Category: Justice

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The Journey Toward Justice

For a journey of the heart, it matters what I use as my guiding star.

My heart journey began when I woke up and realized that my perspective and worldview was too small and limited. I wanted to find a way to expand the boundaries of my heart and life, to live as one member of a global family on our shared earthly home.

There was no need for this sort of journey when I believed what the culture told me—that we were already a nation of freedom and justice for all. So much of the culture was set up to distract me, especially as one with more cultural access and power, to keep me from noticing the injustice and inequities at the heart of my nation.

I began my heart’s journey, a journey toward justice, by first waking up to the world as it was, contradictory with its glorious beauty and soaring vision alongside its profound injustice and disrespect directed at certain groups of people.

Once I woke up, I saw brokenness all over the place: our treatment of the earth; our power and access inequities based on race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, sexual identity, homeland or legal status. Many of these have hundreds or thousands of years of inequity behind them, but all are still riddled with injustice today.

Part of me is a fighter. Since I was a child, I’ve believed that the direct path is best and most efficient. Therefore, when I saw something wrong, I wanted to call it out and fix it.

There are compelling and very logical reasons to begin by fighting injustice head on. Once the cultural blinders have fallen away, injustice screams to be transformed from many directions at once. The need for immediate change feels urgent.

However, even stronger than the fighter within me was a longing for metanoia—a transformative change of heart. This required me to shift my orientation, both a spiritual and how-I-orient-in-the-world turning. To use metanoia, rather than fighting, my guiding star required that I begin my journey toward justice “outside the distress of oppression.”*

Those words—know myself outside the distress of oppression—are like a koan meant to shock me into a whole new way of seeing.

When the oppression, both within me and in the world around me, is so overwhelming and so flesh-and-blood real, why would I choose to begin outside of it? When the wrongs are so obvious (once I saw them), why would I choose not to directly fight the wrong and liberate the right?

And how can I, with all of my first-world, white skinned, wealthy, traditionally educated privilege, call myself oppressed?

The culture I was born into was complex and sophisticated. Its values were both honorable and grand (visions I love like freedom and inalienable rights, for example) as well as greedy and power-hungry (legal and tax bias toward corporations and people who are wealthy, or acting as if black lives aren’t as valuable as white lives, for example). I was schooled in these values in my public education, laws, popular novels, churches, playgrounds, advertisements, institutions and traditions. They seeped into my brain—as internalized oppression, prejudice against certain people, and a bias toward the status quo.

For me, I’ve struggled with the oppression of sexism (primarily internalized and directed against me) and with the oppression of a skewed world view that gave access and privilege to me—calling it normal and earned—while keeping me tragically blind to the inequity behind it all.

When I tried to stand within the mess of oppressor/oppressed, my sight was limited by the dichotomy, and I wanted to fight. Unfortunately, when I tried to fight the oppression I saw around me without simultaneously noticing and moving to transform the injustices in my own conscious and unconscious beliefs and behaviors, I kept slipping into the very injustice I was fighting to change.

But this journey isn’t only toward expanded sight and understanding. While metanoia is a transformation of the heart and Spirit—an internal realignment—unless stunted, it will naturally continue to unfold into a life that participates in the transformation of society.

That brings me back to “knowing myself outside the distress of oppression.” Who am I, who are you, who are we, outside the distress of oppression?  What is it that interferes with each of us and keeps us from living from the fullness and uniqueness that is our birth right?

For me, orienting myself outside the distress of oppression has been the most demanding journey of my life. Stepping outside the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy requires that I take responsibility for myself and continually align my beliefs and actions with my values of justice, love and equity. Self-knowledge and self-responsibility are the keys to both personal metanoia as well as sustainable social change. I need to act with integrity, no matter what injustice I am experiencing. Change is possible in any moment, but it requires someone (like me) to act, respectfully and honestly, and thus open up a space that opens the possibility for justice to emerge, moment by moment.

I have patterns, mostly unconscious, that still emerge from time to time. I get uncomfortable or scared and go silent. I don’t like sitting in my own fear and project it onto others. These behaviors tend to show up when I am tired, irritated or feel like someone is treating me unjustly. For me, stress is the doorway through which my old habits and unconscious beliefs tend to emerge.

But that is very dangerous. Most fracturing of relationships and partnerships, especially across cultural differences, happen in moments of stress or conflict. If I don’t learn how to change my behavior and thinking at the roots—seek metanoia—stressful times will continue to be moments when I am not able to sustain my values and respectful behavior. Instead of being part of the healing, I will participate in the brokenness.

My journey toward justice requires me to keep metanoia as my guiding north star. Only then can I keep my sight free and flexible enough to focus outside the distress of oppression. I walk on this journey with many friends and partners, mutually taking time to lovingly but firmly support each other as we navigate the path of justice. There is no need for shame as together we know we are on a journey of learning and alignment.

But even when my friends are not around, I am not alone. Spirit is always present. The natural world opens her arms to me. I am part of the human family. In addition, this journey has led me into a powerful, healing relationship to the diversity that is within me. Demanding as this journey has been, following metanoia as my guiding star is leading me on a joyful journey home.

 

*This is the first step of Be Present Inc.’s Be Present Empowerment Model.

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From “Shut Up and Follow” to “Step Up and Lead”

There was a voice in my head that told me to shut up and follow. It was finally loud enough that I took notice when, during a cross-class Bible study on Jesus, Faith and Money, it bellowed inside me, “Why do you—a white, wealthy woman—think anyone could benefit from your ‘privileged’ perspective?” I shut up.

There are lots of variations on this theme within the social justice movement. Men need to shut up and follow. White men in particular. And wealthy folks.

There is a certain logic in this thinking. For 6,000 years, patriarchy has upheld men and the masculine as ideal, while deeming women and the feminine as subservient. The whole concept of whiteness was conjured up around 1790 to give power to people with light colored, “white” skin (as long as they weren’t southern Italian or Irish or Jewish). The current demand by some in the social justice movement toward those with cultural power and access to shut up and follow, many would assert, is merely a desperately needed rebalancing.

But, for me, this logic breaks down quickly. At this moment of deep divides, both ancestral and current, we need everyone to stand up and step into the fullness of their leadership. The only way out of this mess is through the full, creative thinking and perspective of all of us.

That does not, however, mean that people like me can lead, unconscious of our assumptions of the “right” (i.e. “white cultural”) way of taking charge.

Collaborative leadership that includes everyone demands that each of us takes a level of personal responsibility that is rare in our culture. This requires a process of unlearning and learning anew that requires conscious awareness of ourselves, and sharpening our skills for working collectively within diverse partnerships.

I wrote Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Gender, Power and Class because I understood two things. First, my family’s white skin let us settle into a white-centered view of the world without any conscious awareness of that privilege. In the writing, I sorted through assumptions and perspectives to see what things were true, what things held only part of the truth and what was completely false and out of alignment with my values. Second, I realized that I’d been almost exclusively raised with the white male perspective of history and current events.

The “silencing myself ah-ha” in the middle of my Bible Study class led me to the work of Be Present, Inc. There I learned a model that has been invaluable in waking up to both the injustice woven into the middle of our culture and into the edges of my mind.

This model, called the Be Present Empowerment Model, was birthed through the leadership of Black Women with a vision for a world not constrained to the injustices they had experienced but rather a vision of the playground of life where all are welcome to bring our full, creative selves.

Here are a few of my learnings along the path from “shut up” to “step up.”

I need to take the risk to step in to conversations with as much integrity and justice as I can muster, and the humility to admit it and change when I stumble.

I need to release my assumptions that the world has worked for everyone the same way it worked for me, and really listen with openness to other’s experiences.

I need to slow-down awkward moments in my interactions so I can take responsibility to know what is true about me—even when I don’t like what I see—and what is an inaccurate assumption.

In conversation, I need to listen to myself—those powerful inner voices—to see when I am listening more to myself than to the other person and when my mind begins to shape what I assume I am hearing.

And I need to show up with my sight as one sight among many. We need to hear the beautiful diversity of everyone’s perspective, including mine.

It takes partnership with others for me to “step up” as much ease as possible. Someone to help me remember the goodness of my heart when I stumble. Someone to stop me when my behavior smells like it might be tainted with the very injustice I am working to shift—even when I am in public and embarrassed that I “got caught.” Someone to help me keep my sense of humor.

While “shut-up and follow” might seem logical from one perspective, at this moment in history our world needs all of us to “step up and lead” as one part of the global collective.

This is the 25th year of Be Present, Inc. In honor of that anniversary, I’ve been pondering my learnings over the 15 years I’ve been part of the network. I’ll be flying to Atlanta the first week of November where I am part of the leadership for Be Present’s National Network Convening and 25th Anniversary Fundraiser. I invite you to join me in supporting this groundbreaking work by making a donation to Be Present, Inc.

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Homegrown Terrorism is the Battle Cry for Repentance

Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey

More Americans have been killed in the US by white male citizens, often white supremacists, than by any other domestic or foreign group.1 Well-armed with guns and hatred of Jews, Blacks and Muslims, these white Americans fight to regain a white and “christian”2 nation.

It is accurate to say that our country was founded on white, male, wealthy, “christian” supremacy. While that foundation still has a strong foothold on almost every aspect of our culture, it is predicted that by mid-century, white skinned people will be in the minority in the US.

I can’t pretend that I am totally separate from these white extremists. They have lit their torches illuminating the fact that our country has long been dominated by whiteness and anti-Semitism. This same system has opened doors for me all my life, as it did for my ancestors. The natural consequence of generation after generation of exclusion has erupted today as hatred directed at non-white and non-Christian people.

My grandfather was an attorney who believed in justice. Yet, in a letter to his fiancé (my grandmother) written in 1923, he spoke about one of the best speeches he’d ever heard: “This Col. Simmons of the KKK made a talk [at the Texas Capitol] to 20,000 people. He has a wonderful personality and is a good speaker. I wonder if you have joined the Klan? Or the Order of Camelia, I should have said.” Years later, my grandfather publically supported the first black female attorney’s nomination to the Wichita Falls, TX bar association. And I loved him.3

In Big Topics at Midnight, I wrote a chapter titled “Did My People Survive Slavery?” After listening to a Sweet Honey in the Rock’s song “I Remember, I Believe,” where black women asked that questions about their own ancestors, it struck me that the same query applied to my ancestors, and I asked myself: What was the moral legacy of families like mine who owned slaves and were moved by a KKK speech?

Unfortunately, we are living that legacy now.

This legacy came through families like mine and through the larger cultural family of Euro-Americans. Unnoticed without confession or repentance, the moral flaws of yesterday erupt now in the growing movement of white supremacists, our nation’s homegrown terrorists.  A terrorist is defined as “a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Our focus on foreign terrorists is merely a distraction to the real terrorists within.

The signs of this ingrained white supremacy is fully visible for anyone who cares to notice. Can you imagine if the August 11 march on the University of Virginia campus—complete with lit torches, armed men and hateful rhetoric targeted at specific groups—had been as assembly of black skinned rather than white skinned men? Or Jewish? Or Muslim? Can you imagine the uproar if President Obama, a black skinned man, had spoken and acted as disrespectfully as white skinned President Trump has consistently done? Can you imagine what the law enforcement response would have been if the armed men who took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon had been black skinned? Or Jewish? Or Muslim?

Our national law enforcement and public sentiment response would NOT have been the same.

I’ve spent years unmasking the tendrils of white supremacy that have been part of my nation and my family and my life. Denying that, or white-washing it as merely a historical problem or an isolated issue of extremists, is to personally participate in the movement for white supremacy.

The cry of my heart is directed at others like me—white skinned and Christian. The legacy of racism, patriarchy and religious intolerance that was one part of our nation’s founding is threatening to destroy us all. While we are not responsible for actions of our ancestors, we are living in the toxic legacy of the moral disconnect between values and actions that worked their way into our institutions and systems. We—you and me—are fully responsible for how we live today.

Being quiet and disconnected is no longer an option.

My prayer is that our nation is going through the last gasp of what has been and is still a dangerous and hateful legacy. For that to be true, however, all of us need to step up and embody justice for all. Each in our unique way.

The steps forward to constructive change are ancient and outlined in many of our faith traditions: open your eyes and heart to see; confess where you as an individual and where you as part of the national collective have participated in injustice and inequity; repent—a transformative change of heart; and then take action that flows from your new, wide-open heart.

Our nation’s racism and anti-Semitism runs deep. The call of my heart to our beloved nation is to wake up and repent, remembering these self-evident truths: that all are created equal; that all are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of a union with the good spirit (named as “happiness”).

1 Article  with links to more primary sources

2 A side note: I can’t help putting christian (with a little c) in quotes. There is no relationship between the heart of Christianity and white supremacy’s christianity. Unfortunately, far too much of CHRISTIANITY as a institutional church has become infected by the sin of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Likewise, it is also true that white-skinned people and male people have too often been culturally infected by a sense of power-over superiority inherent in racism and patriarchy (among other things), and perhaps should also be noted with quotation marks. This cultural sin has a wide and deep legacy.

3 Individuals (such as my grandfather) like nations are complex and paradoxical, full of wisdom and generosity and prejudice and hatred. I am hopeful that seeing our own shadow will give us greater compassion as we support each other on the journey back to the just and equitable essence that is our birth right. We need each other as we unhook from the toxic parts of our national legacy.

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Memorials

People keep coming, bringing flowers, candles, notes, posters, photographs. Silent. Some sitting in the grass around the central of several the ever-growing altars. Some with their backs to the flowers and candles, turning instead to the chalk-covered wall of words. Others picking up pieces of chalk and adding their words to the “wall” that begins on the sidewalk near the street, past the gym that lines the Hollywood Transit Center, up the ramp walls and continues on the bridge to the steps down to the light rail Max stop. Others heading to catch the train, looking down and reading the words on the overpass under their feet.

I’ve seen little public altars before. They dot the highways with their white crosses, plastic flowers and little mementoes of lives cut suddenly short.

These spontaneous memorials are powerful altars. They hold so much: grief, an awareness of the beauty of life and the reality of death, memories, regrets, sadness, gratitude for gifts given long ago, lament, cries of the heart.

I have an altar at home. A multi-colored cloth spread over a small table in my office is set with a candle, a stick of incense, symbols of my faith, items of beauty that have meaning for me and symbols of people I love and am praying for. The items change as life moves on, but the altar remains.

Public and private altars are sacred places to sit with the huge mysteries of life and death, sacred and horrific. They help us stop and not rush through our feelings, giving grief and hope a chance to rest in our hearts and bones for a while.

There is talk that the Portland transit system will erect a permanent memorial here. The heartfelt impulse is beautiful, but that sort of official altar is more complicated.

Why a memorial here, and not at other places of death and heroism? Are some deaths more worth marking in public than others? Are some acts of heroism bigger than others? Is the undercurrent of cultural racism, ethnic bias or sexism within our culture influencing the decision of who/what gets honored?

These questions are too often unasked when our public hearts are broken and we want to “do something.” But they are questions that need to be asked as we as a nation seek to transform the very divisions that were at the heart of the tragedy that exploded at the Hollywood Transit Center. Sustainable and equitable partnership across our differences is the memorial I seek.

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The Bigger Story of Hate and Heroes

On August 20, 1965, Alabama resident Tom Coleman, a white-skinned vigilante, aimed his gun at seventeen-year-old, black-skinned Ruby Sales and threatened to blow her brains out. Jonathan Daniels, her white-skinned companion in the Southern Freedom Movement, threw himself in front of Ruby and was killed instantly.

In a recent On Being interview, Ruby Sales reflected on the larger context of this incident: “When you signed up to be a part of the movement, it became very clear that we were willing to die. Not because we were suicidal but because we believed so much in the work that we were doing that we did not believe that death was the end.”

As a correction of how the story of Jonathan’s murder is usually framed, Ruby said, “Truly I am grateful that Jonathan saved my life and truly that was an important event. But at the same time, the narrative must include the profound impact that local black people had on shaping and stretching my life as a young black woman in the south.”*  Jonathan’s heroic act was one small part of a larger justice movement that had been active for generations both in Ruby’s community and around the world.

I thought of Ruby’s words recently when a raging White Supremacist yelled anti-Muslim vitriol at two teenagers, one wearing a hajib, and then killed two white men and injured another who stepped between hatred and those threatened. Ruby’s words remind me that the horrifying event that occurred in my Portland, OR neighborhood on Friday, May 26, 2017, was one part of a nation-wide pattern where other Muslim, Black and Brown people (among others) experience violence.

Racial slurs and violence toward Muslims and non-whites aren’t new. Killing unarmed black men and women isn’t new. Injustice from the “Justice” system isn’t new. Prejudice and threat of deportation to immigrants aren’t new. They are, however, becoming more visible … to whites like me.

The incident in my neighborhood a few weeks ago isn’t an isolated event. It is part of a much larger story of hatred and violence that still festers at the heart of our nation. It is also one part of a long, powerful movement for compassion, justice and equity that many have bravely walked for hundreds of years.

The larger context is important. Oregon was founded as a white supremacist state: black-skinned people were barred from living within our borders. The KKK long supported our governmental leaders. Today, green and progressive Portland is one of the whitest big cities in the nation.

I am grateful for the heroic deeds of Ricky, Taliesin and Micah, and for the heroic deeds of millions over the centuries who have stepped forward to follow the leading of their hearts and courageously stand for compassion and justice. I am saddened by the impact of hatred hurled at two teenage girls, and for millions over the centuries who have long been the brunt of prejudice, inequity and hatred. The power to transform our world’s injustice and stark divisions lies in our ability to see these individual incidents as one part of a much larger movement.

This is a journey of transformation that we must take together. This is not a time to deepen our divides, even if the divides are between oppressed and oppressor. This journey requires us to all step courageously into the gaps that divide us. Standing together in the midst of both hatred and the compassion, each of us can begin—or continue—to look inside our own skins and root out assumptions, stereotypes and fragments of the “isms,” then take the risk to actively build the world that best serves all of our children, now and for generations to come.

Otherwise, actively or passively, we are complicit in supporting the underlying generational behavior that erupts into violent and hateful deeds.

 

*These critical words of context for Jonathan’s death were cut from the finished Krista Tippet’s On Being interview of Ruby Sales. For that reason, I recommend listening to the uncut version.

This blog is one in an upcoming series of “The Bigger Picture” blogs.

 

 

 

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Nothing Lasts Forever

 

Nothing lasts forever;

No one lives forever.

Keep that in mind, and love.*

These words have danced through my head all spring. For the last few months, almost a dozen friends and family have experienced a traumatic, life changing event. Sometimes resulting in death, but more often in an event that will change them forever. Even after “normal” life returns.

Friday afternoon, just as I was finishing a support group call with friends, police car after police car streaked down the street in front of my home. It was an hour before I knew what had happened. During what most expected to be a routine light rail trip home before a holiday week end, a white man began yelling hateful things to two Muslim young women. Three men stepped in to try to deescalate the situation. The ranting man pulled out a knife and killed two of the men and injured the third.

A Memorial Day holiday that, for two families, began with death, for one family, began with a hospitalization, and for all the rest unfortunate enough to have been in that light rail car, began with witnessing hatred and death and compassion.

I too will die one day. Maybe today. All that I think of as essential parts of my life will one day pass, maybe in the blink of an eye.

Tagore reminds me that I must keep that reality in mind, and still love.

Love. Open my heart again and again. Knowing that nothing last forever.

This is at the heart of my spiritual path, the container that holds my whole life and death (both the daily little deaths and, one day, my physical death). I have many freedoms and choice in my life, but I am not charge of everything life brings to me. Life and death have their own rhythm and power, in my life and in all of nature. Birth, life, death and rebirth are all part of the natural cycle of life.

How we live matters. How we die matters. How we savor life and then, when it is time, release life, matters. For me, life invites me to live fully—savoring the gifts that surround me—and to die open-heartedly—surrendering to the big divine love in every moment.

The Rule of St. Benedict admonishes, “Keep death before you daily.” Know that only by fully accepting death can we fully accept life.

In our death-phobic culture, remembering our death and honoring the transitory nature of life seems crazy. In reality, it is the only way.

*Illustration by Khara Scott-Bey. Poem by Rabindranath Tagore

This blog is dedicated to the three who bravely stepped forward Friday in an attempt to bring peace to a violent moment— Micah David-Cole Fletcher, Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche (The latter two died in the process). And to all my friends, and yours, whose life in these past few months has taken them to places they never would have chosen. And to my mother, Mary Sue Tipps Mathys, on this eve of what would have been her 91 birthday. Thirty years after her death, I still feel Mom’s presence and guidance.

 

 

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Be Careful What You Say to Men

When I was young, Mom warned me watch what I shared with Dad. I no longer remember the details, but the implication was clear—my problems would add to Dad’s already demanding work life. He wasn’t strong enough to handle anything other than his own concerns.

Somewhere along the line, that warning spilled over into many of my relationships with other men. Since my local inner circle of family and friends was predominantly white skinned, this precaution focused on white men specifically.

It is a strange contradiction that I am both an outspoken woman and one who is sometimes hesitant to speak openly with men. Not all men, and not all of the time, but the warning bell rings loudly when I get near an invisible line.

Howard and I married when we were twenty-two.  My confidence that I was a liberated woman of the ‘70s didn’t silence the clang of Mom’s warning bell ringing in my head.

For conversations with any emotional charge, I worked diligently to find the perfect time—i.e. when Howard was well rested and in the midst of a calm day—when I assumed that he had the capacity to deal with my conversation. Unfortunately, if my sharing included the impact of something he’s said or done, too often he slipped into guilt or regret or shame. I’d scramble to reassure him, and the conversation I’d wanted would too often got derailed.

Over our forty years of marriage, I’ve learned how to speak up earlier and address the topic regardless of what emotions arise, but it was a bumpy learning process. In that process, I discovered that Howard (like my Dad) was indeed strong enough to meet me in conversation.

My learning was slower with other men. I’ve too often stepped out tentatively, lightly touching what I’d like to say, then gone silent if my point wasn’t quickly understood or listened to. I too readily questioned myself, especially if my thinking was nuanced and spiraled rather than linear.

I knew I wasn’t alone in this struggle as women talk to each other about this tendency. Recently, a group of my women friends were talking about who to include in a newly forming group, when one of them said, “Let’s keep gathering as just women, because a man would try to take over the group.”

All of us have had experiences that would confirm the wisdom of her suggestion. But we were also all related to men whom we loved—either as husbands or sons, fathers or friends. Is it true that there is little chance for equitable participation when men are present? Are we women incapable of showing up in ways that are powerful enough to shift the behavior without excluding or attacking the men? Was this also inevitable with the men we loved and respected?

Stepping out of patriarchy requires me to be in a different sort of partnership than my mother taught me or than my women friends imagined.  While being clear about the ravages of patriarchy in our culture, I must make a choice about how I choose to be in my relationships with white men—the men close to me as well as men in the community.

When I am silent, whether because I don’t want to upset a man or because I feel intimidated, I am fully participating in patriarchy by behaving as if their voice is more important than mine. When I lash out, throwing my anger at generations of gender injustice at the man in front of me, I am also participating in patriarchy by stereotyping men and then attacking them as if they alone were the problem.

I don’t want to perpetuate any of these patterns interfering with equitable partnerships with men. As always, I must start with myself.

I want to take responsibility for how I am with men, taking a risk to speak respectfully and clearly when an interaction feels like “power-over” or sounds like “mansplaining.” I want to share what is happening to me: to articulate the impact of disrespectful behavior; to listen to what is behind his actions or words; to acknowledge his feelings if shame emerges, but to then return to our conversation. I must honor myself enough to insist that I am treated respectfully, and I must honor my relationship with the man enough to see if there is a possibility that we can find a way to relate that is outside of patriarchy.

You taught me many wonderful things, Mom, but your advice to me as a preschooler about relating to men doesn’t serve me or the men in my life. I’m sixty-two now, and I know better.

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Wail after Bombing

The US just bombed Syria. The latest in a long string of military strikes using violence to fight violence to bring “justice.” We keep trying the same solution seeking a different result.

No wonder I kept crawling back into bed yesterday. I am in grief about the latest actions of the homeland I love.

I don’t yet know the rest of the hidden story about circumstances that led to this attack on Syria, but I can’t help noticing that the US has angered Russia at the very moment our current administration is under investigation about Russian involvement in our presidential election. If my hunch turns out to be correct, it wouldn’t be the first time that a US President turned to war to distract us from a problem here at home. Bill Clinton and LB Johnson come to mind.

Sometimes we step into military action based on lies. Vietnam, for example. While running for office on a platform of being aggressive and restrained at the same time, Johnson needed a national security risk to justify military action in Vietnam. This risk came in the form of unprovoked North Vietnamese PT boat attacks on two US ships.

In response, Johnson said, “Yet our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. We Americans know, although others appear to forget, the risks of spreading conflict. We still seek no wider war…but it is my considered conviction, shared throughout your Government, that firmness in the right is indispensable today for peace; that firmness will always be measured. Its mission is peace.”¹

It turned out, however, that the first attack was provoked. Johnson admitted privately that we had been carrying out “some covert operations in that area” like “blowing up some bridges and things of that kind, roads, so forth. So I imagine they wanted to put a stop to it.”² The second attack, however, the one used to justify a US military response, never happened. It was completely fabricated.

Then we had the Iraq War of 2003. The truth was obvious to many prior to our invasion, and the facts have since become public.

Cuba was a different issue. The US almost stepped into a nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Russia, a Cuban ally, tried to secretly deploy nuclear weapons to Cuba. Horrified that nuclear weapons were so close to US shores, Kennedy’s secret White House audio tape recorded him saying, “It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs [Medium Range Ballistic Missiles] in Turkey. Now that’d be goddam dangerous.”³ Problem was, that was exactly what we had done, despite prior assurances to Russia that we would not install missiles in next to their borders. Both US and Russia’s actions were dangerous.

There is more to the story of many US wars than reached our press—North Korea, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. In addition to military action, we’ve also played a role in helping to topple democratically elected presidents in Iran, Belgian Congo and Guatemala. And don’t forget our land theft through lies and war with the Indigenous Native American People.

We Americans have steadfastly been unwilling to look at the shadow side of our nation’s history. We cling for dear life to the pure image of the US as a beacon for democracy seeking justice for everyone. There is some truth in that image, but our actions fall short of our vision.

The more we prop up the image of a blameless US, the more we continue to project our evil onto other countries.

There is another option. Ironically, addressing these international crises must begin with me. And you.

I’ve always known that there was a direct relationship between the personal and the global. We can’t fight against war between nations when a war rages within us. Personal wars spill out in disrespectful and arrogant behavior with people in our homes, with other drivers on our roads, within our communities. Fighting violence with violence, popular as it is, will only lead to more violence.

This is not a time where we can lazily believe the “official American story.” I uncovered the truth hidden in the version of history I’d learned in school when writing Big Topics at Midnight: A Texas Girl Wakes Up to Race, Class Gender and Herself. Getting accurate information wasn’t difficult, and didn’t require too much digging. I learned a bit more history this week reading Dorothie and Martin Hellman’s A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love At Home & Peace On The Planet. Most of the examples and quotes in this blog are from the Hellmans’ book, but this information is easily found elsewhere. We just have to be willing to see.

“Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me,” may sound like a flaky sentiment too weak to resolve global conflicts. And it is, if we think finding peace within ourselves and our communities is about thinking sweet thoughts and being nice. The open-hearted, compassionate but fierce love required to honestly look at ALL of ourselves—the beauty and gifts as well as the narrow-minded and short-sighted assumptions—can pave the way for us to wake up and realign with our personal and national vision. For us as individuals. For communities. And for all of creation.

Grief must be part of the process. Grief right in the middle of our grief-phobic culture. We’ve tried to step over heart-wrenching experiences, both personally and nationally. This turning away from grief has resulted in stunted living, rendering us unable to appreciate the exquisite gift of life itself and unable to honestly look at those parts of our behavior that are in direct conflict with our values. Climbing back into bed again and again today was part of honoring my grief. Getting out of bed at 3 a.m. and writing my way through this week’s news was my next step. I am listening for whatever mix of grief and action that comes next for me.

I’ve seen how communities change when one person takes the risk to behave honorably and honestly. I know it is possible for a small group of people to bring about huge, global shifts. I believe that grace steps in powerfully in response to a transformed heart. The ripples spread from individuals to people around the globe.

I also know the inspiring vision at the heart of this country, and the beautiful global diversity of Americans. My wail is a love cry to my people and my nation. It is time to hold the full paradox that is us, and step into the fullness of our Vision.

 

1. Dorothie and Martin Hellman, A New Map For Relationships: Creating True Love at Home & Peace On the Planet, New Map Publishing, 2016, page 183. The transcript of President Johnson’s August 4, 1964 television address is accessible online.

2. Hellman and Hellman, page 179. From Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-64, page 493-494.f I first learned about this through Jim Stockdale’s first-hand account of that night on the US Maddox in his memoir In Love and War.

3.  Hellman and Hellman, page 237-238. From Sheldon M Stern’s The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis, page50

 

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Knowing What is True About Myself

I have been stumped about how to write what I want to say. As soon as I complete one paragraph, I know that the opposite has to be addressed. Therefore, I am writing “in conversation” across my paradoxes.

I am a better partner in diverse collaborative ventures when I know for myself if I am acting in integrity or if I am caught in racism.

Who but me can know what is at work within my words or behavior?

To even suggest that I have to take responsibility for myself and personally know what is true about my racism feels risky. Like many other white skinned people, it took a long time for me to notice the profound bias towards whiteness in my nation and, thus, in myself. How will I know that I am not just blind to my racism?

I have a responsibility to know for myself. When I am buffeted around with every accusation and assumption, abdicating my responsibility to know what is true about my actions, I have nothing on which to build a partnership.

But what if I am unaware that my action is a result of donning my white-colored glasses and my words or actions are actually racist and out of alignment with my values?

I am responsible for seeking out a broader picture of history, one that includes the silenced voices. I am responsible for knowing myself, outside of the distress of oppression. And for holding what I believe is true about me lightly, with openness to the possibility that I might be wrong.

It is true that white people for centuries have been oblivious to their racism. Why should my self-knowing hold any weight against such an overwhelming history?

When accusations come that something I said or did is racist, completely in line with the behavior of generations of other white folks like me, who am I to disagree? Maybe something is still lurking in the shadows, and the accusation just might be true.

I am not just one of a group of folks acting just like so many have acted before. I am a unique individual, in a world of unique individuals. It is disrespectful to lump everyone into a group, wiping out an individual’s unique humanity.

I’ve walked it both ways. In a nine-year cross race and class collaborative process, I have spent far too much time reacting to and wobbling whenever something I said or did was assumed by someone to be racist (or classist). I’ve reacted. I’ve become afraid and stepped back. I’ve looked at all of the reasons the accusation was or wasn’t true. In the midst of that swirl, I’ve stepped out of partnership with the collective and slowed down our process.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I learned to listen, really listen, to the assumptions about my actions. I’ve honestly asked myself what was true about me and what wasn’t. Sometimes it was an opportunity for self-correction. Sometimes, however, it was a time to claim what was true about me.

Always open for new revelations, when I stand clear in what was true about me I participate in relationships in a way that allows me to stay fully engaged in the process, bringing my own thinking and intuition to the conversation as one part of the whole.

Waking up and stepping outside of my personal and the cultural distress of oppression isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible either. It does require me to take a huge amount of personal responsibility. I will stumble from time to time. But walking this paradox keeps my feet on the path of truth.

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Fearless in a Time of Fear: Loving in a Time of Hate

skyFall fearlessly into love.* That may sound like a very weak way to stand steady in our world today, but it is the only way that makes sense to me.

Our divisions are too deep and old for lashing out with hatred and disrespect. Something much bolder, more impossible, is required. For me, response starts with a roar from my heart as I seek to fall fearlessly into love.

For decades I’ve been waking up to the hidden and not so hidden destruction that lies within the heart of our beautiful nation. Too much of our unacknowledged history is in direct opposition to our nation’s bold assertion of freedom and justice for all:

…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [sic] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

(Declaration of Independence)

…in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

(Constitution of the United States)

A great vision pulses through the founding documents of our nation. Unable to embody that vision, our legacy has included dangerous irregularities within the heart of our nation. We need to become, in Rev. William Barber words, “moral defibrillators of our time” and restart our nation’s heart back to the just and steady rhythm of her founding values.

Reflecting in Loving Your Enemies, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote “… within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good …  And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every [person] and see deep down within them what religion calls ‘the image of God,’ you begin to love [them] in spite of.  … When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems.”

Fierce Love holds the possibility of systemic and individual transformation. Hatred, on the other hand, holds the seeds of destruction.

Fall fearlessly into love. That is the only way I know powerful enough to ensure that I land solidly on my feet, heart open and mind clear. From there I seek the courage to take seriously my partnership with Spirit, my global family and my nation and work for justice, general welfare and liberty for all.

Even when my knees shake or my heart wobbles.

 

*inspired by a story of Cynthia Bourgeault’s, found in “The Wisdom Way of Knowing,” pp. 70-71