Self-Denigration is Not the Way...How to Break the Cycle?

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 Fire & Water Leadership/Rites of Passage with Quanita Roberson and Tenneson Woolf. 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…

I landed in the leadership role in 2014-2015 with a huge sense of imposter-syndrome, in senses both young and white. 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 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 leadership 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 schooled me 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. And I can see her action as (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.

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 because it’s higher education, built on plantation logic with an aim of forming the white self-sufficient man (Willie Jennings, After Whiteness). One of the norms you learn early on, or leave because you didn’t is proportionate response. 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, The West Wing, season 1, episode 3).

A new norm began in earnest for the group after my own ‘schooling’: white women denigrating themselves before joining into a conversation, so to be heard, so to speak. 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 know I’m just a white woman, stupid, but…[ask a question or make a point].” 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.

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.

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 higher education is broken. 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).

Significantly, a seed of confidence in my own hard-earned wisdom was also planted here. 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. I knew I was done seeking life or healing in that violence. Hannah Gadsby nails it in her own show, Nanette.

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, and the remainder of the show is her brilliant crescendo to a woman sharing her story in sacred fury. No one who has to denigrate him/her/themselves in order to be heard is participating in a nonviolent communal system. Something in me knew this, even though all around me were urging me to conform, to obey the new group norm… 

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 warriors--higher education is largely warrior-caste--but also teachers, healers, visionaries. (Angeles Arrien). 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: no one had to self-denigrate in order to speak. 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.

It was in this context that the question arose, that I want to ask white folks--with anyone else listening in, pull up a chair, if you like.

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? If self-love (rooted in Source) is the root of authentic other-love, caritas, (which I believe it is), then actual love of an/other will require white folks to figure this out.

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 together, then how do you accept and honor who you are 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? 

There are assumptions here (self-love, rooted in Source, root of other-love) that would take too long to really flesh out here, but more importantly, the excruciating-and-liberating breaking-open 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 my whiteness from that enslavement so long ago then we shouldn’t have to feel any pain or suffering because of what they did so long ago. This is the puss-filled, boil-ridden wound that so many of us whites refuse and resist, aim to not-see somehow...so I’m not talking about hiding or ignoring the wound. 

But I also know that self-denigration is not 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... I think my question then is simply 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? How do white people halt the flow of their own unconscious/refused self-loathing into the world…?

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.

This is some of my stuff...into the Center...for now.

[I began a new journey with some pilgrim companions this past weekend, as each of us said ‘yes’ to a Fire&Water (&Water&Fire) Leadership/Rites of Passage 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 reconsider citizenship 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).]

Multi-Container Life? Now and Not Yet...

A day of gratitude dawns, with a new phrase that has some energy for me: a life with many containers, or a multi-container life. 

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 a methodological moment. You can skip it if you’re not into such moments.) When these musings welled up in me several months ago now, toward reconsidering citizenship, 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,: how we ought to reconsider citizenship here in the States. 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 all 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. 

In some contrast, I wanted this 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 methodological intention, this kind of reflective, curious, heart-oriented listening-space. (End of methodological moment…)

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. 

How many ‘containers’ do you pour your life into, find your own life in? The instigation here 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?

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 multiple-container life?

Perhaps a bit of definition will help, at this stage. In my line of work and vocation, container describes the “organizational universe encompassing all aspects of how a group lives: time, physical space, money, relational agreements, food and ritual” (Mary Pierce Brosmer, Women Writing for (a) Change, p. 182). Words with similar meaning or intention could be eco-system, home, or womb. As Brosmer continues, a container is “anything that maintains the delicate balance between open space and boundaries and [that] allows life to emerge...” 

Most of us could use this term ‘container’ to talk about the primary private and public relationships-communities within which we understand our lives: family (of origin then extended), perhaps eventually marriage or partnership or union, school, church/faith-community, city/town, county, state, country, continent, (eventually? planet?). 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. 

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.

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 containers in our lives, individually and collectively? We rarely see the whole organizational universe, with overlapping circles or containers, let alone ask ourselves how can we best tend 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? All of us? We are co-creating our worlds right now, after all. And what 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?

The scholarly biz I’m in has developed words for this within religious traditional discourse--multiple religious belonging, double-belonging, religious hybridity, 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 are 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...

But in our refusal to open our hands or hearts, to be already who we are right now, what are we missing? In the protection of the sacred we already know, we protect/defend/grasp, what are we missing seeing about what it means to be human, that we cannot know without this one in front of us?

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.

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 both or all, 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 more fully what it means to be human?

It requires surrender, yes, a wisdom way of knowing assurance 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 will 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… 

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?

Biting the Hook...or Honoring/Releasing the Projection

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 biting the hook, eventually to be followed instead by an invitation to consider honoring-releasing the projection. 

First, the metaphor. One of my favorite teachers, Pema Chodron, uses a metaphor of biting the hook 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 shenpa 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 shenpa 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.

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, I heard him say “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 his loyalists 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. 

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 bite the hook and yet so desire to bite the hook. 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. Hear the language? Hear the triggered energies?

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 government cannot limit a citizen’s right to free speech--and a personal/cultural matter--anyone can say whatever the hell they want, no matter the consequences or implications. 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 piece 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.

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 they 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 their 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 so out of their perception or consideration, we can hardly communicate genuinely. Instead, I live into don't go to war with the way things are; create alternative realities (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. 

The trigger feeling here, the bite the hook moment, is one of smugness unto outrage. There is a seductive draw to being right, 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 not bite the hook. “See how that feels then, why don’t you?!?” is often the tone underneath whatever measured speech I may offer in a discussion. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” I want to ask, with a smarmy smile on my face. (Autocorrect just helped me note ‘smarny’ should be ‘smarmy.’ LOL. When did smarmy 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 this hook, I still cannot participate in open-hearted listening. Shenpa reigns in my body; I won’t hear a word ‘the other’ might say.

Pema Chodron’s invitation, her wisdom here, is to not bite the hook. What she’s trying to say is don’t let an old story or an old wound make you see everything in only its terms. 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, we bite the hook anyway.

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 stay with the itch and not scratch it.

So what if we changed the story, the invitation? What if we found better pathways to not scratch the itch or not bite the hook? 

I’m increasingly convinced about the power of projection 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.

A most traditional, even scriptural version of this is the notion of scapegoating. 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. Scapegoat. 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 onto them 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.

To our earlier point, to be clear, I feel a similar trigger-potential with both 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.

Change or die, as the saying goes. There’s no fire for me to protect 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 trusting God 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.)

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 painful 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.

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 and trying to get free of them, all at the same time.

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 I need 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.

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 them, because of something that is actually inside of me. Same pattern of projection.

So...what if the new story, the new pathway, was simply seeing the projection? Honoring the projections of others 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: Thou shalt not ignore me. 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 and the Republicans to pay attention to him. To prick the outrage. To be so preposterously untrue that rational, compassionate human beings bite the hook, 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.

The different pathway is to not bite the hook. 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. Refuse the projection, we sometimes say in my circle-way world. Refuse to play in that energy, and move your energy to constructive, compassionate outlets.

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 biting the hook 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 (mostly unsuccessfully), 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.'

The challenge here is, of course, that refusing to bite the hook, focusing on seeing and honoring the projection, doesn’t feel the same in the body. 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?

If I can get to that question, I’ve not bitten the hook, and I won’t be doing so in the near future.

One 5-minute victory, until the next one comes, probably within the hour. 

Being Where We Are Now...

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--guilty or not guilty 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.

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 not guilty aloud. Senators who in my view are courageous leaders standing firm in the face of authoritarian, violence-prone politics said guilty. 

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.

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. 

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 almost happened...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...

All of this has 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 just more clinically interpreted than others.

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 do get together for family reunions. We do stay in touch, some more than others. 

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 in them, locally, every day, or even each week or month. 

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 we just didn’t talk about politics publically. 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 we’re actually living in together. 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?

I saw a documentary recently that has caught my memory and my heart-strings too: Spiritual Audacity: the Abraham Joshua Heschel Story 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: “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 Godwin’s Law comes into play. But Heschel’s persistent and regular confrontation of indifference has landed in my belly, in my craw.

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.

Yet we hear...There is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings…

HOW??? If I cannot open-heartedlly listen yet...if this is going to be a temporary ‘hold’ until I can listen...how is that different from indifference? How do I not become indifferent to the fears and concerns of all those around me? What will be your 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 today? 

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.