings what he could not ordinarily do to them without losing his self-respect.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">In all this, I’m not providing a rationale for hate in a civil society, an argument for why it should remain or not be redressed. But I <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">am</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> grateful for such a clear description of the purposes it can serve toward </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">self-realization</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for those society has denied, maligned, neglected, abused, even killed. To bear up under systemic forces already slated against you, from the time you were an infant to the year you’ve been blessed to live to? </span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can empathize with those in the throes of hatred’s force. I can share in a fierce commitment to the self-realization of each and every one of us, all of us together. I can see, as Thurman names it, how “the oppressed can give themselves over with utter enthusiasm to life-affirming attitudes toward their fellow sufferers, and this becomes compensation for their life-negating attitude toward the strong.” (75) I can honor the exhausting both/and of it all, even as I am not one of the disinherited in Thurman's work.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AND YET...HEALING & WHOLENESS</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of which is to say that "hatred is a Good" in our society today. “Despite all the positive psychological attributes of hatred we have outlined, hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater” Thurman teaches. “While it lasts, burning in white heat, its effect seems positive and dynamic. But at last it turns to ash, for it guarantees a final isolation from one’s fellows. It blinds the individual to all values of worth, even as they apply to himself and to his fellows. Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit.” (76) </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;">Contacts without fellowship. Unsympathetic understanding. Ill will. Hate. We see the disintegration of humanity, its blindness to its own moral divisions. And we see the barrenness of creative thought in those enthralled to hate, only able to see the failings and voids of the hated.</span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Those who travel with me for any period of time know that I will eventually turn the topic around toward the archetype of the Circle, wherever She is welcome. ;) But circle </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have two main practices that mirror our frailties </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> provide new directions to explore that will both allow our hatreds to be seen and to gently diffuse them in a love shared across violence. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Story-councils, for one. Listen to a person’s story, held with reverence and care by a whole community of listeners, and fellowship simply happens. I won't try to argue the point with those who've not been in circle, or who won't enter into circle. It simply happens, every time willing human beings face one another, held in a co-created trust, allowing themselves to be seen in all frailties and fierceness. If you disagree, try a circle of trust or a series of circles that are well held by certified/trained facilitators. I dare you.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second pathway is one from a particular community, <a href="http://www.womenwriting.org" target="_blank">Women Writing for (a) Change</a>. We've learned over the years this powerful practice, but not without its Achilles heel: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">presume good will</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Listen deeply to whomever is speaking. Note your own reactions, attractions, aversions. Get curious about your own aversions, especially the most energetic-charged ones. Do not assume you know others' feelings or reactions, even watching their bodylanguage. Then presume the speaker is doing her/his work, is speaking what needs to be said. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Presume good will</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The more we can learn to presume good will, the more good will there will be around us, in the world beyond us. We are co-creating our worlds more and more, after all. How may we meet </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ill will</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with compassionate goodwill? Again and again? </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Achilles heel, of course, is that it’s easier for people in power to presume goodwill than it is for those with less power. Particularly over longer periods of time with more opportunity for systemic dynamics to play out with well-intentioned, but wounded-healing persons. Even with the best of intentions, the presumption of good will </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be abused. It can serve as an excuse to refuse the experience of those we cannot see, for whatever reason (be it race, or legalities, or whatever). I've learned to look for this dynamic when I'm asked to presume goodwill by someone in greater power or authority than myself. Not to assume or presume anything, but to get curious about the power structure, enforced by what means, exercised legalities etc. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CONCLUDING, FOR NOW...</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the end, it will behoove us all to learn to see the entire anatomy of hatred in our public spaces today, noting the body language and the spoken/written expressions of contact without fellowship, unsympathetic understanding, and ill will...walking in human beings on the earth. The new energy for me here is honoring the positive role hatred may be playing in someone’s life, if that someone has faced literally unimaginable (by me) challenges and repeated slights, injustices, threats to their person, personhood. How can I honor that, especially if the hatred is directed toward me? How can I honor all s/he/they have had to endure...without losing my own boundaries, my own sense of self, my own self-realization path?</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">All of which I will only really come to know if she/he/they are willing to tell me their stories and I am willing to share mine. Whereby I can presume goodwill, and hope they will too. Whereby we may live in fellowship that is deepening, with an understanding that is birthed in love first. I am fine to not understand you, and I aim to practice loving first so to understand <i>whatever it is I can be learning</i>...so to know and be known. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Deep bow to Howard Thurman here, probably not for the last time.</span></p><br />Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-59604168643138596962021-04-21T17:34:00.002-04:002023-12-24T13:28:46.416-05:00We Shall Be Known By...what? I'm not so sure...<p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">My heart hurts. I’m beginning to appreciate sadness enough to just name it up front, without blame outward or shame inward. My heart hurts. This Hurt hurts… </span></span></p><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a3bc84b8-7fff-b9b7-b2b6-727e95665aa7"><span style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I faithfully participated in a business meeting this morning, for the good of students and an institution in which I’ve invested years of my life. And we did our business as usual. As usual. I heard a colleague celebrating her baptism, made possible by another colleague and the tradition in which they(we) stand. I heard another colleague celebrating his entry into the Church of Rome, as he named it, alongside his family. I heard another colleague state plainly that a specialized religious leadership degree does not require coursework for intercultural or interreligious sensitivity today. There was immediate disruption of this (potential) exchange, “as that is a larger conversation for another time,” a fellow said, but I felt my silenced rebuttal land heavy in my heart. And then something broke open a bit in me. I realized that probably most of the colleagues there would have agreed with </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">her</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not with me. All morning, I sat as I always do with the celebrations I can celebrate and the statements with which I disagree whole-heartedly, noting the contradictions and irreconcilability that are larger than I can hold, that cannot be flattened easily into any compassionate resolution. I’ve done this for years, holding spaces and places for myself in a conviction in the larger human communion to breathe amidst an era of narrowing and polarization. This time, tears. My body aches. My heart hurts enough to allow it all to rise up in me, weeping…sadness...with no place it </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">needs to go</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> right now, except here, my processing, my holding(s). I suspect this is part of the Work needing to be done...</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>A gift/challenge here is my immersion this week in Beloved Community work (also hosted by this institution). I serve as a consultant to a Mentor leading a Doctor of Ministry cohort in this Beloved Community lineage of practice, thought, heritage. I’ve/we’ve been refining language of documents, resourcing students for their work as scholar-pastors in the church and world… Which </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">practically</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> means I have also been gifted in receiving texts about the Chauvin trial and verdict arriving last night. I have been wrestling to--able to?--hold more expansive space for these colleagues outside and inside of this immediate institutional culture, for us all to be about transformative work across difference(s).</span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And yet...</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">None of any of </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was spoken, named, invited into anything this morning, not even in prayer. It was like it didn’t exist.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My heart hurts, like so many hearts I’m now blessed to know, travel with, companion and encourage, honor, learn from... AND I felt alone. I felt isolated from hearts feeling deeply. I felt disoriented amidst the waves of grief (and their potential graces) clearly arriving for me here, now...</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Significantly, these reflections had begun a little differently this morning, enjoying my cup of coffee, praying the rosary, then beginning to write before my CrossFit workout at 8 a.m. There’s a song that has been following me, of sorts, with both invitation and aversion, for probably 18 months. The original artists are a group I’ve loved for several years, MaMuse, a two-woman duo with folksy sound and heart-felt compassion flowing and being grounded in the earth. They have a choir, called the Thrive Choir, sing it in the YouTube clip available. I have several of MaMuse's albums, enjoying a shuffle of their artistry as I drive from place to place.<p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This song seems so very poignant today: "</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We Shall Be Known"</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...lyrics as follows, or listen to it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwgwIyyZfvk" target="_blank">here</a> (Thrive choir cover, 3 min investment well worth the listen...):</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We shall be known by the company we keep</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">By the ones who circle round to tend these fires</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is time now, it is time now that we thrive</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is time we lead ourselves into the well</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It is time now, and what a time to be alive</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love</span></span></p></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love</span></span></p></span></blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I love the vocals of the song. I love the harmonies, the melody, its lyrical quality woven gently with a defiance or assertiveness that is also softening somehow. There’s a firmness to the song I love, and dislike, both at once. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be known by </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the ones who circle round to tend these fires</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? YES. I'm a circle-keeper/holder/learner. <i>HearthKeeper</i> is a name I treasure from 2013. I tend many fires. We shall be known by the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ones who sow and reap the seeds of change from deep within the earth</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? YES. I'm a nature-girl, all around, becoming more and more attuned to co-creation with Nature, the wilding wisdom way...</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>But for me, I <i>am</i> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not known</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <i>by the company I keep</i>. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I keep company with lots of folks who are quite different from me in religion (many) and politics (less so, but some), racial-ethnic heritage (even less so, but some), and economics/class (probably least here, truthfully...which makes me think of Marx). The company I keep in my day-job holds a history of a root-tradition within which I too stand, which I cannot relinquish with a sense of integrity. But this institutional community expresses itself more and more narrowly...insularly theologically, if globally assumed-to-be-expansive. I am not remotely aligned with these theologies, the rather triumphalist faith practices, more overtly-traditional norms of ‘community’ well-guarded by older white men and those who barter power with them. I remain because students who need most what I offer have to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">come to me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--they have to take my course. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember a progressive student coming into my office for support in a course she was struggling with and discernment whether the school was serving her journey well enough. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How can you teach here? How can you stand it here?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> she asked me with deep frustration. I suppose I could have said, <i>Because I have already surrendered</i>, come to think of it, but I didn’t have that language yet. I smiled with her into her frustration, sharing a bit of my own journey that led me right here. I kept to myself that if the journey hadn’t been just as it was, I wouldn’t have been sitting with her right then. Ultimately, we discerned early formation and being a tenured-professor had way different risks for deep formation, and she did wind up transferring, with deep blessing. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>But perhaps I should be known by these colleagues with whom I identify so little? <span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">In which case perhaps I need to wake up and leave said company? I’m sure some of those others with whom I travel would say that to me, would encourage me to leave. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Here's the rub for me...</span></p><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think the song creates such aversion in me because it’s too easy, and easily polarizable. There’s a whiff of what I’ve heard called </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">liberal fundamentalism</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (basic gist: so progressive/urgent/wounded-angry-inside that the wounding of others </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for justice</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is justified). <i>You're with us or against us</i>, one might say. <i>If you're not with us, you're complicit</i>, others will say. I get that, even bow to that experience for so many today, the truths of both. Except my elders-teachers have shaped me to awaken to either/or thinking, if/then causal statements, that are lashed about in pain and grief today. Those are <i>not</i> the Way.</span></p></span></span><span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My heart hurts today because I'm convinced that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">some of us</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> simply have to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">stop</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the polarizing tribalisms</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Some of us </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have to learn to be with </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">company </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nothing like us</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, who do </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> believe as we do, whose lives and politics are absolutely irreconcilable with our own. If we sing along that we shall be known by the company we keep...as a good thing...then aren’t we just staying in our silos? So...have I reached my limit? Am I done with living a different both/and into the worlds around me?</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Reconsidering citizenship</i> is underneath all of this, for me. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How do we face the pressuring judgment of others who encourage us to join only with those they find most comfort with, or those who are seeking change only as we/they see it? </span></span></li><li><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How do we discern when it's just too fuckin' hard to hold the both/and, that it's simply time to BE with those who are <i>sowing and reaping the seeds of change</i> we CAN see? </span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But if that...</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if we are truly known by the company we keep...then where or how does any and all the violence end? </span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;">If we cannot hold the sacred dignity of every human being, <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">even THEM, </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and yes, even those who refuse the dignity of all, then where/when does the polarization, the separation, the violence ever </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">end</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?</span></span></li></ul><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Acceptance within</i>, I can imagine hearing. <i>Integrity is known from within</i>, I can already tell myself. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But who cares when the tears come? When it all makes you cry, is that enough? </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">When one's heart hurts so, what is to be done, known...?</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I dunno...</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then the song ends with a great line, of course: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, I simply have to ask... Does any one of us actually think he or she is leading </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in love</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? And if she/he/they think they </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> leading in Love, is she/he/are they willing to eventually come to know how very deluded each of us is right now about that, in this moment? [The unhealed, sad-angry but impish part of me then wants to know, “And can I be there to see it happen to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">them?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” (not to myself, of course).]</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Which sits in utter contradiction with <i>Love Upholding All That Is</i>... I sat with a friend this past week, both of us finding ourselves listening to some questions about when Love begins, how it begins, how/if we know. I won’t have space/time today to give much of that richness voice, but it became apparent to me that while there </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">moments in which we experience </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when love begins</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and there are moments when we experience </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">when love ends</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">... </span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...it is no less true to say that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Love Simply IS</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It is what upholds everything. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, whether we know it or not. It opens and holds and creates and invites, whether we participate in it or not. We </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">get to</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> participate, my friend would say. We </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">get to</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> practice and learn and deepen in Love…</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">...with the company we keep, I guess.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So it ends for today... I got nothin'... No tidy integration... No clarity, really... Except now my sadness is more bearable. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There's that.</span></span></p><br />Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-41533292520043586322021-04-03T14:37:00.007-04:002023-12-24T13:29:34.340-05:00Blessed Un-Idolatrous Easter, All Who Celebrate<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well over ten years ago, I had a dream in which a new friend from NYC--a rabbi--and a nearby community’s spiritual teacher--a lama--figured highly. The three of us were discussing whatever we were discussing, and I remember saying “</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is risen. He is risen indeed</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But what does that really mean today anyway?” Then I woke up, of course, so I never got to hear what either of them said. The friendship with this rabbi was new enough that I wasn’t sure I could just reach out to share such a dream, but throwing caution to the wind, I did. A short note, with an honoring of the dream, the question, and my own wonderment to listen more deeply to whatever might arise in response. Blessings upon blessing, this initial exchange has now created an intimate listening ritual for Easter mornings. I get to write a letter pondering the same question, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this year</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This year later. Every years. These many years later… These words here are not this year’s letter, but this year’s letter has popped some new connections, new wonderment.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-76c8bb2c-7fff-7ed2-0893-93d084471eb2">Additionally, you may wonder what in the world any of this has to do with </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reconsidering citizenship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Fair point. The wisdom of the founders proclaimed a separation of church and state, which has ironically insured that all generations afterward would have to wrestle with religion or religious devotion in civic expressions. With a proclamation of separation, any appearance of interconnection or reliance necessarily comes into the courts--of public opinion, surely, but also state, federal and Supreme Courts. In contrast to Europe, let’s say, in which there is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> separation of church/state (for admittedly much longer historical trajectories), that has resulted in very little Christian piety within the public spheres there at all. [One of my favorite early teachers, Soren Kierkegaard, predicted this in his homeland of Denmark, writing innumerable volumes/tractates to demonstrate his view that a "civilized" or civic-aligned Christianity was not actually <i>Christianity</i>]</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Our current mixture of religion and politics in these United States is particularly toxic, especially white Protestant Christianity of conservative-Evangelical-fundamentalist streams. I write as a white, Presbyterian clergywoman-seminary professor in deep lament for the imprisonment and confinement of my own root-tradition’s wisdom, bastardized with Empire and white supremacy. I refuse to relinquish the adjective Christian to describe myself--I am rooted and ordained to leadership in this tradition beyond my capacity to depart it. But I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not find much spiritual nourishment amongst white Protestant Christians</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">these days</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Some of that is my own anger-baggage, my inability to receive amidst deep wounds as a woman-awakened to the deep abandonment of the feminine in Christian traditions; but some of it is because the decline happening in my root tradition </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">needs to happen</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for rebirth and new life to have any meaning, any contribution to life sustainable and available to all. This year, in my own journeying, an important shift emerges in the liturgical refrain that will be proclaimed in living rooms/live-streamed sanctuary services across the world. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is risen. He is risen indeed.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDoJ_JOCCcmZaTE_D3FgXh0FpdwqedGTL3MJ_dNFHzOAciq1pR1841hT9Mbx5IMmrgDMfzdpuH5etVdkp8Fw-E_bkpn1rl_y7LWVnoSr28LJCqgF6ZSpDeeNrU8nuUACWtQZhKL-iSBkA-/s568/Geralyn2-1+-+chakra+rosary.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="496" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDoJ_JOCCcmZaTE_D3FgXh0FpdwqedGTL3MJ_dNFHzOAciq1pR1841hT9Mbx5IMmrgDMfzdpuH5etVdkp8Fw-E_bkpn1rl_y7LWVnoSr28LJCqgF6ZSpDeeNrU8nuUACWtQZhKL-iSBkA-/s320/Geralyn2-1+-+chakra+rosary.jpeg" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Surprisingly, the gift of this Holy Week/Eastertide for me can be received because of a new practice I’m exploring, in a new circley-group of practice-friends called <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Way of the Rose</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Reliant upon words centered in maiden-mother-crone, with a <a href="https://aloharosaleis.com/" target="_blank">rosary</a> crafted in juicy-feminine-earthing-wisdom just for me by <a href="https://aloharosaleis.com/pages/aloha" target="_blank">another</a> in the community, I am now into my second novena. I aim to attend one rosary meeting a week, by Zoom, but most mornings find me praying the rosary. Without a Catholic bone in my body. Peace-church, Anabaptist DNA, persecuted by the Catholics perhaps, but no Catholicism welcome, really. Thanks anyway. Just as there is no causal path from practice to insight--our actions do not </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">create</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the insight(s)--there is no honest way for me to track, for you, the movement and the holding spaces that seem to be finding me here. For these two days, however, Holy Saturday & Easter morn, the description for the first of the Glorious Mysteries, the Resurrection, can structure a bit of the liminal space in which I find myself. It's offered in </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Way-Rose-Radical-Divine-Feminine/dp/0812988957/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=way+of+the+rose&qid=1617472808&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Way of the Rose: the Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary,</a></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> bearing witness to the Story, yes, but what I will eventually call the Story surrounding the version of the story I/many of us have inherited. <br /></span></span><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Resurrection</i>, (first of the Glorious Mysteries): “</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following an ancient pattern whereby a slain god is resurrected by a mother or a lover, Mary Magdalene observes a sacred vigil at Jesus’s tomb. On the third day, he appears to her at last. When she tells the other disciples, they refuse to believe her.”</span></span></p></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This points in several directions I want to go here, all at once, but I will honor the order of the story for this morning, inviting you to trust me with where we land in Easter morning's liturgical refrain...</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following an ancient pattern</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">... When you are willing to dive deeply into the centuries of wisdom hidden in unexpected places across the earth--different traditions than your own, different cultures than what you know, different geographies than you’ve had to survive in--you begin to encounter patterns that feel familiar to some of your own. One of the women I’ve gotten to learn with, in another root community, WWfaC, likes to name this patterning as </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fractals</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A geometric pattern that repeats itself in seemingly infinitely new ways within our world(s). She loves to look for these patterns, resonating in unexpected places. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;">When I first took a deep dive into the story of Ereshkigal/Inanna, I encountered the fractal of resurrection in an unexpected place. In this mythological stream of human thought, the Queen of Heaven, Inanna, decides to visit her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, who is mourning, even enraged, at the loss of her husband/consort. Without recounting the whole story, Inanna is left on a post to die for three days. Until companions from the worlds above come to save her, resurrect her. Life, death, rebirth into new life. Repeat. <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following an ancient pattern</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first encounter with a familiar pattern in a completely different stream of wisdom usually creates overwhelming dissonance for people of faith. Or people of Christian faith I have known in my years, within our modern-postmodern capitalistic worldviews. Most of us have spent an incredible amount of time and effort in our heads, aligning and reconciling sacred things with a literate tradition rooted in Scripture and the Christian tradition we know best. Defenses are brought against any ‘familiar pattern’ experienced elsewhere, seeking then what is distinctive, unique, ‘only’ about our </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">own</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> tradition. C.S. Lewis’s begrudging kneeling before God in his Magdalen College office (nice touch there, Magdalen/e) led him on the journey of apologetics for the utter plausibility of Christianity’s historic gift. This ancient pattern became Real in historical time in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The distinctiveness of Christianity is bringing this pattern to life in a man’s body, born and raised from the dead. Given the idolatry of rationality in our particular era, of course this would be the argument expressed for this ancient pattern. We worship the logical, the scientifically supportable, the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reasonable</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> within a materialistic, functionalist capitalistic society.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does this mean I no longer believe in the Resurrection? The bodily Rising of this Jew from Nazareth? Of course not. I am a Reformed (Presbyterian) Christian standing the long line of my own historic tradition, the architecture and life I understand only within the bodily resurrection proclaimed. But I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">am</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> curious about this human drive for the ‘only’ or the ‘unique’, the distinctive therefore for it to be True. That touches some new things in my journey of awakening in these days...more about that below. Why doesn’t someone make the argument that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because it follows this ancient pattern, it must therefore be True</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? Why must Christians fear or defend from being a part of this ancient pattern? Why the dissociating from ancient human mythological wisdom(s)?</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">A slain god is resurrected by a mother or a lover<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This sentence in the description will touch the patriarchal wound in most of our bodies, I’ll guess. Some will erupt into complete contradiction, insisting that the Father raised the Son into new life. Some will simply be surprised, quietly watching the argument unfold with a strange sense of hope or expectation. Others will begin to say, “It’s about fuckin’ time.” Finally, the Feminine is finding some voice, presence, balance in our power-abusive world. Today I see it with new eyes within the relationship of anger and grief: this sentence touches deep grief in many of us about which we cannot begin to become conscious...yet. The (un)necessary separation from the mother (esp for boys, to become manly). The enmeshment with the mother (esp for girls, hoping to ease their mother’s pains). A mother’s relinquishment of herSelf because that’s what mothering always seemed to require. Or maybe the defensiveness or contradiction will arise because of the “resurrected by a lover” implication. Our bodies are diffuse with wounds of not being enough for that lover (who left me/broke up with me), of yearning for a lover (who has never seemed to arrive), or mourning the loss of a lover (to death). </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mother</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lover</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are powerful words, but rarely do they find much traction in patriarchal religious traditions more familiar with Almighty God, and God the Father. To the bereft Loss for us all.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A woman observes a sacred vigil at the tomb. He appears to her at last. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This retelling of the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">women who stayed</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">women who were faithful in death</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, has been an important part of my own coming to voice, my own awakening to women’s experience in this sacred Story. I don’t want to malign or underestimate its continued importance for me, for others. Yet the yardstick or focus that denies the Feminine still remains the central hub of the Story. The tomb (</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where He lies</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> appears… This retelling of the Story that focuses on the women’s vigils, the women’s faithfulness, is nice and all, but it’s no longer enough for me. I will argue it's no longer enough even </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for us</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, eventually.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">When she tells the other disciples, they refuse to believe her<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. An entire chapter could explore all the nuances of this sentence, but for now, simply a nod to the familiar. A refusal to listen, to hear, to trust the experience of a woman, of an ‘other.’. The mandate felt within the woman with such incredible news to speak to those who will not believe her. The ‘other’ disciples. Here is a fingernail sketch of much human community today. We live unthinkingly in imbalances of who we listen to and why. We listen for comfort, for confirmation, to not appear foolish by believing something untrue. It’s harder and harder to listen to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what is</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, uncertain as we are about </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what is</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, really. Then we live in a weariness, sometimes even a relinquishment, of our personal experience </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because they won’t believe me anyway</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Or I don’t know how to align or reconcile my experience(s) with those in power, those in authority who must be in the know. Today’s complexities then lead some to fabrications of experiences so to be heard, believed, which then results in less and less capacity to trust. This dynamic here at this first of the Glorious Mysteries is so very familiar, then or today, matters little.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So where does </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is Risen! He is Risen indeed!</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> land amidst this exploration…?</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>First I’ll say <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">celebration, but not into idolatry</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The bodily Resurrection of this Jesus of Nazareth remains a singular event in that he came into this world as himSelf, died, and rose again, giving voice and energy in historical time to an ancient pattern at the essence of being human-divine. Birth, life, death, rebirth into new life is the signature co-creative pattern within Earth & all her Heavens. Why shouldn’t it play out in a human body? albeit not as we try to grasp, control, conceive it. </span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus has become an idolatrous center for so much of contemporary Christian devotion, with attention and worship I’d guess he never welcomed nor wanted. He <i>relinquished</i> divinity, thereby embodying it, to invite us into it. I don’t </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not believe in Jesus</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in other words. My sense of Him is so strong that to honor him and his relinquishment of divinity/embodiment of divinity requires these words, this reminder that Jesus himSelf was never </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the point</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...He is the Path, his life-death-resurrection is the Way, held with forgotten human beings who shaped him, created life with him, unnamed and unknown. Christians needing their certainty will move right to </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, named in the Gospel of John. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No one comes to the Father except through me</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But we Christians confuse the finger <i>pointing</i> the Way with the <i>Way itself</i>...which is so very human (as Buddhists would smile and nod, saying). I don’t argue with folks here, because it’s not a rational discussion that will open the heart to the mysteries beckoning so many of us today. If this doesn’t beckon to you, deep bow to you and just let it go.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ironically, it is the insisted singularity of Jesus in this fashion that now pushes me further and further out of Christian liturgies. Again, not for reasons of disbelief but for reasons of alignment with and integrity in the ancient sacred pattern in its entirety, the Wholeness that is missing. The holding-context of the Feminine--or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/398032263660376/user/1433262452/" target="_blank">Divine Animacy</a>, a phrase used by Sophie Strand I hope to explore more--is always missing, never spoken or allowed to speak, to BE. Or She's added on, with the focus still on the man at the center (be he God or Jesus or…). So I’m done with the dissociating, the analytical surgeries of human interconnection. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">The Story takes hold of me in its breathless Wholeness today, for which I am indescribably Thankful, even as it therefore makes me lonely and sometimes angry within “my own traditional community(ies).” The whole ancient pattern at the essence of being human-divine can only live and breathe in the world today if and when we retell the Story as it happened, not as a declining institution of church tells it. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What do I mean? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Live into the Mysteries with me, even just briefly… (most a paraphrase from </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Way of the Rose</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, by Perdita Finn and Clark Strand). </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Joyous Mysteries</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Annunciation</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A woman had to consent for the man to be born. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Visitation</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Two women had to hold the mysteries together, impossible to understand but so clear within them both. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nativity</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In a cave, not unlike a grotto, a woman goes into labor, bearing a boy-child. Goddess drenched symbolism, never spoken in Christian liturgies. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Presentation</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Holy mysteries can be seen, by those with the Gifts of Seeing--in this case, an older man and an older woman. The mother’s heart will be pierced, we learn. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finding</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A mother searches for her young son, left behind at the Temple. She finds, and takes him with her. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Sorrowful Mysteries</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Agony in the Garden. Aloneness, abandonment. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scourging at the Pillar</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “Just as the land is furrowed by plows and the beasts are beaten into submission, the body of Mary’s child is scourged. In the name of empire. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Crowning with Thorns</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The central mystery of the entire rosary. This body is mocked by those still fearful of the power represented. Red robe and a reed for a scepter--each an ancient symbol of the goddess. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Carrying of the Cross</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. No one intervenes. A bystander assumes the weight of the cross. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Crucifixion</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “The tree that once stood at the center of devotion to the Mother has been stripped of life and made an instrument of execution instead. Mary’s son’s body is lowered into her arms.” </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Glorious Mysteries</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Resurrection</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Following an ancient pattern…and all that is already named above. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ascension</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The ceaseless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that includes all life on Earth is completed as Mary’s son surrenders, ascends. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Descent of the Holy Spirit</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The disciples pray for nine days with Mary Magdalene, after the Ascension. A mighty wind, the Holy Spirit--</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ruach</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, feminine--descends, often portrayed by a dove, another sign of the Goddess. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Assumption</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “The body of the Great Mother is the body of the Earth and the body of the Heavens, the body of all that is.” </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coronation</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “In the final mystery of the rosary, Our Lady is crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth. … Life is a journey that circles back to where it started.”</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The unquestioned assumption that Jesus's Resurrection is <i>the</i> Christian mystery, <i>the</i> pivotal event of my Root Tradition, is (of course) </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a slanted Truth</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The entire Story is rarely held, honored, or told fully as the Mysteries above show. Jesus’s name is not named once, intentionally, but the Story interconnects us all without... </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is Risen</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is part of the story--blessedly--but it is not THE story, no matter how desperately (anymore) the self-sufficient man wants it to be so. The church’s idolatry of this Name blinds it to the whole Story--a woman’s consent, a community’s formation, the suffering of Empire, the disconnection of choosing religious tradition over deep spiritual intimacy with one another, separation from self-other-Earth, and so much more… I find myself aching for what Emily Dickinson knew so well…</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Tell all the truth but tell it slant —</i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Success in Circuit lies</i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Too bright for our infirm Delight</i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Truth's superb surprise</i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>As Lightning to the Children eased</i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>With explanation kind</i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Truth must dazzle gradually</i></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Or every man be blind —</i></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When and how, I continue to pray and ask, will all the Story be told and remembered in its entirety, in its balancing Wholeness? </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Truth must dazzle gradually</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...I know...but for how long will so many of us hide our eyes and ears from the Whole? The interconnection of being human underneath and beyond ‘traditioning’? When can we hold our sacred traditions a little more loosely, so to see one another a lot more generously? </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will assist in songleading in our Easter service tomorrow, delighted to do so, but I can no longer hear </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is Risen</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as most congregational members profess it and will celebrate it... </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>He </i>is Risen. No longer can I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not hear</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the aching fear of the self-sufficient man, needing to be idolized in a power-over world he and we have co-created.</span></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He <i>is Risen</i>. No longer can I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not hear</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the abuse of this sacred mystery as the only one, positioned at the heart of (white) Christianity to worship a man who in contrast relinquished divinity so to become himSelf</span></span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>He is Risen. He is Risen indeed! </i>No longer can I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not hear</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the grasping attempts to be distinct-from, dissociated-within the rest of the ancient patterns of human-divine becoming. It’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so white</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> when my community says it after all...what might be called 'segregationist habits of mind' (<a href="https://divinity.yale.edu/faculty-and-research/yds-faculty/willie-james-jennings" target="_blank">Willie Jennings</a>, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-Whiteness-Willie-James-Jennings/dp/080287844X" target="_blank">After Whiteness</a></i>)</span></span></p></blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tomorrow, when my (husband's) community celebrates this sacred mystery with all the forms so familiar to so many, I don’t think I can recite aloud </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He is Risen. He is Risen indeed</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, though He is, and blessed be for that mystery, among so many. A deeper Story surrounding this version or this story, a Story rooted in Wholeness and enveloping the Earth/Heavens has begun to claim me. Not in contrast or competition, not in contradiction but addition, welcome, expansive hospitality. Because it’s not about gender or ideology or any of the things we distract ourselves with to remain in our fears, our wounds. No...it need not be either/or. That is not the way of Our Lady anyway, our dear One, Sacred Mother. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">No, tomorrow, because of these words today, I finally know how to be alongside my pastor-husband, preaching and leading, while I lead in song…</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>He is Risen. She is Rising indeed. </i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Truthfully? I think Jesus is relieved. How could he have imagined, or desired, all that has been done <i>in his Name</i>? How could it not be lonely to be the lone, sole-soul Man purported to save the world? Particularly as his entire Heart-Body-Spirit, within the dance of the Trinity, is for what a mentor-friend called <i>relationality</i>, the interconnection of all things? So let us step out of the Jesus idolatries all around, shall we? Blessed Un-Idolatrous Easter to all those who celebrate this mystery tomorrow, today.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Much gratitude to gifted spirit-friends of many, many years now, and to new traveling companions in Awakening Women (a shakti-oriented community founded by Chameli Ardagh), the Way of the Rose (the circley-rosary friends community), and Fire&Water Leadership/Rites of Passage (a diverse circle-way community). Truly, without all these old/new spirit-friends willing to press into new forms, new awarenesses, new encounters with old wounds--many staying in their own experience of the sacred that does not match this one!--without them, I would not be able to trust these words pouring forth…]</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-3370500113644117482021-04-01T14:39:00.006-04:002023-12-24T13:30:20.335-05:00Accountability, Un-Anti-Anything, and Equanimity...How?<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Accountability</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. "</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact or condition of being accountable; responsibility."</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Or "</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">." At least those are the definitions that arise with a quick search, feeling my way into it with an early morning cup of coffee. Then another energy arose that seems to want to dance with the word accountability. Something I read on a friend-teacher’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/quanita.munday" target="_blank">page</a> recently: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The issue with the term anti-racist is that it comes from the wound. A healed person wouldn’t claim anti-anything. They would stand for something</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I have been sitting with this dancing-tension within me here--both deeply appreciated and welcoming with intention for the well-being of the Whole. Even so, I suspect this posting is gonna get me in trouble. I pray it is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">good trouble</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Or at least </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">good enough</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for today.</span></span></p><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-22fb4c88-7fff-e051-ff58-655d4de64afd"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A bit of context out of which this dance arises then… Circle-way has an ethos and a grounding in a different way of being that I both had to re-encounter in my decades of higher education and that somehow we’ve/I’ve yet always known within the human genome. Different communities focus on different aspects of it, but it’s an archetypal energy that nourishes, holds, challenges (nurture-with-rigor, <a href="http://www.womenwriting.org" target="_blank">one community</a> names it), protects, invites. No one is at the Center. At least none of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">us</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is. Some say </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all voices are equal</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> here, while others say </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all voices contribute. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I tend to find the latter more honest, the former still a good ideal we are striving toward. I imagine this way of being human together, this way of gathering, originated around the fire when everyone who sat in the circle knew that the circle of the Whole depended upon each and all to survive. At the very least, it’s an archetypal energy of ancient re-emergence today, calling forth a forgotten way to be human </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">together</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And that we’re not fully </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">human</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> until we are human </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">together</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>But given its origins, it’s also a small-size wisdom-technology. Today is incredibly complicated in a multicultural, complexly-economic global community of a size too big to gather into a circle the way we are remembering. And we live in a world measured and divided by multiple yard-sticks of evaluation, cross-cultural and globally diverse. I, at least, am living in a market-economy world often measured by a yardstick conceived by what is white and male (says this friend-teacher, in her new book, forthcoming). So we cannot call the global circle, per se, but we </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> invoke the archetypal energy of Circle. We can learn from the ethos and live from/through its Grounding(s). <br /></span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So that’s a fingernail-sized glimpse of the context in which this tension between </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accountability</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and <i>un-anti-anything</i>, my inadequate short-hand for </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a healed person wouldn’t be anti-anything</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they would stand for something</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. There is something here at the heart of this tension that feels contradictory inside of me, which is what usually brings me to this blog-space to think aloud, to be seen thinking aloud, to welcome others' questions and shared vulnerabilities.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of my root communities today--<a href="https://www.womenwriting.org/" target="_blank">Women Writing for (a) Change</a>--has a marvelous practice for small group process, but also for practicing the ethos of the Circle as a whole: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">invitation, not obligation</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It has many expressions throughout an evening’s writing circle, but the one in small group is the most germane here. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What kind of feedback do you want?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There is a list that’s been created over the years, including Heart/Gut, One True Thing, Silent Witness, or even my favorite, Standing Ovation (for having done the writing at all!). Having held these circles for years now, I always love it when I can hear the standing ovation from a small group in its confidential space, the sound traveling clearly into the large-circle room I sit in during those times. Some woman has just asked for her community to cheer her on. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Love it.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Craft feedback is also an option, for more polished pieces--this being the kind of feedback most often found in English classrooms around the nation. But for the most part, few writers ask for Craft, particularly if the piece is drafted, musing, reflective, curious. Additionally, red pens are not really all that welcome in a WWfaC circle. Too many bad experiences from the English teacher who squashed a student’s creative attempts. In circle-language, craft feedback doesn’t often match the ethos of equanimity and invitation well suited to the purposes of those circles: coming to voice and creative experimentation, expression. So for years now, I’ve lived into the practice of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">invitation, not obligation</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in as many contexts as would welcome it</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, well aware of its liberating and healing impact in areas within and beyond the writing circle.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I often find myself wondering how/if </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">invitation not obligation</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> could further open civic discourse to come from healing/healed spaces within us each/all, particularly in tender streams in our public spaces these days--anti-racist work, whose advocacy for justice is so needed today; diversity-equity-inclusion work in broader frames (including all PoC and LGBTQ+ persons), being intentional about the question “Diverse compared to what/whom?” that Resmaa Menakem invites (<a href="https://onbeing.org/programs/resmaa-menakem-notice-the-rage-notice-the-silence/" target="_blank">Notice the Rage, Notice the Silence</a>); and various religious-political discussions amidst declining/refusing-to-grieve traditions and polarizing/refusing-to-grieve politics. There is a freedom and assurance at the heart of this phrase, this practice of invitation, that seems so very absent in much of the discourses I’ve just named.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What does it mean, and feel like, <i>to speak from</i> </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">invitation-not-obligation</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, in a world where so many of us seem to need to be held accountable to the experiences of others we cannot see or do not know? What does it feel like <i>to be spoken to</i> within invitation, not obligation? Does accountability have a place within the energies of Circle, and if so, how/where? </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">[A quick shorthand in my own experiences, from what I know so far, and why I'm invested in spending the time and energies to explore all I am here. <i>Speaking from</i> in this practice feels like <i>freedom from responsibility for</i> others' choices, for their experiences, for-their-anything. I can invite to hear more, to bear witness, to be awakened by their words, but I'm not <i>responsible for them</i>. I can also leave whatever does not touch me in the Center, as a gift for others. I <i>am </i>responsible for receiving my own feelings/sensations, for my own actions, for offering what I can and asking for what I need. In my (wordless?) bearing witness, I am honoring the others' own wisdom, gifts, and resources to ask for what they need and offer what they can. Trust and shared vulnerability is the currency here. <i>Being spoken to</i> within this practice feels like, well, an <i>invitation</i>--freedom to accept, freedom to decline; freedom to pause and consider <i>what</i> I feel, because the speaker appears to trust and respect my voice, my words, my experience and desires to learn more for...themselves? their own purposes? The interactions will communicate that further, within Circle, within the sacred gaze of the Whole. And yes, accountability therefore has a cherished space within the energies of Circle, though it is differently configured than most of us are familiar with...self-accountability embeds within invitation-not-obligation, which breathes the ethos of equanimity of Circle. Arguably, this is the summary of all I want to say, written after a couple hours of word-smithing my own process in what follows...!]</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Accountability: </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.” Right here, we could seem to be at an impasse. Accountability is rooted in obligation, a sense of responsibility-for. Circle, on the other hand, seems to welcome </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">invitation</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not obligation. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Equanimity</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not expertise or sharing information, per se. Wondering, curiosity, not knowledge or power. </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does this mean we are not accountable to one another, to the whole? Of course not. Accountability is a practical world notion and necessity for us all. Government needs to be held accountable for how it spends taxpayers’ monies. Perpetrators of crimes need to be held accountable for their actions, for society to protect the innocent, the vulnerable, the marginalized. Power needs to be held accountable in Grace, Mercy, even that seemingly impossible yearning for Justice. I dispute none of this. But standing in the archetypal energies of Circle challenges this notion of accountability in some really interesting ways. </span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For one, accountable to whom? is an interesting angle with which to begin. To the other? To self? To the powerful (high status in money, intellect/expertise…)? To marginalized peoples? To the vulnerable? Ask yourself the question then--to whom/what am I most accountable? How do you discern/decide? So much of our overculture (<a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2017/clarissa-pinkola-estes.html" target="_blank">Clarissa Pinkola Estes</a>) suggests structures of accountability within terms like certification, accreditation, corporate work and the like. We live accountable to licenses and job descriptions and our superiors’ oversight in institutional organization charts. All of which shapes a power-over habit of mind--we are to be held accountable by those with the most power, or we are responsible to hold accountable those we perceive with less power. The human ego loves this game, and many of us play it elegantly well. Particularly in academic discourses, this runs rampant with call-out-culture--exposing blind spots in public ways, playing the accountability-mutuality game we’ve learned in our higher or educational environments. We jockey for who knows more and who gets to hold the other accountable. We soften it with language like mutuality and ‘for the good of the whole,’ but power-over remains at the center, with judgments arising from our ‘greater experience’ or expertise. By the yardsticks we’ve been shaped by, in… In contrast, a beautiful invitation for 'call-in-culture' can be found in a NYTimes piece on <a href="https://www.smith.edu/academics/faculty/loretta-ross" target="_blank">Professor Loretta J. Ross</a>, who crafts/explores this tension-shift in her course at Smith College. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/style/loretta-ross-smith-college-cancel-culture.html" target="_blank">"What If Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?"</a> </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Accountability to what…? seems to bring more clarity to me about my own dissonance. I've learned to be accountable first to my own body-cues and sensations... </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A person’s communication style and word-choice (whether they’re conscious of it or not) will hint at what yardstick(s) they are using to interact with me (whether intentionally or not). I’ve learned to look for the emotional cues and the energetic charges that come </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with others’ word-choices. When I feel a power-positioning language, often experienced with someone playing the academic political game with me, I know to expect <i>within</i> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sensations of dissonance, discomfort, anger at an imposed presumption, and an urge to defend myself against...whatever I perceive is coming at me in a guise of ‘community’ but with language of ‘power-over.’ I've lived in higher education to be quite sensitized to this, both for my own protection and for the danger of reactivity here. I've experienced this in both higher ed and professedly circle-way communities. [note: All of this is intentionally named as my feeling/experience language; others may </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be playing that game at all, in <i>their</i> experience of an interaction, but I feel what rises in me, and am most healthy when I honor it within…] These sensations are actually really helpful body-cues that while not desirable or pleasant per se, are so very familiar to me now. Sometimes I ‘bite the hook’ as <a href="https://www.shambhala.com/don-t-bite-the-hook-503.html" target="_blank">Pema Chodron would say</a>, but most times anymore, I’m getting better at pausing, allowing, getting curious, and then learning...bringing words to life for myself that align with what I </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">want </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to live into the world, which is Circle. </span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like yesterday, when a white woman whom I am enjoying getting to know used language in a public forum that felt like power-over, touching my higher-ed wound. Ironically, it was in response to a piece on proportionate response in academic/conceptual violence. She also assumed an assertiveness that I did not experience as inviting, more a demand/command, which then touched my distrust and suspicion. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like today, as I am blessed and thankful to explore this tension I feel here with a day of writing and receiving. </span></span></p><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For this case, it comes back to my deep experience and appreciation of invitation-not-obligation and the gentle question within that ethos of equanimity: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what kind of feedback do you want?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When someone approaches with a deep respect of me, also a demonstrated trust that I am doing my own work, that I am on a beautiful sacred journey, they invite me with a question more than a statement. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are you curious to have a conversation with me about your writing?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Or even better, they invite me into a question that arose within themselves, instigated by me or something I’ve said/written. Something they now want to ask, something they are struggling with. In such invitation, there is a shared vulnerability at the heart of the communication, and we are automatically co-listeners, co-learners, peers, within an ethos of equanimity that rests at the heart of Circle. This invitational approach is their ante-up into the deepening-sacred-listening--they show me they are willing to be seen in their own journey. This rarely happens in higher education, and I dare say, in much liberal social justice advocacy work. Instead, I was asked to join into a conversation about accountability and mutuality, to learn of my blind-sides (which I of course have and am always curious-willing to know more as I go, though I'm often too willing to go into discomfort as a sense of penance and shared suffering). She told me to set up an appointment after a certain date with the link for the online calendar. All my body cues arrived, just as expected for a seminary professor attuned to power-over games. I've let the sensations simmer, welcoming the percolations and the bemusement, the irritations and the sadnesses rest in my cells for a while.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My journey with this simple communication has been so very informative, instructive, and fascinating. My inner life and the stories I create for myself are engrossing, predictable, and even exhausting before they ever reach the light of day, or the electrons of computer-print-prose. I won’t lengthen this by going into detail, but I’ve realized that so much of the ‘reaching out for accountability’ I see and sometimes receive seems to come from a power-over place. It’s ego habit, and it’s what social-justice-advocacy work requires today, at least if you don’t want to be accused of being complicit. Especially between white people who haven't figured out how to hold the horrors of white supremacy <i>and</i> rest in the divine order of things in who they are as white persons today. (see previous post). This is what I understand as the anti-ness my teacher-friend challenges with her own words. </span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having clearly spent my energies here, I will say that <i>usually</i>, in much contrast, I don’t argue overly much with this whole accountability dynamic. Not because I don’t care about it. Not because it’s not necessary or valuable. Not because of my own privilege, which I know is great. I don’t participate in it very much anymore because more often than not, the yardsticks we’ve inherited are at the Center of it. You can tell when your body responds with an energy of protection. When someone uses language that judges your work before asking if you want feedback, or language that seems to position power-over/under in some fashion. Even assertiveness, while valuable, is a cue for me. I may or may not accept the invitation to conversation, here in the end. These reflections may be gift enough for me, instigated by the communication received.</span></p><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because as painful as it may be to say or be heard saying, I’d rather practice the self-accountability of the Circle, live fragilely/flawedly into the ethos of equanimity that trusts you for your journey, trusts that you are right where you need to be for your sacred journey, and the best thing I can do is bear witness, give you a standing ovation for showing up as you are. </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I want to be in this for the long-haul. I</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">f I am intent upon living-Circle, learning more and more to be Circle where I am, the power of invitation-not-obligation compels a much greater peaceableness, a curiosity with what will happen next </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for which I am not solely or remotely responsible</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I am practicing my trust of that person's work. I am demonstrating a willingness to be present in actions/work that I may find painful, but I commit to be alongside regardless. I am responsible only for my own actions, and for owning my place at the rim of every circle. We co-create the space together, so I am responsible for my part, but also for living into equanimity. But that’s it. I’m not responsible for another’s actions, nor for their journey into deepening awareness or even self-transformation. Bearing witness is sacred privilege enough, in the flows of Circle I know and have been blessed to receive.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I’ve landed where I know how and what to be-with in the communication that arrived for me to welcome and digest yesterday. I’m curious what got touched such that she/he/they were compelled to reach out to ‘hold me accountable.’ What is that energy living in </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">them</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? There’s beautiful sacred energy there, after all...and it will be used for the good of the Whole if/when we enter into a shared vulnerability and ethos of equanimity. Not in a judgmental or fearful way, for either of us. Neither in a shaming or guilting way either, though so much of the overculture feeds on pitting one of us over the other. No, I’m curious what energy is in the other, while I tend to what energy is within me. When someone reaches out to me to invite me to a deeper sense of accountability, I vow to welcome their questions (clearly, given the verbiage here!) </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m curious </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what touched something in them such that they were compelled to reach out for greater accountability in me…?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If they haven’t done the work to know what got touched </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in them</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, then neither of us is in a place to have the healing/healed conversation. Because then we’re not both in Circle; we’re straddling the intersection, holding onto a past familiarity of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anti-woundedness</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that does not serve the Whole well today.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bemused ironies here are of course not to be missed. My words into public blog-spaces almost beg this kind of interaction. Most folks write a blog to begin to craft a public space, build a readership, and engage public discourse on social media. Never been my purpose. I'm not interested in that pathway, for myself. I write/speak in these posts to reflect and wrestle with my experience, what I’m learning, and sometimes to honor with whom I’m learning. I'm aware that many of my school's alums serve in leadership roles in small-rural areas, often enthralled with Trump/ism. I’m interested in inviting and demonstrating a different way to process. I'm wanting readers to enter into my process with me, into the practices that find me, and ultimately to find their own versions of what they’re drawn to within more Circle ethos than before. Rarely do I enter into the worlds of Should--</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is what our world needs; or </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is how peace will be earned, etc.--simply because that’s not what this work is about for me. That’s expertise/accountability culture, not Circle wondering and inviting. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I do yearn to lean into greater trust of those around me, even as I enter into more diverse communities with deeper and deeper pain, wounds, suffering. I know that I/my words will be a lightning rod of these ‘reaching outs’ and worse, ‘lashing outs’ given the woundedness of our public discourses today. I'll need to be listening gently to my own bodycues in how long and whether I remain in this sharing of my work, my process. But at least for now I’ve walked this integrative path to the practice of exploring un</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anti-anything. Circle invites invitation, not obligation, which offers a freedom I can recommend to those I love, and those I have yet to love.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of positioning against, or anti-anything, then... What do I stand for? [Circle, invitation-not-obligation, practicing and welcoming missteps and more]. What do you stand for? [fill in the blank...then practice and risk toward that...] How are you being responsible to that in your journey? How may we bear witness...even give you a standing ovation?</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-11786957598868805542021-03-30T21:26:00.003-04:002023-12-24T13:30:47.062-05:00Self-Denigration is Not the Way...How to Break the Cycle?<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new question landed in my belly this past weekend, as I Zoomed, walked, listened, spoke, listened some more in a newly forming community of leaders called </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fire & Water Leadership/Rites of Passage</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with <a href="https://www.nzuzu.com/" target="_blank">Quanita Roberson</a> and <a href="http://www.tennesonwoolf.com/" target="_blank">Tenneson Woolf</a>. The seed of the question was planted in 2014-2015, when I served on a diverse leadership team for a cohort of faculty in theological/religious-studies departments, in institutions of higher (theological) education. I will eventually ask the question, which is clearly for white people, but first, I want to set it up within the stories out of which it now arises…</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-c4cb36a1-7fff-98b5-a394-5b0dbec1783a">I landed in the leadership role in 2014-2015 with a huge sense of imposter-syndrome, in senses both <i>young</i> and <i>white</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was a colloquy aimed to help mid-career faculty renew and re-envision their callings through collegiality and creativity. Given my own way in the world, I was a natural at holding space for this kind of mission. But </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I could have applied to be a participant in the colloquy. I saw myself as peer first. The weighty elder in my past had asked me to join the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">leadership</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> team, so of course I said yes. I trust him, and learn from him so deeply. I still felt young and unschooled from Day One. Given my social-and-institutional location, I was less ‘cutting edge’ or ‘status-visible’ for status-aware higher education faculty. Not surprisingly, the collection of wounds in the room soon became entangled, and one of the other leaders on the team </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">schooled me</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> about a way I had spoken in a group meeting. I had wanted to weave some wisdom she had made earlier in the leadership team meeting into the whole discussion, but didn’t want to ‘steal it’ by saying it in my own voice. I invited her to speak, and her wound experienced it as (however she experienced it). Her reaction was angry, direct-attack of me in public. I felt humiliated, ashamed. Today, I can see it as inevitable for who she and I are in this system. <i>And </i>I can see her action as</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (over?)-reactive, a lashing out from her own wound-places. The leadership team ruptured and never quite recovered, to be honest, though I finally made my peace by receiving her as a painful spiritual teacher, doing to me what all had been done to her for longer than I was alive. In a base sense, it was some of the easiest money I earned: from that point on, I showed up and said nothing. For 12 months.</span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember watching the dynamics unfold, true to higher education norms and the conceptually violent practices higher ed faculty learn in order to succeed, or don’t learn and get fired or leave. The gift of this entire experience for me was seeing writ large how broken higher education is for the things I value today. Even when the room was diverse, even when the diverse voices had the power and center-of-gravity, the same relational-communal wreckage occurs </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">because it’s higher education, built on plantation logic </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">with an aim of forming</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the white self-sufficient man </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Willie Jennings, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-Whiteness-Willie-James-Jennings/dp/080287844X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=after+whiteness+jennings&qid=1617143463&sr=8-1" target="_blank">After Whiteness</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">).</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the norms you learn early on, or leave because you didn’t is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">proportionate response</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. When one faculty challenges another, you better meet him/her/them with proportionate response on topic and in conceptual force. Even a perceived ‘tie’ in the argument will save face, your political capital. Submission or being wrong loses face, loses political capital. (also President Bartlett, <i>The West Wing</i>, season 1, episode 3).</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>A new norm began in earnest for the group after my own ‘schooling’: <i>white women denigrating themselves before joining into a conversation, so to be heard, so to speak.</i> There’s very little that unnerves an academic than being perceived as ignorant or un-woke (to use today’s term), so the politically savvy thing to do in a mixed-ethnicity group in this instance was to denigrate yourself first before speaking. <i>“I know I’m just a white woman, stupid, but…[ask a question or make a point].”</i> I heard this or its variations innumerable times during the year of the colloquy. At first I saw it as condoned passive-aggression by those racial-ethnic participants who were finally in an energetic majority for the whole. But then I realized everyone was simply playing their part in the higher education script. It didn’t matter whether the voice was white or black, Latino or Cuban, Celtic-Irish or melting-pot-white. The system operates as it does, and we’d all learned how to play that game. The fact that we were all there was evidence that we were survivors of an art to this conceptual violence, this game.<p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But something in me simply refused this new norm, this self-denigration, for whatever reason. I went to a fragile place (of course) though did my best to hide it, own it. I kept my mouth shut as I’d been schooled to do, watching and learning, learning and watching. Perhaps being on the leadership-team gave me an ‘out’ in the new norm? I don’t know. But I refused to denigrate myself in order to speak. Every cell in my being said NO, even deeply aware of the pain, if also my inability to truly know their experiences from within.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, I have feelings of pain and regret about this leadership experience AND I know Spirit’s use of it has been priceless, an incredible Gift for me into my own journey Work. I saw much more fully that <i>higher education is broken</i>. This Gift freed me of interest in any other institution or climbing any other faculty ladders, of any kind. I knew my path was breaking open, to learn what I did not know I did not know, to draw closer to the experiences of racial-ethnic faculty/normal people in whatever ways I could, feeling my way in, keeping my mouth shut, learning with whomever would show up (even if I never asked them to teach me or ‘do the work’ for me). </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Significantly, a seed of confidence in my own hard-earned wisdom was also planted here. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No one who has to denigrate him/her/themselves in order to be heard is participating in a nonviolent community, or in the kinds of conversation and deep-listening that I’m interested in having.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I knew I was done seeking life or healing in that violence. Hannah Gadsby nails it in her own show, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nanette</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p>She reflects on her entrance into comedy, her use of self-denigration to get a laugh, to buy permission to speak. And so she decides, “I must quit comedy then, because I will not denigrate myself any longer, on behalf of myself or anyone who identifies with me.” The audience cheers, of course, <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the remainder of the show is her brilliant crescendo to a woman sharing her story in sacred fury. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No one who has to denigrate him/her/themselves in order to be heard is participating in a nonviolent communal system</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Something in me </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew this</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, even though all around me were urging me to conform, to obey the new group norm… </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then this March 2021 weekend happened, a five-day journey with a wildly diverse group (in comparison), steeped in Circle-Way practices, with shared intentions to walk alongside one another, perchance to heal, perchance to reclaim parts of ourselves we’ve not known or claimed (yet). For one thing, the group is made of not only <i>warriors</i>--higher education is largely warrior-caste--but also <i>teachers</i>, <i>healers</i>, <i>visionaries</i>. (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Four-Fold-Way-Walking-Warrior-Visionary/dp/0062500597" target="_blank">Angeles Arrien</a>). More will be said over these next months as I journey and learn, learn and listen, watch and offer/receive. But for this flow of story: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no one had to self-denigrate in order to speak</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And while there was so clearly deep woundings in each of us, and in the whole, there was no reactivity or lashing out in any fashion. Each is responsible for his/her/their own work, in the Circle. You put what you need to into the (metaphorical/literal) Center, and the community holds it without entangling in it...unless someone decides he/she/they are called to respond. From a healing/healed place within themselves.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpYotUavoV2WasDsXE55kO3ouJghkNgxAGPumwrA0Ey2iKjWQ3Md4XBCQMxJ4tOJa7CeBQaKS9WRhJURsauBHYya1JlT0eVRaHMxJSz0jt4Z7a6YDh8j9t2kofCQzzSjTJyWO8PnCVNHRs/s1096/98602BA6-DE66-4A9F-A79B-3B447143A586.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1096" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpYotUavoV2WasDsXE55kO3ouJghkNgxAGPumwrA0Ey2iKjWQ3Md4XBCQMxJ4tOJa7CeBQaKS9WRhJURsauBHYya1JlT0eVRaHMxJSz0jt4Z7a6YDh8j9t2kofCQzzSjTJyWO8PnCVNHRs/s320/98602BA6-DE66-4A9F-A79B-3B447143A586.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> context that the question arose, that I want to ask white folks--with anyone else listening in, pull up a chair, if you like. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How does a white person love and honor him/her/themselves once deeply attuned to the suffering and horror exacted onto human bodies in white-body supremacy?</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If self-love (rooted in Source) is the root of authentic other-love, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">caritas,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (which I believe it is), then </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">actual love</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of an/other will require white folks to figure this out. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you are white, and you finally grasp that each of us is interconnected, and all of us depend upon this beautiful-threatened whirling planet </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">together</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, then how do you accept and honor </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who you are</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> as a white person, while at the same time continuously receiving how connected you are to the unspeakable pain, suffering, historical-and-contemporary horror that whiteness has exacted upon Mother Earth and her beings? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are assumptions here (self-love, rooted in Source, root of other-love) that would take too long to really flesh out </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but more importantly, the excruciating-and-liberating </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">breaking-open</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> here can not be understated. I am not asking about how to value whiteness in a world that clearly already values whiteness within capitalism, to the suffering and cost of so many multitudes… Nor am I interested in ‘pacifying’ or ‘satisfying’ any white-refusal of pain-suffering, imagining that if we could just disconnect </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my whiteness</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that enslavement so long ago</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> then we shouldn’t have to feel any pain or suffering because of what </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> did so long ago. This is the puss-filled, boil-ridden wound that so many of us whites refuse and resist, aim to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not-see</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> somehow...so I’m not talking about hiding or ignoring the wound. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I also know that self-denigration is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> non-violent. White people denigrating themselves is not the pathway to wholeness for anyone. It is violent inside, which only then gets projected outside. I know that interconnection, unveiling interconnection, is a complicated and disruptive force finding more and more Energy in the world today. I know that much of religious culture-ing in white communities--I’m thinking Protestantism/Catholicism, myself, at least--defends against change/awakening with shame and guilt, which sends most of us into self-loathing. Which begins a cycle of self-denigration that then pours hatred into the world, projected onto others... </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think my question then is simply </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how do white people break the cycle of dissociation, disconnection, segregation within us, our habits of mind, our conceptual hierarchies and analytical responses to pain</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? How do white people halt the flow of their own unconscious/refused self-loathing into the world…?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have no answers yet, except to simply keep walking with new companions who are invested in engaging their own questions, their own leadership journeys, putting their ‘stuff’ into the Center for us all to hold, bear witness to, and let go. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is some of my stuff...into the Center...for now.</span></p><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[I began a new journey with some pilgrim companions this past weekend, as each of us said ‘yes’ to a <a href="https://fireandwaterleadership.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Fire&Water (&Water&Fire) Leadership/Rites of Passage</a> invitation. There are intentional times of gathering over the next nearly 1.5 years, but there is also a nice spaciousness between gatherings, to allow for percolation and the living of life in our normal dailies. My sense of invitation to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reconsider citizenship</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is interwoven into a visible reality and invitation to learn deeper Circle-Way living-loving-breathing within a much more diverse community than I often have access to in my religious-leadership day-jobs. From time to time, a post will appear here, with learnings that have made it into the coffee-cup (from percolating).]</span></i></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-58412973553820909952021-03-16T12:30:00.005-04:002023-12-24T13:31:17.611-05:00Multi-Container Life? Now and Not Yet...<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A day of gratitude dawns, with a new phrase that has some energy for me: a life with many containers, or a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">multi-container life</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-18b6f176-7fff-80d1-619e-fae913ad9940" style="font-family: arial;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before I dive in, first, an orienting observation...particularly as it’s been a while since I’ve written here. (In the biz I’m in, we would call this paragraph </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a methodological moment</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. You can skip it if you’re not into such moments.) When these musings welled up in me several months ago now, toward </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reconsidering citizenship</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, it was quite clear to me that the writing space here was to name, honor, reflect-publically (sometimes even theologically) on what was rising in me, a writer who perhaps could give voice and words to my experience that perhaps is less uncommon than it feels to me. I was seeking companionable readers, friends, and have been blessed with them, some known, many unknown. So this is not a space for a top-down, ‘expert’s view’ of this topic,: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how we ought to reconsider citizenship here in the States.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Not interested in ‘shoulds’ or ‘ought to’s’ here, for me. This has been for me a heart-space, a feeling space, a way to share the undercurrents or erupting emotions that get little measured press in our civic spaces today. Which is not to say there are not, of course, erupting emotions. One could argue that is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> we see in our public spaces today--usually the negative, reactive, and incendiary emotions at that. What bleeds, leads. We are primed for the anger or fear that instigates the ‘click’ that pays the advertising bills, that creates more anger and fear. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In some contrast, I wanted </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> space to be for deep feeling to have a voice, but more a tender curiosity, a grief-stricken-hopefulness, a vulnerability of the human condition that is willing to profess uncertainty without fear, sadness without anger, anger without rage, love without assurance from without… Living at the intersections as I do of higher (theological) education, church/faith communities, family, marriage, friendship, circle, fitness, and online ‘communities’, I see few places for this kind of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">methodological intention</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, this kind of reflective, curious, heart-oriented listening-space. (End of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">methodological moment…</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>What I realized today, driving back from my CrossFit ‘birthday party’...yes, I get to celebrate 52 years on this whirling globe, thank you Mom&Dad...what I realized today is that so much gratitude wells up for me from blessedly different and multiple directions, from places, persons, relationships, communities I get to participate in regularly because of the blessings of good health, a curious disposition, technology (esp today) and what I’ve both been given and have strived hard to earn. So when I’m open to it--not only on such a day like today--I get to feel deeply connected to persons near and far, quite different from me, some quite similar to me. For someone like me, that is like catnip for a cat, or to stay with my heart-dog connection, Nala, like beef consomme in a coop-cocktail glass for a dog. Which then got me curious. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How many ‘containers’ do you pour your life into, find your own life in</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? The instigation </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> arises because so much of our outer/civic discourse seems to focus and polarize our ‘containers’, to force us to choose fewer and fewer containers of belonging, identity, and significance if we are to be authentic, or live with integrity. Like being a specialist in your container-life makes you smarter, more intellectual, more of an expert, more virtuous, or live with more integrity. This is a boomer-generation kind of question around “who are you?” or “what do you do?” It’s assuming an identity, even an intersection of identities, or a profession. But is that really accurate anymore, or even helpful? Particularly in politics or citizenship?</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">I remember getting some backlash about this dynamic in my clinical education days. One of the supervisors on my examination ‘board’ asked with great exasperation “When are you going to choose what you will do here? What professional path do you need to choose?” She assumed a need to choose, where I did not. She held authority on the Board, but not over the whole examination, thank heavens. She was very impatient with my sense of connection to the church, the academy, the clinical-education world (CPE), and the broader communities in which I could serve. I remember being befuddled by her question. Why narrow or choose if the pathway didn’t require you to...yet? More and more of us, even in vocational terms, are many many things today. What might our lives be like if the invitation to passion and an abundant life was a <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">multiple-container life</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps a bit of definition will help, at this stage. In my line of work and vocation, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">container</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> describes the “organizational universe encompassing all aspects of how a group lives: time, physical space, money, relational agreements, food and ritual” (Mary Pierce Brosmer, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Women Writing for (a) Change</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, p. 182). Words with similar meaning or intention could be </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">eco-system</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">home</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">womb</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As Brosmer continues, a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">container</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is “anything that maintains the delicate balance between open space and boundaries and [that] allows life to emerge...” </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Most of us could use this term ‘container’ to talk about the primary private and public relationships-communities within which we understand our lives: <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">family</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (of origin then extended), perhaps eventually </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">marriage</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">partnership</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">union</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">school</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">church</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">/</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">faith-community</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">city/town</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">county</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">state</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">country</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">continent</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, (eventually?</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> planet</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?). Note that the first terms are ‘groups’ by which human beings organize into pairs, tribes, small groups, larger communities, etc. They are ‘organizational universes’ that encompass the governance of time (who’s always late in your family? :)), physical space (who’s the tidy one, and who is not?), money (how is that organized in your primary partnership, then family?), relational agreements (how often do you play together? Work together? Visit with extended family? Communicate? etc.), food (how does you primary unit make food choices? Out to eat? Sugar? Alcohol? Regular mealtimes or catch as catch can?), and ritual (what daily or weekly or monthly or yearly ‘customs’ do you observe in your ‘groups’?)... The later terms move into religious traditional or geographical reference, though they still have human-being complements or governance structures. Well, not continents or planet, really. Attempts at consortiums and alliances wax and wane, as we know. </span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In much of American life (North or South, for that matter), various sports could be considered ‘containers’ as well, with participatory teams (groups with aspects similar to above) but then also hybrid participatory/fan associations, like fans of favorite teams who create a culture around being a fan of that team. Browns’ fans come to mind, of course. Or Boston Red Sox. Some sports have time-specific seasons for their ‘organizational universe’--fall sports, spring sports, decided by school schedules--while others go year-round, building a more consistent community of participation and fan-dom (often parents, with the younger ages). In this zone, a gym could be a container, of a sort. CrossFit, for instance. It’s both a fitness community and a gym, with its own relational agreements, norms of practice, time, space, money, even food recommendations.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So in our public lives, like it or not, we are all immersed in multiple containers of family (of some kind), broader community, and city/county/state/country. The more active of us, or the more professionally mobile of us, can be immersed in even more numerous containers. Rarely will we think of the containers that 'hold' our lives as a collective, unless it is within the private/public dichotomy, or the individualist frame of reference. How do my relationships serve my growing identity(ies)? can be a regular question, for instance. Or how do you tend your marriage amidst the demands of family, work, church, etc.? These are the questions that are familiar. But how do we tend the <i>containers</i> in our lives, individually <i>and</i> collectively? We rarely <i>see</i> the whole organizational universe, with overlapping circles or containers, let alone ask ourselves how can we best <i>tend</i> the whole? We look to institutional leaders or organizational science experts to inform our leaders who are to care for the institution. If we saw the multiple containers that make our lives rich and nourishing, how might we ask questions or breathe into what it means to be healthy and human within them? <i>All of us</i>? We <i>are</i> co-creating our worlds right now, after all. And<i> </i>w</span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">hat might our shared life become if it were an intention, a goal, to honor how we belong to multiple communities at once, even receive nourishment and instruction from multiple communities...even traditions...even political parties...at once?</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The scholarly biz I’m in has developed words for this within religious traditional discourse--</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">multiple religious belonging</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">double-belonging</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">religious hybridity</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and more. This is probably not the place to begin, however, because it’s already fraught ground. These terms accurately describe more and more deeply faithful, spiritual people today, though it’s clearly important to develop nuance. For instance, some traditions can nourish/inform together better than others, like Buddhist and Jewish streams of traditions. There’s very little conflictual history between those traditions, in deep contrast to Jewish and Christian histories of such pain, suffering, the Shoah/Holocaust. There </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Jewish Christians, called Messianic Jews, but they travel quite tender, sensitive terrain in public spheres. These 'multiple' terms can unnerve and even threaten the more conservative religious or traditional practitioners today, seeing this ‘multiple’ as a diffusion or watering down of rich traditional resources that should require higher boundaries and traditional-definitions. So maybe these kinds of terms aren't going to be helpful...</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But in our refusal to open our hands or hearts, to be already who we are right now, <i>what are we missing? </i>In the protection of the sacred we already know, we protect/defend/grasp, what are we missing seeing about<i> what it means to be human</i>, that we cannot know without this one in front of us? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such deep gratitude arises in me today to receive gifts of connection from multiple directions, near and far, each so distinct, and all so interwoven. I used to be afraid of not being seen, or not being connected, yet it is all deep within, all around me, around us all. There is such abundance, available and desiring us to surrender in (that’s for you, Quanita, learning as I am 😆). It’s deeply moving, poignant, humbling, beautiful. I know...I know...It’s easy to hunker down, especially given the shitshow that our world seems to be today. It’s easy to see only the ‘containers’ that we’ve found meaning in for years, staying grounded only in those and no others. For ‘safety,’ which doesn’t keep us safe at all. It’s easy to try to stay in the container that freed us from the previous containers that confined us so. This is my most recent learning, actually. Just because one container freed you from a previous one that was too small, it doesn’t mean that container will remain supple and welcoming enough to be your only or primary container.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What if one of the marks of deep human integrity was to be acquainted with and fluent in multiple containers, those close into your family of origin, and those further afield? What if one of the marks of deepest integrity was being acquainted with and increasingly fluent in ‘containers’ that from the outside appear to be irreconcilable opposites, impossible to love and be committed to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but shaping your experience of unforeseen mysteries? What would our shared life become if we allowed each person we meet to be simply a part of a container we don’t know well yet, a part of another organizational universe that we allow to shape us, guide us, even encompass us, to know </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more fully</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what it means to be human? </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">It requires surrender, yes, a wisdom way of knowing <i>assurance</i> first from deep within first...but this is beckoned over and over again by the incredible, beautiful, and stunning mystery of each human being. Look for her, and you <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">see her in strength and beauty. Look for him, and he will speak to you in tenderness and humility. Amidst so much fear and anger, I can say with deep conviction: there are just as many invitations to live a life of deepening trust in one another, in multiple containers, as there are in our propensity to refuse or choose only one… </span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we get to choose...a choiceless choice, if you ask me. For how much longer can we ignore the stunning mysteries and possibilities in our fellow human beings, not to mention all sentients that surround us on our gloriously small-humongous whirling planet? </span></p><br />Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-11550681037309852412021-02-17T13:50:00.008-05:002023-12-24T13:32:13.802-05:00Biting the Hook...or Honoring/Releasing the Projection<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m beginning to notice a pattern in my regular civic-duty-digestion of the news. Today seems the day to describe it, give a couple examples and then explore a different pathway of possibility. Let’s call the pattern </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">biting the hook</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, eventually to be followed instead by an invitation to consider </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">honoring-releasing the projection</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c1807b13-7fff-d0d7-4010-08dbbd119f3b">First, the metaphor. One of my favorite teachers, Pema Chodron, uses a metaphor of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">biting the hook</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to describe getting caught up in a visceral, snag or trigger feeling. The sensation of it is a shimmery character that first draws your mind’s attention, then an energetic charge or sting felt in the body, but mostly in the mind when you’re caught. She uses the word </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shenpa</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to describe the body’s trigger response, identifiable sometimes by eyes glazing over a bit, or facial expressions flashing a signal of charge. Her wisdom is that once </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shenpa</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> has been triggered, there’s really no point in trying to have a direct conversation about the matter at hand. If you’ve unconsciously bitten the hook, you cannot hear anything except through the sting or pain of the hook. This human phenomenon can be something as simple as the tone of voice in the one you love, grating on your nerves or touching a tender spot you didn’t want to feel right then. Or it could be a news story that you hear coming home from work, causing an eruption of anger, or sadness, cloaked as anger. The internal experience for me is the mental (or audible) arguments that begin to cycle inside of me, from outrage or a sense of injustice, unfairness, disregard.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">A couple of examples might flesh this out in more contemporary detail. I felt this trigger when I read a portion of Trump’s response to his acquittal in the Senate trial this past weekend. Among other things he said, <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> heard him say </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant, and limitless American future...It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law." The trigger arose in me in the last sentence, particularly because only </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">his loyalists</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> could imagine they themselves are the “one political party in America” posturing to be in support of “law and order.” For anyone who has been willing to see the footage from hundreds of sources--not partisan, in other words--it is inconceivable to hear his words without immediate outrage at how Trump’s language mirrors precisely the opposite of what is true, real, and provable with visual and rational evidence. </span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stepping away from the habitual (and unending) ‘he said/they said’ dynamic within the outrage, I find it fascinating to watch myself attempt to not </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bite the hook</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and yet </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so desire to bite the hook</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I feel the draw to search for news media that shares my outrage at how much of a liar Trump is. I can feel the need to be confirmed in what I have seen, what I have been willing to watch, probably to my own detriment out of a sense of civic duty. I can no longer even listen to anyone who can stomach his words, his voice, his narcissism and abuse of what I hold dear. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hear the language? Hear the triggered energies?</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Another example can arise within me when anyone begins to tender commentary about “cancel culture” in our public spheres today. Traditionally, there’s a close ‘chaser’ about the First Amendment, Free Speech, which battles in Americans hearts between a civic matter--the <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">government cannot limit a citizen’s right to free speech</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--and a personal/cultural matter--</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anyone can say whatever the hell they want, no matter the consequences or implications</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I affirm the First Amendment fully AND I believe corporations and organizations have a responsibility to co-create with us a public sphere dependent upon truth, vulnerability, transparency, honesty, integrity. 'Censorship' of those who flagrantly deny those values is justifiable, in my view. So for example, I read a <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jaysondbradley/2021/02/cancel-culture/" target="_blank">piece</a> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a couple days ago, written from a progressive perspective by Jayson Bradley. He is attempting to mirror the commonality between the phrase “cancel culture” and the conservative habits that have “cancelled” others for a long time. Bradley is attempting to rationally alter conservatives’ behaviors here, though he does nothing to address their increasing fears of being unheard, silenced, disregarded (whether anyone else honors or feels those fears are valid, legitimate). He's pissing in the wind, in my view, but it can definitely satisfy an itch I have, on any given day.</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sensation-experience with this news-exchange differs in me, of course, but is no less noteworthy. I’m drawn into the essay Bradley writes because I already agree with him. I’m regularly shaking my head at conservative theological voices who are now increasingly strident about how </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are being oppressed, silenced, disregarded. I got an advance glimpse of this in my seminary-teaching work, with conservative and more rigidly-traditional male colleagues creating safe spaces in our faculty parlance for <i>their</i> felt-sense of grievances when faced with grievances of others. They didn't get curious to learn more, most of them; they got more aggrieved and used the power they had to prioritize their own grievances. The conservative voice still dominates at my seminary, and I rarely mirror or confront it directly. Perhaps that's complicity in me; progressives would certainly think so. But rarely do I have a dog in the fights or debates crafted in their categories. Most of what I do is <i>so</i> out of their perception or consideration, we can hardly communicate genuinely. Instead, I live into <i>don't go to war with the way things are; create alternative realities </i>(Mary Pierce Brosmer). This has always seemed the more powerful wisdom than fighting debates created by white men's categories in the first place. The ironies never fail to make me smile, however; sadly some days, angrily other days. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The trigger feeling here, the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bite the hook </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">moment, is one of smugness unto outrage. There is a seductive draw to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being right</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to feeling the righteousness of my own view as just, fair, obvious. The shimmery character of the hook may be different, but it’s no less difficult to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not bite the hook</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “See how </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feels then, why don’t you?!?” is often the tone underneath whatever measured speech I may offer in a discussion. “</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Doesn’t feel good, does it?”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I want to ask, with a smarmy smile on my face. (Autocorrect just helped me note ‘smarny’ should be ‘smarmy.’ LOL. When did </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">smarmy</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> become a legitimate word in our lexicon?) The sting of this hook, when bitten, doesn’t hurt in the same way, maybe even at all. It simply doesn’t embody the kind of person I want to be in the world. It doesn’t practice the open-hearted, compassionate listening I advocate, teach, strive for in my own life. When I’ve bitten </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hook, I still cannot participate in open-hearted listening. Shenpa reigns in my body; I won’t hear a word ‘the other’ might say.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pema Chodron’s invitation, her wisdom here, is to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not bite the hook</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. What she’s trying to say is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">don’t let an old story or an old wound make you see everything in only its terms. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The challenge, of course, is that the story is SO compelling, and the sensations of being incredulously outraged or righteously smug are so seductive that more often than not, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we bite the hook</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> anyway. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;">Chodron likens it to having scabies, the incredibly itchy skin disease that will get worse and worse, the more you scratch. Folks will often scratch themselves bloody, just to try to relieve the itch. But scabies can’t be healed by scratching. It will only lessen by learning to <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">stay with the itch</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not scratch it</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what if we changed the story, the invitation? What if we found better pathways to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not scratch the itch</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not bite the hook</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? </span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m increasingly convinced about the power of <i>projection</i> in human beings’ attempts to digest pain, loss, sadness, anger, grief. When we encounter something that does not fit our view of the world, or our view of ourselves, we will nearly automatically push it away, push it outward onto someone else or something else. Perhaps you strived for a PhD but didn't succeed. Now, you viscerally dislike PhD's and experts, though you consciously try to be nice. Had a rough time in high school, bullied by jocks? You've excelled now in the techworld, and you thrive in feeling superior to blue-collar workers, though consciously you think you have no prejudice or dislike of anyone. When we are overwhelmed with pain, loss, sadness, this behavior of projecting our pain or our fears onto others becomes exponentially predictable. Spend any amount of time in psychological, sociological, anthropological literatures and you’ll see different interpretations of this very thing.</span></p><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A most traditional, even scriptural version of this is the notion of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scapegoating</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Long ago in Hebraic ritualistic practice, the community would regularly sacrifice a lamb, put the blood on a goat or the wounds of the community into the goat, and then chase it out into the wilderness to die. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scapegoat</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The belief was that the sin of the community would be ‘confessed’ and ‘paid for’ by this ritual action, pushing it out of the bounds of the community, enacting atonement (at-one-ment) with God. You can feel the contemporary dynamics of this around just about any human collective. The Republican Party right now, attempting to censure or expel anyone who does not bow in loyalty to Trump. “We will push out all those who do not look like us or think like us. Preferably placing our own lack of insight </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">onto them</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> before we do so.” Totally unconscious, of course, so bring it up and you'll get blusters of defense and refusal. The Democrats’ version of this is Progressives who become militant about identity politics’ things, shaming and blaming any and all whose language doesn’t fit the latest politically correct version of whatever identity is in question/under attack. Here, there is an exclusion of anyone who is not willing to cow-tow to the latest language, the latest human-rights defense. The vulnerability to expulsion for ‘thinking differently than the ones in power in this Caucus matches the other dynamic. They are analogues of each other, similarly shaped behaviors if within different contexts/settings.</span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To our earlier point, to be clear, I feel a similar trigger-potential with </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of these political ‘extremes.’ I’ll more often have empathy for progressives’ views/behavior, pointing out the years, decades, centuries of inherited trauma in their bodies inflicted by fundamentalists, ultra-orthodox religious, and conservatives. Progressives are no less acting out of their wounds than the rest of us, after all, and I can sympathize, even empathize. I’ll have less sympathy for the ongoing Republican Party struggle, simply because it’s not my struggle. It’s not as much my experience to feel sadness, loss, outrage at the loss of religious or political traditions that in my view need to change anyway.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> <i>Change or die</i>, as the saying goes. There’s no fire for me to <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">protect</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> religious or political traditions that already have huge power-over structures in place to protect themselves (practically). If faith were grounded and true in the Reality beyond the human institution, then the faithful practice is <i>trusting God</i> to be in the process without need for ‘our puny protections.’ (Again, in my view). I've often said, "God doesn't need me to protect Him, Her. What kind of divine would that be?" (Answer: one I have created myself, domesticated to my own desires/perspectives, and made speak what I think I need to hear.) </span></span><p></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm of the ilk that resistance and painful awakening are the pathways of Spirit; not comfort, not rightness, not certainty. Scandalous grace. Sacred abundance. Choiceless choices of devotion and Love that Liberates. (I didn't learn this in church, btw, but after being shaped by the church and then exiled...). So I have huge fire to hold space for anyone/everyone to be refined in the fires of necessary change, awakening, awareness. I have compassion for how </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">painful</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it is for a conservative or a Republican to awaken to things s/he’d rather not have seen or known but can no longer deny. It’s painful. It begs questions of personal complicity, confession, humility and reparations or redress. The resistances to actually seeing or feeling the pain are well-defended inside. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s little space in (personally) conservative habits of mind for confessing error, responsibility, or even guilt without the whole machinery of Shame coming down on the one confessing. No wonder our post-Christendom/Evangelical-Protestant implosions are so painful to see, watch. This is one of the difficulties I have with conservative theological-religious socialized communities (like the ones I grew up in). These communities/traditions have great social machinery in place, well-suited for the needs of white men to try to face their pride, learn to humble themselves, and return to the community with a sense of participation and equanimity more than power-over or dominance. For women, for 'bodies of culture' (Resmaa Menakem)? The social-machinery not only sucks, it wounds and damages. Survivors either stay unconscious--easiest pathway, actually--or get to learn double-speak and talking out of both sides of our mouths. We get to learn the two-step of playing the shame-games <i>and</i> trying to get free of them, all at the same time.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can watch the power of projection in a variety of public and personal expressions. Watch the political-projection arguments take hold in the stories of loss in manufacturing, blaming the overwhelming pace of change and loss onto Black people. (This is a tried and true Confederate strategy from way back, usually so sub/unconscious that folks overwhelmed by loss will defend against any whiff of accusation of believing it. “I’m not racist” and "Systemic racism is a ploy of the Left to take/steal our businesses, our history). Or perhaps it’s a household thing. I don’t know how to hold my deep-belly need right now to be in physical spaces with close friends while loving and honoring my husband’s need for the smallest ‘covid-19’ bubble as possible. I can project my anger onto him, though I am perfectly within my own capacity and ability to make choices that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I need</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for my physical and emotional-spiritual-psychological health. He has to live with me too, after all. He can deal with his own reactions and responses, just as I tend to my own. I’m becoming more aware of the anger at him rising, which is really only my own sadness and grief, sense of isolation inside, projected onto him. It's easier to be angry with him than to face the challenges of naming what I need in a global pandemic where such things are riskier than science/authorities recommend.</span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But we human beings do this even with positively-tinged things, things that are deep within us but seem too impossible or abundant to actually pursue, consider, or attempt. Secretly, I may have a desire to publish a book that seems out of reach or not a skill set within me. So I push all that energy into my admiration of published authors, supporting all others who may be writing to publish but not facing my own desires. Or perhaps in a CrossFit gym. I wish I could do butterfly pull ups, but instead of putting the plan-of-action in place to take the small steps to get there, I project all that energy onto those who already can do it. I cheer them on and celebrate </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">them</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, because of something that is actually inside of </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Same pattern of projection.</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">So...what if the new story, the new pathway, was simply <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">seeing the projection?</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Honoring the projections of others</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that you can then release, let go, disregard? So much of Trump’s language is all about him. I laughed when I saw the final tagline of a governing commandment he demands of all in his sway: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thou shalt not ignore me</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The trick is, with this projection of all he refuses to allow to be true about him, his loss of the election, his role in the Capitol Insurrection, he can get the media </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the Republicans to pay attention to him. To prick the outrage. To be so preposterously untrue that rational, compassionate human beings </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bite the hook</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, every day. To refute him. To defend against him in rationality’s terms. Buddhists would call this aversion, simply the negative version of attachment. Let the attachment to Trump GO. </span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The different pathway is to </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not bite the hook</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. To honor the language for what it is--pure projection, inability to accept his loss, his own emptiness and woundings--and release it as the projection it is. <i>Refuse the projection</i>, we sometimes say in my circle-way world. Refuse to play in that energy, and move your energy to constructive, compassionate outlets.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or the conservative outcry about cancel culture… See the clear projection of fear of being silenced, unheard, disregarded...just like those who have been excluded, disempowered, silenced for centuries. We are mirror images of one another, Progressives and Traditionalists, Liberals and Conservatives. We're polarized, and speaking in oppositions, but the underlying dynamic of <i>biting the hook</i> is exactly the same. The wounding force is the exclusion and isolation, not the silencing. It is the focus on victim-culture and attempted re-graspings for power-over, not actually being disregarded. As Bradley tries to show</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> (mostly unsuccessfully)</span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">, it’s not cancel culture inflicted upon conservatives. It’s finally being confronted in public, without shame. It's invitation to a discussion that no one controls. It's invitations to transform, evolve, change--that will more often be refused by Traditionalists or Conservatives. They are not as adept at this, in comparison to those who have had to learn that journey simply to become who they are. And no one wants to look foolish or admit they are wrong, regardless of 'camp.'</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">The challenge here is, of course, that refusing to bite the hook, focusing on seeing and honoring the projection, doesn’t <span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feel the same in the body</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The initial sensation is unbearable itch. Reactive defense. The challenge is breathing into both of those sensations. Just breathe. Stop. Sometimes when I become aware that there is a hook, I pull back. I pause. I breathe. I count to ten, slowly. Maybe again, even more slowly. Then I return to the shimmery thing that has caught my attention. Will scratching assist my compassion? Will the smugness I could feel assist my learning? Can I simply see that what is being thrown at me is all about him, them...and has nothing really to do with me, right now, this moment?</span></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I can get to that question, I’ve not bitten the hook, and I won’t be doing so in the near future.</span></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One 5-minute victory, until the next one comes, probably within the hour. </span></p><br /></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-30338522196862075092021-02-15T15:22:00.005-05:002023-12-24T13:32:36.767-05:00Being Where We Are Now...<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve never listened to a live-news reporting of a US Senate roll-call vote before. Or at least listened from start to finish. The formal process requires each senator to stand in place when their name is called, tender their vote aloud. Then their vote--</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">guilty</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not guilty</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in this case--is repeated aloud by a Senate clerk for the whole chamber to hear, for it to be publicly recorded. Every senator in the chamber votes and then the president of the Senate reads the final tally aloud, naming the collective action on the item at hand.</span></p><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-73b24765-7fff-b57e-712e-d496e8b7076e"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The news of acquittal in the Impeachment hearing is no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, and it’s way too early to make definitive judgments what the impact of the Senate’s action (non-action) will be. I found myself distracted by feelings of inversion. Senators who, in my view, were guilty of cowing to a fear of authoritarian politics said </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not guilty</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> aloud. Senators who in my view are courageous leaders standing firm in the face of authoritarian, violence-prone politics said </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">guilty</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been quiet on this page for the entire journey of Senatorial transition into the Impeachment trial, including the recalcitrant scheduling of the trial by the then Majority leader of the Senate, an achingly slow transfer of Senatorial leadership to the Democratic Party leaders into the trial, then finally the collective listening to the arguments for the Article of Impeachment from the House Managers, with the former-president’s lawyers offering whatever it was they offered. </span></p>Part of my quiet is tending to my own tenderheartedness amidst the glaring, jarring political scenes we’ve come to tolerate, expect. I’m getting better at discerning just how much I can tolerate and stay open-hearted in my sense of civic-duty, and when I have to shut it all out/down, simply to stay in a compassionate centered place. If I can’t stay there, I’m just becoming what I don’t want ‘out there.’ I know that the news media/social media forays are a gladiatorial display that bears little resemblance to the people and work of democracy on the ground. </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think I’ve been quiet also because I honestly don’t want to know if the Republicans I know and love still stand behind the authoritarian-esque displays of the current Republican Party. Without being disrespectful, I simply cannot bend on this line...and I pride myself on being flexible and open-hearted. So...I remain quiet, unasking, not presuming, but also not reaching out. Will they continue to stand behind such things because they’ve always voted Republican and don’t see any other option? Does their view have to impinge upon mine in any way? Do I just disregard them politically if not in friendship? Do they continue to stand behind claims of fake news about things that are publicly available on YouTube about what actually happened...and what </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">almost happened</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...in the first really not-so-peaceful-transition of power in our country’s history? I desperately want to know that the Republicans I know and love see Trump and his minions more and more for who he is/they are...and I desperately canNOT know that they refuse to see it, him, them. I’m simply too tender, fearful...and I don’t have the open-heartedness to let bygones be bygones in something so violently threatening of what we profess to share in common...a love of our communities, our country...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of this </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">has</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> gotten me to musing about painful difference in my own family of origin, and our strategies for navigating it. I can’t say that we’re a model family in this respect, as I don’t think our current ‘way of being’ is particularly satisfying to any of us. But perhaps that’s a teaching unto itself, for this purpose here. I do know that our dysfunction, while exquisitely ours, is not completely traumatizing or debilitating. Difficult, yes. Requiring growth and forbearance, of course. I've come to realize that every family is dysfunctional in its own way(s)...some are </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">just </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">more clinically interpreted than others.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The line of conflict in my family is ostensibly a religious one, but as ever, it’s always more complicated than that. On the surface, we demonstrate all the currents of an established Protestant mainline denomination, its fragmentation in schism surrounding issues of human bodies (sexuality, in particular), and resulting difference-in-relationship held with tension and ambiguity where no one is truly who s/he actually is in the presence of the other(s). Translated, this means my folks emerged from rather fundamentalist religious traditions (Brethren and Baptist), found a faith community more rational and well-suited to their life in small-town Ohio (Presbyterian). They faithfully raised two daughters ‘in the church.’ Each daughter has lived into Christian tradition(s), if in diametrically opposed fashion: Campus Crusade for Christ for one, seeking-challenging-establishment-prophetic multiracial-multifaith spirituality for the other. Immediate family reunions are jokingly suggested for the Hawaian Islands--my folks on Hawaii itself, Brian and me on Kauai, and Kathy and her family on Maui. It’s progress that we can joke about it. This kidding aside, we </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> get together for family reunions. We </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> stay in touch, some more than others. </span></p><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m pleased to have stretched to the point of really wanting my sister to be precisely as she is, pursuing what she desires, loving how and whom she is called to love. As I desire that spaciousness, so I practice offering and breathing into that for her, her family. It works so well because she lives in Virginia, of course. It’s easier to live across differences when you don’t have to live </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> them, locally, every day, or even each week or month. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Living in political differences here locally can be feasible, possible, when those who differ decide not to fan those flames of difference. One of the first posts of this blog was the yearning to go back to a time when </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we just didn’t talk about politics publically</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Maybe that’s a temporary solution for now. I know it’s one that many liberally-oriented FB ‘friends’ are exercising, so I presume the conservatively or Trumpist voices are exercising this pathway as well. Social media makes it so easy/possible. It’s gonna need to be temporary though, or we are precisely back in the bubbles-fantasies instead of the world </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we’re actually living in together</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But what does 'living in political differences' mean if a significant portion of our population uses violence to attempt to hold onto power? And those in the same party do not feel any responsibility to challenge this violence? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I saw a documentary recently that has caught my memory and my heart-strings too: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://journeyfilms.com/" target="_blank">Spiritual Audacity: the Abraham Joshua Heschel Story</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Martin Doblmeier. Heschel, of blessed memory, was an Orthodox Jew who barely escaped Hitler’s Death Camps. He arrived into the States having escaped his native Poland, teaching first in Cincinnati and then in NYC. He offers wellknown words I’ve heard often this month: “</span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” It’s always a bit dicey to bring post-Shoah wisdom to bear upon our times today, particularly as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law" target="_blank">Godwin’s Law </a>comes into play. But Heschel’s persistent and regular confrontation of indifference has landed in my belly, in my craw. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see indifference in myself, in the face of overwhelming challenges I know not how to hold or confront. I see indifference in others, facing similar overwhelm, if from their political location(s). I see indifference rampant in many of our leaders, militantly intent upon 'their needs/identities/power' without any more sophisticated tools in their leadership box than war, domination, and deception. So indifference runs rampant in the world today--indifference to the suffering that is all around us. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet we hear...</span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings…</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>HOW???</i> If I cannot open-heartedlly listen yet...if this is going to be a temporary ‘hold’ until I </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> listen...how is that different from indifference? How do I not become indifferent to the fears and concerns of all those around me? </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will be <i>your</i> invitation(s) to awaken out of indifference? Same as mine? How may we find assurance that the suffering all around will not overwhelm us? Or if it will overwhelm, that we will know how to stay open to it, survive it, learn to hold it anew with care, steadiness of heart, compassion…? What is the journey into a gentle but necessary confrontation of indifference </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">today</span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For now, I take comfort in the pragmatic wisdom I can feel here. I can only be where I am today, now. I know I am not indifferent, nor really in danger of becoming indifferent. But some days the fear is larger than the hope. Our political culture punishes anyone for taking responsibility, for saying they were wrong...and now we are living in a collective rupture of our country as a whole... But I'm here, today. For now, that's enough.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-58018208707879051982021-01-21T13:33:00.004-05:002023-12-24T13:33:18.452-05:00So...What Can I Do? (ALL of us need to begin asking...)<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Am I glad he’s gone? Of course I am. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-ef27d381-7fff-42ab-ddf4-9fb36340efd6"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do I feel a rising sense of hope because of yesterday’s Inauguration and a clear emergence of a federal administration bent on transparency and truth, a strengthening of institutions undervalued by the previous administration? Yes, I do.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do I look forward to the inevitable return to ‘business as usual’ in our nation’s capital, covered by a media whose ratings depend upon fear, conflict and discord? No, I don’t. I don’t pretend to know how our media-culture needs to recalculate its own algorithms for “success” in a market-driven capitalistic economy in such a way to prevent (or at least not provoke) divisiveness/polarization. And I’m not naive enough to imagine that yesterday’s pomp&circumstance truly redresses the work that is in front of us as citizens of the USA. Part of the hope above is that those who have signed onto public service at this challenging time aren’t naive--or </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">inexperienced</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--either. </span></p><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what can I do? How am I to be a part of stepping into our past and listening for its repair? (nod to readback line from Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb”).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I found myself musing on a well-worn conundrum in my life as I was driving home from CrossFit this morning: the <i>invitation to change</i> in the face of <i>holding-onto-what-is</i>. How does someone become a liberal or progressive, born into a conservative family? Is the journey different if they are born into a progressively oriented family? How does someone become a conservative or traditionalist if they are born into a more liberal or progressively oriented family? Different if born into a conservative family? What, if anything, instigates inner transformation in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--perhaps a change of views, or of party--in our political milieux--today, or ‘back then’? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My grounding assumption here is that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all of us</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> need to consider our own </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">inner transformations</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in any reconsideration of citizenship. It’s not just “the losing party” that needs to “catch up to the times.” That’s a polarizing habit of mind/assumption, winners/losers, etc. It’s only a matter of time before ‘the party in power’ becomes ‘the party no longer in power’ anyway. A unifying question would be: <i>What is my own path of inner transformation, for the good of the Whole?</i> It signals individual promise, honoring of a collective larger than the “I”, and interdependence. Today, no one can avoid this question--except those resisting growth and change, which I know is most of us as of yet. But it needs to be asked as a question without shame or blame. It needs to alter how we listen/see/feel, so the fear-triggers don’t live in the same places that the media knows to goad. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What will be my own path of inner transformation in this next year, for the good of the Whole?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The two elements underneath all these questions, seems to me, are </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">resistance/refusal</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unresolved grief</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that acts out in distinct but different ways in each of us. If you were overcome with joy and relief yesterday (like I was), cherish it. Enjoy it for as long as seems right and honorable. Then, when an edginess or an antsyness begins to arise, ask yourself the question above. To then live into the question in realtime, ask yourself </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What am I resisting/refusing right now? </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> am I resisting/refusing, and why? Perhaps related, perhaps not, then, “Where is the sadness in me? Or what touches my anger, even my rage?” This second one is harder to get inside, particularly if it feels so good to finally not feel sadness or anger. </span></p><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you decided not to participate in anything about Inauguration Day at all, then I bow to that choice and the unknown (to me) reasons behind it. Stand in that necessary-space that our free country offers all of us, for as long as it seems right and honorable. Then, when space opens, or an antsyness begins to arise, ask yourself the same question: What will be my own path of inner transformation in this next year, for the good of the Whole? What am I resisting or refusing, and why? Or </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? Where is the sadness or anger in me? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For us to reconsider citizenship in a healthy way, and for us to begin to change the toxic soil we’ve created that is American politics today, we need to shift the frame toward “the Whole,” and we need a new mantra that honors and does not judge. So, be honest with yourself, for where you live/land/love. Who do you include in your Whole? Those you can see around you? Your economic situation--business owner, teacher, entrepreneur, health provider, service-professional, factory-worker? Those with your own skin color, who look like you? Who do you include in your Whole? I saw a t-shirt the other day that made me smile, “The GPS coordinates of your mother’s vagina at the time of your birth do not determine your value as a person.” No matter your sense of “the Whole,” I invite you to stretch it. Expand it. Have your politics be determined by your passion for the human person, anywhere, everywhere.</span></p><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new mantra or practice that seems a significant shift of frame too, at least for us local folks) is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">invitation, not obligation</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. (This is not to disregard the meta-conversations about accountability and protection/fragility of our democracy right now, in face of white nationalism and bastardized Christianity. This is simply to focus on the local and human in front of us, peeling the political veneers off for a while…). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For example… Our country’s pressure to celebrate the Biden/Harris administration </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if you’re a true patriot</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or to boycott all of yesterday and deny the Biden/Harris administration </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">if you’re a true patriot</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a pressure coming from the old, not the new. If we say we are a country of the Free because of the Brave, then each citizen and his/her experience needs honoring and spaces to be legitimate, valid, expressed--as long as it doesn’t drum up militarized or conspiratorial violence, of course. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Translated for me, this means all those Republicans who voted for Trump because their lives have never seemed valued by Democratic administrations and Republican heritage is what they’ve always stood in are justified in boycotting, disregarding, and settling into these next four years, however they may. (As long as it’s without violence in the public sphere). (Part of the sadness and anger in me, of course, is that now writers are beholden to add this descriptive caveat now...my belly hurts when I think of it, and if I don’t let it out gently, I get triggerable and ragey about it…) In a similar vein, all of us who are celebrating and cherishing this movement into our valued norms and institutions? There is invitation to the More, not obligation. Genuine, human collective “soil” can only be nourished with this practice of invitation, not obligation. Which also means </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">non-judgment</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of others in their own expressions. Direct your energies within, to the ‘you’ you </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> change. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eventually, though...with a greater sense of urgency for some of us, lesser for others of us...we need to engage the question of inner transformation, independent of politics, though irreparably intertwined across a complicated political scene of corporate money, national polarization, and media (news/social) algorithms set for fear, unmet desire, and conflict. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How do we live into our culture’s obsession with fear in a (larger) framework of the Whole, practicing invitation not obligation? Anyone trying to stay current on political events and the state of our world today faces these conscious and unconscious forces of fear-mongering, whether liberal or conservative. How do you become conscious of the fear in your body? What can you try and experiment with, to learn? How may we practice fearlessness in peace, free to stumble and fail with one another? What is the role of the ‘other’ in how you practice? Do you project your fear onto ‘them’? Do you use them ‘to vent’? How might we learn to transfigure it within ourselves before it gets pushed out into the public? </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps you refuse expanding any sense of the Whole, and you think the mantra is stupid. You think your best bet is avoidance and refusal, focusing on things you can control, actions that confirm your own biases again and again? Avoidance and refusal for a period of time is understandable, even necessary for short periods of time. But as a path of inner transformation for the good of the Whole? Impotent. The Whole can carry a small portion of us who choose this option, but we cannot carry a large percentage that way. Look at the loss and death all around us. Each of us is interconnected to each other… Right now, we have broad swaths of “us” who simply want to resist and refuse the challenges of our day. That is unacceptable </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for long periods of time</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, at least if we say we love our country. We are an unfinished country, not a broken one. (again, nod to Amanda Gorman).</span></p><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And in a broader political culture unable to honor death, loss, failure and the inevitabilities of these things for all of us, we are faced with learning how to grieve, what grief requires (in different cultures, different contexts), what unresolved grief </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">looks like</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This of course will look differently, depending upon perception and party affiliation.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Right now, unresolved grief in some of us looks like a cultural triumphalism, a smugness and leering quality to our celebrations or laments. Notice how that could be Democratic or Republican? Liberals sneering right now are part of the country’s wound, not its victors. Republicans refusing any part of the American process right now are part of the country’s wound too.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And this is where my first questions come back into play. Try to imagine the wound our behaviors come from to feel your way toward those whom you see as not-you. Many who have become liberal or progressive began as conservatives or traditionalists. This adds an additional layer of internalized power-abuse, and external triggers. Many have been deeply, spiritually wounded by patriarchal religious traditions. We’ve had our very right to BE HUMAN or to make choices in our own bodies (women) questioned and legislated. We’ve had top-down political forces of mostly white men, often oligarchs in corporate business, brought crashing onto these sensitive wounds, all in attempts to “change us into what mostly-white-men would rather us be.” Many of us have a tender heart for the earth, seeing her raped and pillaged by global business, for material gains that will pass like chaff in the wind in a matter of years. The woundedness of these our American brothers/sisters comes out with weeping, joy, sighs of relief to no longer have to face the serial-womanizer and authoritarian-leader who was in the news every fucking day.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unresolved grief in others of us may be harder to track...or easier now, in one sense. Conservatives’ woundings are different, though no less grounded in loss and lament. The rate of change in our world today has grown exponentially. Our biological-neurological bodies were not built for processing this much change. Fear and overwhelm are common today. Traditionalists and conservatives see the loss of everything they consider sacred and dependable, their spirituality, institutions, power (yes), family, and human dignity rooted often in self-sufficiency. White male rage is the most obvious, of course. This grief/anger/rage looks like an insurrection and rampage, attempts to hold onto what used to be, in physical aggression that has always seemed to work in world history, at least “for the winners,” who get to write the history books. The propaganda and abuse of patriotic language to motivate and get a mob to conspire toward violence will attempt to mimic truth of ‘years gone by,’ even though all of it is an uncritical grasping at a past that never truly was. (Isn’t it interesting that Trump’s 1776 Report had no historians on it? Hmmmm…anti-intellectual policy-mongering, uncritical and indefensible). More subtly, and more dangerously, this grief may look like complete withdrawal from all public sphere activities, a version of “I’m taking my marbles and going home.” Which I totally get, having done my version of that at different times in my entire adult life. Or perhaps this energy-unresolved grief looks like an uncontrollable fear that seduces human beings into the worst the corporate-or-‘entertainment’ media can spawn--conspiracy theories, religious fanaticism, and militia-run gang-building. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of it is pain, unresolved, untended, no longer able to be ignored by as large a population (that has ignored it for decades, some of us would say with regret and humility). So how do we invite this large population of denial-refusal, regardless of party, to become smaller? How can more of us explore a willingness to learn the skills for inner transformation, for the good of the Whole?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our story gives us our woundedness, which, when tended carefully and with compassion in a container able to hold the journey, becomes a person’s strongest gift for the world.</span></p>Imagine the thing you feel most shame about, the thing you’d die if anyone ever found out about? Inner work is facing that shame-fear-wound, ultimately becoming liberated from it so no one can harm you with it, no one can shame you with it. It has no more power over you, and you get to serve from your healed Self, not your fear or reactivities to others. <p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our country’s past is overrun by wounds and opportunities for this journey. When it’s time, when you’re ready, will you step into our past, listening for its repair? We are the only ones who can do this work. You and me. Citizens.</span></p><br /><br />Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-91952763858015867082021-01-14T16:13:00.004-05:002023-12-24T13:33:58.831-05:00What I'm Learning in this Round of Impeachment...<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">What am I learning in this round of Impeachment actions by our House of Representatives, to then be taken up by the Senate next week? A good friend inquired into my views just now...which gives me pause to see what words will come. I <i>will</i> say that my husband and I enjoyed “Impeachment Cocktail Hour” together yesterday, about 5 p.m., after the vote tallied and closed. Whiskey sour for him, Poet’s Dream for me. Tasty and yet a sad clink to the glasses, given the turmoil is just continuing... </span></p><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-5c445fc6-7fff-cdaf-ed0d-a7a946df4c39"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think the now-second Impeachment of Donald J. Trump IS the right thing for the country whose Legislative Branch has been threatened--politically, and then physically--by the Executive Branch. Impeachment is not the only right thing, however, which is why I want to see what words come here. I’m taking my cue from a good friend’s piece on </span><a href="https://thewisdomdaily.com/17323-2/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Reckoning or reconciliation? Why not both?”</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A healthy, productive society requires both justice and mercy, both accountability and spaces for grace. It’s not either/or, except in how our media or political pundits try to cover it. Impeachment is the right next thing, but not the only next right thing.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Our democracy is as fragile as I’ve known it in my lifetime, which is not surprising given the timbre and tones of the world in a global pandemic and the rise of nationalism all over the planet. The United States would of course now be faced with its own version of rising authoritarianism and fear-driven threats from within. You can find multiple quotes online about how our greatest threats were never going to be from without, from the global stage, but with us destroying ourselves from within. I admit I’ve now watched the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Star Wars</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> scene several time where the Republic dies into the Emperor’s control to rounds of thunderous applause. (You can view that </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgxZr6LLS34" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here…</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). I don’t hold to any American exceptionalism, so this is our hour in the crucible. Or years, perhaps. I’m sure it won’t be the last.</span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was fully engaged in the news process of yesterday, the day of HR 24, the procedural votes, the final tally vote 232 to impeach, 197 against impeachment. 10 Republican Representatives split from their party to impeach. [If the House is constituted by 435 Representatives, then 6 Representatives didn’t vote at all...or there are outstanding races in which 6 slots have not been filled. I’m not sure which, to be honest.] I did my best to listen to each Representative who was given the floor, impressed by the smooth functioning of statements, minutes given to other voices to speak, the formalized discourse that was both calming and heated, predictable and yet tender too. I could hear the Republican Representatives arguing for a bipartisan commission to study the evidence of the Insurrection, and I could honor their perspectives for that. Rep. Cori Bush from Missouri spoke passionately and compelling in her 30 seconds, lent to her from another Representative’s time. The old-guard Representatives who have been in the House for years if not decades spoke with more pause, but also more predictable nuance, such that my attention would waver. They were saying almost what they were slated to have to say in the political currents they were/are swimming after years in this business of legislating.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Things I’ve learned… This Impeachment process was not a “rush to judgement” at all. There were articles of impeachment drawn up by a Representative from Texas well over a year ago, which the Democrats tabled because they knew the Body would not receive the report and/or they knew they wouldn’t have the votes even in their own party. Then the process in the first Impeachment unfolded successfully, with more evidence and a sense of discerned agency by the Legislative Branch as a whole. (</span><a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres755/BILLS-116hres755enr.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HR 755: High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) The Senate’s refusal to convict happened across party lines, with multiple Congressmen and women running for election and politically ‘unable’ to split from Trump if they wanted to keep their jobs. So Donald Trump got impeached the first time, and the Senate failed to convict. This gave Trump a ‘pass’ without any accountability for his actions or rhetoric with respect to the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Observations were made from both sides of the aisle that this refusal to convict by the Senate would only embolden Trump. Hard not to see that now, to be honest. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Democrats and Independents can accuse these Republican Congress-persons as cowardly or unprincipled, but if the tables were turned, we’d see a similar behavior in Democratic Congressmen/women. It’s the nature of the political beast. Very few politicians today seem to be able to integrate principle with money-organized politics anymore. Yet Democrats have been the party ‘out of power’ for quite some time, in Congress. I suspect some balancing is due, while everything appears about to fall completely apart.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given there are only days left in Trump’s term, was Impeachment worth it? Is it worth diffusing the first days of the Biden Administration while keeping Trump’s chaotic tantrums in the news? I’m wavering here, but I still think, YES, for my sense of things. Impeachment and the Senate Trial to come is necessary and worthwhile. There is a cancer of physical violence forming in our nation that Trump incites and fans </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">until he fears retribution</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. He thrives on the chaos he causes, irregardless of who it injures. I believe it is in the interest of a healthy Republican Party and the country as a whole for Trump to never be able to hold office again. Regardless of whether he’d win the nomination in 2024 or not. He responds to force and economic pressure, so the (whole) Legislative Branch must bring force to bear and the market/corporations must bring economic pressure to bear. That both are happening concurrently is a positive sign for our democracy as a whole, at least in my view. I think we need to do all we can as a country to assist healthy Republican-ism to begin to lead sanely again--i.e. with a loyalty to the Constitution, not a President/man--to choose democratic-republic institutions that are necessary, even if arguing for 'smaller.' Our Republic cannot survive with the chaotic narcissism it's had for these four years, in blatant disregard of institutions and truth/facts.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />But none of this is the main energetic focus for me… Or bevy of foci/focuses… All these are questions and slants driven by political party discourse, important but ultimately distracting for the deeper work of reconsidering citizenship. My questions come into the “why” invitations my friend’s essay invites...with a guess that each of us is driven by so much unconscious and hidden energy we don’t have the ‘containers’ or ‘time’ or even ‘practice’ in addressing…<p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why is it that white Christians struggle so very clearly with claiming their part in the sufferings of others? Life </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> suffering, after all, and we hurt one another all the time. Why do we defend against honoring that fact, dealing with its challenges, and being a part of learning how to heal self and one another? (Hunch: embedded shame and patriarchal abuse of power-over, institutionalized and more)</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>What does it take for each of us to shift into curiosity instead of blame, wonder instead of fear, practice of trust instead of accusation and refusal? (Hunch: When we feel safe, invited…)<p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are Trump supporters and QAnon folks </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">getting</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in their surrender to conspiracy theories and ‘alternative facts’? It is scratching a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">deep</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> itch they have, so what is that? Is it a wound, scabbed over? Is it fear? Is it loss of purpose and finding of it again in a parallel universe that buys their attention for cheap? These precious human beings would not be immersed in it all if they weren’t getting something they needed so very desperately… (Hunch: passion, felt sense of patriotic purpose, presuming to be on the side of the Good in a fight with Evil)</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Why do so many of us feel impassioned or at least obligated to defend the white men in our lives? I watch this pattern again and again in my classroom, a bit befuddled. White men still have a majority of political power and economic power too. One could even argue that the women in business have had to learn how to do it like a man to succeed. (Speaking as one of those myself, if business is ‘theological education.’) What a majority of white men do <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have is emotional flexibility and relational intuition, wisdom. The sensitivities required for deep intimacy are often socialized out of men by the time they hit puberty. But white men need to start learning new skills...as well as the women (like me) who can empower them to do so. Hannah Gadsby’s words return to me…”I don’t hate men. I don’t even believe that women are better than men. I believe that women are just as corruptible by power as men... But the story is as [white men] have told it: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">power belongs to you</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. And if you can’t handle criticism, take a joke, or deal with your own tension without violence, you have to wonder if you are up to the task of being in charge.” </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why don’t more of us know the ultimate, blessed </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">freedom</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the root of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">surrender</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> today? Why is that word falsely ‘coded’ in our world as failure, or weakness, victim or loss?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So those are some of my working energies right now...I’m curious about how we face down violence in our communities and nip the authoritarianism in the bud. </span></p>How could the American machismo morph into something life-giving, sustainable, and not raging, aggressive, warlike? Until we know the answer to that question, we’re all in danger from enraged, militant Trump supporters who have bullied the current Republican Party into submission… What will it take for white men and the women who enable them to yearn for a better way, for all of us? To learn different questions and explore different skill sets including the emotional elasticity that can prevent war?<p></p><br /><br />Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-11503371103889041642021-01-12T21:54:00.002-05:002023-12-24T13:34:21.255-05:00JESUS...a sign and a prayer<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sun was shining Sunday afternoon, so I took myself for an hour-long, loop walk through the neighborhood. I needed to feel my feet on the ground and the sun on my face (underneath my warm cap, of course). It felt so very foreign, however. I have not walked my loop walk in the neighborhood for quite some time, veering on years. The city finally put a sidewalk on the other side, on the road leading down to a nature preserve nearby. That’s the main reason. But no less true is that I stopped walking my neighborhood when seeing all the Trump signs in 2016 made me nauseous. I found myself walking the neighborhood on Sunday, curious what I might see. A delightful surprise awaited me, but so did a sinking feeling of “here we go again.”</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a8d7f1e6-7fff-ef65-bcbc-f757d226a2b3"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the corner houses on the main thoroughfare road I drive regularly </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">has taken down all its Trump regalia.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There had been up to five Trump/Pence signs on the lawn, at one point, and a Trump flag pinned to the side of the garage facing the road. Each time I would pass by, I would marvel at the need for multiple signs and large flags blazing. Emphatic loyalty, I understood it to mean, when I was feeling generous. Other terms would come to mind if I was irritable. “Huh,” I thought to myself. The passing of a megalomaniac’s thrall in at least one Ohio family.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>The sinking feeling arrived when I then saw the symbolism that remained. A large sign remained in the front yard, close to the house, white letters on a black background: JESUS. Slightly reminiscent of the JESUS 2020 signs I saw at the Riot. The driveway had a black-faced ‘lawn jockey’ in the corner, by the garage. I hadn't seen one of those for decades, though my neighbor across the street when I was growing up had one. Part of why I disliked it so, besides the obvious racist/blackface stereotyping of the figurine today. I glanced across the street and saw the neighbor opposite also had the JESUS sign. I paused in the street for a moment, just taking it all in. My relief that all the Trumpist regalia was gone. My dread that all that frustrated energy devoted to a megalomaniac was now being directed toward this 1st century carpenter whose name is used for more damage than I as a seminary professor can stomach gracefully. I walked on, remembering I was walking to feel my feet on the earth, the sun on my face.<br /><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was good to be out in my neighborhood again, even as it felt so very strange, knowing what I know now. I think I saw one Biden-Harris sign as I started out, but most other detritus from the political election season was gone. It was marvelously quiet, though suburban people were working in their garages, washing their cars in the sunshine, tending to their yards. I found myself sad and curious, in both compassionate and voyeuristic guises. What stories are locked within these homes, with parents and children, men and women, trying to survive economically and physically in a global pandemic? What babies have been born? Have any died? What grandparents have come to stay? Did they live? How many of my neighbors actually voted in this season? Did anyone from my neighborhood go to DC, believing they were there on patriotic holiday…? Did anyone from my neighborhood go, fully armed, with intent to harm Representatives or Senators who know Biden’s election is legitimate? Radicalized conspiracy theorists </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">must </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> live in my neighborhood too, after all. I actually attend to statistics and find them informative, if critically assessed over time. Who in my neighborhood thinks January 6th was no big deal...still...after these many days…? I walked on, remembering I was walking to feel my feet on the earth, the sun on my face.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A dear friend and colleague offered some really important words tonight, into our small circles here in Dayton, but available to any and all who might receive them. <a href="https://united.edu/christians-and-the-capitol-riot/" target="_blank">“A Jesus I do not know: Christians and the Capitol Riot.”</a> David Watson serves as Academic Dean at the seminary where I teach, write, serve. He and I differ on many many things, but I know his leadership heart and have appreciated deeply his passion for the historic Christian faith. Folks in his denomination who disagree with him--who have probably been on the receiving end of intellectual discourse and debate--have painted him as a fundamentalist or a sexist, Evangelical man, or worse. I don’t get into the disputes he/they do, so I get to experience him as David, brother in my root tradition of Christianity, colleague, remarkable Dean who can hold the vagaries and tensions of a quite diverse faculty without imploding. I find myself thankful for his words tonight. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He itemizes the Christian symbols visible in the Capitol riot and refutes their use in the name of Jesus, in a Capitol riot. Things like</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Christian flag, an ecumenical white flag with a blue field and a red Latin cross… </span><a href="https://twitter.com/diegopues/status/1346998530259394563" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">carried by one rioter on to the floor</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the House of Representatives even as guns were drawn to keep them out;</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At least two flags featuring the icthys, the outline of a fish adopted by early Christians;</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An American flag altered to read “Make America Godly Again” on its white stripes;</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A white flag with a green pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven;”</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And blowing prominently in the foreground as the mob kicked in a Capitol door was a red, white and blue flag that proclaimed, “Jesus is my savior” and “Trump is my President” on either sides of an elongated American flag</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Additionally, Watson notes, a cross was erected across from the Capitol building.</span></li></ul><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He then begins the uphill journey of reclamation to name the Jesus he does know, who would not be a part of any such event as happened on January 6th. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus — the real Jesus — does not bow at the altar of politics. He does not require the assistance of the kingdoms of this world. He transcends all governments, states, and borders. He cannot be held captive by any political agenda. He is not an ideological wax nose. Jesus — the real Jesus — is Lord of all. And attempts to remake him in our image, no matter how sincere our intentions, are affronts to his lordship. We do not honor him by parading his image in displays of political showmanship. We do not honor his cross by distorting its meaning for political gain, nor do we honor his name by co-opting it in the service of some other cause. Jesus is the cause, and he is too holy, too righteous, too perfect to serve as a spokesman for our this-worldly enterprises. We are not his masters. He is ours, and he abides no rivals.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I think my favorite line is “He is not an ideological wax nose.” But what I love about these words? A nuanced Evangelical position, which never gets good press and I can find wearying for myself, but which is also worth honoring and supporting too. We need all points of view that have not been radicalized, like Sen. Josh Hawley, for instance. These words counter his version of Evangelicalism. We need every perspective willing to come to the table and not insist on taking it over for himself (or herself, but that's less familiar or habitual).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jesus stands at the center, as for Christians, he does. The “Lord” language retains the patriarchal power-over dynamic within the church, but has theological integrity if one is attempting to speak honestly of a wholly other God become human flesh, dying, rising again. These words also give opportunity to listen for “sincerity of intentions” in the riot and damage inflicted last week. “No matter how sincere our intentions”... Our intentions… A compassionate assumption of “we,” “ours.” So many wounded and grieving today will not follow him here, but it’s an intellectually virtuous thing to do, in a piece like this. Then the closing line of the paragraph: “We are not his masters. He is ours, and he abides no rivals.” Again, scriptural language within a patriarchal worldview, laced with slave/master imagery, which lands so painfully for progressive ears...AND...he moves into the necessary historical critique of cultural Christianity, the Christianity enslaved to wealth, power, status, and more. All that Constantine opened the door to in the 4th century of the Christian community’s life together. The Jesus symbolized and bastardized in the Capitol Riot is not any Jesus he knows. Nor is it a Jesus I know.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t know all that I want to say in this confluence of my Sunday Sabbath walk, and the good, pointed words of a friend proclaiming that all the Christian symbolism at the Capitol riot had </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nothing</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to do with the Jesus of the Gospels. I needed those in leadership in my institution to speak out, and they have. I needed to hear his words for myself, simply receiving them as a friend, from a friend. But I'm sad too, easily slipping into hopelessness in these days...</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Far right Christian believers won’t hear such a critique without accusing the loss of faith by ‘a liberal.’ Far right Christian believers don’t yet realize that faith that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">doesn’t</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> question, faith that doesn’t doubt </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is what needs to be lost for the real Jesus to live and breathe anew.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Jesus whose utter refusal to be the Messiah the zealots wanted him to be, in face of Rome… This Jesus... “though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself…” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">So <i>JESUS</i>. A black sign with white letters. In a front yard. It speaks an opening to me, but also a wall and a mountain. My own calling lives here all the time, so of course it would look like this to me…</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How do we do the work of breaking open such rigidities, such refusals to consider anew faith, hope, love? How do we invite deepening awareness of the lure of power to compensate for sadness and loss, unresolved grief and anger? When will “faith” not become the blinding salve to the suffering within, attempting to “spiritualize it all away”? My uncle has often spoken of this bind with an image that seems particularly vivid today. “Most Christian Americans have received a religious tradition and expression well-suited to further capitalistic White America, but which innoculates them from the real thing.” We get just enough of the false, socialized, domesticated “tradition”, which prevents us from opening to the Real Thing. Or perhaps the words of G.K. Chesterton: “Christianity is not a failure. It’s just not been tried yet.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lots to chew on tonight, but at least walking around my neighborhood is getting easier. Waiting for the other Trump flag I see most days when I drive to be taken down. He’s done the Universe’s bidding to wake us up a bit more. Time to go...He’s gotta go.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-55134959792854577882021-01-11T15:08:00.006-05:002023-12-24T13:35:06.744-05:00What Keeps Him Silent...Until He's Not? What Keeps Her Silent...Until She's Not?<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Enjoying an hour-long walk in the sunshine yesterday, I found myself remembering the final scenes in a 1992 movie, <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Few Good Men</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kevin Pollack, Kevin Bacon, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Keifer Sutherland, J.T. Walsh, and of course, Jack Nicholson. Then this morning, I was drawn back to a comedian from ‘down under,’ Hannah Gadsby, whose show </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nanette</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> emerged a couple years ago via a good run in local shows in Australia, then globally--or at least into the USA urban scenes--when NetFlix picked it up. Both have the seed of something I’m been feeling, so I’m relying on these words to bear witness to it. My invitation to you is to treat each ‘story’ or ‘orator’ as a part of your own self...feel for yourself the binds felt and broken... Yes, underneath this are our worry-stones of 'free speech,' 'accountability,' and more... I'm interested in the questions of <i>what holds us back from speaking freely</i> and <i>what do we allow to break those barriers?</i></span><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-ee57f4a6-7fff-99a2-17ac-dc57c45a13fd"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In one sense, each main orator in focus sits within a frame of reference that predetermines how something public should be said--a court room for Colonel Jessup, a comedy stage for the Hannah Gadsby. Each has its norms, its expectations for those observing and listening to the one speaking. Each orator in focus also winds up transgressing the expectations or norms assumed. Each framework or setting holds the transgression convincingly (in my view), though the transgression also changes the scene, the actual story, the awareness of hidden stories finally coming out. I find myself feeling into how each ‘video-text’ is an instance of someone holding back what s/he “is not supposed to say,” until the barrier breaks...until the words simply have to come out. To hell with the consequences. ...or... Please, let there be no consequences?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s start with </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Few Good Men</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… I won’t recap </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">too</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> much of the whole plot</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here, but if you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to watch this clip (6:24 mins) of the final scene I mean <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa80_sKNgM4&t=320s" target="_blank">here</a>. It’s a drama that would never happen in an actual courtroom--too much dramatic license taken for actually believable court proceedings. But it </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a beautiful and daring scene of a class-clown, white-father’s-boy lawyer (Tom Cruise) litigating a case in which a high-level witness is called to the courtroom, a base-commander Colonel in the Marines down in Guantanamo (Jack Nicholson). The smart-alecky, entitled JAG Corps lawyer is egging on this white-male-lion of the Marines to say in a courtroom what he’s tired of hiding and</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> really wants to say.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Say in a courtroom proceeding for which he displays disdain, for the inconvenience of it all. Some part of Jessup knows that an order he gave was against the regulations in the Armed Forces, but another part of him doesn’t agree with the regulation anyway. He ultimately doesn’t feel bound by it, knowing he can probably get away with disregarding it in his remove, near Cuba.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THIS is what interests me about the clip this morning--a white man hiding something he no longer wants to hide, for the inconvenience of it all, and finally saying what he fuckin’ wants to say. Colonel Jessup had given two contradictory orders--a public one, to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> discipline a sub-par soldier, and a private one to a high-level officer, to ‘give a Code Red,’ a physically violent trashing of the soldier “to insure his quality of soldiering would improve.” By the very act of two orders, Jessup knew he was disregarding a national regulation while simultaneously doing what he wanted to do in his military occupation. When the soldier actually </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">died</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the cover-up begins, as do the legal processes of accountability from Washington. The drama is then about getting Colonel Jessup to say </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in a court of law</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what he knows to be true, is pissed off he has to hide, and thinks was right anyway. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>What <i>does</i> it take for white men who are weary of having to hide something about themselves to finally say what they want to say, out loud, in defiance, seduced by the probability that there won’t be consequences?</b></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then I was reminded of Hannah Gadsby from a couple summers ago, her show </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nanette</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. (If you have NetFlix, that’s how I access it; the trailer can be seen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aE29fiatQ0" target="_blank">here</a>.) These are not comparable media-events, to be clear, but for me, they share a seed I’m trying to learn more about in our current settings: struggling with how to say aloud what we’re “not supposed to say”, but finding ways to say it anyway. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gadsby’s voice comes from a social location “on the margins,” she would say. A lesbian comic from Tasmania (the island off of Australia), she begins her show in much the way any audience would expect her to--some gentle gay humor, some pot-shots at homophobia, some ‘coming out’ stories that would be familiar fodder with such a comic. Her artistry is simply stunning as slowly, ever so slowly, she invites her audiences into an </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">experience</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of what she is going to say, not just the words or thinking about it. The best public speaking does that, after all. It gives you an experience of ‘the point,’ not an intellectual lesson. But ultimately, she creates a comedic-dramatic container in which she finally gets to say aloud what she has needed to say, but had been forced to hide, for decades. What she has to say? More below... My questions, however, are...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What keeps each orator in these two video-texts silent for so long, then, and what finally breaks open the barrier so the speech can come pouring out?</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Colonel Jessup holds his tongue within the necessary norms and expectations, until he doesn’t. What seems to hold him is the choreographed dance of a courtroom in which public speech is honored, truth is sought, and justice is hoped to prevail. Jessup has a veneer of civility, even hope for the two Marines to be spared court-martial for their actions. What doesn’t break the barrier, however, is contributing from his own story/role to the hoped-for justice for the two Marines who were given an order and would have been severely punished for disobeying it. They were collateral damage, in his mind. Some assumptions of public discourse, the heightened awareness of the court, his need to ‘color within these lines’ to keep his status...all this kept things in check for him. Until they didn’t…</span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>What finally broke open the barrier was the smark-alecky, entitled young lawyer who had never served any time in the military. In the scene, he provokes Jessup, disdaining him, keeping calm focus on the ‘two orders,’ the evidence that would finally prove Jessup’s orders <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are always followed</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, that he had ordered the illegal Code Red. In classic Aaron Sorkin drama, the tension becomes simply too much for Jessup, who is sick and tired of having to hide all the protection he offers, and the means he sees fit with which to offer it. “I would rather you just said </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thank you</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” he sneers at one point. He’s a militant white man who is tired of having to hide who he is, who therefore insists on saying whatever he fuckin wants to say, assured there will be no consequences in the courtroom. </span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Except in this Hollywood courtroom (filmed in Culver City, most likely), <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">there were consequences</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The whole courtroom hushed as Tom Cruise’s character immediately moves for an action to tend to Colonel Jessup and the ensuing federal prosecution </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of him</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “The witness has rights,” he says, as the scene concludes. Kevin Bacon, playing the prosecuting attorney, sits down in disbelief that Jessup confessed to the crime. The consequences are beyond the film’s ending, but they begin with “the witness has rights.” There is a system in place to adjudicate criminal offenses, and while it is flawed, it is what we have. I think I was drawn to this memory, this clip, because I wanted to see a lawfully abiding courtroom system hold the Hollywood tyrant of Guantanamo Base accountable. And I want to learn more what it takes for white men (and women) to awaken to what is within them, for us to be held accountable.</span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Gadsby’s artistry moves through a similar pattern of ‘holding the form expected,’ until she doesn’t. What held her speech? What held her speech for decades, before it finally came tumbling out? A social order in which homosexuality was considered a crime (“til 1999,” she quips, “<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not quite</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> long enough ago”), for one, but also a small-town or at least more easily rural setting in which shame ruled the roost. White male power, cloaked in (largely) Christian garb of patriarchal texts and worldviews. A social system in which there is a Center, and she’s not a part of it, at all. “I haven’t wasted a lot of time looking for how I fit in (in high classical art). <i>I don’t.</i> A lot of naps.” Family and local community relationships kept her silent, for years too. Her mother likened her daughter’s coming out “a little bit lesbian,” as something she didn’t need to know. “What if I had told you I was a murderer?” she recounts her mother saying to her. They laugh and jest within one another about it today, but a mother saying that to a teenage girl? The pain of it... I myself recognize the shame that was then embedded into her from such an early age, and for so long. That silenced me for decades, in my stories without near the violence hers has had.</span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Gadsby then recounts the multiple instances of abuse and violence that kept her silent for so long. A man sexually abusing her when she was a child. Getting the shit beat out of her by a man at a subway stop when she was 17. Two men raping her when she was 23. “I didn’t tell the authorities,” she says, “nor go to hospital, and <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I should have</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Why didn’t I? Because I thought </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was all I was worth. And that is what happens when you soak one child in shame and give permission to another to hate." Various moments in the show she pokes and jabs at this largely unspoken but increasingly visible aggression in white men (and women), unwilling to see or hear other points of view without denial or violence. Listening to her words again today, I'm struck by some of the prophecy-tones within them. "I don't hate men. I don't. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t even believe that women are better than men," she says. "I believe that women are just as corruptible by power as men, because you know what fellas, you don’t have a monopoly on the human condition, you arrogant fucks. But the story <i>is</i> as you’ve told it: power <i>belongs</i> to you. And if you can’t handle criticism, take a joke, or deal with your own tension without violence, you have to wonder if you are up to the task of being in charge." </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>And if you can’t handle criticism, take a joke, or deal with your own tension without violence, you have to wonder if you are up to the task of being in charge.</i></span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so what broke the barrier for her to finally speak out? Over ten years on the stand-up comedy scene, learning her artistry. Becoming reflective of the dehumanizing dynamics in comedy today and the increasingly debilitating role she was playing in destroying her own well-being, sense of self. A week of flow-writing in which the show poured out of her onto the page. Maybe it was just one night, I can’t recall precisely, but I know it came out as a whoosh of Truth for her. And then persistently, consistently, performing it, night after night, for well over a year. Therefore an act of courage and impressive resilience, endurance, and today, as I said above, prophetic insight. All of that broke the barrier for her to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">finally say what she’s not supposed to say in societies where whiteness is assumed.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But we can learn here... Her artistry is never a lack of control or an uncontrolled rage, nor a willingness to use anger to incite a rage. Near the end of the show, she pauses, smiles. “To the men in the room…” she says, pausing some more…“who feel I may have been persecuting you this evening… </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well spotted</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That’s pretty much what I’ve done there." She names it, minutes after the hour's experience of it. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this is theater, fellas, I’ve given you an hour, a taste. I have lived a life. The damage done to me is real and debilitating. I will never flourish…” She teaches, she smiles sadly, she stands before her audience, spent. She returns the room's awareness to the humanity of the very persons she "persecuted" for an hour. She invites her audience to see the violence, the pain, the men who have caused it...which are not far from our public images today, radicalized white men and women enraged in and violating the world stage. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She closes her show with a plea and a mirror of what we need. “Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world, and that, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is the focus of the story we need. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Connection</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.” I won't go into the context here, because the words could stand alone for us, here, now. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial;">"He" needs a tether, whether "he" likes it or not. "He" needs to learn how to handle criticism...handle his own tension without violence. "He" is less and less up to the task of being in charge. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It doesn't seem insignificant to me that Jessup is a fictional character (in the movie) and Gadsby is a real, live, flesh and blood human being. This distinction can mean different things, which I'll let you decide for you. For me, it mirrors that (especially white) men have so very few legitimate role models of a healthy masculinity that can collaborate, that can hold tension or shame or failure or whatever and </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">refuse violence, </i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">that can surrender or relinquish ego without losing himself. [One that comes to mind, though, is <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIMO1IheTpA" target="_blank">Ode to Joy</a></i>, a recent film with Martin Freeman and Morena Baccarin. A white man has an illness that causes him to collapse anytime he experiences strong emotion.] Sad, but true. But it takes a courtroom and an entire societal uprising to begin to limit the "free speech of the white man." Whiteness has held its sway with violence for centuries, so of course, it would resort to violence now. Will more of us be willing to no longer deny? Allow the suffering others are experiencing without distancing ourselves from it? Why does it take the ransacking of the Capitol for <i>more</i> of us to notice...? Good questions to ask, for which only you, each of us reading, has his/her/their answer.</span><div><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And "We"... <i>We</i> need to listen for what keeps each of us silent in the face of suffering--visible and hidden. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">We need to learn <i><b>what will break the barriers for us to come to voice about what we see</b></i><b>, <i>all without losing the humanity of the others around us</i></b>. It is the only way for us to retain our own humanity, you see. This movement is not about 'them' out there, it's about me, myself, holding onto my own humanity. It strikes me today that more and more white people are realizing that the habits of denial and avoidance are getting painful for more and more of us, not just people of color. When will we learn to listen for and allow legitimacy to the sufferings all around us? <br /><br /></span></span></p><br /><br /></div>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-48284079033917264802021-01-10T09:38:00.004-05:002023-12-24T13:35:48.790-05:00Bounding Intolerance for the Sake of Tolerance<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A despondent day yesterday, after riding the fierce energies of ‘listening anew’ in my previous post...not sure why, exactly. I don’t disagree with anything I wrote and I stand by it still. But some morning browsing gives me a glimpse of a balancing energy, something that heartens me again, challenges me, and feels an important counterpart to ‘listening anew.’ </span></p><br />The <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tolerance paradox</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of philosopher Karl Popper, who is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a philosopher I adore but who has really important things to say nonetheless. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A felt-sense of my own limitations to sustain compassion in the face of seemingly endless aggression, and therefore a surrender of an obligation to be compassionate while disregarding self-defense. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, naming my own inability to ‘say nothing’ when those I love insist on refusing to see or honor the suffering around us. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">To begin, the musings of Jay Kuo this morning, which I stumbled across through a couple associated-friends’ leads:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-2a40c55d-7fff-ca93-9894-def9d900aeef"><p style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1945 (ed: so right on the heels of the end of WWII and the extermination of 6 million and more), the philosopher Karl Popper wrote about what has been called the "tolerance paradox." He argued, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This is an important argument to make when opposing those who claim the right to foment insurrection or refuse to take pandemic precautions. Critics say this leads to "cancel culture" and censorship. There is a real risk of going too far. Popper addressed the limits of that: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise."</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Two important points, then, are that a tolerant society must leave room for both rational argument and informed public opinion. … But what if some want to burn the whole market down? … Popper wrote, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"[W]e should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."</span></p></span></blockquote><span id="docs-internal-guid-2a40c55d-7fff-ca93-9894-def9d900aeef"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Something sprung open in me this morning, receiving this gift of reflection. And surprisingly, the words of a philosopher I’m not overly fond of, though familiar with, in the context of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">theology</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">evolution</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I took a Theology and Evolution course when I was in grad school, with a marvelous South African professor, Wentzel van Huyyssteen. He could reshape any immature or foolish question a student might ask into one that would open the discourse further, deepen the chance of awakening to the paradoxes within us. This was a necessary charism for a Reformed theologian teaching students wrestling with evolution and the perceived threat of losing their faith if they accorded legitimacy to evolution, science. Eventually, most of us found our way to the integration of theology and science as conversation partners, not enemies; rhythmic colleagues in the search for truth, not elements for nuclear war. Popper was one of the philosophers who always seemed a bit too objectivist to me, refusing the mysterious, the wondrously inexplicable, for the materialistic empiricism of ‘pure science.’ I’m more an Albert Einstein, imagination-science-discovery girl myself. But this morning, I find myself thankful for Popper.</span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More and more, I know truth is close by when a paradox shows up. Truth is always something larger than the human mind can grasp, after all. As soo as we think ‘we have it,’ we alter it to our own egos, uses, fears. It becomes weaponized and unTrue. When a paradox shows up, however, we cannot grasp it as a whole. It’s the optical illusion with foreground/background, a Gestalt. We can focus on one side of the paradox, or the other, but struggle to hold the both/and in surrender, without ego-grasping. The tolerance paradox, then.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Big Tech is now closing out Trump from his social-media bullhorn… As Amazon ‘web-service’ has now shut out Parler… we can begin to see this play out in critics who accuse “cancel culture” and/or “censorship.” Some politicians are wondering aloud about how much power Big Tech executives have to control social discourse. What do we feel about this, do about this, if anything? They weren’t elected by the people or for the people, after all. They’re oligarchic businessmen (mostly) on the so-called “left,” though I’d bet their political location is much more diverse than perceived (given Trump’s pro-business leanings). But politicians feel their own powerlessness compared to Big Tech’s decisive action to close accounts fomenting potential (or in this case this week, actual) violence. That has to be discomforting…</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conservatives and those radicalized by NewsMax media </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> being silenced from their activities of communication on the platforms they’d migrated to. No one likes feeling silenced or suppressed. I get that. I also understand that in any feelings of outrage, the boring legally-oriented facts don’t matter or redress them. I have my own experiences/versions of that, so I can empathize. (Or is the word </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sympathize</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? Dunno) </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still, it seems relevant to point out: opening an account with any social-media platform requires explicit agreement--checking of a box--to abide by the site-management and ‘community normed rules.’ Facebook does this by putting posts in “Facebook jail” until a moderator can review ones with any complaint. Heather Cox Richardson spoke to this when one of her posts got sent to “Facebook jail,” she called it, with a smiling tone. “This will probably happen more in the days to come, as someone writes to Facebook to complain about something I’ve written.” Those that are factually accurate, have been community-norm checked, get returned to Facebook feeds. The one she wrote on January 8th disappeared, then reappeared, because of this process. Anyone participating on social-media sites has agreed to this communal structure, much looser on Parler than on Facebook and Twitter, but still written in the fine print. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Then there is the next level up, businesses that have businesses as clients. Those businesses that perceive a client-business neglecting or failing to practice its own standing rules can then make the next level decision to hold to previously agreed upon, mutual-legal norms...or not. Amazon web-service shutting down Parler, for instance. It was within the rights of Amazon’s fine-print agreements to make decisions about its services, offered to its clients, for the wellbeing of the whole. All of these are judgment calls within a hierarchy of transnational corporations driven by capitalist currents, markets, and the bottom line. It’s true, the feeling of unfairness and censorship, but it’s business, not personal. It’s not within any of the currents of a government of the people, for the people, by the people.<p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In these days, after our January 6th ‘whatever you call it,’ I can’t say that I’m in disagreement with setting limitations on the intolerant. Of course we don’t want to live in a society that suppresses free speech or becomes like Putin’s Russia. But we are living in an American Republic where a portion of those who are (or used to be) Republicans are refusing as legitimate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/trump-voters.html" target="_blank">any politics but their own</a>. I’m all for a healthy Republican Party, because we need to balance the progressivist Democratic tendencies that are rising. But I can also no longer pretend or unsay this reality with Republican friends who choose to unsee the intolerant amongst us.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We the People… More of us need to be willing to come out of the silences we prefer, and move into the choppy terrain of <i>bounding the intolerant, for the sake of tolerance, precisely for the free society we all desire</i>. Yes, it’s paradoxical. Yes, the human mind resists the feeling of tension, trying to hold onto both sides the illogical-logic (for the sake of tolerance, being intolerant of the intolerant). Flattening the paradox leads to aggression, perchance even the war the intolerant want. Do we play into the hands of the intolerant, giving them what they want by our silences?</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consciously choosing intolerance of the intolerant, however, is an active, tensive, necessarily repetitive investment of personal energy on behalf of others, on behalf of the whole. It takes effort and consciousness, not reactivity and war. It takes a calm steadiness of spirit, not an enraged mentality or mob, incited by a strong-man needing chaos to know who he is. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s exhausting for tolerant souls to become intolerant, for the sake of tolerance. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">So...let’s get exhausted, fiercely, together, shall we?</span></p><br /><br />Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8970452654147283965.post-17839551727116546752021-01-08T17:36:00.009-05:002023-12-24T13:36:29.206-05:00The Day After the Day After...<span id="docs-internal-guid-89db7547-7fff-9912-bbb3-50beb5362d0a"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Blessed be for a good night’s sleep, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Wild Turkey rye, good friends, and time...time to breathe, to feel the earth underneath my feet, to return to what I choose to focus on and not what grabs my attention. I can say this in the blessings (and relative economic security) in which I live in these strange, painful days, which means I also want to pay forward and be attentive to what I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> contribute from this place and time I occupy…</span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Again and again, my sacred Work has been all about awakening to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">habits of mind</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--from which realities are seen, experienced, processed--and then discerning in a teaching-learning community </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how these ways of seeing the world are invited into transfiguration for the better</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This post explores some of the habits of mind I’m witnessing on social media/news media, with some curiosity about how we might awaken together, then learn together, begin to imagine together. </span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anglican hermit Maggie Ross does a nice dance with this word, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">transfiguration</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. She prefers it to transformation or transcendence because </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">transfiguration</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> takes what is already present, and will always be present in time, and changes it in its earthly totality toward Sacred Intent. What </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">has been</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> isn’t severed or left behind or demonized, in other words. It becomes </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">transfigured</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in a force of Love and Wholeness that doesn’t depend upon reciprocity or result for its assurance</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Transformation or transcendence have this sense of ‘leaving behind’ whatever was ‘before,’ ‘sinful,’ ‘harmful,’ etc., so to be in sanctified or newly-sacred form. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Transfiguration</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> refines all that is right now. Transfiguration alters whatever needs altering in order to redeem </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, toward holy purpose for the Whole. The context out of which Ross defines this term is Christian theological-liturgical practice. Christ’s wounds were not erased or left behind. His wounds remain, but are transfigured in his resurrection.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The context I want to dive into here is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">today</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, this moment, and the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">practices</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> invited to transfigure </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">what is</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> toward holy purpose for the Whole of our </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We the People</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. We cannot leave behind January 6th, 2021, nor hold onto it as a bludgeon in outrage and anger. No democratic majority can leave behind the 74 million of us who voted (a second time?) for the current President of the United States. Yet so very few of us in our democratic republic have a clue in how to hold all that is erupting, in all of its contradictions and pain. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">[editorial note: Observe what word you are choosing, consciously or unconsciously, to describe what happened this week at the Capitol, January 6th, from about 10:30 a.m. to sunset. The word you choose will signal to your listener your politics. I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">am</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> choosing the word "insurrection", but avoiding "coup attempt." I am also </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in agreement with the gentler words "protest" or "riot," both because of the symbolic location <i>and</i> five deaths, including a police officer. I saw a "mob" and I saw a standing President incite it into this symbolic damage and the resulting deaths. Therefore, I consciously choose the gravity of "insurrection," or uprising with more visual power than we'll know for some time. Words matter, and we need as much consciousness as we can muster when we listen to one another more vulnerably, closely...]</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I was saying...</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">so very few of us in our democratic republic have a clue in how to hold all that is erupting, in all of its contradictions and pain.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of us are spending our pain by raging for invoking the 25th Amendment, or if not that, then Impeachment of this President for his horrific abandonment of We the People (all of us), for his inciting the Insurrection, for his dictatorial tendencies and abuses of power, standing, populations and more. (I myself think either of these steps IS necessary to pursue, though I do not have much confidence that either will come to fruition. Doesn’t mean they’re not still worth pursuing). Some of us are slated with responsibilities to lead and serve the People in this fashion, so I encourage them to honor their oaths of service to We the People, to the Constitution.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of us are spending our pain in calling out the Seditionist Caucus, particularly Senators Cruz and Hawley, arguing for their resignations, for the Senate to refuse to seat them, for sanctions or reprimands of political value. (I cannot say I disagree with this either, but I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> think it simply plays into the Trumpist handbook. Both will be contenders in 2024 for the Trump base, regardless of how horrifying that sounds today, the day after the day after the Insurrection. Political and media critiques-attacks on them, however accurate and legitimate, will simply fuel the fires raging in our civic chaos. No one knows what or how to welcome home seditionists...not in the late 1800’s, not now.) Here I do <i>not</i> encourage political servants to be calling out other political servants in a mud-slinging and sedition-hunt. Citizens without political responsibilities, of course yes, but otherwise, it's more of the same. Plays into the hands of the dividers. The place to confront seditionists is in local organizing, grassroots learning, listening to what is here that needs tending for the soul of America. Our politicians don't give a rats ass, most of them, about the soul of America. Our communities need to re-engage, each of us, one with another.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of us are remaining relatively quiet in our pain (refused? if aware of any), in the throes of a media frenzy, having voted for Trump but not supporting what we saw on TV. We are weary of being vilified and judged for all the social ills in the world, particularly when it’s obvious these have been around forever. No way it’s totally Trump’s doing, or even the Republican Party’s doing (however it may be fracturing and imploding at the moment). We see the day at the Capitol as a raucous and inappropriate event, but not a coup attempt nor even an insurrection. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tsunami of grief within so many of us is spiking through these gaping holes. Until we get curious about the <i>habits of mind</i> we have lived in for decades, if not longer, nothing will change. Nothing can become transfigured until it is all out in the open and surrendered to the whole...so I’m not suggesting anyone alter a thing about what they’re doing. What is unfolding is precisely what needs to be unfolding. And more are beginning to act in ways we've needed to act in a long time. Each of us is really doing the best we know how in uncertain and unpredictable times. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I <i>am</i> asking </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are your habits of mind, creating what you see? Are you willing to be in conversation about them?</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>For me then… My habits of mind these last two days have been narrowed, tight, angry, afraid, sad, stunned with disbelief. This means I’ve been testy, irritable, tending to see the worst in people--family and/or friends included. I’ve been tired and feeling hopeless. People I think/feel I love and share life with are not who I thought/felt they were--which, it must be noted here, has more to do with me and my habit of mind than anything objectively true/false about ‘them.’ And then this window opened last night…<p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I stumbled into a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/latimes/videos/766471597411221" target="_blank">video clip posted by the LATimes of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)</a>. I was exhausted, and trying to dis-engage from the performative-psychological grasps of my electronic devices, but something caught my heart and attention. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I paused. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I checked in with myself to see if I could receive whatever I might receive. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feeling a cautious sense of “might as well,” I clicked the link.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My immediate, knee-jerk reaction to the name Lindsey Graham is one of utter disagreement, even nausea, for things he has done and things he has been accused of doing. I don’t actually know how many of those things are accurate, but I’ll guess at least 50% of them are. Negative heart space is where his name lands in me. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That is the habit of mind and heart</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I surrendered in my “might as well.” I offered it up for transfiguration</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. If we have to start somewhere, then I might as well begin with me, in that moment, right? Somebody said that once...Ghandi, I think his name was? :)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now Graham is an incredibly good speaker, as many know. He’s charming, self-effacing, intelligent, impish even. He got the quite-shaken Senate chamber, after an armed assault of Trump supporters on the Capitol building, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to laugh as a whole</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That’s pretty remarkable. So I practiced listening anew. Listening for what I could affirm, what I could receive. What I knew I would disagree with, and my own outrage at the too-little-too-late timing of “Enough is enough.” I sat with all of it, in my body, in my mind. When the five minutes was done, I watched it again, staying curious. I wanted to see if I could see TOG--</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that of God</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--in him. [One of the things that draws me to the Society of Friends (Quakers) is this very practice: seeing that of God in every human being]. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I saw that of God in him. I did. I won’t deny it. I could feel it. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All while knowing also that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Graham is a politician, and a very good one</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. He can read the energies in a room and persuade and seduce with a Southern charmed voice that has worked in White America for so very long. He did not persuade or seduce me to forget the past, nor to change my mind about my own Democratic values, knowing all that I still know, but I could begin to see the very human being in him. I could see that of God in him, even if the jury’s still out whether the forces of Spirit or other forces will make the most use of him. I posted the clip onto my Facebook page, with a “take five minutes...see if you can watch, listen anew…”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A friend and fellow-writer who has been a supportive presence for me in this whole venture of blog-writing posted a comment. It was true and honest, a frustration at the ‘too little too late’ character of a Republican politician, which I share. But I found myself watching how my own habits of mind had begun to shift. It was okay to have my frustration AND it was no less possible to see anew, a desire to begin listening anew. My habits of mind could shift, and my body experience of a Republican senator from SC could be different, curious.</span></p><br /><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not much, but it’s something for me today, this day after the day after. I felt a similar hopefulness when I heard Ben Sasse speak on the Senate floor. There ARE pieces of this puzzle We the People can begin to put back in place, even if there are also those who are throwing the puzzle pieces into the trash (by which I mean radicalized QAnon folks, Trump supporters who can see no danger in President Trump yet, and liberal-progressives who would rather hold onto their anger than try to find new ways to be human together…). </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My learning here was that even wearied angry habits of mind can be surrendered, and they can be transfigured without severance or denial of all that has come before. What we are experiencing, while horrific and painful beyond ken, unjust and rupturing of all that seems rational, IS the birth canal, if we stay in the labor. The distrust overwhelms us and swamps everything else too. It’s so easy and exhausting to name all that is wrong and broken. I will have days of that. But for today, this day after the day after...for me, in my room, surely not where others are in this journey...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What are the practices that can begin to rebuild a nation’s public trust in itself, in our neighbors, toward creating a different and more mature political culture?</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How does one just </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">begin</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to practice trust in a tsunami of distrust, every day?</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>I can only start with me. The vision of our country is larger than any one of us, but each of us needs to begin to find his/her/their way--individually and collectively--to live trust where there has been distrust, to do the work of grief inside so the work of rebuilding can begin to be imagined on the outside. (Note I did not say actually <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">begin</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">imagine</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I cannot imagine right now when the actual work of rebuilding a healthy political culture can start...too much pain that will need to come out, much from those who have few skills or public support for such work. So we simply need to begin imagining, brainstorming, exploring, experimenting…). For me, yesterday, it was simply watching a US Senator -- Republican SC -- speak on the floor of the chamber, while I held the intention to see that of God in him. </span><p></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s it. And I’m different because of my intention, and my leaning in...</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No one should do this kind of thing until they’re ready to, have the umph to...this is not prescriptive, on my part. And listening anew does not mean being gullible or forgetting the past or disregarding the years of pain, sadness, and anger that remain in so many of our cells today. I don’t believe everything I hear, and I don’t believe everything that I yet want to think, try on, consider. What’s the worst that can happen anyway? My trust gets broken. I could appear foolish and idealistic to angry liberals and angry conservatives. The point is surrendering the habits of mind we have into the flow of transfigurations we cannot yet see. It’s not ‘changing one’s mind’ about </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">anything</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It’s allowing one’s habits of mind to be just as they are...until they aren’t like that anymore.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So maybe I’ll have a new goal. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To look foolish to the angry ones…those unready or unwilling to surrender their habits of mind, to know this better way.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ever wonder if there’s a better way than anger 24/7? There is...and I can feel it more often in these days that I do my own emotional work, when I strengthen my ability to trust, and when I reach out to Trump supporters (or they reach out to me). I’ll bet there are about 73 million of them who don’t like the man at all but see a lot more that they appreciate than I know right now.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For now, this day after the day after, I’m aware we all simply need to learn a helluva lot more about our country than our polarized view of it. I’m ALL IN for learning </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">really</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who we are. The only way forward is to engage those who voted for Trump, and to claim our own unwillingness to see our own habits of mind, the role they’ve played in the whole thing. A willingness to listen anew, see anew, and begin to imagine </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">together</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> what we’re going to create is where it starts. With you. A willingness to not-know and to get curious.</span></p><br /><br /><p> </p>Wisdom Walkerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16057851158613049923noreply@blogger.com0