tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49754665878219612972024-03-14T02:24:49.376-05:00Welcoming PathSupporting communities to create positive change
through reflective and transformative practices.David http://www.blogger.com/profile/07342073440141906227noreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-85440334894135903502023-09-25T13:20:00.005-05:002023-09-25T13:20:55.971-05:00A Brief Meditation on Impermanence, Grief, and What is Possible<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Everything is impermanent, inconstant, and subject to change.</i><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s hard truth, because the world can be shaped in ways that harm and hurt, and it can happen by degrees.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">So we grieve a world that has made oppression, hatred, injustice, and inequality feel so utterly normal.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Everything is impermanent, inconstant, and subject to change.</i><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s good truth, hopeful truth, because the world can be changed – for wellbeing and wonder and joy.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">So we fix our hearts and minds, hands and feet, on what is possible.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">We keep dreaming and working together to make a world full of well-being, love, justice, equity, and equality, not just possible, but utterly normal.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">We carry both the grief and the hope within us, as we go. And a new world blossoms within and around us. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSnfRd3L5Cylr7UB62lvrYEDB4t9sH91waiOAGKwJ962MPgufmi3YYVeuczSe6v9vBVzVjtw6JbsHCmprRtsZG2_KIpMhOQs3Ip6-3iUSC8c-gH4QFHu88248d0yCqonX8Ab7RB6wC5B-YyUyT0Dj91FFLrA3CIUzo8EH8-2WcHRnOXdlfd4nZWWb6NR0Z" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1096" data-original-width="1764" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSnfRd3L5Cylr7UB62lvrYEDB4t9sH91waiOAGKwJ962MPgufmi3YYVeuczSe6v9vBVzVjtw6JbsHCmprRtsZG2_KIpMhOQs3Ip6-3iUSC8c-gH4QFHu88248d0yCqonX8Ab7RB6wC5B-YyUyT0Dj91FFLrA3CIUzo8EH8-2WcHRnOXdlfd4nZWWb6NR0Z" width="320" /></a></div><i>Image: the unseen sun paints the clouds pink and orange as they float across a blue sky turning toward dusk; the silhouettes of trees form the horizon. </i><br /><br /></span></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-18936324857302039472023-08-26T20:28:00.006-05:002023-08-26T20:28:38.387-05:00(Still) Learning to Tell a Story<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I am currently in a time of transition. While I have never been particularly sentimental, a big part of my life has been taken up with reflective practice. So recently, I’ve been looking back as a way of looking forward, thinking about and learning from the last years. In particular, I've been spending time looking at writings from another recent time of transition, in 2015-2016. It has been nice to reconnect with aspirations and convictions I named then. For instance, it remains most important to me that we, as individuals and as communities, care for one another and our world. My reflective practices have value inasmuch as they integrate inner and outer transformation. I am interested in how cultural and religious beliefs and institutions help or hinder the development of social and ecological justice and lasting peace, and what we can learn from each other. I aspire to be open-hearted and willing to encounter truth and wisdom in each person and experience I meet, in resistance to the violent patriarchal, racist, capitalist fragmentation of our world and psyches, and to do this in community. <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;">
</span>That vision has stayed with me, but that is not by accident. It takes work to nourish these aspirations, especially when they are easily drowned out by other visions and voices. We cannot escape the narratives that surround us, stories told by those in power, in ways that preserve their power. And for those of us who had to, or still need to, recover from the old formulations of sin and shame have often worked to sap the life of our movements for social change through preoccupation with straining the gnats of personal guilt and trendy controversies while swallowing the camels of systemic injustice. It is an ongoing practice to fully embrace the stories and aspirations that stir our hearts. That is the challenge and the opportunity for any of us who take up the vision to come together, embody a beloved community, and ever more truly share peace with one another. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> These ideas were especially prominent in a reflection I wrote in April 2016, "Learning to Tell a Story."</span> It was a reflection on religious naturalism, storytelling as meaning-making, and the aspiration to be a community of justice and wholeness. But looking back, what stands out most to me is that attention to what stories we remember and how we remember them. We mainly do this effortlessly, unconsciously, because this is how we make sense of the world and our place in it, “imbuing the ordinary acts of life with purpose, even in the face of [our] own extraordinary smallness, or the intractability of systemic injustice, or the vastness of time and space.” (Re)turning to bell hooks’ description of “collective black self-recovery,” she encouraged us to know and remember that -</span><span></span><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> “Memory need not be a passive reflection, a nostalgic longing for things to be as they once were; it can function as a way of knowing and learning from the past, …. It can serve as a catalyst for self-recovery. … We need to keep alive the memory of our struggles against racism so that we can concretely chart how far we have come and where we want to go, recalling those places, those times, those people that gave a sense of direction.” (<i><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Yearning-Race-Gender-and-Cultural-Politics/hooks/p/book/9781138821750">Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics</a></i>, 40)</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This type of re-membering is important for all of us working for justice and peace, and especially important when the dominant voices in our society are telling a different story. Take, for instance, the popularity of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/08/22/country-musics-having-a-moment---understanding-the-hits-controversies-and-records-broken/?sh=526d3b52699c">this summer’s controversial country music hits</a>, such as Jason Aldean’s “Try that in a Small Town” and Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.” There are plenty of analyses out there that address these songs, so I won’t take that up here. Instead, let’s note how they carry lyrics and images that resonate with people, that help make sense of the world while tapping their toes. But while Anthony’s song title takes aim at wealthy politicians, he also repeats harmful stereotypes, singing: “Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare.” He manages to shame both receiving food assistance and being fat, two easy narratives that are often used to shift blame and attention away from systems of economic injustice. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How does such a song sound to the people actually affected by those injustices? In one response to Anthony’s song, Hannah Anderson shared her experiences in <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/august-web-only/oliver-anthony-song-rich-men-north-richmond-love-neighbor.html">her recent article at <i>Christianity Today</i></a>. Her husband was a pastor and her family was, in her words, “the epitome of conservative values.” But they still struggled financially, working hard and still going hungry. She described the mixed relief that came when they accessed SNAP (<a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program">Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program</a>). “At first, a weight lifted from our shoulders,” she wrote. But a new weight replaced it - shame: “I felt it creep in the first time I used my EBT card, and it grew each time I ran into a congregant or neighbor at the store. … Today, a decade later, I can see how shame dominated my experience of SNAP … .” The real shame was that a family couldn’t afford to eat, but our society has persistently avoided wrestling with that story in favor of blaming the poor, so that a mother like Anderson felt compelled to keep their situation and suffering a secret. Stories are powerful, even if they are false. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>While a lot of attention has been given to the country music hits carrying these kinds of messages, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23842173/oliver-anthony-rich-men-controversy-morgan-wallen-jason-aldean-small-town-political">Aja Romano, writing for <i>Vox</i></a>, also pointed out that other musical groups “may not have the sound of country music, but they seem to have tapped the same well of reactionary extremist conservative ire.” As an example, Romano described the music of Tom MacDonald and Adam Calhoun, whose lyrics are filled with “virulent racist, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and particularly hateful anti-trans lyrics.” I looked at a few of their songs, and they came across to me as telling a particular story crafted especially for aggrieved white people. For example, in “American Flags,” they raise an alarm: “My people love this country and we’re under attack … If you man enough, come stand with us, take USA back.” And, as Romano noted, the lyrics specifically cast vulnerable communities as the Big Bad Guys. For example, in back-to-back lines they target transgender people first, including all of us nonbinary/gender-expansive folks: “Never hit a lady but it’s pretty hard to tell if you’re a girl / Or a they, them, theirs, these, that, those.” They then immediately pivot to people who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality: “I ain’t never gonna take a knee for the anthem, smack ‘em / I don’t give a damn, can’t stand ‘em.” <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>And when I say target, this is both symbolic and literal, because the song is also an anthem to gun violence: “Ima shoot at somethin’ / Why you think we own these guns? So we can just go do some huntin’?” That song, by the way, hit number 1 this summer “<a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/tom-macdonald-american-flags-billboard-number-one/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CAmerican%20Flags%E2%80%9D%20reached%20number%20one,%2FHip%2DHop%20Digital%20Songs.">on two Billboard music charts - Rap Digital Songs, R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Songs</a>.” Its popularity is a reflection of the stories that people tell to explain their suffering and anger, with lyrics that resonate. In turn, the success of these songs reinforces those narratives. <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23842173/oliver-anthony-rich-men-controversy-morgan-wallen-jason-aldean-small-town-political">As Romano wrote</a>, “none of this is about country artists … ultimately, none of it is about the music at all.” And at least part of what this is about is channeling outrage to re-establish cultural narratives that favor a specific type of people, to the exclusion of anyone they label as a threat - anyone who isn’t “My people.” <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We have witnessed a similar trend in teaching history. We’ve talked several times about this over the years, but Ron DeSantis has really gone the extra mile this summer. Last month, while speaking with reporters, he described the ongoing revision of the history of slavery, saying that the curriculum is “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/30/desantis-slavery-florida-standards/">probably going to show” how “some of the folks … eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life</a>.” To put it another way, DeSantis claimed that slavery benefited at least some people, acting like a job training program that helped them in a later career. This is a horrible retelling of the history of slavery, diminishing its horrors and inherent violence. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Thankfully, many folks have been pushing back, including Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is also “the only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate”. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/30/desantis-slavery-florida-standards/">While campaigning in Iowa, Scott said</a>:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom was slavery, … . There is no silver lining … . … What slavery was really about [was] separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating. So, I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that.”</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span> Unfortunately, <a href="https://twitter.com/DeSantisWarRoom/status/1684971885690331146?s=20">DeSantis doubled down</a> during his own stop in Iowa, replying that: “part of the reason our country has struggled is because D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left.” He offered his version as a defense, saying: “The way you lead is to fight back against the lies, is to speak the truth. So I'm here defending my state of Florida against false accusations and against lies. And we’re going to continue to speak the truth.”<br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>I have not understood exactly what lies are being told, when the reports about Florida’s curriculum are largely just that – reports. Perhaps this is why Jamelle Bouie, writing in the <i>New York Times</i>, titled his July 28, 2023 article “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/28/opinion/desantis-slavery-florida-curriculum-history.html">Ron DeSantis and the State Where History Goes to Die</a>.” Bouie insightfully appealed to David Blight’s observation that: “A segregated society demanded a segregated historical memory. The many myths and legends fashioned out of the reconciliationist vision provided the superstructure of Civil War memory, but its base was white supremacy in both its moderate and virulent forms.” Bouie concluded: </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“The history we teach to students in the present is as much about the country we hope to be as it is a record of the country we once were. A curriculum that distorts the truth of past injustice is meant, ultimately, for a country that excludes in the present.”</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So what are we to do? We return to hooks’ insight that “Memory … can function as a way of knowing and learning from the past, …. It can serve as a catalyst for self-recovery.” In other words, we need to tell our stories, sing our songs, and re-member our communities. <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/august-web-only/oliver-anthony-song-rich-men-north-richmond-love-neighbor.html">Anderson reflected on how vital this kind of re-telling can be</a>: </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Though I now realize my shame was unfounded, that did not make it any less real or any less harmful to my soul. And while none of us can singlehandedly dismantle the larger narratives that encouraged it, each of us can make small adjustments to ensure we’re not reinforcing those patterns. / We can take care of how we speak about programs that provide needed care for the poor, … . We can extend the freedom we enjoy in our own food choices to those who are dependent on social safety nets. … though we may differ in our political preferences, we can love our neighbors as we love ourselves.” </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Loving our neighbors as ourselves” is one of these transformative narratives in a society drenched with images and encouragement to hate and kill, to take a gun and “shoot at somethin’.” But that means that this is another commitment that requires constant practice. In everyday life, it can be necessary to just shrug off the reality that millions of people are daydreaming of shooting you and the people you love. But the hatred does cast a shadow. We are left with a terrible choice: silence and oppress ourselves, keep our heads down so we draw as little attention as possible and hopefully avoid becoming a literal target, or speak up, perhaps loudly and persistently, risking being misunderstood on one hand and objects of violence on the other. I think, for most of us, we navigate a blurry spectrum between these poles, trying to judge how much we can say and be ourselves at any given time. It’s tiring. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Which is why the community aspect is also so important, and why I found myself gratefully, and a little surprisingly, part of a church again when I entered those doors and heard Monty Python’s greatest hits. Please forgive me for quoting myself, but I think I got this right <a href="http://archives.spfccc.org/2016/04/learning-to-tell-story.html">back in 2016</a>, and it is good for me to hear it again: </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“We need communities, and we need to support communities, who care about justice, who understand systems of oppression and domination, to take up the pen, the brush, the stage, the drum, the microphone. We need all manner of art to help us think about these questions and stumble toward an answer. We need folk stories and historians. We need Role Playing Games. We need good friends and good conversations over cups of tea or on long walks. We need the singing of songs and the telling of tales. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“We need to learn to listen, to interrogate our own complicity with the way things are, so that we can resist. We need to learn to tell our own stories, to find out how we got here and what we really think, so that we can understand and then resist the ways in which we’ve been conditioned into acting a part that often contributes to oppression and marginalization of others. We need to listen to the stories of others, so we learn we are not alone, and so we can understand how our stories and the systems of domination intersect, and so we can push the boundaries of our own understanding. We need to read outside what is familiar to us, especially to read and listen at the margins when we have become accustomed to seeing the world according to the Powers that Be. And we need to be reminded of what’s gone before us, to be proud and celebrate and to be sad and grieve. We need to learn what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and why. In other words, we need to hear stories where we are … on the right side of justice and grace, discerning what to do next. And we need to hear the stories where we are … in desperate need of a painful change. … In the hearing and telling of stories, wisdom can be born in us, in our communities and as a community. But we have to pay attention. We have to listen not just to the stories, but for what they mean and how they change us. We can choose the stories we hear and the stories we live with attention to what we care about, with attention to kindness, justice, and community.” </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span> </span><span> </span>In this spirit, I want to close by offering a poem I wrote many years ago about leaving fundamentalist Christianity: </span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><u><span style="font-family: arial;"> A Sower Went Out</span></u></b></p><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> they always taught me</span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">that Jesus' story about the seeds</div><div style="text-align: center;">and the soils was about thinking</div><div style="text-align: center;">the right things, agreeing with</div><div style="text-align: center;">the right people, falling into line,</div><div style="text-align: center;">measuring goodness with compliance.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">but that's not how anything grows.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">the old prairies here knew better,</div><div style="text-align: center;">knew that the soil needed the plants</div><div style="text-align: center;">as much as the other way 'round,</div><div style="text-align: center;">knew that the life in the soil was</div><div style="text-align: center;">a community of living and dying,</div><div style="text-align: center;">of bugs and bacteria as well as</div><div style="text-align: center;">beautiful blooms opened to the sun,</div><div style="text-align: center;">knew that the good soil had roots</div><div style="text-align: center;">reaching down fourteen feet</div><div style="text-align: center;">so that there was always</div><div style="text-align: center;">a place to hold the rain, to hold</div><div style="text-align: center;">the life when the dry times came.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">you want to plant something</div><div style="text-align: center;">that will grow a hundredfold</div><div style="text-align: center;">in love and not in greed?</div><div style="text-align: center;">give up on tidy rows and telling</div><div style="text-align: center;">others what to do and think</div><div style="text-align: center;">and take a lesson from the</div><div style="text-align: center;">little earth that's left that we</div><div style="text-align: center;">haven't tried to squeeze for</div><div style="text-align: center;">profit or crush into submission.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">for when the human heart finds</div><div style="text-align: center;">itself in a place like that,</div><div style="text-align: center;">no one has to tell it what to do,</div><div style="text-align: center;">and no one can stop it from</div><div style="text-align: center;">giving forth its own small</div><div style="text-align: center;">offering of love, or grace,</div><div style="text-align: center;">or justice, or truth.</div><br /><span> </span><span> </span>This is our ongoing work. We live with the aspiration to love one another in a society that profits from our alienation; hoping for community in a society that encourages the dislocation of our relationships; and nourishing a commitment to love and justice in a society where everything and every one is disposable. We look to each other for courage and grace to transcend the ever-present poisons of hatred and greed, to cultivate a boundless love, and to embody that love in our everyday expressions of kindness and the sharing of life together. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>I am grateful to have added a few pages to the story of this community, to help transform the stories that dominate our society and to “turn it around, offer kindness instead of hate, and justice instead of a tired resignation to the way things are.” One organization I belong to has a banner that boldly reminds us that we will not stand idly by, that we can make a difference, and that “Our own, very earthly voices can call one another to a more beautiful and just and altogether wonderful way of life.” Thank you for everyone who helps create communities and cultures where anyone and everyone can do that. My heart has benefited from having the opportunity to be myself and give forth my own small offering of justice and love. </span><p></p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-71588160644599724332023-08-19T21:07:00.008-05:002023-08-19T21:23:46.231-05:00The Limits of Shame<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>Last June, I was participating in a workshop dedicated to racial justice and wholeness, especially designed for white folks. During a discussion session, one participant recommended harnessing the power of shame to move us in the direction of justice. For proof of the effectiveness of this approach, he mentioned a study on anti-cigarette smoking campaigns, and that the only effective campaigns were those that utilized shame. It felt like quite the leap to me to move from an anti-smoking campaign to anti-racist work, but, even if that application could be justified, I felt immediately curious and suspicious of how he was framing the data. <br /></span><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>My hesitation was twofold: both from my personal experience and my understanding of social science research. These spheres overlap, influence, and inform one another, but, for me, the personal experience came first. For those of you who have listened before, you already know that I grew up in what could be called a “chronically-shaming environment.” This was centered around my fundamentalist Christian community, especially when it came issues related to gender and sexuality. But the shame began earlier, before any awareness I could have of those particular topics. <a href="http://archives.spfccc.org/2022/10/transforming-contempt-into-compassion.html">As I’ve shared before</a>, </span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“… it felt like the concept of sin was weaponized against those who were outside of the dominant culture, because of who they were, what they believed, or how they behaved. You might have heard my story, for example, of how our pastor took us kids aside and had us pass around square cut nails and a crown of thorns (from locust tree branches), letting us poke our fingers and hands while he solemnly described how each of us murdered Jesus. ‘Even if everyone else had been perfect, Jesus still would have had to die this horrible death because of your sins. You put Jesus on the cross.’ It didn’t seem to make much of a difference to some of the kids, but it rather terrified me. I felt horrible for just being alive. As I grew up, anything I did that was outside of our religious community’s expectations could then be used to prove to me how sinful I was and how much I deserved to suffer for it.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>So shame was given to me as a lens through which to evaluate every thought, word, or action I took. I recognized my own first three decades of religious and cultural experiences in Dr. Alison Downie’s description of: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“the potential for Christian communities to create climates of chronic shame and cause religious trauma … . In this way, the religious teachings themselves, especially when communicated in chronically shaming environments, are traumatizing. In this approach, Christian religious trauma is not an added element to traumas of domestic, physical, or sexual abuse by a religious person or leader. Instead, the source of the trauma is formative experience of participating in Christianity.” (“<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/10/925">Christian Shame and Religious Trauma</a>”)</span></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Because it is formative, the shame became part of my identity: “I felt horrible for just being alive.” And because my very existence represented a constant temptation, a flirtation with evil or a descent into damnation, I struggled with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. This created a psychological situation where everything was – somehow and always – all my fault. As <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/10/925">Downie also points out,</a> “The most insidious aspect of Christian shaming is that it is routinely and consistently presented and justified as love.” And in my experience, shaming was done sincerely. That is, people truly believed that using shame in this way was an expression of their care. I do not doubt that the people who trained me in shame also felt affection for me, and believed they were acting in my best interest. After all, they likely were raised in a similar way, passing on a cycle of shame that alienates us from our own bodies and minds. Downie described the impacts, particularly on children when they “are taught that their experience of harm is not harm but an expression of love”: </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"</span><span style="font-family: arial;">Those formed to believe that violent harm is an expression of love are thereby prevented from the possibility of considering their harm as abuse. They already ‘know’ it is a demonstration of love. Shame can also be understood through a lens of hermeneutical injustice. In chronic Christian shame, those experiencing the pain of shame are also taught not to know what their bodies tell them, the truth of their own experience. This harm must be understood not only as deprivation of knowledge but as formation in a hermeneutical habitus of shame as a way of knowing encompassing all relation to self, others, world, and God.”</span></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Shame as a way of knowing” is a good description of my experience in fundamentalist Christianity. The familial and religious authorities in my life had always let me know that they were afraid that, in the absence of shame, we would indulge in all sorts of terrible behavior. This was the justification for shame as a way of knowing – it was always worth the price. Jesus may have died on the cross to rescue us from Hell, but it was shame that really saved us. We could not trust ourselves; we needed shame in order to know what was wrong and feel bad enough to not do it. Failing that, we needed shame in order to return to the official version of Truth after we - inevitably - failed. Turning again to <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/10/925">Downie’s description</a>: </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“the only knowledge of self permitted in chronic Christian shame is that which conforms to the religious authority which establishes truth. All else is condemned as either sinful or false. In such contexts, truth is always and only external. Truth is received by submission to authority, by conformity.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>This is my personal experience with shame. It dominated and could have destroyed my life. I wrestled with it. I resisted it. I eventually freed myself and found healing from it. But also, without a doubt, I was shaped by it. I had to devote years of intentional healing and growing to recognize the harm and abuse; to untangle shame from love and care; and to learn to extend that love and care to my body. I had to weed out every inclination and habit of shame “as a way of knowing,” so that the kindness, compassion, joy, and wisdom that also lived in my heart could be unburdened and become boundless.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"><span> </span><span> </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">So you can imagine the alarm bells that started ringing internally when I heard the well-meaning workshop participant advocate that we should utilize shame in our social justice movements and strategies. Still, I work hard to keep an open heart and mind, to listen to others. I realized that perhaps my experience of shame was not the only one, and I should at least practice due diligence and chase down the research he referred to. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for me to find analysis of the study he had mentioned, and the title of the article was already more nuanced: “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636189/">Shame-Based Appeals in a Tobacco Control Public Health Campaign: Potential Harms and Benefits</a>,” by Dr. Cati Brown-Johnson and Dr. Judith Prochaska. As a note, let me emphasize here that I will necessarily be discussing smoking cigarettes for the next few minutes, but what I hope we will be focused on is the role and function of shame.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>The authors frame their analysis by acknowledging that the possibility of using shame as a technique to control human behavior was worth exploring because of the high costs of smoking. <a href="https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/smoking-stereotype/">In the USA alone, almost 500,00 people die every year in smoking related deaths, and associated medical costs are almost $170 billion</a>. And <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636189/">as Brown-Johnson and Prochaska point out</a>, globally: </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide, responsible for 1 in 10 deaths globally (>5 million a year). Tobacco use adversely impacts not just smokers, but also those around them through secondhand smoke exposure. Given the significant personal and societal costs of tobacco use, any strategy to reduce smoking should be considered.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The primary study given this consideration by the authors was a “tobacco control ad campaign” conducted by Amonini et al, which used focus groups and interviews with former smokers to identify and develop social isolation themes associated with smoking, such as “you feel like a ‘leper.’” They used those themes to create and test an ad prototype to discourage people from smoking, and finally launched a public campaign using a shame-based ad. The results showed some promise: “a majority of respondents self-reported in the first several weeks that they reduced cigarette consumption (36%), attempted cessation (16%), or quit (2%).” So this was the basis for the recommendation I heard in June: shame works! Or, at least, shame kind of works! Shame was at least correlated with a desire to change, and so, it would be easy to conclude, we can – and probably should! – use shame as a strategy in our social justice movements. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>But this is not the whole story, and we thankfully do not even get through the introduction before <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636189/">the authors wisely recommend caution</a>: </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“While suggestive as a promising public health approach, the potential for harm associated with an emphasis on shame also bears consideration, particularly when in relation to a behavior sustained through addiction and increasingly concentrated among marginalized groups.” </span></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is a crucial point. At least in industrialized countries, the people most likely to smoke “are largely characterized by lower income and education, ethnic minority status, and co-occurring mental and physical health disorders.” Anyone who belongs to a marginalized community will likely recognize this. As John Sharpe observed in “<a href="https://westcoastrecoverycenters.com/the-tie-between-oppression-and-addiction/">The Tie Between Oppression and Addiction</a>,” “oppression is often a traumatic experience,” easily leading to “feelings of inferiority and loss of self”. And since oppressive systems are usually intractable, and chronic systems lead to chronic symptoms, they bring significantly increased risks of both mental health issues and substance use disorders. “Through repeated or severe instances of oppression,” Sharpe writes, “mental distress increases and the likelihood of using substances to cope also increases.” <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So what happens when a public health campaign, with the best intentions, weaponizes shame in order to influence people to stop smoking? The shame can act to reinforce prejudice against already vulnerable groups. In this case, campaigns shaming smoking will, in turn, largely impact marginalized communities, both in how they view themselves and how others view them. Internally, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636189/">Doctors Brown-Johnson and Prochaska pointed out</a> that shame-based public health campaigns can lead to adverse effects, such as isolation, hiding tobacco use from others, and increased stigma when relapsed. Although most smokers experienced social stigma (such as “glaring looks” and insults), in a small amount of cases, smokers even experienced blatant discrimination, such as being denied employment or housing. So we have a situation where marginalized groups are most likely to use tobacco, and, thanks to shame, tobacco use can then be used as further justification for their marginalization. As Brown-Johnson and Prochaska wrote, “interventions that risk stigmatizing could backfire by exacerbating health disparities rather than reducing them.” <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">One example of this kind of backfiring can be found in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.14696">a 2019 study by Clarissa Cortland, Janessa Shapiro, Iris Guzman, and Lara Ray</a>. Their double-blind, randomized trial exposed one group of smokers to a control message and another to a message that relied on negative stereotypes of smoking. Both groups were given a financial incentive, earning a small amount of money for each minute they refrained from smoking. But instead of being discouraged from smoking by negative stereotypes, those participants tended to light up earlier in the test and showed that: “Messages that elicit negative stereotypes of smokers operated as ‘smoking-promoting messages’ in the context of our controlled laboratory investigation.” <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"><span> </span> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Approaches to working for social change that rely on shame and humiliation, then, tend to sacrifice long-term well-being for getting short-term results. This was the case in the “formative shaming” that I experienced, which traded my long-term well-being for controlling my behavior in the short-term. But shame-based approaches also carry a significant risk of backfiring, actually encouraging the behavior they seek to control. They can even lead to making a conflict more intractable over time, sometimes reinforcing the view of another party’s ill-will, leading to resentment, and sometimes reinforcing the view that all the worst things we believe about ourselves are actually true. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Understanding this can help us move forward. It is a reality that humans are capable of experiencing shame, so it is vital that we develop skills, resources, and cultures that help us respond to shame in a way that heals instead of harms. One aspect of this that is increasingly emphasized by social scientists is to recognize the differences between shame and guilt. For example, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-underpinnings-and-impacts-of-shame/">Annette Kämmerer, in her article “The Scientific Underpinnings and Impacts of Shame</a>,” wrote that: <br /></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“People often speak of shame and guilt as if they were the same, but they are not. Like shame, guilt occurs when we transgress moral, ethical or religious norms and criticize ourselves for it. The difference is that when we feel shame, we view ourselves in a negative light (‘I did something terrible!’), whereas when we feel guilt, we view a particular action negatively (‘I did something terrible!’). We feel guilty because our actions affected someone else, and we feel responsible.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is a lot to unpack here. First, we need to go out of our way to identify our social norms, with awareness to how those norms impact our personal and collective wellbeing. Many of our social norms run on automatic; we’ve inherited certain beliefs and behaviors, without examining how those beliefs and behaviors impact us. This is where our ongoing work of critical social theory and similar tools comes into play, and that is essential for our long-term wellbeing. Our norms need to reflect our mutual commitment to human and ecological thriving, and they need to be based and adapted to our best scientific and creative knowledge of how we can all thrive. Continuously changing social norms to align with human potential for wisdom and compassion is an essential part of healing and preventing the harm that comes from shame. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But along the way, we also need to transform how we respond to when social norms are broken. Using shame as a coercive tool to control others is a social norm that itself must be transformed. We need to learn how to work with shame with understanding instead of blame, with kindness instead of coercion, and with healing instead of humiliation. This is slower work that requires a lot of patience, but is worth it if we want healthy, transformative communities. As <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-scientific-underpinnings-and-impacts-of-shame/">Kämmerer pointed out</a>,</span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“parents, teachers, judges and others who want to encourage constructive behavior in their charges would do well to avoid shaming rule-breakers, choosing instead to help them to understand the effects of their actions on others and to take steps to make up for their transgressions.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Where there is hurt, we want to heal. By practicing awareness, we can become sensitive to when and how shame is an obstacle to that healing. When we feel shame, that can be an opportunity for reflection:</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Why do I feel shame? What social norm have I broken?</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">•</span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Is this social norm for my and our collective well-being? </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">•</span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">If yes, then how can I shift to feeling empathy? How can I work with guilt in a way that heals, instead of getting caught in shame?<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">•</span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">If no, if this social norm is against my and our collective well-being, how can I recenter myself in a new norm? How can I connect with an aspiration that better aligns with mutual care and thriving? </span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>For social norms that don’t support our personal and collective well-being, we can also ask: </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What behaviors is this shame seeking to control? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Who benefits from my shame and humiliation? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What changes in attention and intention could help shift social norms toward wellbeing, justice, and peace? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What resources, support, skills, communities, and movements could I connect with in order to participate in that transformation? </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>While shame and humiliation are part of the human experience, we should not promote them or build our communities and movements around them. Instead, let’s focus on becoming places where we learn to care for ourselves and one another, with healing for when we hurt and celebration for when we thrive. Wisdom and compassion as a “way of knowing” will serve us better for creating social norms and communities where we can learn to take care of our personal and collective well-being; where we can be and feel safe; and where we can nourish our creativity and joy. </span></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-14138214087914092072023-07-28T13:08:00.005-05:002023-07-28T13:11:05.274-05:00“Our Humble Return”: Knowing our Capacities, Boundaries, and Aspirations<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I’ve spent a significant amount of my life supporting human beings navigate through and heal from difficult and distressing experiences: as a minister, mediator, conflict coach, peer counselor, support group facilitator, educator, and friend. And after spending tens of thousands of hours over decades of listening, I can wholeheartedly confirm what you already know: having healthy relationships with healthy boundaries in our unhealthy society is hard work. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>One of my favorite <a href="https://disorient.co/setting-boundaries/">descriptions of boundaries comes from Dr. Helena Liu</a>: </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“</span><b style="font-family: arial;">the framework in which we take responsibility for our own emotions and actions and relinquish responsibility for the emotions and actions of others. They are fundamental to leading healthy and happy lives.</b><span style="font-family: arial;">” Importantly, Liu notes that these are living spaces, “dynamic and flexible”; the more in-tune we are to our needs and circumstances, the more we can customize our boundaries to the moment. At certain times in our lives, or in certain relationships, we may relax or strengthen our boundaries. In other words, and if I may borrow from a well-known observance about the Sabbath, boundaries are made for human wellbeing; humans are not made for boundaries. </span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span><span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span>Dr. Liu calls boundaries “the necessary spaces” between us, and names five common aspects of life where we experience and need healthy boundaries. <br /></span><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>emotionally</i> (to mutually know and honor our feelings, rather than “reject or deny” them); </span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>mentally</i> (to mutually know and honor our values and beliefs, rather than to “impose … thoughts and opinions” on ourselves or others); </span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>energetically</i> (to mutually know and honor our time and energy, so that we can spend our lives aligned to our aspirations);</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>physically</i> (to mutually know and honor our bodies, their safety and wellbeing); and</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>materially</i> (to mutually know and honor the possessions that are in our care). </span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>You probably noticed that I’ve taken the liberty to frame each of these aspects with the phrase, “to mutually know and honor … .” At the risk of sounding obvious, healthy boundaries in relationships arise when people take the time to understand their own and learn about the other person’s boundaries, and then work together to treat each other in ways that honor both. As simple as this sounds, there are many places where things can go wrong. Maintaining healthy boundaries depends on each person having the skills, resources, support, willingness, and dedication for things that require a lot of effort, such as self-reflection, communication, listening, creative problem-solving, assertiveness, and flexible decision-making. Add to this a commitment to ethics and self-restraint, and we begin to see how complicated boundaries can be. This is also why so many of us choose to rely on cultural and relational scripts to do the heavy lifting. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Yet what are we to do when those cultural and relational scripts are not healthy? The world as we often experience it actively undermines our wellbeing and our ability to thrive. For too many of us, we are trained to be alienated from our own bodies; to actively ignore our needs; and to then view the emotional pain of this alienation as proof of how we are somehow terrible human beings. Unhealthy relational and cultural patterns, especially abusive ones, also condition us to accept this kind of alienation as normal. Add on layers of marginalization and oppression that comes from the kinds of injustice that are baked into our society and culture, and the cards are often stacked against us. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">My friend and colleague, Caryn, illustrates these kinds of differences by comparing the living habitat of a beaver dam to a rigid, fixed system like a concrete dam and channel. Beaver dams are part of and responsive to their ecosystem, not separate from it. They slow and filter water flow, help recharge groundwater levels, and create wetland habitats that support bird and amphibian lives, including many endangered and threatened species that depend on wetlands. In contrast, human-built dams are associated with erosion, trapped sediments, and habitat destruction. They often lead to species extinction, and their reservoirs are typically populated by non-native, invasive species. It’s a powerful image of the difference between boundaries that are life-affirming, that make sense of and support our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, and boundaries that are imposed, rigid, and life-denying. For many of us, we have been living with boundaries that have been shaped and defined by oppressive systems that do not have our wellbeing in mind. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">We can reflect on much of our activism and movements for social change in relation to our work to insist on our humanity and gain some level of self-determination in our lives, to establish our own boundaries that do center our personal and collective wellbeing. But when we decide to act, to become agents of change resisting and transforming unjust systems and cultures, then we encounter another way for our boundaries to be tested and stretched, as we balance what needs to be done with what we can do. And with our society’s obsession with productivity, even our most skillful activism and balanced boundaries can be haunted by the question, “have I done enough?” There are thousands of temptations, every day, for us to ignore our boundaries and push past the limits of our wellbeing. Everywhere we turn, we run into the traps of cynicism, indifference, despair, fatigue, burnout, and powerless rage. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">When it comes to boundaries and oppression, it is also important to explicitly note how boundaries and privilege interact. <a href="https://www.climateemergence.co.uk/blog/on-boundaries">Jo Musker-Sherwood expressed the tension</a> in this way: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “we don’t have much of a positive culture around ‘no’, and that the number of options available to us in saying ‘no’ can very depending on our levels of privilege. / Which boundaries are respected are in part determined by the strength of preference on either side, but also by the balance of power. So boundaries are personal, but they are also deeply political.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In other words, when it comes to unmasking, resisting, and transforming injustice, establishing a boundary is often a defiant act of asserting our humanity. For this reason, working with boundaries can be a healing and empowering experience, especially for any of us navigating oppressive systems, recovering from abusive experiences, and unlearning internalized oppression and dominance. This is wonderful, but this also means that marginalized people are often – and again – carrying an extra load. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>For example, <a href="https://disorient.co/setting-boundaries/">Dr. Liu notes how racist tropes work like this</a>, with Black women expected to have an “infinite reserve of inner strength” and Asian and Middle Eastern women expected to be “‘naturally’ subservient and … available at the beck and call of others’ demands.” The result is: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Integral to the work of setting and maintaining boundaries is recognizing the sexist and racist assumptions that set unreasonable expectations on women of color. We need to do the ongoing work of decolonizing our minds and learn to detach from these harmful assumptions both in our expectations of others and our expectations of ourselves.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span><a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/boundaries-important-bipoc-mental-health-234527347.html">Rheeda Walker, a psychologist and professor at the University of Houston, similarly points out </a>that BIPOC “communities disproportionately carry high levels of burden with less access to education, housing, economic and political opportunities while shouldering more violence and disparities in health and well-being.” This pushes resilience to its edges, where we find ourselves overwhelmed and “as if we cannot take anymore, mentally.” Establishing boundaries comes with recognizing our limits and caring enough about ourselves to believe our wellbeing is worth protecting. <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/boundaries-important-bipoc-mental-health-234527347.html">Walker recommends reflective questions</a> to help us track with those limitations, so that we can affirm our worth, recognize when we are being overwhelmed, and take steps to come back to balance:<br /></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Am I behaving in ways that are inconsistent with my character? Am I snapping at friends or my children and feeling regretful about doing so? Do I resent having to get out of bed in the morning? Have I lost my sense of joy and peace?”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yet because our society is set up to expect and benefit from their exploitation, marginalized people often experience pushback when they do establish boundaries. This means that, not only is it essential for members of marginalized and oppressed communities to develop healthy boundaries, it is also an act of resistance against systems and cultures that are organized around our exploitation. Boundary-making helps us recover our agency, but it may also expose us to pushback and even attacks, especially from people who benefit from our marginalization. <a href="https://disorient.co/setting-boundaries/">Dr. Liu links boundaries, self-care, and “showing up for others”</a>: </span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Caring for ourselves is also a cornerstone of sustainable activism, where we can sustain our passion and commitment while not succumbing to exhaustion and despair. … Sometimes if you advocate for yourself when people are used to compliance from you, they will be taken aback. / We must ultimately remember that when we give and give and give without any regard for our own needs, we <i>will </i>burn out. When we work ourselves to exhaustion, we won’t be able to give anything to anybody.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is a good reminder that boundaries are also about honoring our personal and collective limitations. Anyone actively involved in trying to make the world a better place has felt the pressures to push past our limitations, abandon boundaries, and sacrifice our well-being and aspirations in the name of a cause. While it is true that sometimes we may strategically and intentionally place our needs to the side to deal with a crisis, it is not sustainable or healthy to do so over the long-term – for ourselves or our movements. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>If we need a devastating reminder of just how true this is, we can reflect on how our current ecological crisis and the urgency of climate change arises out of our humanity’s reckless refusal to honor the earth’s boundaries. Climate change and environmental injustice are both a reality and a symbol of the harm that arises when we ignore boundaries and balance. <a href="https://www.climateemergence.co.uk/blog/on-boundaries">Musker-Sherwood helpfully makes this connection</a>, and names the remedy: <br /></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “It is precisely in our difficulties respecting boundaries that we have found ourselves facing the consequences of an overstretched planet, and it is therefore in our humble return to the natural rhythm of giving and receiving, of action and rest, that we can find healing personally and globally.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>But this also means that boundaries are about accountability. The healthiest boundaries are meaningless if we don’t know how to practice them; recognize when we are out of balance, being harmed or harming another; and adjust course toward healing and growing. One of the important essays I’ve encountered on this topic is Shannon Perez-Darby’s “The Secret Joy of Accountability” (in <i><a href="https://www.akpress.org/revolutionstartsathome.html">The Revolution Starts at Home</a></i>). Writing in the context of recovering from domestic violence, she describes how an abusive relationship narrowed the choices available to her and eroded her agency and self-determination: “The solution to breaking a pattern of power and control that limits choices lies in an increased ability to act powerfully and make choices on your own behalf.” (105-106). “Relationships,” she wrote, “are made of tiny moments of intention and choice.” (103) Boundary work brings our intention and attention to these tiny moments, helping us recognize both woundedness and strength, and our need for both “self-determination and safety” and accountability. Perez-Darby’s description of this helps capture it as a living process of healing and growing:<br /></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“I define (self) accountability as a process of taking responsibility for <i>your</i> choices and the consequences of those choices. … In a process of self-accountability, this reconciliation isn’t dependent on another person’s involvement, but instead engages with our own sense of values and what is important to us. In the work of self-accountability, we are constantly striving to align our actions and our values, knowing it’s likely they will never be exactly the same. When there’s a gap in that alignment we can reflect on what choices we would need to make in the future so our actions are more in line with who we want to be.” (110-111) </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This brings us full circle, back to the <a href="https://disorient.co/setting-boundaries/">Dr. Liu’s description of boundaries</a> as: “<b>the framework in which we take responsibility for our own emotions and actions and relinquish responsibility for the emotions and actions of others.</b>” This relinquishment does not mean letting go of community; instead, we are cultivating community in ways that give us each the support, resources, and care we need to “take responsibility for our own emotions and actions.” Like the beaver’s dam, our healthy boundaries help create a life-giving habitat of mutual care and support. Perez-Darby calls it “creating the conditions for loving each other the very best way we know how – beautifully, fully, and as people who can act powerfully and make choices on our own behalf.”<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">And, at least for me, it is this kind of vision that makes the hard work of healthy boundaries more than a psychological routine, more even than an act of resistance, but a creative practice suffused with joy, love, and hope. </span></p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-54453832292725877952023-07-15T21:14:00.002-05:002023-07-15T21:14:24.448-05:00Empty Promises: From Consumerism to Community<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I grew up in a working class family, with an emphasis on community and helping each other during times of need. Those of you who have listened to my reflections in the past know that these experiences were far from perfect, especially when it came to understanding and resisting oppressive systems, from racism to misogyny. Despite these limitations, it was still in my working class family that I received the first tools for deciphering this mess of injustice and oppression that we’ve collectively come to accept as normal. My father especially extolled the importance of labor and unions, as well as studying and understanding history. And even the conservative religious community that hurt and alienated me so thoroughly, also gave me a lens to understand justice, peace, and a vision of healthy, happy society beyond the long reach of exploitation, violence, and inequality. </span></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I held these values in tension with the world around me. As a small child, everyone I knew was part of this working class, and our economic experiences were not that different. Outrageous wealth mainly existed as a plot in books and movies, but I didn’t have any personal experience of it. When I went to junior high, I met and befriended people whose economic world was different than my own. Suddenly, I felt a social pressure to desire things that I had never wanted before.</span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> I took extra odd jobs to buy golf clubs (a sport I was both terrible at playing and couldn’t afford to play) and my first pair of branded shoes (white Nike cross-trainers with an orange swoosh). I copied a friend by buying a poster of a huge house with a four-car garage, with each open door revealing a different luxury car parked inside. I bought a CD player and joined those mail-order music clubs so I could own the most popular music of the day. I even felt like something was missing in my life because I couldn’t afford to buy a designer leather jacket, the must-have fashion item of my friend group. My family had never been in poverty; my dad had a stable factory job with good benefits, and we had the good luck of being relatively healthy and accident-free. But when I visited friends at their big suburban homes, I began to see and feel the influence of a whole other way of life in the United States. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">When I encountered the academic study of economics at university, the first lecture of the first day of class introduced economics as “the study of how people satisfy unlimited wants with limited resources.” Our professor sped through the choices we have for dealing with this scarcity. Using resources wisely held some importance to her, but she told us it was not very practical. Reducing our unlimited wants was basically dismissed out of hand. After all, one of the basic traits of being human was to never be satisfied and this, she stressed, was really a virtue. Insatiable greed is the driving force of creativity, innovation, and productivity. So we were left with only one real option, which would be the focus of the class: maximizing economic growth. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">What this emphasis amounted to was a romanticization of economic growth, or growth for the sake of growth. At the individual level, the economy would be sustained by everyone always envying those above them in the social order, their envy inspiring more and more consumption. At the macro level, the economy would be sustained by constant expansion: new resources to extract, new labor to exploit, new technology to develop, and new consumers to entice. In both cases, contentment was the enemy. And while my professor spoke about meeting people’s needs, she wasn’t describing an economics centered around care, community, or human thriving. Humans mainly existed for the purpose of fueling the economic machine, which must be fed, at all costs. If we allowed it to falter, everything would collapse. In that world, a certain amount of economic injustice, of exploitation and inequality, was a small price to pay to save civilization. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I didn’t have a word for it at the time, but I was being taught a neoliberal approach to economics. First coined in 1938 by such economists as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, neoliberalism became the favorite ideology of the very wealthy. The version I received at my conservative Christian university espoused competition as the highest value. The market is the ultimate arbiter of who succeeds and fails, who lives and dies. The good citizen is the good consumer. Democratic choice is freedom to choose what to buy and what to sell. And anything that limits competition is an enemy of freedom, such as taxes, ethical and environmental regulations, public services, labor unions, and collective bargaining. Everything is an opportunity for profit and consumption, so everything must be privatized. Even inequality is seen as the result of merit. In a neoliberal version of the world, an unrestrained market makes sure everyone gets what they deserve. If you are rich, you earned it. If you are poor, you just need to work harder, hustle harder, innovate harder, and exploit every moment, circumstance, and person you can to get ahead. If you don’t, then that’s on you. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s historical context for the rise of neoliberalism. For example, the real threat of totalitarianism and fascism made arguments associating social democracy with totalitarian regimes sound more plausible. That suspicion carried over to policies, such as public assistance programs championed by Roosevelt’s New Deal, the bureaucracies that administered them, and the taxes that funded them. Culturally, another shift had been gaining momentum in the late 1800s, and which continues to play a key role today. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>William Leach, in his book <i><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/98859/land-of-desire-by-william-r-leach/">Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture</a></i>, described the emergence of consumerism following the Civil War. American capitalism produced “a distinct culture, unconnected to traditional family or community values, to religion in any conventional sense, or to political democracy.” Its culture was oriented around business, “with the exchange and circulation of money and goods at the foundation of its aesthetic life and of its moral sensibility.” Its prominent features, Leach explained, were fourfold: “acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society.” (3)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Leach saw the roots of this transition in American and European history, particularly in the religious mythos of many Christians. “For generations,” he wrote, “America had been portrayed as a place of plenty, a garden in which all paradisiacal longings would be satisfied.” (4) By the 1900s, the literal, millennial promises of Jesus’ second coming and the New Jerusalem were “being transformed, urbanized and commercialized”. People were increasingly enticed focus on “personal satisfaction,” and “the cult of the new” made certain that they always had something newer, better, improved, to satisfy those desires. “Innovation became tied to the production of more and more commodities,” Leach explained. Fashion appropriated folk designs, “reducing custom to mere surface and appearance.” In fact, Leach called this “the most radical aspect of this culture, because it readily subverted whatever custom, value, or folk idea came within its reach.” Although Science was often seen as a threat to traditional ways of life, it was “not intrinsically hostile to custom or tradition or religion. Market capitalism was hostile; no immigrant culture – and, to a considerable degree, no religious tradition – had the power to resist it, as none can in our own time.” (5)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Parallel to this movement was “the democratization of desire.” Around the second half of the 19th century, rapid industrialization brought profound cultural and social changes, perhaps most powerfully symbolized in the shift away from owning and controlling land toward owning and controlling capital. And though inequality continued, and even increased, industrialization made it possible for people to imagine and desire more than they had ever dreamed of before. Leach summarized the argument of John Bates Clark, an influential economist: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“despite the ‘vast and ever-growing inequality’ of wealth in America, democracy could be ensured through the benign genius of the ‘free’ market, which allocated to Americans an infinitely growing supply of goods and services. … the new conception included … equal rights to desire the same goods and to enter the same world of comfort and luxury. American culture, therefore, became more democratic after 1880 in the sense that everybody … would have the same right as individuals to desire, long for, and wish for whatever they pleased.” (6)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">When considering how all-encompassing consumerism as a way of life has become, it’s a little strange to realize it is still relatively recent, and its success in dominating the socioeconomic terrain is astounding. Leach puts “democratizing individual desire” in contrast with other possibilities, choices we collectively had – and have – to democratize “wealth or political or economic power,” and concludes that the “market notion of democracy … was perhaps one of the new culture’s most notable contributions” to the modern world. But the consequences of its success included a focus on competition, an increase in anxiety, a denial of mortality, a growing dependence on money as a measure of all things, including morality, and the prominence of marketing and advertising. Consumerism produced alienation, and alienation perpetuated consumerism. As Leach wrote, “It fostered anxiety and restlessness and, when left unsatisfied, resentment and hatred.” (7)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Now, about a century after the victory of the democratization of desire, this competition has become more than familiar; it is simply the way things are for most of us, most of the time. Scarcity remains an important backdrop, especially as it interacts within oppressive systems. When we talk about consumerism, materialistic values, and scarcity, we must keep in mind how our wellbeing has been fragmented, individualized, and set against one another. Economic and social disparities create the constant experience or threat of deprivation.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Global-inequalities-Stanley">Andrew Stanley of the IMF rightly calls this “a lopsided world”</a> – “Some 10 percent of the world’s population owns 76 percent of the wealth, takes in 52 percent of income, and accounts for 48 percent of global carbon emissions.” And it is human choice that creates and maintains these disparities. As Dr. Richard Ryan wrote, </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“At this point in human history we have enough material resources to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate every living individual on Earth. Not only that: we have at the same time the global capacity to enhance health care, fight major diseases, and considerably clean up the environment. That such resources exist is not merely a utopian fantasy, it is a reality about which there is little serious debate. Nonetheless, a quick look around most any part of this warming globe tells us just how far we are from achieving any of these goals.” (ix, <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262611978/the-high-price-of-materialism/">The High Price of Materialism</a></i>)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>These disparities are both between and within nations, with “insulated pockets of wealth surrounded by ever widening fields of impoverishment.” This is the flowering of the democratized desire; in Ryan’s words, we live by the maxim, “to each according to his greed.” Selfishness and materialism have been transformed from “moral problems” to “cardinal goals of life” in increasingly “winner-take-all economies.” We are socialized into this system and successfully navigating it is key to survival. As Ryan pointed out, we are conditioned to evaluate our worth, our “well-being and accomplishment,” not by our integrity, “wisdom, kindness, or community contributions,” but in terms of what we “what we can buy. … it is not simply about having enough, but about having more than others do.” (ix-x)<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Dr. Tim Kasser, in <i><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262611978/the-high-price-of-materialism/">The High Price of Materialism</a></i>, examined the research about wealth, consumption, and happiness and concluded that materialistic values “lead people to organize their lives in ways that do a poor job of satisfying their needs, and thus contribute even more to people’s misery.” (28) Consumerism turns out to be good at perpetuating economic systems organized around endless growth, but bad at perpetuating economic systems organized around human and ecological wellbeing. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is because, once our basic needs are met, “increases in wealth do little to improve people’s well-being and happiness.” Instead, “when people follow materialistic values and organize their lives around attaining wealth and possessions,” those pursuits divert time, attention, energy, and resources away from “goals that could fulfill their needs and improve the quality of their lives.” In terms of wellbeing, these materialistic pursuits are essentially wastes of time. (47)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Part of this wastefulness is connected to the limited ability these pursuits have in meeting social-emotional needs like self-worth, connection, and contribution. When we achieve a goal, we usually expect our feelings of self-esteem and competence to increase. But this doesn’t happen with “materialistic goals,” which are instead correlated with lower self-esteem. With such an emphasis on comparison and competition, in a context of scarcity, our self-worth becomes dependent on both our “accomplishments and others’ praise.” In such a scenario, our sense of well-being is constantly threatened, and our “feelings of competence and worthiness are tenuous, even when they succeed.” Just as there are always more things to buy to make us happy, there are always more things to prove before we can feel secure. In Kasser’s words, “people with strong materialistic value orientations experience persistent discrepancies between their current states and where they would most like to be.” With these “chronic gaps between ideals and actual situations,” it’s difficult to feel good about ourselves and our relationships with others; it’s difficult to be happy. (47-48) <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">And that is our starting place. This has been our starting place, because there have always been those among us who resisted this reduction of life to buying and selling, consuming and craving, exploiting and hoarding. The ways forward are both disarmingly simple and overwhelmingly complicated. It is simple because we know the values and practices we need to cultivate: moving from competition to cooperation, consumption to care, craving to contentment, indifference to compassion, exploitation to regeneration, harming to healing, scarcity to abundance, and oppression to justice. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>But it is overwhelmingly complicated because our survival is so often, and in such complex ways, tied to this current system. Psychologically, we can’t help but get this message all the time, in advertisements, entertainment, job descriptions, expectations from family and friends, or even the inner voice that pushes us to prove our worth by what we produce and what we consume. Financially, we face the limitations of our debt; ever-increasing expenses in housing, transportation, and food; the looming costs of medical care and the threat of being without insurance; and future financial uncertainties related to social and political instability and the impacts of climate change. Socially, we find ourselves increasingly polarized, fragmented, and isolated, often without clear pathways or valuable experience for understanding and supporting our mutual wellbeing. Holding all this together, getting what we need to live, while also resisting the cruelties of consumer culture, is sometimes more than we can manage. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>So we need to be gentle and patient with ourselves and each other, even while we insist on moving forward. This means being honest about our own desires, goals, and consumption. We need to understand the ways that we relate to this buy-and-sell world, and how we relate to one another. This is not easy, especially for those at the economic margins. When the only jobs we can get don’t pay enough to live; when we work full time and the world still tells us to go harder, to hustle, and we will finally get what we deserve; it can be difficult to not reduce relationships to transactions. So, we also have to be honest about economic oppression and injustice. There can be no platitudes here. “Money can’t buy happiness” might be the message that financially secure people need to hear, but it doesn’t apply when we can’t afford rent and groceries. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Still, it is important to realize that being caught in consumer culture is one of the key dynamics that maintains our unjust economic systems. And our collective breaking-free from consumerism is an important part of transforming that larger system. If we can see that consumerism as a way of life is built on empty promises, that wellbeing lies instead in those beautiful, interwoven spheres of care, community, contentment, and human thriving, then that awareness is a powerful resource in itself. The scarcity that human society has assumed and then created is both real and a lie. It is real because our society has chosen to organize in ways that create those huge economic and social disparities. But it is a lie that those disparities, and the scarcity that everyone, especially those at the margins, experience, are inevitable or natural. They are not. We made them; they are ours. And we can change them. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Just as neoliberalism positioned itself as a preferred alternative in the 20th century, humans are working together to imagine alternatives to neoliberalism today. One example of this is <a href="https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/dp-a-safe-and-just-space-for-humanity-130212-en_5.pdf">Kate Raworth’s conceptualization of “doughnut economics,”</a> which uses the shape of a doughnut to create a framework that acknowledges and honors a social foundation (the inner boundary, representing human needs) and an environmental ceiling (the outer boundary, representing the limits of our planet’s health). Between these boundaries lies an abundant space for human safety and justice. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As <a href="https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/">Raworth explains</a>,</span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend … .”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>This vision is not far from the questions my economics professor asked, and dismissed. With the neoliberal emphasis on maximizing endless economic growth (instead of growing responsible, regenerative economic systems), we glossed over areas where we can make a big difference in creating societies that prioritize human and ecological wellbeing: wise use of resources and reducing human wants. An ethic of care brings a focus to those ways we can relate to resources wisely and gratefully, instead of as objects of extraction, exploitation, and commodification. We can learn to work with greed, to notice the ways we are encouraged to solve our problems with purchases, and to make intentional decisions that realign economic and social realities with mutual wellbeing. The more often we choose to understand and act with one another in terms of cooperation and care, instead of competition and craving, the more resources and skills we’ll have to live, enjoy life, and find ways, together, to change the world. </span></p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-43249507563608156932023-07-07T22:33:00.007-05:002023-07-07T22:34:19.281-05:00“Beyond Blaming and Agonizing”: Lovingkindness Practice in Ordinary Life<div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Last month,<a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2023/06/as-wide-as-world-cultivating-wisdom-and.html"> I reflected on the emerging research on the human capacity for violence and empathy</a>: </span></span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“… it is a question about the overall shape of our lives and our society. Will they be characterized by violence, relying on our capacities for coercion and aggression? Or will they be characterized by healthy social bonds, relying on our capacities for wisdom and compassion? Which action will be exceptional, violence or empathy? Which action will be normal, violence or empathy? We can understand both paths as strategies to protect ourselves, and recognize that both possibilities live within us. But the research also points out that these are diverging paths. We nourish one path at the expense of the other. … Each decision we make is something of a crossroads. Collectively and personally, our decisions answer the question: which direction do we choose?” <span><a name='more'></a></span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIG4yhwMXUk_zkyEolBIutA9DPES8Lq6dAly0c3jb7RZlvCYyFs5ul-HdZLglFV0g9CFymdl4dU5vRDXfFY84HFdgYR2b6iD1mW4GvSvDHQ1VckwxokefgFeyfBSf0NYnEKMEA7EEwi1Mk0NgEVNCwSVtuOLrn0txI8H-ygwNHvAuvYRhzZf4UiW_3GhZt" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIG4yhwMXUk_zkyEolBIutA9DPES8Lq6dAly0c3jb7RZlvCYyFs5ul-HdZLglFV0g9CFymdl4dU5vRDXfFY84HFdgYR2b6iD1mW4GvSvDHQ1VckwxokefgFeyfBSf0NYnEKMEA7EEwi1Mk0NgEVNCwSVtuOLrn0txI8H-ygwNHvAuvYRhzZf4UiW_3GhZt" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As an example of the kinds of tools and practices that can support this kind of personal and cultural transformation, I reflected a little on <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156028/pdf/nihms304992.pdf">a 2008 study led by Barbara Frederickson</a> that investigated the impacts of Buddhist metta (lovingkindness) meditation on participants. They documented slow and small changes that built up both intra- and interpersonal skills, through awareness and cultivation of the daily, mundane experiences of “love, joy, gratitude, contentment, hope, pride, interest, amusement, and awe.” Significantly, the study demonstrated that more positive emotions in themselves do not make life more fulfilling. Instead, “greater positive emotions help them build resources for living successfully.” When we work together to create conditions characterized by love, joy, gratitude, contentment, and the rest, human beings have a better chance to thrive. And lovingkindness meditation is one tool we have to support this thriving. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The most popular form of this meditation practice is to bring the heart and mind to focus on a simple aspiration for wellbeing, usually starting with oneself and then moving outward to loved ones, then strangers, then those we find more difficult to love, then to all beings, and then returning to oneself. A common formula is simply: </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://alokavihara.org/teaching/chanting/metta-song-from-sarah/">May I be filled with lovingkindness.</a></div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I be well.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I be peaceful and at ease.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I be happy. </div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji2hEo3n1Za78w8zWu1mHIrqr4PdGi7a8EczA0euSaLqlWmJyq2qlz9Hj4wyox3aocAtL63TCSMVcb43Pw6aqP3bDjL5SieoNGzQm1czuOfC142i_v4WkHYatL4b_ZCBdppSrOUABqTQ-mSvjiornDE6zOuHzPBNskKRM-C_TMs13m5FwoV1V0AKTWt72Z" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji2hEo3n1Za78w8zWu1mHIrqr4PdGi7a8EczA0euSaLqlWmJyq2qlz9Hj4wyox3aocAtL63TCSMVcb43Pw6aqP3bDjL5SieoNGzQm1czuOfC142i_v4WkHYatL4b_ZCBdppSrOUABqTQ-mSvjiornDE6zOuHzPBNskKRM-C_TMs13m5FwoV1V0AKTWt72Z" width="320" /></a></div><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Since 2008, studies have continued to show how beneficial this simple practice can be. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-it/201409/18-science-backed-reasons-try-loving-kindness-meditation">Emma Seppälä, writing for <i>Psychology Today,</i> collected research on eighteen benefits of lovingkindness meditation</a>. They include: decreasing migraines, chronic pain, PTSD, and schizophrenia-spectrum disorder symptoms; slowing aging; and improving social connections, such as increasing helpfulness, compassion, and empathy while decreasing bias. More recently, lovingkindness practices have been increasingly designed to address specific areas of harm in need of healing and transformation,</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> such as the “<a href="https://www.drcandicenicole.com/post/2016-07-black-lives-matter-meditation">Black Lives Matter Meditation for Healing Racial Trauma.</a>” And a <a href="https://mindrxiv.org/w3cp5/download?format=pdf">2022 study explored how lovingkindness meditation can help people “navigate harmful situations, both individual stressors and systems of oppression</a>.” This study is especially important and relevant because of its enlarged focus beyond the individual, including participants’ social contexts such as a community where they meditate, social justice movements they support, particularly those committed to racial justice, and global systems of oppression that they seek to resist and transform. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The core commitment is to metta, variously translated as lovingkindness, friendliness, or goodwill. When this goodwill encounters suffering, it arises as compassion. When it encounters good fortune, including and especially the good fortune of others, it arises as joy. And when our goodwill is sustained by wisdom and insight, it arises as equanimity. Ajahn Sucitto, a Buddhist monastic and teacher in the Thai Forest tradition, calls back to the Buddha’s simile of a conch. These four qualities of kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are called “the measureless intent”, “because their sound blows without restriction in all directions: to others as to oneself; to the heart that acted on those energies and to any others who have been affected by them.” <a href="https://amaravati.org/dhamma-books/kamma-and-the-end-of-kamma/">He wrote that</a>, </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Exactly what ‘tune’ one plays is something that arises dependent on the distortion one is healing. There are pains that bring up the awareness of the basic need for the nourishing quality of kindness; whereas sometimes the awareness of how volatile and vulnerable we all are calls forth compassion, the protective energy. Sometimes it’s the case whereby we recognize the harm that comes from neglecting what is good in ourselves and others, or even through taking others for granted. Then the sense in appreciating goodness, however obscured, can arise. It’s important to not neglect this one – the stream of good deeds that you did do, the kind words that just seemed natural, but were the right thing at the right time. It’s important not to overlook it, because we so often do. Equanimity holds the empathic space and allows things to unfold. It doesn’t ask for results, but attunes to how things are right now.” </span></blockquote></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>One of the reasons I mention these studies and applications is because of my own experience with lovingkindness practices, which has been the center of my life for decades. Exploring these different aspects of lovingkindness is helpful in discerning what we are actually experiencing, empowering us to be intentional in our actions. And metta practice has been key in healing, transforming, and empowering me, both personally and in my participation in community programming and social change movements.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Beyond my own personal practice, I’ve most often been invited to adapt lovingkindness meditation to the wellbeing and aspirations of my lgbtqia+ community. Similar to those applications of lovingkindness meditation to healing racial trauma and navigating systems of oppression, I’ve found applying lovingkindness to my experience as a queer person to be an essential part of my well-being and a joy to share with others. For example, as a member of the ACLU-MO’s Trans Leadership Table, I was invited to lead <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2020/07/guided-meditation-justice-joy.html">a guided meditation (2020) that adapted lovingkindness to our particular experiences in the world</a>. We began by pausing and cultivating a sense of having “arrived in this moment across sadness and incalculable loss; across joy and innumerable gifts; through the love and concern of yourself and others; against oppression and hardship.” As a nonbinary person whose existence has been debated and erased throughout my entire life, this grounding in the here and now is transformative. To be here, despite the numberless times that people and systems have communicated to me that I don’t belong here, is deeply healing and connecting.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This grounding helped us to center ourselves in our deepest aspirations, pausing and opening to those things that most lift our hearts and animate our lives: “How is it that you want to encounter this improbable and impermanent moment of time and space that you inhabit? What opens your heart and brings forth your love, your joy, your creativity, your fierceness?” And in this example, I expanded the basic formula to include elements that are often stressors that our trans community faces:<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><div style="text-align: center;">May I be safe.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I have food, shelter, and friendship.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I have health in my body.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I care for and appreciate my body.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I honor my own strength.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May my heart be open and free.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May my wounds, inner and outer, be healed.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I be generous, creative, and caring.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I receive the generosity, creativity, and care of others.</div></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">May I be equal and free.</div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We then extended those aspirations toward others, eventually envisioning “a transformed world,” “savoring and being nurtured by this kindness, and our shared commitment to liberation and justice.” We closed by resolving “to let this energy carry and sustain the tasks that lie ahead, embodying and co-creating a new world where all transgender and gender nonconforming folx can live with freedom, safety, and joy.” This kind of meditation intentionally connects our wellbeing with our community and a future where we live in abundance, rather than scarcity. It energizes us, and reminds us of how important it is, to connect with our aspirations, our selves, each other, and a vision where we no longer have to fight for our very right to exist. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Another, related aspect to lovingkindness practice is bringing attention to areas of our experience where we especially need to direct kindness, compassion, enjoyment, and equanimity. In the case of those of us who have experienced being alienated from our bodies, especially through discrimination and marginalization, cultivating lovingkindness for our bodies is an essential, and often overlooked, practice. This became the theme of a guided meditation I offered for a Transgender Day of Remembrance (2020) gathering with the theme that “<a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2020/11/our-bodies-will-be-heard-meditation-for.html">Our Bodies Will Be Heard</a>.” In this practice, we began with an awareness and appreciation of the courage and self-love it took for us to listen to, trust, and honor our own bodies: “In the face of a society that told us we couldn’t, shouldn’t, or didn’t exist as transgender and gender expansive folx, we dared to listen to ourselves. And our bodies told us: ‘This is what this body is like.’” We then paused and held the pain and suffering that we’ve had to carry in our bodies, and the grief that has so often worn us down and worn us out. Yet despite all this pain, our bodies have continued to carry the possibility of a different world: “Breathing in, I am aware of my body. Breathing out, I listen to the life in my body.” We then listened: </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><blockquote>“Our bodies teach us what we need. We dream of a world where these bodies are safe, healthy, and rest easy at night. We dream of a world where we access the medical care, housing, food, employment, and enjoyment we need. We dream of a world where we get to decide what supports our well-being, and where all people are free and equal. And in this moment, anticipating a future built by us and for us, we relax into joy and peace. Our bodies will be heard. … So … we make room for more than grief. We make room for our fierceness, our pleasure, and our love. Because when we are included, our communities are stronger, more beautiful, more complete.” </blockquote></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In this approach, lovingkindness meditation is more oriented around our intentions and aspirations than our emotions or sentiments. At least for me, I am not trying to coerce or manipulate my feelings; I am training my heart and mind to a default of kindness and justice, after a lifetime of learning to survive in a world oriented around violence and oppression. In much of our lives, we are bombarded by messages that we are misunderstood at best, and very often we are unwelcome. Resolving to “<a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2021/11/we-take-our-space-in-world-transgender.html">Take Our Space in the World</a>” is an expression of lovingkindness to ourselves: “We exist in the face of all this violence, hatred, and grief, and insist on living, loving, and thriving. We create new worlds.” And this new world can be born of kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This point is especially important to me due to my experience (many years ago) of being part of a meditation group. When I shared that my own practice was oriented around metta, they responded by teasing me. The general idea was that metta was too sentimental; it wasn’t “real” meditation, like the insight practices they focused on. I also practiced insight meditation, and I found these practices mutually supportive. I didn’t understand their association of lovingkindness with sentimentality, because I didn’t understand that they had been taught lovingkindness in a very different context. My practice was born of deep suffering. It wasn’t weak, and I wasn’t coercing my emotions. I was transforming aversion into goodwill. I was refusing to repeat unhealthy, coercive habits. I was resolving for my own body to be a place where suffering could come to an end, rather than incubating that pain and passing it on to others. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://amaravati.org/dhamma-books/kamma-and-the-end-of-kamma/">Returning to Ajahn Sucitto</a>, we get a better sense of how this comes to be and the connections between kindness and equanimity. We learn to discern patterns based on our conditioning, and the conditioning of others: </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><blockquote>“In the world in general, there’s a huge inheritance of abusive patterns based upon violence and deprivation – and who knows where all that began. But, instead of blaming and agonizing, we can regard our own and other people’s actions in terms of cause and effect. That regard is equanimity, the most reliable base for action.” </blockquote></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Equanimity is perhaps the most challenging quality to develop, but it is well worth our continued practice and effort. My understanding of Ajahn Sucitto’s point that equanimity is “the most reliable base for action” is that equanimity empowers us to act out of insight and understanding. Our brains are meaning-making machines, spinning out stories to help us explain why we feel the way we do and why we are justified in doing what we have done or want to do. Psychologically, what we want is a convincing story, and we’d prefer to have it quickly. Some of those stories may even become old standbys, providing easy answers for how to interpret difficult and complicated experiences. And too often, we are simply caught in stories that praise or blame. These explanations may or may not hold some truth, but they are convenient. However, convenience is not a “reliable base for action.” </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is part of the reason why, when we begin a meditation practice, it is common for our minds to unearth all sorts of memories, from ridiculous to mortifying. This is part of getting to know our minds and bodies, and how we relate to suffering and the end of suffering. You might be enjoying your first taste of deep concentration in one moment, only to find yourself singing the lyrics of a silly tv commercial you heard as a child in the next moment. During one extended time of sitting meditation many years ago, I found myself listening to a fractured playback of the entire Thriller album by Michael Jackson, pieced together from memories I made as an elementary school student. It had been hanging out there in my mind, undisturbed for decades, until my brain got desperate enough to fish it out and see if it would be the thing that would finally make me give up on my sitting meditation and do something more interesting. It still makes me chuckle. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But we can also encounter more difficult experiences, which is why we always recommend working with an experienced teacher, tradition, and community. (And, in cases of unresolved trauma or complex mental health issues, it is important to work with your mental health caregivers.) There are several aspects to meditation that can be disorienting and challenging, such as directly experiencing that what we often think of as permanent, unchanging self is a dynamic process. But anecdotally, the most common challenge is that we encounter those patterns of thinking, feeling, and remembering that we find embarrassing, confusing, disturbing, or scary. These are often key parts of our own stories of praise and blame, and they can be cruel. In those moments, it is vitally important that we have the resources we need to respond with kindness, patience, understanding, and wisdom. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Several years ago, I was leading a workshop on cultivating self-compassion during conflict and stress, which is an important aspect of lovingkindness practice. One of our participants was a retired human resources manager who was volunteering with a non-profit. He had spent the morning looking rather disinterested, so it didn’t surprise me when he approached me at our first break. “This stuff just doesn’t apply to me,” he said. “I don’t struggle with any of this and I’m thinking that maybe I should just leave.” I was quite excited to meet someone who had had already mastered the skills of self-compassion, so I quite enthusiastically celebrated his skillfulness. “That’s fantastic!” I exclaimed to his surprise. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay here if the training doesn’t benefit you,” I continued. “But if you do stay, you could take the perspective that our reflections here might help you understand others, because a lot of us do struggle with having self-compassion.” This made sense to him, and he settled into the morning with more interest. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>But all of that changed during our lunch break. The room’s floor was tile over concrete, the perfect medium in which to shatter glass. Inevitably, we were cleaning up a mess pretty regularly. And on that day, this HR manager was the one who, accidentally knocking his glass of water off the table, proved that gravity was still working after all this time. And as the glass hit the floor, in that moment of shared quiet when everyone turned to see what had happened, our affable HR man said to himself, in the most savage tone that I could imagine, “stupid boy!” </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>With our reflections on self-compassion fresh on his mind, he looked up and locked eyes with me. It was a look of mixed fear and wonder, like some lost secret had just been uttered. “I had no idea that that voice was inside of me,” he later told me. “It was my father’s voice, plus sixty years of shame for every mistake I’d ever made.” The afternoon took on new significance for him, and he came back for the follow-up trainings, too. I don’t doubt that some people have already developed these skills, even without formal training. But most people I meet have quite a way to go, and we need all the encouragement we can get. All of us who are committed to continually growing into compassionate, wise people can benefit from having these skills and resources available to us, so that we can be available to ourselves and others when we need that kind wisdom the most. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>So may we – our selves, our communities, and our movements for justice - be filled with lovingkindness; may we work together so that all of us have the resources we need to take care of ourselves and enjoy life; may we grow communities where justice is the norm, free of the cruelty of all forms of oppression; and may we be happy. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEKFQkHR0S8SplCrIR70TE80apSEkZNQMAn6zkCAAfIKaoOSxe3HVgBWHCX8KXey4a0uHwF5d1764hm6SCm36idpop9aZxfZma8RAZb5D5Qu6FixJI8mK4oR5mEIyAyzku8bTItgyJ-VRmt9LWStBJt9VtefCaem4Z6Kh-15hYvMJQLW3ths81MuSa1E49" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEKFQkHR0S8SplCrIR70TE80apSEkZNQMAn6zkCAAfIKaoOSxe3HVgBWHCX8KXey4a0uHwF5d1764hm6SCm36idpop9aZxfZma8RAZb5D5Qu6FixJI8mK4oR5mEIyAyzku8bTItgyJ-VRmt9LWStBJt9VtefCaem4Z6Kh-15hYvMJQLW3ths81MuSa1E49" width="320" /></a></div></span></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-70235398870417038882023-06-10T22:59:00.006-05:002023-06-10T22:59:49.487-05:00As Wide as the World: Cultivating Wisdom and Compassion in the face of Violence and Coercion<div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; white-space: pre;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgGXamsjfjxTvD9Hh-Apo9xfi8A4mpTdi1sB11EpU59K9TKUNggNYyBGzxgNLbwDxJkKLFCrUOAr9YW1ZoCHdBtKPfJSfS7gdZYsCMWg_JH9jugo6zyRURVUZi2VUFjzBZp6m-qBeiOEeyuJhm9kHx9k74oaV9lTmbh73KBnhYyMoy9jng4agdevSgwBQ" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgGXamsjfjxTvD9Hh-Apo9xfi8A4mpTdi1sB11EpU59K9TKUNggNYyBGzxgNLbwDxJkKLFCrUOAr9YW1ZoCHdBtKPfJSfS7gdZYsCMWg_JH9jugo6zyRURVUZi2VUFjzBZp6m-qBeiOEeyuJhm9kHx9k74oaV9lTmbh73KBnhYyMoy9jng4agdevSgwBQ" width="320" /></a></div> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When we lived in Cambodia, one of our favorite places to visit was the <i><a href="https://phnomtamaozoologicalpark.com/wildlife-rescue/">Phnom Tamao Zoological Park and Wildlife Rescue Center</a></i>. And although people sometimes called it the zoo, its mission focuses on addressing the illegal hunting and wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. Phnom Tamao is something more like a hospital and rehabilitation center, caring for injured, orphaned, or ill wild animals that were often rescued from wildlife trafficking. (As you might guess, many of these animals are critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species.) Animals that can be fully rehabilitated are released back into their natural habitat (more than 8,000 animals were released from 2013 to 2018). Those that are no longer able to survive in the wild and need continued care remain at the Rescue Center. We had the good luck to know one of the folks who coordinated the <a href="https://freethebears.org/pages/cambodia-sanctuary"><i>Free the Bears</i> program</a> there, a program that not only works to rescue and care for endangered sun bears, but also to transform cultural attitudes about sun bears, giving the bears, and their ecosystems, the best chance to thrive.</span></div><div><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgNnZKNg00BtK3N7v0U60_fKxNitwPmF0xCxOOn6T7sJqoDwXVSJXyet-O32Qlnp2ajMlsRaVvnglhDVJRocMdan5jHqyYXMRdsSdPc1a5YlM43nq9OurD32T8J1Ms8cwwtH6dGL8qSZbPTK1EB0RGCacgejxh3EdSBJMH_Ttzog5Z303J1c7W27pmc-w" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgNnZKNg00BtK3N7v0U60_fKxNitwPmF0xCxOOn6T7sJqoDwXVSJXyet-O32Qlnp2ajMlsRaVvnglhDVJRocMdan5jHqyYXMRdsSdPc1a5YlM43nq9OurD32T8J1Ms8cwwtH6dGL8qSZbPTK1EB0RGCacgejxh3EdSBJMH_Ttzog5Z303J1c7W27pmc-w" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This reflection isn’t about this important work (work that was put at risk last year by <a href="https://southeastasiaglobe.com/reforestation-follows-cambodian-pms-intervention/">the deforestation and planned development around the Rescue Center</a> that was halted after public outcry). But it was during one of our visits to the Rescue Center when I had an experience I cannot forget. Looking for a break from the sunshine and heat, we wandered into a small gift shop. The woman working inside struck up a conversation and was delighted to know we could speak some Khmer. The conversation quickly shifted away from caring for animals, though, when she asked what we were doing in Cambodia. We explained our work, which fell into three broad categories: 1) understanding and healing family conflict and violence; 2) offering mediation, conflict coaching, and other peacebuilding services to English-speakers; and 3) supporting human rights and community development workers to integrate peace and conflict tools into their organizations and activities. She asked us some more questions, and then hugged us tightly, tears streaming down her face. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We talked for quite a while, hearing her stories of surviving the Khmer Rouge, the civil war, and years of often violent chaos as Cambodia began to recover from decades of both systemic and random violence. She described how the violence had become just a way of life, a way to survive, and it was just habit for many people. It was, for me, a powerful reminder of how violence can become part of us – a possibility, an exception, a habit, a culture. That possibility exists within us, and we must deal honestly with that potential if we don’t want to be ruled by it. And that can be difficult, but the flipside is that healing and compassion can also become a part of us. Healing, compassion, and joy remain a possibility, even in the most desperate situations. When we act on that possibility, that choice may be exceptional at first, but, choosing it again and again, it can become a habit. And, when chosen together, as a community, it can become a culture. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>These experiences and lessons were very fresh on my mind when, near the end of our time in Cambodia, in 2010, a study by researchers at the University of Valencia investigated which brain structures were at work during experiences of empathy and violence. They found that the neural pathways associated with empathy had a substantial “overlap ‘in a surprising way’ with those that regulate aggression and violence”. The lead author of the study, <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100409093405.htm">Dr. Luis Moya Albiol, explained</a>: </span></span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">"We all know that encouraging empathy has an inhibiting effect on violence, but this may not only be a social question but also a biological one -- stimulation of these neuronal circuits in one direction reduces their activity in the other, … . Educating people to be empathetic could be an education for peace, bringing about a reduction in conflict and belligerent acts”. </span></blockquote></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>This immediately made sense to me. At least, from my experience with both meditation practices (e.g., mindfulness and <i>metta</i>) and empathetic practices (e.g., transformative mediation and nonviolent communication), I have found myself encountering the scared, angry, and aggressive aspects within and finding them settling down, released in the embrace of compassionate awareness. But the study said something more than this, potentially helping us answer that nagging question, "How can we humans be so wonderful and horrible at the same time? So generous and compassionate on the one hand and so cruel and violent on the other?" It could even be that the possibility of violence is part of the price we pay for the beautiful opportunity to connect with each other with compassion, care, empathy and respect.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A further example comes from a 2016 “comprehensive review of the neurobiology of empathy” in comparison “with the neurobiology of psychopathic predatory violence by Doriana Chialant, Judith Edersheim, and Bruce H. Price (“<a href="https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.15080207">The Dialectic Between Empathy and Violence: An Opportunity for Intervention?</a>”). Although we typically think of violence in connection with self-defense and self-preservation, the authors point out that our capacity for empathy evolved “in the service of attachment for self-preservation.” If you think of the most foundational of mammalian social bonds, that of mother and infant, this makes sense. Empathy and a healthy bond are the most important protections for a newborn against predators and other dangers. These same capacities support all our social relationships. Empathy and healthy social bonds reduce personal distress and reduce avoidance behaviors. Healthy attachment supports healthy emotional regulation, which, in turn, supports our ability to experience and express empathy for others. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the chemical level, the authors point out that oxytocin is “released in the context of supportive relationships.” This is part of our brain’s reward systems. For example, hormonal shifts during pregnancy “predispose the brain reward system to form mother-infant bonds at birth,” and interactions between a securely attached mother and child “increase the production of oxytocin, activating the brain reward regions.” This modulates the HPA (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal) axis, “enabling greater trust, attachment, and empathy.” <a href="https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.15080207">They also noted</a>: </span></span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> “Both secure attachment and higher degrees of empathic capacity hormonally activate the brain reward system, which, in turn, sustains attachment and nurturance. Because empathy and attachment are linked to the same hormonal events, they are both behaviorally and physiologically interdependent. … Even when empathic behaviors are extended to nonkin, these behaviors activate the reward system, inducing feelings of well-being. Thus, empathic behaviors are physiologically rewarding, if not addictive.”</span></blockquote></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The reverse is also true. The literature demonstrates that violent traits and psychopathic behaviors (including predatory and callous-unemotional violence) “are tightly linked to these same structures” activated during empathic processing. A “functional imbalance” of these pathways “leads to the cognitive and interpersonal/affective aspects of psychopathy.” However and hopefully, “A corollary of this,” the authors wrote, “is that strengthening empathy, which enhances bonding, might result in diminished P[redatory]V[iolence].”</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>Our understanding of the human brain continues to deepen, and this topic is still one where we have a lot to learn. However, research like this points to something very hopeful. Namely, cultivating empathy and compassion, a wonderful practice for so many reasons, may also help heal and protect us (though not make us immune) from the potential for violence that has devastated so much of human history. It is another piece of evidence that may help us understand what practices and values (be they direct, structural and/or cultural) support a peaceful, just and happy place to live.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is not an absolute decision; humans and human society are more complicated than that. But it is a question about the overall shape of our lives and our society. Will they be characterized by violence, relying on our capacities for coercion and aggression? Or will they be characterized by healthy social bonds, relying on our capacities for wisdom and compassion? Which action will be exceptional, violence or empathy? Which action will be normal, violence or empathy? We can understand both paths as strategies to protect ourselves, and recognize that both possibilities live within us. But the research also points out that these are diverging paths. We nourish one path at the expense of the other. As <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100409093405.htm">Dr. Albiol put it</a>, “stimulation of these neuronal circuits in one direction reduces their activity in the other”. Each decision we make is something of a crossroads. Collectively and personally, our decisions answer the question: which direction do we choose?</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2022/10/from-coercion-to-connection.html">I’ve noted in the past</a>, I am asked from time to time about why </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I have embraced the path of cultivating wisdom and compassion. Perhaps unsurprisingly in a society so often oriented around violence and coercion, the greatest anxiety is whether this path "works." I have also been told with some frequency about how naive I am to embrace wisdom and compassion and how, in doing so, I am endangering the whole planet. Most of these conversations come out of a moral view of violence, which rather pushes us into conversations about when violence is justified. But this can very easily camouflage the issue that violence always includes suffering: to victor and victim, to perpetrator and bystander, and to the earth itself.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Another of my memorable conversations in Cambodia came about when a very sincere man was struggling with these kinds of questions. He was just visiting Cambodia as part of a cultural exchange, learning about the types of peace and development work going on there. In Cambodia, he came face to face with horrible memories of still open wounds, many of the same tragedies our new friend talked about in that wildlife rescue center gift shop. He had grieved the cruelty, brutality, and death recorded within the walls of S-21, the Khmer Rouge's torture machine. He had wept at the tower of skulls memorializing the killing fields. And he had listened to desperate stories of people facing violent eviction and land-grabbing, suffering violence in real time. He was overwhelmed and confused and found himself asking, over and over again, how can someone choose compassion and wisdom in the face of something like the Khmer Rouge? Won’t they inevitably fail?</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> <span> </span><span> </span>But if we visit these terrible places - the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the gas chambers of Germany or the mass graves of any one of the 20th century's genocides - we need to remember what it is that we are witnessing. These are not testaments to the inherent weaknesses of wisdom and compassion, though they are testaments to our collective failure to cultivate wisdom and compassion. Instead, these places are monuments of violence, of the horrors humans are capable of inflicting and suffering when they do not learn the art of living with wisdom, compassion, joy and equanimity. We could similarly look at the ongoing violence endemic to our own society reflects the ultimate failure of violence as a long-term strategy for creating collective and personal wellbeing. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>Arguments about when violence is necessary, justified, or unavoidable often distract us from the real issue at hand. And that issue is that it is unwise to wait to remove the greed, hatred and delusion from our lives until circumstances are at their worst. We should not wait to cultivate empathy and healthy social bonds until we are caught up in the terrors of war or when we are facing a great injustice. This practice is for every single day. It is about how you think about yourself, how you treat your children or work colleagues, and even how you express disappointment or respond to criticism. All violence is a form a suffering. We cannot wait until a crisis to begin the transformation. It really is like <a href="http://cgi1.usatoday.com/mchat/20030820013/tscript.htm">Thich Nhat Hanh said</a>,</span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“When you have peace within yourself, you can bring peace to another person; when you both have peace you can bring peace to a third person. This is the only way.” </span></blockquote></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s challenging to bring up this point without oversimplifying things. Cultivating authentic wisdom and compassion cannot be a retreat into unrealistic idealism. It's not pretending that pain and difficulty are never a part of our experience. And it's certainly not about coercing ourselves, resisting the present moment in favor of forcing positive or pleasant emotions onto ourselves or others. Instead, it's about being able to accept and engage that pain and difficulty with curiosity, openness, and love. "This is what it feels like when there is conflict, violence, suffering; this is what it feels like when there is anger, fear, grief; this is what it feels like when there is greed, aversion, and ignorance.” </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>The practice is to hold both the potential and mechanisms for violence together with the potential and mechanisms for wisdom and compassion. We have known for decades now, for example, that witnessing violence impacts the neurological development of children. Published in 1997, Bruce Perry’s “<a href="https://www.childtrauma.org/_files/ugd/aa51c7_c5dbf3cc18c3475da0891b8982bcf63c.pdf">Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the ‘Cycle of Violence’</a>” remains a powerful exploration of how childhood experiences may condition us for life in a violent world (and thus perpetuate violence), as well as highlighting factors for breaking that cycle of violence. He wrote: </span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> "It is in the nature of humankind to be violent, but it may not be the nature of humankind. Without major transformation of our culture, without putting action behind our 'love' of children, we may never learn the truth."</span></blockquote></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So how do we get there? How do we put into action our love for children, for one another, and even and especially for the Other and the enemy? One tool at our disposal is the Buddhist practice of metta, or lovingkindness, meditation, which I am planning to describe more fully next month. Very briefly, it is a simple technique for cultivating kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity for oneself and others. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>One of foundational studies on this practice is detailed in “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156028/pdf/nihms304992.pdf">Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources</a>.” A research team led by Barbara Fredrickson (with Michael Cohn, Kimberly Coffey, Jolynn Pek, and Sandra Finkel) described the empirically supported broaden-and-build theory. It “holds that positive emotions broaden people’s attention and thinking” by training the mind to: 1 ) “widen the scope of people’s visual attention”; 2) “broaden their repertoires of desired actions”; and 3) “increase their openness to new experiences”. The broadening increases our “sense of ‘oneness’” with others, our “trust in acquaintances,” and even our ability to recognize people “of another race.” The second part of the theory is that we can “build consequential personal resources.” The authors called this a growth trajectory, where cultivating positive emotions lead to growth over time in our capacity for: optimism, tranquility, the ability to adapt to change (ego-resilience), mental well-being, and healthy relationships. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>This broadening-and-building has obvious overlaps with and impacts our capacity to choose empathy, and to intentionally cultivate wisdom and compassion, over the shortcuts of violence and coercion. It helps us notice possibilities that we would otherwise overlook and to be open to strategies that we would otherwise be too inflexible to consider. It helps us understand how we are connected and recognize the potential to know and trust those who we might otherwise think of as too different and maybe even too dangerous. It keeps us adaptable, even when the circumstances might be screaming for us to dig in and make demands. It helps keep a path open, when otherwise we might see no other option but hate. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the 9-week study conducted by Fredrickson’s team, they found that loving-kindness meditation increased participants’ daily experiences of “love, joy, gratitude, contentment, hope, pride, interest, amusement, and awe.” These were slow and small changes, spread out incrementally over the nine weeks. And they were linked with real increases in intra- and inter-personal skills, such as mindful attention and self-acceptance. Satisfaction in life increased, while depression decreased. These were “long-term gains that made genuine differences in people’s lives.” Significantly, these impacts were not so much direct effects. Instead, participants were building resources “that make their lives more fulfilling and help keep their depressive symptoms at bay.” <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156028/pdf/nihms304992.pdf">The authors concluded</a> that: </span></span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> “people judge their lives to be more satisfying and fulfilling, not because they feel more positive emotions per se, but because their greater positive emotions help them build resources for living successfully.” </span></blockquote></div><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Building those resources is key, because we are on a path to make wellbeing, in ourselves and in community, available to all. And that takes moving away from a culture where fear, anger, greed, scarcity, and ignorance is normal. It takes choosing a path where wisdom and compassion become the norm, so that we are building resources, personally and collectively, where we can thrive. As the Buddhist monk and scholar <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel006.html">Nyanaponika Thera wrote</a>: </span></span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“The world suffers. But most [people] have their eyes and ears closed. They do not see the unbroken stream of tears flowing through life; they do not hear the cry of distress continually pervading the world. Their own little grief or joy bars their sight, deafens their ears. Bound by selfishness, their hearts turn stiff and narrow. Being stiff and narrow, how should they be able to strive for any higher goal, to realize that only release from selfish craving will effect their own freedom from suffering? / It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, opens the door to freedom, makes the narrow heart as wide as the world.” </span></blockquote></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thank you for being part of a community and movement that seeks to make that transformation real, taking our narrow hearts and opening them, “as wide as the world.” </span></span></div><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpVPl41qV3r0c6c5PYO141B98Y3EWLBYI1qOVw7hhD3_9SA4jAuE0N9mc50FgznetYFq9C7fJb8MWbILRf7OELpd2lR1R92-RqWKHV2AfkkVFy4VhuE_JFnmt66RVmIeXqs3sEFw5YNr7uY-Pe2fM4VtWvaMl21AtzAz01Dx3_cVkhf5-E1pFOcbJhkA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpVPl41qV3r0c6c5PYO141B98Y3EWLBYI1qOVw7hhD3_9SA4jAuE0N9mc50FgznetYFq9C7fJb8MWbILRf7OELpd2lR1R92-RqWKHV2AfkkVFy4VhuE_JFnmt66RVmIeXqs3sEFw5YNr7uY-Pe2fM4VtWvaMl21AtzAz01Dx3_cVkhf5-E1pFOcbJhkA" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-71176310182316917012023-06-03T21:23:00.003-05:002023-06-03T21:23:48.562-05:00 “Nothing Humane”: A Lament and Plea for Rights-Respecting Border Policies <div style="text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2023/05/15/safety-harbor-migrant-shelter-teen-death-seizure-medical-epilepsy/">Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza traveled to the United States</a> earlier this year. He was 17 years old; he was a dedicated athlete who had dreams of being a soccer player. But he was from Honduras, and he wanted better medical care than he could access in his home country. A cousin in Tampa, Florida, agreed to be his sponsor in the United States, and everything was in order when he left Honduras on April 25. He even made sure to pack enough medication to last three months, just in case. Ángel entered the US on May 3 at the Reynosa, Mexico crossing, and Immigration and Customs officials placed him on a plane to Florida on May 5. His next stop was the Gulf Coast shelter, operated by Jewish Family and Children Services. But on the morning of May 10, 2023, staff found that Ángel had died in his sleep, evidently from a seizure. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ángel had a physical exam at a clinic on May 8, and he did not disclose his epilepsy or medication. He also did not have his (three months’ worth of) medication with him when he arrived on May 5, and it was unclear what happened to it. However, his family had sent his medical files to Gulf Coast, twice for good measure, and these documents were uploaded into the system. Tragically, staff did not read the files, and Ángel died just miles away from the better medical care he had come the USA to receive. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>This was the kind of case where immigration policy is meant to shine, not end in heartbreak. But at least two stressors are prominent in making this tragedy possible. First, while the US itself might be the answer an asylum seeker needs, fear and uncertainty often characterize encounters with the US immigration system. For example, you might have found it curious that Ángel didn’t disclose his epilepsy, but it is not unusual for asylum seekers to hide medical conditions. As Danielle Hernandez, an immigration attorney, explained for the <i><a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2023/05/15/safety-harbor-migrant-shelter-teen-death-seizure-medical-epilepsy/">Tampa Bay Times</a></i>, “You don’t know when you’re 17 that your health won’t be held against you when you’re seeking asylum.” Ana Lamb, an immigration rights activist, explained that this “climate of fear” was created by the types of immigration laws passed over the years. “All the laws being implemented in this state are terrorizing people, … . We will see more of this if we don’t take care of people coming in.” <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Second, the US immigration system is overburdened. In Ángel’s case, this resulted in the staff’s failure to read the medical notes that would have likely saved his life. And, in the tragic story described by Valerie Gonzalez in <i>AP News</i>, it was denial of care in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/border-patrol-custody-death-harlingen-8da5429f39cb7ac0ff4c9184a42d8ba2">the case of Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez</a>, an eight year old girl who died in Border Patrol custody on May 17, 2023. Although the policy is that people are not to be held in custody more than 72 hours, Anadith’s family (her mom and dad, along with two siblings who were 14 and 12 years old) had already been in custody for nine days when Anadith died. After crossing the border in Brownsville, Texas, on May 9, Anadith was diagnosed with influenza by a doctor. They were then transferred to the Harlingen station on May 14. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That first morning at the Harlingen station, Anadith awoke to fever, headache, and bone pain. Her mother, Mabel Alverez Benedicks, reported these conditions, and the border agent (who was not a medical caregiver) waved it off, saying that “Oh, your daughter is growing up. That’s why her bones hurt. Give her water.” Mabel shared the doctor’s diagnosis and insisted on taking Anadith to the hospital, but agents said refused. Instead, they issued saline fluids and fever medication. But Anadith’s breathing worsened, she found it difficult to walk, and a sore throat kept her from eating. On Wednesday, they requested an ambulance, which was denied. Later that day, Anadith became unconscious and spit up blood. By the time agents agreed to take her to the hospital, she had no vital signs. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Anadith was born with a congenital heart disease that required surgery three years ago. It was successful, and Anadith dreamed of becoming a doctor herself. Instead, she became another victim of the tragedies that have come to characterize the southern US border, even for those seeking asylum, who travel to the United States with the hope of relief from suffering or violence. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>That the suffering on the border is overwhelming is an understatement. For example, <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/quickfacts/#:~:text=Immigration%20and%20Customs%20Enforcement%20held,as%20of%20May%207%2C%202023.&text=10%2C944%20out%20of%2021%2C293%E2%80%94or,as%20of%20May%207%2C%202023.">on May 21, 2023, more than 27,000 migrants were being held in detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement</a>. Over 240,00 more people were being monitored through the Alternatives to Detention programs. <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights">According to the ACLU</a>, the United States spends $1.84 billion on these detentions. Border deaths have also been climbing each year. The dangers are well known. The terrain is often risky itself: dangerous rivers; extreme heat; deadly heights, including from border barriers. And then there is the deadliness that often accompanies smuggling organizations, who are notorious for everything from packing dozens of people into tractor trailers to abandoning migrants in dangerous places. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/09/29/1125638107/migrant-deaths-us-mexico-border-record-drownings">In 2021, more than 560 migrants died</a>, a new record – <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/migrant-deaths-crossing-us-mexico-border-2022-record-high/">until 2022, when more than 850 migrants died</a>. (This is despite the fact that <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/migrant-deaths-crossing-us-mexico-border-2022-record-high/">Border Patrol has actually increased rescues and “life-saving operations.”</a> In 2022, they performed more than 22,000 rescues, up 72% from 2021.) But these numbers are almost definitely lower than the real totals. The <i>US Government Accountability Office</i> issued a “<a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-22-105053.pdf">Report to Congressional Committees</a>” in April 2022 that documented that the: </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “Border Patrol has not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths, or disclosed associated data limitations. Specifically, Border Patrol … did not record all available information on migrant deaths from external entities in its system of record, or describe these data limitations in the report.”</span></blockquote><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The International Organization for Migration, a UN group, recorded more than 1,200 migrant deaths in the West in 2021, and more than 700 of them were on the U.S.-Mexico border. They named that border “<a href="https://www.iom.int/news/latest-migrant-tragedy-texas-highlights-crisis-along-deadliest-migration-land-route">the deadliest land crossing in the world</a>.” Last September, a Morning Edition report from NPR recounted how a county sheriff in Texas even shared that their local funeral director had run out of room to store bodies until they could be transported to a neighboring county. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/09/29/1125638107/migrant-deaths-us-mexico-border-record-drownings">“Right now,” he said, “they’re overwhelmed.”</a> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s important to look at this situation honestly, even though it is painful: immigration is an issue of life and death. Beyond the politics of choosing strategies to address immigration issues, we need to return to the question of ethics. Basic human decency should energize and motivate all of us to resist easy narratives that allow us to justify the status quo. As Robin Reineke, a University of Arizona professor and co-founder of the <i>Colibri Center for Human Rights</i>, has rightly explained: "<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/09/29/1125638107/migrant-deaths-us-mexico-border-record-drownings">It isn't just a matter of strategy anymore. … It's a matter of human life and the costs, socially and morally to an entire generation of border residents, and families of those who died crossing.</a>"</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the heart of our flawed policies is a commitment to deterrence, a commitment that has been prominent since at least the 1990s. The idea is that if illegal crossings could be stopped at the safest, easiest, most accessible places, potential migrants would be discouraged from trying to cross the border. It would simply be too dangerous. But that did not happen, and immigrants continued to cross the border. Each renewed commitment to deterrence created more and more dangerous crossings, and yet migrants continued to be willing to take those risks. This history should make it clear to us that deterrence policies, at least as they have been generally legislated and enforced, do not address the root issues driving immigration. Our policies have failed to honestly wrestle with the conditions that make dangerous border crossings worth the risk to thousands and thousands of people every year. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Instead, we have focused on criminalizing migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. We have also normalized denying them basic rights, including the right to a trial for those facing deportation. <a href="https://www.vera.org/news/immigrants-facing-deportation-do-not-have-the-right-to-a-publicly-funded-attorney-heres-how-to-change-that">As Erica Bryant wrote for the <i>Vera Institute of Justice</i></a>, “Many immigrants with the legal right to live in the United States are deported simply because they can’t afford an attorney to help them navigate notoriously complicated immigration proceedings.” For example, more than three fourths of immigration court cases in 2019 “had no legal representation” – even though studies have shown “that immigrants with attorneys are 3.5 times more likely to be granted bond (enabling release from detention) and up to 10 times more likely to establish their right to remain in the United States than those without representation.” Deportation can then have severe impacts on already vulnerable people, including “exile from home, separation from family, loss of income, and even forcible return to dangerous conditions in a person’s country of origin.” As <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights">the ACLU reminds us</a>, “When the government has the power to deny legal rights and due process to one vulnerable group, everyone’s rights are at risk.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>These stories and issues are particularly relevant and important now, as the Biden administration rolls out a new border plan that largely relies on recycling past policies. For the last two years, the administration’s approach has depended on extending the Title 42 policy that the Trump administration created, which used the </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to quickly expel migrants. As that policy finally expired last month, officials anticipated a wave of new migrants, joining the already crowded border. In response, 1,500 more troops were deployed to the border. This means that the US now has 4,000 soldiers stationed on the southern border. A<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/4/what-to-expect-as-biden-sends-1500-troops-to-us-mexico-border">s Fernando Garcia, executive director of <i>Border Network for Human Rights</i>, put it,</a> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “Now, without a doubt, we can say that the US-Mexico border is one of the most militarised borders in the world. … That continues to perpetuate this idea that the border is an issue that can be resolved through enforcement, in this case the deployment of the military. That is very wrong because it fails to recognise the nature of what we’re seeing.” </span></blockquote><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Biden administration’s reliance on Title 42 was already broadly viewed as a failure to live up to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/12/21012462/biden-immigration-obama-deportations-trump-asylum">Biden’s campaign promises</a> that the US “must do better to uphold our laws humanely and preserve the dignity of immigrant families, refugees, and asylum-seekers.” This criticism was intensified when the administration proposed its own asylum ban that doubled-down on the some of the most cruel aspects of past policy. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/28/biden-asylum-ban-rule-would-send-thousands-danger">Ari Sawyer described the rule for <i>Human Rights Watch</i></a>: </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Through its ‘presumption of asylum ineligibility for certain noncitizens,’ Biden’s new rule combines a version of former President Donald Trump’s ‘<a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-07-16/pdf/2019-15246.pdf">third country transit ban</a>’ – a policy Biden once <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/us/politics/biden-immigration-asylum-restrictions.html">campaigned against</a> and a <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/documents/138_order_granting_pi.pdf">federal judge ruled unlawful</a> – with additional asylum restrictions, … .”</span></blockquote><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In a nutshell, the policy continues the practice of turning away people seeking asylum at the US border, unless: 1) their request for asylum was already rejected at another country they traveled through; or 2) the asylum seeker waited for months in Mexico in order to get an appointment at the border. In the latter case, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/28/biden-asylum-ban-rule-would-send-thousands-danger">Sawyer points out</a> that: </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“These appointments would be available only through a <a href="https://www.borderreport.com/immigration/asylum-seekers-with-cbp-one-issues-turned-back-at-border/">privacy-intrusive and internet-dependent cellphone application</a> used by Customs and Border Protection called CBP One, which<a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/11/03/dismantling-detention/international-alternatives-detaining-immigrants#_ftn33"> facial recognition technology </a>that has been <a href="https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discrimination-in-face-recognition-technology/">shown to reinforce racial discrimination in law enforcement </a>and has <a href="https://myrgv.com/local-news/2023/02/21/families-consider-separation-to-seek-asylum-as-they-face-limited-appointments-through-cbp-app/">driven family separation</a>.” </span></blockquote><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Unfortunately, this rule risks increasing pressure for migrants to cross the border illegally. For example, metering programs like CBP One sound convenient, but the courts have previously ruled them as illegal for good reasons. While asylum seekers wait, often indefinitely, while they try their luck at getting one of a few appointments, their safety is increasingly at risk. They are forced to endure uncertain and violent conditions, whether in their home country (which was dangerous enough that they want to migrate) or in border cities, which have their own dangers. And while they wait, the risks of a dangerous border crossing become more tolerable. The Biden administration’s rule was sufficiently outrageous that <a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2023/03/federal-asylum-officers-blast-new-biden-rule-contrary-legal-moral-obligations/384640/">employees from the Department of Homeland Security, the asylum personnel that would implement the policy, filed a complaint against it</a>. They called it “contrary to the moral fabric of our nation” and said implementing it would require them to violate their oaths. The union (representing 14,000 employees) commented that rule “rewrites the statute Congress enacted” and, </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “At their core, the measures that the proposed rule seeks to implement are inconsistent with the asylum law enacted by Congress, the treaties the United States has ratified, and our country’s moral fabric and longstanding tradition of providing safe haven to the persecuted, … . Rather, it is draconian and represents the elevation of a single policy goal—reducing the number of migrants crossing the southwest border—over human life and our country’s commitment to refugees.”</span></blockquote><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I agree with that criticism, while also recognizing the complexities involved. To their credit, the Biden administration did <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-immigration-62c0488da2f232b812fdb7174ec0df6f">establish a program, led by Vice President Kamala Harris</a>, for creating a “U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America.” They released a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Root-Causes-Strategy.pdf">report in July 2021</a> that acknowledged:<br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">• “addressing the root causes of migration is critical to our overall immigration effort.”<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">• “providing relief is not sufficient to stem migration from the region.”<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">• “unless we address all of the root causes, problems will persist.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>The report’s pillars are solid, naming important root causes driving immigration: economic insecurity and inequality; corruption; lack of human rights (including labor rights and a free press); organized violence and crimes; and sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence. And Vice President Harris’ cover message also emphasizes the need to “build on what works” while pivoting “away from what does not work.” “It will not be easy,” she wrote, “and progress will not be instantaneous, but we are committed to getting it right.” </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>The challenging truth is that it is difficult to be patient during a crisis, even if the crisis has been centuries in the making. And from a political point of view, public discourse tends to be caught in a tug-of-war between arguments emphasizing the necessity of a secure border and arguments emphasizing the rights and humanity of those crossing the border. And because <a href="https://time.com/5951532/migration-factors/">immigration is tangled up in so many other open wounds in US history and culture</a>, talking about immigration puts us directly in the path of discussions about colonialism, imperialism, and centuries of systemic racism and classism. There are painful, difficult, and even shameful parts of US history that we are tempted to forget, rather than honestly acknowledging and addressing them. The related social issues are also painful and complex, from honestly acknowledging intractable economic injustice and labor exploitation to wrestling with the painful realities around drug production, distribution, and addiction, on both sides of the border. These kinds of conversations and transformations are hard work, and it is easier to dehumanize immigrants - and one another. This has made immigration issues particularly vulnerable to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/5/3/11571444/republican-democrat-anti-immigrant">partisan divides</a>. And while we argue, more people suffer. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I called this reflection a lament, because my main goal was simply to return our awareness to the tragedies suffered by migrants (especially along the US southern border, but also around the world) to our grief, and hopefully to our care. As <a href="https://pen.org/to-change-the-world/">James Baldwin taught us</a>, “The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter even by a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” Beyond our partisan divides, beyond our fears, beyond the difficult history that both binds us together and drives us apart, we share a common humanity. No one wants to suffer, and our well-being is bound up together. To be fully human in this moment requires us to honestly look at the continued abuses and injustices suffered by migrants, and to act in ways that embody and insist on the humanity, safety, and wellbeing of all – including and especially vulnerable asylum seekers and refugees. We should not – we cannot – stand idly by. </span></span></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-44529049499699359852023-05-20T17:14:00.002-05:002023-05-20T17:14:51.449-05:00“Abundance, Regeneration, and Healing”: Permaculture and Spiritual Practice<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjSTzG2RPZJP6ei8CtFleoe6ey1RknH9Z8U9pa4SlImLJL1Yf4aWfMVty0Dh-us8rbp560paLZSbDBIlv4q14mX-8sXh--HNRGsBKVmbebE1BIJjZXmHVczWpdXXJw9EPTjaj_W9_UVE9HB58OCm3gBiMKRjMatIPz-A3QvWxf8lbpSxlUEzchAVv4ODA" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjSTzG2RPZJP6ei8CtFleoe6ey1RknH9Z8U9pa4SlImLJL1Yf4aWfMVty0Dh-us8rbp560paLZSbDBIlv4q14mX-8sXh--HNRGsBKVmbebE1BIJjZXmHVczWpdXXJw9EPTjaj_W9_UVE9HB58OCm3gBiMKRjMatIPz-A3QvWxf8lbpSxlUEzchAVv4ODA" width="320" /></a></div> <span style="font-family: arial;">I love walking in the Ozarks, and there is a special place in my heart for glades and hillsides with limestone outcrops. Even after all these decades, every single time I stop to take one of countless photos, or sit and read a book, I pause in wonder that I am on the floor of what used to be an inland sea, the result of millions of years of marine animals living and dying in a shallow sea. (In fact, <a href="https://sites.wustl.edu/monh/geology-of-missouri/">this sea has been compared to what the Bahamas are like today</a>. So we are, in fact, living in what was something like that paradise; we are just living here 325 million or so years too late!) The memory of this paradise is in the rocks themselves, most readily seen in crinoid fossils. Its stalked form, known as a sea lily, made a tubular calcite shell. When the crinoid died, its shell was added to layers and layers of other shells, comprising much of the limestone we see today. And when the sea receded, more layers of shale, limestone, and sandstone were left behind. <span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH9lM8l64XqwgoLuZpUZbgjc_9vqz008ZgDVXLPKCpRn7bisHmCc1o7gUDcShRuXGAwc4S5xwbUvCiEVK8LqLUU6rH4OolHUgM72fKWdPdc_aBLasLo9yGTPb1pBnS1SDdbNqyfbOLCgK91ftLlGqtd4IcytR23fjX-IwF4dKMrwV2NKgKBP_O9vEERg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH9lM8l64XqwgoLuZpUZbgjc_9vqz008ZgDVXLPKCpRn7bisHmCc1o7gUDcShRuXGAwc4S5xwbUvCiEVK8LqLUU6rH4OolHUgM72fKWdPdc_aBLasLo9yGTPb1pBnS1SDdbNqyfbOLCgK91ftLlGqtd4IcytR23fjX-IwF4dKMrwV2NKgKBP_O9vEERg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This same ancient history is also responsible for so much that I love here, from losing streams, shut-in swimming holes, springs, caves, sinkholes, karst windows, and more. Growing up, I floated, swam, waded, and, when the beds ran dry, collected fossils in the many losing streams and creeks that ran across the countryside. I learned only later that the water was still there, just running out of sight in the bedrock aquifers beneath our feet. And I’ll never forget caving, especially with my friend Aubra. We didn’t need anything spectacular; we just enjoyed the profound solitude that being underground offered. (Although, we did have our share of misadventures. I remember one time, after we had been wriggling for about fifteen minutes through a bit of a squeeze, when Aubra suddenly stopped and shuddered. In the light of my head lamp, all I could see was her feet, which, to my surprise, started to move backwards towards me. They were moving much more quickly than I expected, given we were in a tight passage and moving backwards was not exactly easy. I didn’t have time to figure it out; I started wriggling backwards, too. We made it out in what I would assume is still a record time, at which point I learned that Aubra had inadvertently discovered a thriving community of beetles in the passage ceiling, which had started cascading into her hair.) <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">All of this natural wonder, and the fun that went with it, owes itself to the dissolvability of limestone, made up of calcite, in a weak acid. The Ozarks’ soil happens to be made up of layers and layers of rotting organic matter, such as leaves and pine needles. Rotting organic matter produces carbonic acid, which is dissolved and absorbed by rainwater as it soaks and drains through the soil. When this acidic water meets limestone, it slowly dissolves the calcite. Over millions of years, water carved out the karsts and caves, and coursed beneath our feet as underground rivers in a living process that continues today. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But a <a href="https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/karst.jpg">karst topography</a> is also especially sensitive to groundwater pollution, for the simple fact that there is less sediment to act as a filter. Contaminated surface water can very quickly become contaminated groundwater. And the pollution can spread quickly, at the speed of an underground river. So what happens when we don’t pay attention to this fact? Or worse, what happens when we don’t care? I grew up hearing stories of people using sinkholes as private landfills, and of folks thinking it was okay to dump used motor oil into street drains, without any consideration that these contaminants would go straight into our groundwater systems. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>But as bad as those abuses were, they have been outdone by local industries. One of these terrible lessons in human hubris came courtesy of Litton Systems, near the Springfield-Branson airport. Beginning in the 1960s, they manufactured circuit boards on behalf of the US Navy and the telecommunications industry, and they did so for over forty years. Especially before the EPA was established in 1970, hazardous chemicals were disposed of in very dangerous ways, including dumping them directly into a company pond. <a href="https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/missouri-knew-of-contamination-in-springfields-groundwater-decades-before-anyone-told-residents/">According to a report for NPR</a>, one employee said, “They didn't care what kind of chemical it was … . They all went in.” Just how much went in? “[A] 1993 EPA report estimated that Litton dumped 193.8 million gallons of wastewater from its circuit board manufacturing into pits and sinkholes on its property.” Another employee, who worked at Litton from 1967 to 1975, remembered inhaling fumes and passing out. “You don’t really know that it’s in the air,” she said. “You just smell it and then it gets you high. It was very bad.” <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> When Litton tried to sale the property in 1991, testing revealed that concentrations of TCE, trichloroethene, in the groundwater under the property “<a href="https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/missouri-knew-of-contamination-in-springfields-groundwater-decades-before-anyone-told-residents/">reached 130,000 parts per billion, or 26,000 times higher than the level that the EPA considers safe in drinking water</a>.” The site eventually sold and was closed in 2007, but those pollutants remained in the ground, out of sight. And the TCE, a chemical used to clean the circuit boards, was persistently moving in the Ozarks groundwater. From 2018 to 2020, tests at properties within five miles of the Litton site found TCE at 87 properties, several at dangerously high levels. Not all of the property owners in the area around Litton were contacted, and people spent years drinking, cooking with, and bathing in contaminated water that is <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-09/documents/trichloroethylene.pdf">associated with severe health risks</a>, including “Neurological, liver, and kidney effects,” miscarriages, and “several types of cancer.” <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://dnr.mo.gov/waste-recycling/sites-regulated-facilities/superfund/interest/litton-systems-inc">That cleanup is still ongoing</a>, five decades later. Along with government agencies, Northrop Grumman, the company that bought Litton, is part of the cleanup, pumping and treating millions of gallons of water every year so it can be safely released back into the groundwater system. And all of this – the harm to the environment, the health impacts and risks to people who live here, and the expensive and long-term cleanup – is the result of the lack of attention and care given to what was being done and the impacts it would have. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As I noted a couple of weeks ago, it is this kind of hubris that has led us to the edge of catastrophe, as we have collectively ignored the reality of climate change for decades. One of the questions I raised then was how spiritual and reflective practices might help us in nourishing cultures and communities where this kind of hubris, whether dumping contaminants into groundwater or pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is avoided as much as possible, and recognized, healed, and transformed whenever it does arise. I offered those reflections on May 7, which happened to be International Permaculture Day, and permaculture happens to be a good starting place for these kinds of reflections. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> </span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The word permaculture comes from the mid 1970s, when Bill Mollison and David Holmgren combined the words “permanent agriculture” to describe an “<a href="https://holmgren.com.au/permaculture/about-permaculture/">integrated, evolving system of perennial or self-perpetuating plant and animal species useful to [humanity]</a>.” Over the decades, it has developed into “a worldview, a design system, a framework for best practice and a world-wide movement, based on an academic review of published material” that transforms the role of humans in the ecosystem “from being dependent consumers to becoming responsible producers.” <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Practically speaking, this means that we are paying attention and joining in with natural ecosystems, whether we’re growing herbs in the backyard, tending a food forest, harvesting water, building a home, or designing a neighborhood. <a href="https://www.permaculturenews.org/what-is-permaculture/">The Permaculture Research Institute describes it</a> as -<br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“the harmonious integration of landscape and people — providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. … The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action; of looking at systems in all their functions, rather than asking only one yield of them; and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">It is easy to see the stark contrast between a permaculture approach and, for instance, the approach demonstrated by Litton Systems. Rather than working with the local karst topography, Litton worked against it, introducing millions of gallons of dangerous chemicals into the groundwater system. And it continued this “protracted and thoughtless action” even when “protracted and thoughtful observation” revealed there were problems. Neither sick employees, multiple on-site water tests revealing dangerous levels of contamination, nor evidence that the pollution had entered the groundwater system convinced them to address the problems. This was a system divorced from the ecosystem and that threatened the well-being of an entire community. This kind of ecological violence is not possible within the ethics of a system like permaculture, which is oriented around an ethic of care for the earth, care for people, and care for the future. As Andrew French, describing “<a href="https://andrewrfrench.medium.com/permaculture-strategies-in-a-karst-landscape-b83ac51ab064">Permaculture Strategies in a Karst Landscape</a>,” put it, “Designing for a Karst landscape means designing for groundwater protection.” That protection is a first priority, instead of an afterthought. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As such, permaculture is both a response and a corrective to the hubris that has characterized our economic and agricultural systems. It’s not the only response, but it is a very accessible one that can help us shift the broader culture away from “protracted and thoughtless action” toward “protracted and thoughtful observation,” while giving us an ethical framework and practical tools for translating that thoughtful observation into wise and compassionate design, from our backyards to our board rooms. And it’s no accident that <a href="https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/03/23/leila-darwish-earth-repair/">permaculture practitioners have also been deeply involved in cultivating and applying bioremediation techniques</a>, working with natural processes to clean up, heal, and reclaim ecosystems ravaged by the reckless destruction caused by companies like Litton Systems. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span> Starhawk described the importance and potential of this approach in an introductory article to <a href="https://earthactivisttraining.org/permaculture-design-certificate/">the Permaculture Design Course she teaches with Charles Williams</a>. She writes that - <br /></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“We have a very narrow window of time left in which to respond to climate change and environmental degradation. If we don’t, we face ecological and human catastrophes that are beyond imagining. No one solution or technology can save us: in fact, applying single or simplistic solutions generally will create new, unforeseen and possibly worse problems. … Only an integrated systems approach can find effective solutions to environmental and social ills. This is what permaculture offers, and why we feel such a driving need to teach these skills and insights.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So when we talk about paying attention, it is important to emphasize that this is not value neutral. We are not merely paying attention, or paying attention in order to make the most profit or gain the most power. Permaculture helps us link our insights with actions that intentionally support healthy ecosystems, including human communities. The quality of our attention is love. We pay attention to know a place, to learn to work with the natural world because we are part of the natural world. We learn to heal the wounds left by pollution and extraction, because our own healing is bound up with the health of the earth. It is intentional that permaculture frames its ethics in terms of care, because care is regenerative. We have to cultivate cultures and communities of care if the human species is going to have a future on this planet, or at least a future that is characterized by health, wholeness, and joy. <br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">For those of use cultivating a spiritual practice, this probably feels very familiar. The ethics of permaculture fit right within my own spiritual biography. From my childhood, I can remember feeling most at home in the quiet places, moments that were often pauses for reflection amidst the slow work of life. I remember: sitting in the bean patch, covered in dirt and sweat; picking berries with my grandmother; digging potatoes with my father; climbing a tree above a swollen creek; baking cookies with my mother; playing with a friendly cocker spaniel; basking in the unexpected empathy of a friend; taking a walk through the woods under a full moon, relishing the silence that is full of life that I could sense even when I could not see. In this way, my spiritual seeking was a recognition of simplicity, of letting go into a mindful, grateful, kind awareness of the present moment. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Alongside this, I can also remember my childhood experiences of pain, especially becoming aware of the realities of injustice and loss, and feeling a strong commitment to peace and wholeness from an early age. Though my immediate family was a safe place, my life in my extended family and community included witnessing or experiencing suffering born of racism, sexism, classism, coercion, and abuse. Since my church and family didn't provide any clear ways to address those experiences, my spiritual seeking was also a response to a vision of healing and justice. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">These two themes have stayed with me throughout my life: embodying joy and contentment, born of gratitude in the face of joy and wonder, and embodying healing and justice, born of compassion in the face of oppression and suffering. Looking back, I understand these two aspirations both spring from the root of kindness and goodwill, the root of love, encountering both the beautiful (leading to joy) and the tragic (leading to compassion) in my life and community.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Looking back from where I am now, I can see how my life has unfolded as an expression of these aspirations. Along the way, I've learned that what is most important to me is how we, as human persons and communities, care for one another and our world. My spiritual practices have value inasmuch as they support integrating inner and outer transformation. I am interested in how cultural and spiritual practices have helped or hindered the development of social and ecological justice and lasting peace, and what we can learn from those successes and failures. I aspire to be open-hearted and willing to encounter truth and wisdom in each person and experience I meet, and to do this in community. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Permaculture provides a path that empowers this process, even in the face of the overwhelming challenges we’ve produced in this era of climate change and ecological destruction. Its simple principles can transform our relationship with the natural world and each other: take time to pay attention and understand a system before you act; recognize the value of diversity and its role in resilience and health; act in small and slow ways, so you can notice impacts and choose actions that preserve that health; participate in regenerative systems that produce more than they consume; empower people to act in whatever ways they can, rolling back our helplessness and building accessible, healing, joyful opportunities for everyone. In Starhawk’s words, “Our goal is more than sustainability: we work for abundance, regeneration and healing.” Whatever path we take, this is the destination we need. Let’s go there, together. </span></p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-76720136889691391172023-05-06T22:47:00.003-05:002023-05-06T22:47:10.113-05:00Quicker to Cut than to Care: The Urgency of Climate Justice<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Last week, while on a working retreat in New York, I was delighted that there were four dogwood trees blooming outside my room. I could see two of them through the window every time I came through the door. It was a fantastic sight, made even more welcome because of a choice my back fence neighbors made last winter, when they cut down their dogwood tree. Its limbs grew into my yard, where I could get a close up view of each spring’s flowers. I missed that this year.<br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>I don’t think the tree was targeted. I doubt my neighbors got up one morning and thought, “Wow, we should cut down the dogwood tree today.” It was more probably a case of “wrong place, wrong time.” They were grading out some of their yard and clearing out the fence row, which had some small mulberry and elm saplings. And they just completely removed the dogwood tree. I had taken photos of that tree’s blooms since we had moved there in 2018. And now, this spring, there was an empty space where the blooms used to be. Again, I doubt my neighbors knew what they did. Who cuts down dogwood trees? And I appreciate a clean fence row. But their good intentions did not stop them from cutting down a beautiful tree. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Humans excel at hubris. We just do not – we cannot be bothered to? – stop and pay attention. It takes a lot of intentional effort to slow down and do things purposefully. It is too inconvenient to ask – what trees are growing here? Are they all the same? Do I want to preserve any of them? We are almost always short on the things that care requires: time, energy, attention, curiosity, patience. </span><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="white-space: normal;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don’t mean this as a complaint about my neighbors. They cut down a dogwood tree, probably without knowing it, and I had taken the time to notice it. So that invites me to ask – what is it that I have rushed past? Where have I been quicker to cut, than to care? <br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It’s not such a big deal when we’re talking about my backyard, but it is another thing entirely when we turn to the cumulative impacts of human hubris. Nowhere is this more obvious, or addressing it more urgent, than in the case of climate change. On the plus side, we have had many wonderful people paying attention to these issues, empowering us with the knowledge and actions we need to make good choices. I was in high school when the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued their first report in 1992, and I remember feeling hopeful that humans were actually taking steps to address what would otherwise be a looming catastrophe. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>And the IPCC’s work is impressive and important. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/from-climate-change-certainty-to-rapid-decline-a-timeline-of-ipcc-reports">Damian Carrington, an Environment Editor at <i>The Guardian</i>, described its work</a> as “thousands of the world’s best scientists” distilling “the latest global research into reports that are then signed off by all the governments in the world.” The reports are “gold-standard statements on the reality and dangers of climate change and, arguably, the greatest scientific endeavour in history.” Carrington went on to summarize the findings and recommendations of each of the IPCC reports. The first, from 1992, even led to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, an annual summit where leaders from around the world could meet to discuss and commit to climate action. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was a university student when the second report was released in 1995. The emphasis was again on recognizing the human actions driving climate change, but it also went farther, noting that “Climate change is likely to have wide-ranging and mostly adverse impacts on human health, with significant loss of life.” The risks included “extreme high-temperature events, floods and droughts.” It advised that we collectively act immediately, not waiting for all the data to become known. It would be better, wiser, and more compassionate, to act now to “take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimise the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects.” Surely such a conclusion, spoken by our best scientists and with the authority of the United Nations, would move us to action, right? </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not so much. The third report came in 2001 – when my family was living in a cabin doing our best to learn and practice sustainable, simple living - and the IPCC increased their warnings and calls for action. It was the starkest pronouncement yet: “Greenhouse gas forcing in the 21st century could set in motion large-scale, high-impact, non-linear and potentially abrupt changes in physical and biological systems over the coming decades to millennia.” And scientists noted that “rising socioeconomic costs related to weather damage and to regional variations” indicated that human societies were vulnerable to climate change. They appealed to our sense of compassion and justice by pointing out that it would be “developing countries and the poor persons within all countries” who suffered the most. Surely such a conclusion, spoken by our best scientists and with the authority of the United Nations, would move us to action, right? </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not so much. By 2007, when the fourth report was released, we were living in Cambodia. The science had definitely caught up with the precautions by this time, so that the report could state that, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse concentrations.” The warnings were also starker, emphasizing that further delays to reduce emissions would both make it significantly more difficult “to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increase the risk of more severe climate change impacts.” The economic considerations were also clear; failure to act now would be to recklessly prioritize short-term profits over long-term economic wellbeing: “the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting … delay would be dangerous and much more costly”. Surely such a conclusion, spoken by our best scientists and with the authority of the United Nations, would move us to action, right? Not so much. The financial collapse of 2008 quickly took up most of the world’s attention. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By 2014, with my family firmly settled in Missouri, the reports start to feel increasingly resigned. The warnings are given in the context of “continued emissions,” spoken with an awareness that this is the likely course: “Continued emissions will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.” The report also shifted from mainly preventing impacts to also adapting to impacts that were becoming more inevitable. Yet even with this encouragement, there is almost a grief, at least when I read it, that “Adaptation can reduce the risks of climate change impacts, but there are limits to its effectiveness, especially with greater magnitudes and rates of climate change.” Surely such a conclusion, spoken by our best scientists and with the authority of the United Nations, would move us to action, right? </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not so much. In 2018, the IPCC released a special report. It was an alarm bell of sorts - that we studied and discussed together, along with the Green New Deal, on Earth Day 2019 – to draw attention to the importance of doing everything we can to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius. By comparing impacts between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, the report makes it clear how significant that half a degree really is. Just this amount of restraint on our part would spare millions of people from extreme heat and the ravages of drought. As Professor Johan Rockström said: “Climate change is occurring earlier and more rapidly than expected. Even at the current level of 1C warming, it is painful. This report is really important. It has a scientific robustness that shows 1.5C is not just a political concession. There is a growing recognition that 2C is dangerous.” And yet, the report also acknowledges the proverbial hole we have dug for ourselves. Just to limit global heating to 1.5C, “CO2 emissions [must] decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030.” Surely such a conclusion, spoken by our best scientists and with the authority of the United Nations, would move us to action, right? </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not so much. Last March, the IPCC issued the final section of its sixth report, popularly called a “final warning” for the world to do what it needs to do to address climate change. The first sections focused on 1) the physical science of climate change and its resulting (and increasingly irreversible) crisis; 2) the impacts of this crisis, such as rising sea levels; and 3) the actions we can and must take to limit these impacts as much as possible, such as using renewable energy and capturing carbon dioxide. March’s final section synthesized all this information and translated into suggested policies for governments. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>The urgency and the importance are at critical levels; this is quite literally a life and death issue on a planetary scale. It is unethical for us to fail to act, and the costs that are now and will be paid in human and ecological suffering have been largely avoidable. We have known for decades what needed to be done, and yet we have failed to do so. In particular, this has been a failure of the most powerful and wealthy among us. <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2019/04/climate-change-and-economic-inequality.html">As we discussed in 2019</a>, the most wealthy 10% are responsible for 50% of individual-produced fossil fuel emissions. Oxfam estimated that the carbon footprints of the richest 10% are 60 times higher than the globe’s poorest 10%. And on the corporate level, “only 100 companies are responsible for approximately 71% of greenhouse gas emissions.” </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“In other words, the very wealthy have literally been willing to risk the suffering and death of millions upon millions of people in their pursuit of accumulating money and power. They have been willing to risk massive ecological collapse of the planet in order to satisfy insatiable greed.” <span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></span></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And, unfortunately, resistance to change is still considered a legitimate response to these climate realities. </span> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c">Fiona Harvey, also an Environment Editor at <i>The Guardian</i>, reported </a>that, <br />“in the final hours of deliberations … , the large Saudi Arabian delegation, of at least 10 representatives, pushed at several points for the weakening of messages on fossil fuels, and the insertion of references to carbon capture and storage, touted by some as a remedy for fossil fuel use but not yet proven to work at scale.” </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> But as regrettable as this response is, Saudi Arabia shouldn’t take the bulk of our attention on this count. No, we need look no farther than the United States of America to see how far political leaders will go to prevent meaningful action on climate change. <span style="white-space: normal;">You’re probably familiar with a senator from West Virginia blocking this kind of action. And if you thought about Senator Manchin, you wouldn’t be wrong. After all, and as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/07/15/1111675233/manchin-rejects-climate-and-tax-provisions-in-democrats-spending-package">Ximena Bustillo and Laura Benshoff observed</a> last year, </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Since mid-2021, Senate Democrats and the Biden administration have repeatedly entered into negotiations with Manchin to advance action on climate change, only to have him shoot down the proposals. / Manchin's home state of West Virginia faces grave threats from floods supercharged by climate change. At the same time, it is a major producer of coal and natural gas. Manchin himself has personal financial ties to the coal industry, and he has gotten more campaign donations from the fossil fuel sector than any other senator.” </span></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But that’s not the senator I had in mind. Going back to 1993, within a year of the IPCC’s first report, West Virginia’s Senator Robert Byrd used his position on the Senate Appropriations committee to block a tax on carbon emissions. The Clinton Administration pivoted to an energy tax that stalled in the face of opposition politicians and fossil-fuel lobbyists, and never became a law. Byrd was then instrumental in helping block the USA from making commitments to reduce fossil fuel emission as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol. He spent much of his political career opposing actions that would protect the environment but endanger the profitability of coal mining. And though it’s true that, at the end of his life, he was starting to embrace the science of climate change, it was too little, too late. At his death, Senator Manchin took up his mantle, and joined the long US tradition of failing to address the urgent needs related to climate justice. In <a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/01/is-the-u-s-uniquely-bad-at-tackling-climate-change/">Shannon Osaka’s words</a>, </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“the last three decades of U.S. climate policy look like a graveyard of failed bills: Carbon taxes have died on the Senate floor and been torched by attack ads. Cap-and-trade systems have been endorsed – and then abandoned – by Republicans and Democrats alike. / According to the Climate Change Performance Index, the U.S. is 55th in the world when it comes to climate policy; … .” </span></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is much to discuss and explore when it comes to the reasons behind our collective failure to care for our planet and ourselves, and Osaka outlines several of those points, particularly in the political spheres. But for this moment, I want to bring attention to the window of opportunity we have right now. Last month, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/for-earth-day-key-facts-about-americans-views-of-climate-change-and-renewable-energy/">the <i>Pew Research Center</i> documented that public support for climate change action has grown</a>. For example, </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;">“Nearly seven-in-ten Americans (69%) favor the U.S. taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050, … .[and] say the U.S. should prioritize developing renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, over expanding the production of oil, coal and natural gas.” </span></li><li>“Among Americans ages 18 to 29, 50% say the U.S. should use a mix of energy sources, including fossil fuels, while about as many (48%) say the U.S. should exclusively use renewables.”</li><li>“Two-thirds of Americans think the federal government should encourage domestic production of wind and solar power.”</li><li>“Two-thirds of Americans say large businesses and corporations are doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change.” </li><li>“Majorities also say their state elected officials (58%) and the energy industry (55%) are doing too little to address climate change. In a separate Center survey conducted in May 2022, a similar share of Americans (58%) said the federal government should do more to reduce the effects of global climate change.”</li></ul></span><span> </span><span> </span>But there is a gap. The Pew study also revealed that even though “a majority of Americans view climate change as a major threat, it is a lower priority than issues such as strengthening the economy and reducing health care costs.” Only 37% called climate change a “top priority,” while 34% said it was an “important but lower priority.” And not just a little lower. In a January survey, climate change only ranked 17 out of 21 national issues. There is also, as you might anticipate, a partisan divide that is also important to note. 59% of Democrats identified climate change as a top priority, compared to only 13% of Republicans. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What stands out to me with these statistics is that, while we continue to press forward on policy, we also need to continue to press forward on culture. Because humans excel at hubris. We just do not – we cannot be bothered to? – stop and pay attention. It takes a lot of intentional effort to slow down and do things purposefully. From the mundane joy of noticing a dogwood tree growing on a fence row, to the life-and-death necessity of taking seriously the impacts of climate change, we are too often short on the things that care requires: time, energy, attention, curiosity, patience. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Later this month, I’ll return to this topic from the lens of spiritual or reflective practice, because paying attention like this is the heart of many spiritual, reflective, and scientific practices across time, cultures, and geographies. In the meantime, I hope you can remember the image of that fallen dogwood tree and its hard lesson: it is quicker to cut than to care. There is no time left to value short-term profits over long term health. It took billions of years for those blooms to grow on my back fence row. It is an act of love to notice, listen, and give thanks. How much more this very planet Earth, our only home? It took billions of years for all this beauty to blossom, a vibrant and interconnected web of living and dying. If humanity is to have a future here, it is imperative that we notice, listen, and act – now. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span><br /><br /> </span><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-47910535308985668162023-04-20T22:36:00.004-05:002023-04-20T22:36:19.482-05:00Missouri’s Anti-Trans Actions and Our Continued Resistance <p> <span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s not as if marginalized communities ever get a break, including gender and sexual minorities. But </span><a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2023/03/dont-say-gay-or-trans-in-missouri.html" style="font-family: arial;">this year continues to be an excruciating one</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, especially for the transgender/nonbinary/gender-expansive community. While collective indulgence in outrage, like videos of people smashing or shooting their cases of Bud Light beer, are obviously ridiculous, they also send a clear message to us. It’s not like Bud Light is suddenly a champion of trans people just because they work with a transgender influencer like Dylan Mulvaney. This is a </span><a href="https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/bud-lights-response-to-dylan-mulvaney-backlash-displays-dangers-of-shallow-advocacy/" style="font-family: arial;">marketing strategy</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, and </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06yy88tLWlg" style="font-family: arial;">so is the outrage</a><span style="font-family: arial;">. But all this outrage also tells me that, not only do these Bud Light-bashing folks hate me and oppose my wellbeing, they hate and oppose anyone that is friendly to me. They are so committed to erasing the existence of trans people that they can’t even drink a beer that is guilty by association. <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This kind of outrage, and the vigilance it requires on the part of every trans person trying to navigate the world with some measure of safety, would be more than enough to deal with. But of course there is more. This last week, trans folks in Missouri have been living in the thick of the intentional, ongoing attacks against transgender lives. On Thursday, April 13, 2023, Missouri’s Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, issued expanded emergency regulations that effectively restrict and, in many cases, make impossible life-saving, life-giving care that many transgender and gender expansive people depend on. </span><a href="https://ago.mo.gov/home/news/2023/04/13/missouri-attorney-general-andrew-bailey-promulgates-emergency-regulation-targeting-gender-transition-procedures-for-minors" style="font-family: arial;">The official justification</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> calls it “an effort to protect children,” </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><blockquote style="font-family: arial;">“clarifying that, because gender transition interventions are experimental and have significant side effects, state law already prohibits performing those procedures in the absence of substantial guardrails that ensure informed consent and adequate access to mental health care."</blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Keep this reasoning in mind, because it plays a key role in this particular strategy. It follows and uses the accusations that Jamie Reed made in February 2023 that “a pediatric gender clinic in St. Louis is ‘permanently harming’ children by rushing to prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.” Whistleblowing is important, and transgender people deserve the best care possible. However, and importantly, Reed’s testimony appears to be part of the problem, and not the solution. </span><a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/co-worker-responds-to-whistleblowers-claims-about-gender-clinic.html" style="font-family: arial;">Jess Jones, who worked with Reed at the center, has shared</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, for example, that clients “had raised ‘red flags’ about Reed.” Jones said - </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><blockquote style="font-family: arial;">"So I really wish the center had listened to trans people … We said: ‘This is a person who isn't safe for us.’”</blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But Attorney General Bailey has doubled down, insisting in </span><a href="https://ago.mo.gov/home/news/2023/04/13/missouri-attorney-general-andrew-bailey-promulgates-emergency-regulation-targeting-gender-transition-procedures-for-minors" style="font-family: arial;">his proclamation</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> that: </span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><blockquote style="font-family: arial;">“The regulation is necessary due to the skyrocketing number of gender transition interventions, despite rising concerns in the medical community that these interventions lack clinical evidence of safety or success.”</blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s cleverly done. If you read the entire announcement, for example, you’d never know that professional medical organizations have overwhelmingly published both policy statements supporting and standards outlining gender-affirming care, including: the A</span><a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/4/e20182162/37381/Ensuring-Comprehensive-Care-and-Support-for" style="font-family: arial;">merican Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, the </span><a href="https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Latest_News/AACAP_Statement_Responding_to_Efforts-to_ban_Evidence-Based_Care_for_Transgender_and_Gender_Diverse.aspx" style="font-family: arial;">American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, the </span><a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/102/11/3869/4157558" style="font-family: arial;">Endocrine Society</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, the </span><a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/health-care-advocacy/advocacy-update/march-26-2021-state-advocacy-update" style="font-family: arial;">American Medical Association</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, the </span><a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/policy/gender-diverse-children" style="font-family: arial;">American Psychological Association</a><span style="font-family: arial;"> and the </span><a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/File Library/About-APA/Organization-Documents-Policies/Policies/Position-Transgender-Gender-Diverse-Youth.pdf" style="font-family: arial;">American Psychiatric Association</a><span style="font-family: arial;">. As I pointed out last month and as </span><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/" style="font-family: arial;">Heather Boerner wrote in Scientific American</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, “All of those medical societies find such care to be evidence-based and medically necessary.”</span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As such, the Attorney General took another step this week in </span><a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/18/missouri-trans-gender-affirming-care-andrew-bailey/" style="font-family: arial;">opening up a website for people to report medical providers providing gender-affirming care</a><span style="font-family: arial;">. This has caused a lot of understandable fear and anger, leading to speculation that the state is creating a registry of transgender people. However, the website’s purpose is most likely an attempt to locate people who can support the Attorney General’s biases against transgender people. In particular, they will be looking for people who follow the de-transition narrative, like Chloe Cole and Luka Hein. We’ve already observed how anti-trans lawmakers have used Chloe and Luka’s stories to “</span><a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2023/03/dont-say-gay-or-trans-in-missouri.html" style="font-family: arial;">silence all other trans voices and deny us both basic care and human rights.</a><span style="font-family: arial;">” The Attorney General could employ a similar tactic in the upcoming legal defense of the emergency declaration. This is the most likely goal for the website portal: they are fishing for people with stories that they can weaponize against transgender people.</span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So, at least for now, the Attorney General is focusing on and asking for people to report on medical providers. This </span><i style="font-family: arial;">does</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> directly impact any trans or gender expansive person seeking medical care related to their gender identity/transition, but it does not mean (at this time) that the Attorney General is targeting trans people directly. At present, we are not at risk for being reported and/or arrested for being trans, but we are at risk at losing our medical care and care providers. </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is key: the Attorney General is seeking to destabilize the trans community through robbing us of our medical care providers. </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is especially cruel for two reasons. These providers are often a backbone in our communities. We crowdsource trustworthy providers. Those whom we trust with our care become a vital part of our networks and communities. We love and recommend many of them; they are family. So, in one stroke, the Attorney General is attempting to rob us of our medical, life-giving, and life-saving care AND cause division in our family. It puts medical providers in the difficult, almost impossible, position of having to decide if they risk the wellbeing of the transgender people under their care (by conforming to the emergency declaration) or risk their own career and medical license (by resisting the emergency declaration and continuing to provide gender-affirming care). </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">These purposeful actions are cruel to both our transgender community and our medical providers. </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But we have also been preparing for this attack for some time. From the very beginning of his time in office, Bailey has acted in ways that seem aimed at harnessing outrage related to transgender people. Please keep in mind that this is a long-term strategy that does not rely on the success of the emergency declaration, but on mobilizing outrage (at the expense of everyone who isn’t cisgender), the bigotry he is enabling, and the ways he is able to use this harm to empower political ambition. </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This, of course, is part of a coordinated attack on trans lives, both in Missouri and around the nation. Powerful people are watching what is happening in states like Missouri to inform their own strategies against the transgender community. Please understand that these policies, emergency declarations, and legislation are being copied and pasted, and also adapted based on results, by governments in multiple states. </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This means that this moment is a very tender time for many transgender people, especially in places like Missouri. I have spent a lot of time during this last week providing pastoral care. There is so much desperation, with lots of understandable and practical fear and grief. People are dealing with the shock, and it's really important that as a community we feel care and support right now to make it through this desperate moment. Suicidal ideation is high, along with fear of losing medical care, confusion over what needs to be done, frantic contact with care providers, and scrambling to relocate in another, safe state. It is especially crucial that we survive these next weeks, because the uncertainty is so high. I am reminded of </span><a href="https://www.them.us/story/laverne-cox-anti-trans-legislation" style="font-family: arial;">Laverne Cox’s words from last January</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, when she reflected on a proposed bill in Oklahoma that sought to outlaw gender-affirming care, in words that also applies to Missouri’s situation now: </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><blockquote style="font-family: arial;">“I'm exhausted and trans people are exhausted. … For years, we've been hearing from anti trans pundits and politicians that this is about protecting the children … . But I think what this Oklahoma law reveals is that it's never been about the children. It's always been about scapegoating trans people, stigmatizing us and criminalizing our existence, making us not exist.” </blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So, please remember all of us transgender and gender-expansive folks living in places like Missouri in your in your heart, your words, and your actions. Being trans (being anything other than a white, straight, cisgender, temporarily able-bodied, financial stable, Christian person) in Missouri is tough. We have weathered worse than this attack, but we are tired and this is still going to be a tough journey to protect trans lives and transform hearts and minds.</span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;">We have spent a week helping each other manage grief, rage, confusion, and suicidal ideation. We have spent a week managing pop-up clinics to expedite care for people getting that care established before the new restrictions go into effect on April 27. We have spent a week helping each other pursue options for accessing care through mail-order prescription services and out-of-state clinics. We have spent a week helping each other explore options for moving to other states. We have spent a week communicating with our medical care providers and watching as they make decisions that weigh their careers with our care. We have spent a week. </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">We are supporting each other and doing an amazing job of it. We are not giving up or backing down. </span><br style="font-family: arial;" /><br style="font-family: arial;" /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But we can use and need all the community support we can get right now. Please do not stand idly. Donate to organizations like ACLU-MO and Lambda Legal, who are spearheading the legal activities to oppose the Attorney General’s emergency declaration. Donate to support organizations that provide much needed medical care, mental healthcare, direct assistance, and social support. Volunteer at your local lgbtqia+ center or clinic. Listen to trans voices and reach out to your transgender and gender expansive friends. Be there with them if they need to talk, or if they need company and be quiet, and do your best to help them in whatever ways they request. Go to protests and lobby days. Contact your political representatives. Confront family, friends, and co-workers who spread lies and disinformation about transgender folks. Do whatever you are able to do. We need each other, both for our wellbeing now and for our future wellbeing. These are crucial moments when we decide what kind of community, nation, and world we are willing to live in. Please help us make it a world where everyone can be and feel safe, happy, and free.</span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-25886543967479117382023-03-18T21:29:00.001-05:002023-03-24T17:40:19.941-05:00Moving a Balloon, Moving a Rock: On Patience & Praxis<div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>My reflections of late have turned back to patience, a reflection that arises again and again out of the personal, relational, structural, and cultural turmoil of the last many years. So many of the issues we face are intractable, with roots as deep as hundreds and thousands of years. And while history reminds me that there have always been people who were there to fight against oppression and insist on humanity’s potential for wisdom and compassion, it also reminds me that human lives have been consistently characterized by injustice and oppression. Our progress is at once remarkable and incomplete, and we carry the urgency of our own brief lives. And so, we also carry both a necessary patience and a necessary impatience, like oil and water in our hearts. </span></div><div><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>Reactivity, that impulsiveness that acts with no time - and sometimes no regard - for wisdom, is the obvious choice of obstacles when it comes to patience. But that has not been my preferred vice when it comes to trying to embody peace and justice in my own life and in community with those around me. I'm fairly slow and steady, and that seems to be a deep habit that isn't changing anytime soon. Instead, I've noticed that the real danger for me when it comes to losing my patience is despair. This makes sense to me. In the face of terrible odds and intractable systemic injustice, some of us lose ourselves in the moment and do something rash that we might regret. Some of us, lose ourselves in the grief and simply begin to fade away. Some of us may do a little of both, shaking our fists as we drown in tears.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>In the past, I conceptualized this kind of impatience as passivity, but I don't personally find that nearly as useful a category of reflection as despair. It's not simple indifference; it's the hollow feeling that threatens to engulf me that is most akin to mourning. And this reflection has also helped me move forward. Reflecting on my experience in this way, I can understand I have a need to grieve and that honoring that need is a radical act in itself.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>As part of these acts of healing, I've inclined my ear again to Elsa Tamez. She wrote that: </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“The situation of oppression and pain tends to make people feel depressed, to dehumanize them, to destroy not only their bodies but also their spirit, to make them see their oppression as normal and natural.” (<i>The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works is Dead</i>, 74)</span></blockquote></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> <span> </span> </span>These words will be recognizable to anyone who belongs to a marginalized community. We are meant to come to believe that change is not only impossible; it is unnatural. Oppressive systems want us to believe that oppression is the natural order of things, and that this natural order is good. Each of Tamez’ categories plays an important role: depression, dehumanization, destruction of the body and spirit, and the normalization or naturalization of oppression. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>Reflect on <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/depression/what-is-depression">the APA’s list of symptoms of depression</a>, but not only for its psychological impacts, but also its impacts on us as people for change. Depression can often make it difficult for us to sustain social justice movements, including: “Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed”; “Loss of energy or increased fatigue”; “Feeling worthless or guilty”; “Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions”; and “Thoughts of death or suicide”. These mental and emotional states are further exacerbated by dehumanization. As <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2019/04/social-rejection-social-change.html#more">I’ve discussed before</a>, </span></div><div><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“[I]t is important to notice how dehumanization paves the way for social rejection and social control. Because of the stakes involved, human beings generally don’t want to reject someone they care about. <a href="https://www.zurinstitute.com/enmity/">Dehumanization makes it much easier</a>. So whenever we notice dehumanization going on, we should also pay attention to the social rejection that might be coming in its wake. This is why <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79071">governments have created propaganda that dehumanizes their enemies at war</a> and it is why you hear <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/words-matter/201807/dehumanizing-metaphors-lead-dehumanizing-policies">people like Donald Trump using dehumanizing language to describe the folks that will suffer from his policies</a>.</span> </blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“If you can get the public to believe the victims of oppression are somehow less than human, then that public is much more likely to tolerate violent policies. And if you are involved in the oppression, dehumanization makes it easier to live with yourself. After all, you don’t think you are harming actual people. As <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/17/17364562/trump-dog-omarosa-dehumanization-psychology">Brian Resnick put it,</a> ‘Dehumanization is a mental loophole that allows us to dismiss other people’s feelings and experiences. If you think of murder and torture as universally taboo, then dehumanization of the “other” is a psychological loophole that can justify those acts.’”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>This is the destruction of body and spirit that Tamez included next. That is the end goal of dehumanization: exploited, commodified, objectified, cast aside, ridiculed, institutionalized, forgotten, left for dead, or killed. This is why we often have to recite terrifying statistics, share tragic stories, and say the names of those who have suffered. It is both necessary and it takes a toll. It takes a toll because the grief and rage, once perceived and understood, are perceived and understood everywhere, all the time. This is what <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867153918/-to-be-in-a-rage-almost-all-the-time">James Baldwin was speaking to with regard to how racism and white supremacy suffuse every part of our society</a>: </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time … . And part of the rage is this: It isn't only what is happening to you. But it's what's happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance.” </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>But carrying this grief and rage is also necessary because we are resisting that fourth element, the normalization and naturalization of oppression. Oppression and injustice are normalized in our society to the point of invisibility. This is why people say we are being anti-American by simply telling the truth about history, because violence and oppression - such as the enslavement of African people, displacement and attempted genocide of Indigenous peoples, exploitation of immigrants, and destruction of ecosystems in order to accumulate power and wealth – is built into our history, systems, cultures, and even memories. It is so normalized that we cannot even see that all these social problems people grow up thinking of as normal are actually symptoms of a sick society. Yet resisting this normalization can be unsettling, and the impacts of depression are further intensified both by 1) a lack of resources and access to appropriate medical and mental health care and 2) the continued exposure to injustice. As <a href="https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/reynoldsv2013theproblemsnotdepressionitsoppressioninhearnedstaysolidaradicalhandbookforyouth.pdf">Vikki Reynolds observed</a>, </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“We can start to think we might be crazy (depressed, angry, obsessive, defiant, maladapted...) Hopelessness can make us think we can't do anything about injustice. Political awareness can be paralyzing, overwhelming, and spiritually painful. Individualism makes us think we're alone, that no one thinks like us.” </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In response to these four obstacles – depression, dehumanization, destruction of body and spirit, and normalization of injustice, Tamez encouraged us toward a praxis rooted in hope, patience, prayer, and integrity. Two of these especially stand out to me. First, Tamez insists on cultivating "militant patience, that is, of steadfastness, of resistance, of heroic endurance, all the while practicing justice." And, importantly for me, she concludes that those who practice in this way "do not fall into despair, but rather wisely recognize the opportune moments." (<i>The Scandalous Message of James</i>, 74-75) This is an approach to patience that actually works for me, and that I can carry into my days. Patience as resistance folds patience into praxis. Waiting is not passivity, but strategy. We practice justice in whatever ways we can in the conditions we find ourselves in, while we pay attention for those “opportune moments” to act decisively. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Similarly, Tamez also reframes integrity within the context of praxis, as consistency between what we believe and what we do. This is in resistance to the contradictions within oppressive systems, which compliment themselves for belonging “to the community of faith but show favoritism against the poor, who ought to pay the workers’ salaries but withhold them, who speak ill of others behind their backs, who see others in need but do not come to their material assistance.” (ibid, 75) If we are people who would embody peace and justice, then our integrity must include solidarity. Returning to <a href="https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/reynoldsv2013theproblemsnotdepressionitsoppressioninhearnedstaysolidaradicalhandbookforyouth.pdf">Vikki Reynolds’ wisdom</a>,</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Our resistance to this political violence, degradation, heartbreak, and terror is to hold each other in sacred and revolutionary love, and to work for justice: that's what solidarity is. Solidarity is belonging.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This belonging includes uprooting our internalized oppression and dominance and together, patience and solidarity as praxis help us overcome the four obstacles Tamez named. By practicing radical care in community, we normalize relationships, organizations, and cultures that rely on compassion, wisdom, generosity, and mutuality, instead of exploitation, alienation, coercion, and violence. Instead of destroying body and spirit, we normalize healing and growing body and spirit. Instead of dehumanizing one another to cope with or accommodate injustice, we connect with our common humanity and commit to mutual care. And instead of creating conditions where depression, anxiety, rage, and despair characterize our everyday lives, we create conditions where everyone has the opportunity to thrive, and to recognize and access medical and mental health care when we do need it. Because, as <a href="https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/reynoldsv2013theproblemsnotdepressionitsoppressioninhearnedstaysolidaradicalhandbookforyouth.pdf">Reynolds wrote</a>, “A socially just world is a mentally well world.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The joining of patience and integrity can also help maximize our impacts. This is both through the making the most of those “opportune moments” and through intentionally aligning our actions with our values. This brought to mind a lesson that Daniel Hunter shared from the 2006–2010 campaign to stop a $650 million casino development in Philadelphia. Rather than focus solely on policies and legislative goals, Casino-Free Philadelphia connected with community members to emphasize the predatory nature of these developments and their detrimental impacts on communities. <a href="https://commonslibrary.org/moving-the-rock-shifting-power-for-sustained-change/">Hunter described the choice through an image</a>: </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Politicians are like a balloon tied to a rock. If we swat at them, they may sway to the left or the right. But, tied down, they can only go so far. Instead of batting at them, we should move the rock: people’s activated social values. When we move the rock, it automatically pulls all the politicians towards us — without having to pressure each one separately.” </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>This analogy can help us develop the resources and skills we need to move the rock, while paying attention to identify those opportune moments to move it. <a href="https://commonslibrary.org/moving-the-rock-shifting-power-for-sustained-change/">Hunter likened this to being “careful about our yardsticks”</a> - <br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“A lot of the time when we’re talking about politicians it’s about do we get the legislation we want or not; do we get a bill introduced or not; do we get the bill passed or not; and all of those are a politician’s yardsticks. It’s dangerous for us to align ourselves with those yardsticks in terms of identifying whether or not are our movement is winning. At the end of the day I think we can sneak bills through from time to time, but if we build the social context they move much more quickly.”<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Building that social context loops us back to our praxis, such as Tamez’ emphasis on patience as resistance and integrity as solidarity. Hunter focused on <a href="https://commonslibrary.org/moving-the-rock-shifting-power-for-sustained-change/">the contrast between “espoused social values” and “activated social values,”</a> which in turn connects us to community and solidarity. Reflecting on how many people “believe in a bunch of things that they don’t do anything for,” he asks: <br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“do people have a hook where they can see how to activate their value? Do they have something that they get to do that allows them to give expression to it, and not only expression but actually to make it happen in some way. … We’re taught so much that our contribution is an individual task – that’s why I think the movement building dimension, community building, is so important. Moving the rock is not an individual thing, it’s a social thing. If we’re seeing the rock individually we remain confused and we’re unable to see the ripple effect of our actions. Seeing ourselves in this social context rather than just as individuals is so important to movement building.” <br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>If we want to create social justice movements that can both make a difference and don’t burn themselves out, it is very important that we are strategic about how and where to spend our energy. Insights like those from Elsa Tamez, Vikki Reynolds, Daniel Hunter, and our own communities can help us understand the lasting obstacles to the change we seek, and how we can more intentionally participate in the personal and collective healing and growing we need.</span></div><p><br /></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-9874888514473140762023-03-11T12:58:00.004-06:002023-12-01T16:11:02.608-06:00“Don’t Say Gay (Or Trans)” in Missouri <div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Before getting into a bird’s eye view of the current crop of proposed and passed legislation targeting gender and sexual minorities, I feel the need to repeat <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2018/10/faith-communities-trans-demands.html">some of my words from 2018</a>, slightly edited to fit today’s focus on legislation: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Here at the beginning, I want you to know that I am wonderfully happy about my gender and sexuality. I love – I really love – being genderqueer. I love belonging to the transgender family. I’ll be focusing on painful and difficult experiences [today] as we continue to call [our communities] to accountability, but I don’t want there to be any confusion. There is so much joy in my life. There are so many incredible, beautiful, fantastic people I’ve met and you are so important to me, and to our community. I am so grateful for the time and life we’ve shared together. I am so grateful for you. The joy and life and love we share are why I am willing to stand here and assert our humanity … . I am angry, to be sure; but I am angry because all this suffering is unnecessary and cruel, and I am so exhausted from feeling and seeing my transgender siblings suffer so much. I hope that, in the anger, you also can hear this love.”</span></div></blockquote><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>March began with thousands of people flocking to the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cpac-trans-kids-eradicated-transgender-michael-knowles_n_64038d23e4b0c78bb7430b1c">Christopher Mathias aptly described</a> as “creepily obsessed with trans kids and showcased the GOP’s alarming and intensifying anti-trans rhetoric.” Highlights included former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka, who is allegedly a “member of a Nazi-collaborating political order in Hungary,” claiming that Democrats are “mutilating boys and girls” and “sacrificing them on the altar of their transgender insanity.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she is re-introducing her failed “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” proclaiming that it “will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender!” The president of the right-wing website Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, labeled gender-affirming care “a demonic assault on the innocence of our children.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But Gorka, Greene, and Fitton were outdone by <i>The Daily Wire</i>’s <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cpac-trans-kids-eradicated-transgender-michael-knowles_n_64038d23e4b0c78bb7430b1c">Michael Knowles, who declared that</a>: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> “The problem with transgenderism is not that it’s inappropriate for children under the age of 9 … . The problem with transgenderism is that it isn’t true. … If [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society... transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.” </span></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Again, the crowd erupted with clapping and cheers. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>The rhetoric coming out of spaces like CPAC reflects the growing movement centered around transgender people and their needs, a shift in focus that we’ve been watching for many years now. As transgender people, and our related vocabulary and needs, have grown both more familiar and more acceptable to the general public, we have also become an easy target for those who can exploit popular fears and misunderstandings. So it is that we also live in a time where every year, year after year, we brace ourselves for the barrage of legislation aimed at denying and banning our very existence. And it happens again and again, year after year. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, the frequency and intensity of these attacks has been increasing, and this year is a case in point. Last week, for example, Tennessee gobbled up the headlines as Gov. Bill Lee signed two bills into law that targeted transgender folks in particular, becoming, as James Factora summed it up, “<a href="https://www.them.us/story/tennesee-drag-ban-trans-minors-health-care-bills-head-to-governor">the seventh state to pass such a ban on care, and the first state to ever pass a ban on drag</a>.” House Bill 1 bans transition-related care to minors and can be used to strip healthcare providers of their license for providing care. It also allows patients who received care as a minor “to sue providers within 30 years after the patient turns 18.” House Bill 9 bans performances of “male or female impersonators” in a public place that “could be viewed by a minor.” Penalties include 11 months in prison and/or fines up to $2,500, with repeat violations classified as felonies “punishable by up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $3000.” <a href="https://www.them.us/story/anti-lgbtq-legislation-bills-tracker-us">The Trans Formations Project explains</a>, the broad wording “effectively criminalizes just existing as a trans person in any performance, educational industry, or in public! If you’re wondering how, it’s simple. This bill defines simply being trans (or crossdressing as a cis person) as sexual.” </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://www.themarysue.com/missouris-lone-out-gay-state-senator-condemns-republican-colleagues-cruelty/">Missouri led the way early on, proposing 31 anti-lgbt bills in January</a>. (For those keeping count, Oklahoma passed that number in February, with 34 proposed bills.) Those bills are in different stages of the legislative process, and most will probably not make it out of committee. However, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/missouri-lawmaker-ann-kelley-anti-lgbtq-bill-challenged_n_6407bb63e4b0bbbc6b2fbcb0">Missouri lawmakers were recently in the news for discussing House Bill 634, which has been dubbed Missouri’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill</a>. It aims to prohibit instruction that includes sexual orientation or gender identity, going even further than Florida’s ban by extending the prohibition all the way through grade 12. (Florida’s ban allows for “age appropriate” education on those topics starting in grade four.) The language is terribly vague, lending itself to prohibiting even the promotion of heterosexuality, something that </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/missouri-lawmaker-ann-kelley-anti-lgbtq-bill-challenged_n_6407bb63e4b0bbbc6b2fbcb0">Rep. Phil Christofanelli (a gay Republican) pointed out in a now famous video clip of him questioning the bill’s author, Rep. Ann Kelley</a>: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“‘I’m just going to read you the language in your bill,’ Christofanelli said, pointing to a section that stated no classroom instruction ‘relating to sexual orientation or gender identity shall occur.’ / ‘You mentioned George Washington. Who is Martha Washington?’ Christofanelli asked. / ‘His wife,’ Kelley answered. / </span><span style="font-family: arial;">‘Under your bill, how could you mention that in a classroom?/ Christofanelli continued. / Kelley replied, ‘To me, that’s not sexual orientation.’ ‘So it’s only really certain sexual orientations that you want prohibited from introduction in the classroom,’ Christofanelli shot back.”</span> </div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Missouri lawmakers have also been busy debating Senate Bill 49, the “Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act”, <a href="https://www.ksby.com/news/national/missouri-is-latest-state-to-advance-bill-banning-gender-affirming-care-for-minors">which would ban state and local government employed health care providers from providing gender-affirming health care to minors,</a> as well as banning state and local facilities from providing gender affirming treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy. In a recent email update, <a href="http://archives.spfccc.org/2018/01/we-are-not-fragile-ones.html">PROMO</a>’s Executive Director, Katy Erker-Lynch appropriately called out these lawmakers’ “audacity to debate trans kids’ very right to live and exist”: </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">“They spread lies about the parents of trans youth, about the physicians who provide best practice care, and about the larger LGBTQ+ community. … this legislative session continues to push us into unprecedented times — over 30 explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been prioritized by this legislature—seeking to use transgender bodies as political pawns to push their political agendas forward. The fact that these bills were dignified by voting them out of the Senate Committee should be appalling to any person paying attention and a wake up call to those who haven’t been listening.” </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you have had a difficult time keeping track, it can be helpful to know that the anti-trans legislative tactics have taken on a few predictable forms. <a href="https://www.transformationsproject.org/">The Trans Formations Project </a>has provided <a href="https://www.them.us/story/anti-lgbtq-legislation-bills-tracker-us">six broad categories</a> to track those attacks: <br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Bathroom bills</b> typically deny transgender folks from accessing their appropriate public restroom. However, “They increase danger without making anyone any safer and have even prompted attacks on cis and trans people alike.” </span></li><li><b>Healthcare bills</b> substitute discriminatory health practices for “professional and scientific consensus” around lifesaving, gender-affirming care. They often include criminal charges against healthcare providers and child abuse charges against parents. Notably, “intersex children are typically exempted,” meaning that invasive medical procedures (that coincidentally conform to cisgender-heteronormative expectations) can still take place without the knowledge or consent of the child. </li><li><b>Public performance bills</b> usually target drag performances, which is egregious in itself, but they are also often worded in such a way that they ban transgender and gender-expansive people from performing in public at all. Three important elements to these bans include: 1) a loose definition of “drag” as a “public performance with an ‘opposite gender expression’”, 2) labeling those performances as inherently sexual, and 3) asserting that the performances are therefore inappropriate for children. Again notably, cisgender-heteronormative gender expressions remain acceptable. </li><li><b>School bills</b> often use the language of “parental rights” to force educators and schools to: “misgender or deadname students, ban instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, and make schools alert parents if they suspect a child is trans.” They also typically make it difficult for trans youth to access “life-saving affirmation and support” at school.</li><li><b>Sex Designation bills</b> create further obstacles for transgender folks to access identification and documents that match their gender identity. </li><li><b>Sports Ban bills</b> “are often one-sided and ban trans girls from playing on teams consistent with their gender identity.” Some versions have also included “invasive genital examinations.” </li></ul></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>There’s also a miscellaneous category, but variations of these six tactics have been increasingly repeated across the nation. If you look closely, you’ll also notice that there is a lot of repetition in the proposed bills. There’s a very good reason for this, as conservative legislators have learned that proposing an anti-lgbt, especially an anti-trans, bill has become a major political tactic. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/26/greg-razer-missouri-legislature-lgbtq-00083888">Greg Razer, Missouri’s only openly gay State Senator, recently explained</a> that: <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“What happens is, there might be eight members of the House of Representatives who all want to go home and say they filed the bill. And so, they all filed the identical bill. And then at some point in the process they mesh all those together and make one bill that’s called House Bill 40, 72, 137 — they’ll list all the numbers. So they can all go home and say, ‘I kicked a trans kid in the face.’”</span></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Both positive and negative reinforcement is at work here. On the one hand, transgender folks have become a preferred target, so it is easy to try to leverage proposing and supporting anti-trans bills as a way to seek votes. But there’s also the negative side, in that failing to support these bills can also be used against them in a future campaign. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/26/greg-razer-missouri-legislature-lgbtq-00083888">As Senator Razer put it</a>, “if it is brought to a vote, then how do they vote no? Because somebody on the right is going to primary them. And run the ad: ‘Voted to support gender affirming care for transgender kids.’” That pressure is real, and I fear that transgender lives and care are not important enough for even sympathetic lawmakers to feel compelled to risk their political ambitions and careers. Transgender</span><span style="font-family: arial;">, nonbinary, and gender-expansive</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> lives – the wellbeing of people like me – are not important enough. We are part of the acceptable losses. We are necessary casualties in their culture war, the holy sacrifices on their altars raised to the delusions that transgender people and our basic human needs exist as a tool of some “</span><a href="https://themissouritimes.com/former-transgender-patients-speak-out-at-safe-act-press-conference/" style="font-family: arial;">evil-doer who is seeking to kill and destroy us and our children</a><span style="font-family: arial;">.” (And yes, these words are the direct quote of another Missouri State Senator.) </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is much more to reflect on in how this is unfolding, but I’ll limit myself to one more aspect of this debate. In late February, Missouri senators held a press conference about the SAFE Act that included Chloe Cole and Luka Hein. Both Chloe and Luka transitioned as teens, including receiving gender affirming top surgery, and then later retransitioned. Both are critical about the way they received care and the failure of their medical providers to give them the care they needed. Hearing their stories is important as medical providers continue to improve standards of care for young people; everyone should have access to the care they need. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>However, what I see happening is that anti-trans lawmakers and social commentators are using the voices of Chloe and Luka to silence all other trans voices and deny us both basic care and human rights. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">For example, <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e2021056082/186992/Gender-Identity-5-Years-After-Social-Transition?autologincheck=redirected">a study published in August 2022 by the American Academy of Pediatrics followed 317 trans children and youth for five years</a>. Over that time, retransitioning occurred but was uncommon; around 7% of participants retransitioned during those five years. Obviously, standards of care need to be continuously improved so that this number is even lower. However, it is inappropriate to universalize the experience of 7% of trans youth receiving gender affirming care at the exclusion of the 93% that received the correct care. This is especially important because the impact of that care is literally life-saving. In <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2789423">another study published in February 2022</a>, researchers found that trans youth (13 to 20 years old) receiving gender-affirming care (such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies) “was associated with 60% lower odds of moderate or severe depression and 73% lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up.” </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>This is not an aberration. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">More and more studies, collectively representing the experiences of more than 30,000 trans and gender-diverse youth, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/">demonstrate that gender-affirming care translates into better mental health, while restricting access to that care is associated with worse mental health outcomes, including depression, self-harm, and suicide.</a> For these very sound reasons, professional medical organizations have overwhelmingly published both policy statements and standards of care, including: the <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/4/e20182162/37381/Ensuring-Comprehensive-Care-and-Support-for">American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)</a>, the <a href="https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Latest_News/AACAP_Statement_Responding_to_Efforts-to_ban_Evidence-Based_Care_for_Transgender_and_Gender_Diverse.aspx">American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry</a>, the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/102/11/3869/4157558">Endocrine Society</a>, the <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/health-care-advocacy/advocacy-update/march-26-2021-state-advocacy-update">American Medical Association</a>, the <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/policy/gender-diverse-children">American Psychological Association</a> and the <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/File Library/About-APA/Organization-Documents-Policies/Policies/Position-Transgender-Gender-Diverse-Youth.pdf">American Psychiatric Association</a>. As <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/">Heather Boerner wrote in Scientific American</a>, “All of those medical societies find such care to be evidence-based and medically necessary.” But anti-trans lawmakers silence all of these researchers, medical providers, and transgender voices in favor of elevating the voices of those whose experiences more neatly fit their prejudices. I am not in favor of silencing people like Chloe Cole and Luka Hein, but their voices cannot be allowed to silence all others. Everyone deserves access to the care and support they need. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>Another aspect of the retransitioning narrative is the way the anti-trans movement obscures the variety of reasons why a person may choose to retransition. <a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/lgbt.2020.0437">A 2021 study</a> that included more than 17,000 people who accessed gender-affirming care found that only 13.1% had ever retransitioned. Even more significantly, 82.5% of these respondents experienced at least one external factor, “such as pressure from family and societal stigma,” that motivated the retransition. Internal factors, such as uncertainty about their gender identity, was a much less common factor, even though the current discourse focuses on these rarer cases. This is very convenient, because it hides the fact that the major motivation for retransitioning is the stress that transgender people experience, such as bigotry and discrimination. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>The end result is that both the public rhetoric and constant stream of bills, even when they do not become laws, create an atmosphere that is dangerous for gender and sexual minorities. Just to look at one risk factor, more than 80% of trans folks have considered suicide, and more than 40% have attempted suicide. Trans youth are at the highest risk. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/">A 2020 study of suicidality among trans youth</a> found that “School belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality.” And now we are witnessing a cultural and legislative movement that specifically aims to make it more difficult for trans youth to feel like they are safe and belong at school, that empower families to emotionally neglect their gender-affirming needs, and that promotes internalized self-stigma through the constant denial of their identities, rights, and care. Our society is collectively and persistently creating the conditions for a very painful and wholly preventable tragedy. The words and actions of anti-trans media and legislators are and will continue to contribute to the deaths of transgender people. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don’t know how to end this reflection, which has become something of a lament. My best guess is to return to <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2018/01/we-are-not-fragile-ones.html">advice I gave back in January 2018</a>. I concluded with four lessons, including this invitation:<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“while we can and should support and agitate for reform in order to minimize harm, we must devote as much time, energy, and resources as possible into building community. We have to earnestly and intentionally cultivate practices, habits, and structures … that rely on and embody mutual care, respect, and justice. … We have to make justice and love normal.” </span> </div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />And I concluded that: <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“I titled this talk ‘We Are Not the Fragile Ones,’ because victims are often spoken about in ways that patronize and condescend. The world knew it could break us, and they were right about that. Too many of us have had to live lives that were not ours, just to survive, locked away in a straight, cisgender world. And more - too many of us are wounded, and too many of us are dead. But I’d like to point out that it is oppressive systems that are brittle, and that it is people in positions of power and privilege who usually feel the most threatened and reactive to movements for justice. </span> </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"> </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Those of us with these stories, we are not the fragile ones. We are not the ones who need a gay panic or trans panic defense. We are not the ones who think that our families will disintegrate if we accept people’s gender and sexuality as they are, rather than as we say they should be. And we are not the ones who justify cruelty and violence out of a fear of divine judgment. I offer my reflections as an imperfect tribute to all my comrades, to all my friends at the margins, who live as exiles amid these fragile, brittle egos. I offer my love to all of us fabulous and resilient and wounded people who, together, are creating a new and beautiful world.” </span></div></blockquote><p><br /></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-21800368902545086462023-02-18T21:24:00.005-06:002023-02-19T11:55:07.012-06:00Open to Change<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">My life has been filled with a fair bit of change and transition over the last few years, surrounded by lots of uncertainty. That has made for a natural time for reflection, and already being the type of person disposed toward reflection, I’ve been spending a fair bit of time thinking about the shape of my life: the decisions I’ve made, dreams I’ve chased, failures I’ve felt, and unlooked blessings found along the way. Like probably many of you, my life hasn’t taken the course I expected it would take, but I am profoundly grateful for where I find myself now and for the paths that still lie open in front of me. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">At the heart of that journey has been maintaining spiritual and reflective practices that support my aspirations, especially those related to kindness, wisdom, and justice. For decades now, for example, I repeat a simple aspiration before I meditate: </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“may I be with these next moments with openness and curiosity, with gratitude and kindness, so that wisdom can arise.” Those words have soaked into my heart-mind and become a familiar friend. After a few years, I found that they followed me off the cushion. Practicing with them intentionally made them available to me when I needed them during the day, when they can invite me back to the present moment, especially when I begin to feel overwhelmed by the uncertainties and sufferings of life. <span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> </span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Practices like this have been more important to me than I even realized. I was looking back at old journal entries and discovered that, time and again, I have had to make conscious decisions to not give up. I don’t know how universal this is but, given the conversations I’ve had with others and the data that is available on activism fatigue and burnout, it feels relevant. In 2021, <a href="https://stanforddaily.com/2021/03/08/opinion-activism-fatigue-is-killing-social-justice-is-it-selfish-or-inevitable/">Mikayla Tillery pointed out </a>that “Activism fatigue tends to spike after notable political action” and that: </span></span><p></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“What makes activism fatigue that much more overwhelming than traditional burnout is that activists’ work is tied to identity, injustice, and agency. The political is personal, so the weight of our oppression is a constant stressor that cannot be lifted without our liberation. This pressure combined with the current expectations of selflessness, martyrdom and unfettered loyalty within activist spaces make burnout nearly inevitable.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Perhaps most importantly, <a href="https://stanforddaily.com/2021/03/08/opinion-activism-fatigue-is-killing-social-justice-is-it-selfish-or-inevitable/">she wrote about how social change actions and movements often include a culture that pressures us to push ourselves and our limitations past a healthy point</a> in order to achieve a goal or “reach a finish line”: </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“When we juxtapose the low valleys of burnout with the mountains of celebration, it justifies the idea that our suffering is needed to deserve success. Without addressing the root issue of activism fatigue, celebrations will only habituate burnout. / Eventually, the celebrations will become meaningless, and a once-insatiable yearning for justice will pale to insurmountable exhaustion.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>I felt those words in my body, and I remembered so many moments where I have experienced it within myself or witnessed it in others. For example, when I moved back to Missouri 2010, I was full of energy and ideas. I had spent three wonderful years working with innovative peace and justice organizations in Cambodia, and I was both hopeful and confident that I would be able to translate those experiences into something wonderful here. But southwest Missouri has been a very difficult place for me to live and a challenging place to cultivate communities where justice and compassion can thrive. I have a clear memory of bottoming out during the period of time between when Mike Brown was murdered in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 and when our local city rallied to repeal an ordinance that extended basic civil rights on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in April 2015. That was an exhausting, heart-breaking, devastating year. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>But, reading my journals, I saw that I was already struggling with the beginnings of burnout just two years after moving here. In December 2012, I wrote that: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“Since moving back to the United States in 2010, I have felt again that one of the biggest challenges of living here is simply maintaining this kind of confidence. The problems are so complex, the cultural violence is so entrenched, and the system is so well-oiled and on such a huge scale that it is easy to be discouraged. Still, I have to keep going. The alternative to seeking a more peaceful way in the world is no alternative at all.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I was evidently giving myself a little pep talk; if the stakes are high enough, you can’t give up, right? But I was also doing some good work. In the rest of the journal entry, I described studying the work of <a href="https://albertbandura.com/">Albert Bandura</a> on <a href="http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/self_efficacy.htm">self-efficacy</a>. Bandura famously wrote that: </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failure; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.” (<i>Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control</i>, 1997)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In my work in community development, we had to focus on transforming failure into learning and growth. Especially in that field, and in my work in peace and conflict programming, there are so many variables that it is difficult to anticipate exactly how things will happen in the real world. You have to learn as you go and make adjustments. Self-efficacy is a key skill, because you a certain amount of failure is practically inevitable. We did our best to build that into our organizational cultures, from the way we wrote job descriptions to the way we handled monitoring and evaluation. It was especially important that we were able to talk about the things that didn’t go as planned, instead of feeling pressure to hide them. I have worked with organizations where this wasn’t the case, and the tremendous amount of pressure, often tied to funding, took a lot of the joy out of the work while also undermining the health of the programs and organization. If you can’t recognize and handle failure, you can’t learn; if you can’t learn, you can’t respond in wise and just ways to all the unexpected twists and turns in life. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>Creating those personal values and organizational culture, then, needs to be a priority. But it is not automatic, and it is something our broader society struggles to do. Wrestling with that very question in 2012, I was especially interested in the way Sharon Salzberg, an insight meditation teacher, connected self-efficacy to community and kindness. In <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=v_X_i7I_i3sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+force+of+kindness&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XADSUPrvH7O02AXnl4CIAg&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=8&f=false">The Force of Kindness</a>, Salzberg explained that “Kindness points to the core of what it means to be alive, which is to be connected.” We depend on one another from birth. And when we experience that connection with kindness, we see a reflection of “our own value.” We learn that we also can and even have a “right to be happy.” And another person’s kindness, rooted in their connection to us, communicates “the unspoken message of their efforts – that we are worth the bother.” And that feeling of our mutual value and worth, grounded in and growing out of our shared connection and kindness, supports developing self-efficacy: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">"This is the difference between pain and hopelessness, between distress and bitterness, between suffering and despair - sorrows or difficulties arise, yet we have some sense of confidence that we can find a way to work through them." </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>In my journal, I reflected that, “Reading Sharon's words this morning was a very kind encouragement to see the difference between pain and hopelessness. I feel really grateful for remembering that and a renewed sense of confidence that we CAN find a way that does not sacrifice justice or peace.” Connecting kindness with self-efficacy has been important to me ever since, but I hadn’t remembered where and when that insight had taken root in me. Looking back at this journal entry, I realized that cultivating this insight was also a demonstration of joining kindness with self-efficacy. In a moment of time when I was discouraged and unsure if I could muster the energy to keep going, I practiced kindness toward myself. I took the time to discern “the difference between pain and hopelessness, between distress and bitterness, between suffering and despair.” Taking the time to do that work allowed me to adjust course and keep going. That was encouraging to see in my past self, and added to my current confidence that I can find ways to work with and through difficulties as they arise. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In translating the <i><a href="https://plumvillage.org/library/sutras/discourse-on-happiness/">Discourse on Happiness</a></i>, Thich Nhat Hanh chose the words “To persevere and be open to change” to describe this factor in cultivating “the greatest happiness.” Looking through the lens of my 2012 journal, I understand that description in a different and deeper way. It takes those personal values and organizational culture to feel and be safe enough to open to change. I<a href="https://www.parallax.org/product/two-treasures-buddhist-teachings-on-awakening-and-true-happiness/">n his commentary on the discourse</a>, Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledged that “It is incredibly difficult” to hear it “when our brothers and our sisters point out our faults”. Exploring some of the reasons why this is often the case is another topic. But recommitting to the kinds of practices and processes that make opening to change possible is something that we don’t have to wait to do. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In <a href="https://stanforddaily.com/2021/03/08/opinion-activism-fatigue-is-killing-social-justice-is-it-selfish-or-inevitable/">Tillery’s reflections</a>, she noted two prominent reasons behind social justice burnout: underappreciation and “a lack of self care and community care.” This is a good starting place for us to ask: when have I felt safe enough to be honest about my struggles and limitations? When have I been safe enough to open to change? Community that is characterized by gratitude and care provides a container for us to heal and grow. This emphasis on healing and growing, at least in my experience, feels very different than an emphasis on self-improvement. It is more relational. When I am wounded, it brings a healing presence that includes grief, and my wounds are not understood as inconvenient obstacles to productivity. My healing becomes part of the work, and my growth becomes part of the work. And so does your healing and growth. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>And this includes even and especially the painful work of transforming our internalized oppression and internalized dominance. These unhealed places in us are the source of some of our most difficult problems in sustaining healthy community. They make it almost impossible for marginalized people to feel and be safe enough to belong, and often turn that belonging into the constant work of managing pain from overexposure to people who haven’t done the work. <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2018/05/recognizing-and-healing-from.html">As I’ve encouraged us to practice in the past</a>, </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> “Assume you have internalized oppression and domination. In my experience, the default assumption is often that only ‘bad’ people have internalized oppression and domination. So let’s change the measure: justice-minded folks actively work to recognize their implicit biases and are intentional about changing their habits of thinking, speaking, and acting to align with their values.” With practice and over time, we can change the script, becoming open to change. A wise, justice-minded person receives correction as a gift, because we know how precious it is to get an opportunity to practice in a way that brings freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion. A compassionate person receives correction as a gift, because we want to reduce the suffering and harm we cause in ourselves and in the world, while increasing our kindness. </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span>When the community is healthy, then we want to know when we have done something hurtful, and we are not threatened by hearing about it. With this context, we can hear the fuller comment by Thich Nhat Hanh, because we understand how it becomes possible for opening to change, learning, healing, and growing is a gift to all of us: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“When we can yield to reason and let someone correct us without becoming angry or resentful, then we will find that happiness remains with us. It is incredibly difficult, but when our brothers and our sisters point out our faults, the best thing we can do is put our palms together and bow in appreciation, with graciousness on our faces and in our hearts.” (from <i><a href="https://www.parallax.org/product/two-treasures-buddhist-teachings-on-awakening-and-true-happiness/">Two Treasures</a></i>)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is more vital than many of us have considered, and too easily forgotten. Prioritizing communities where good-heartedness becomes the norm, expressed through gratitude and kindness, is essential for both our personal and collective well-being. Returning to Salzberg’s insights connecting self-efficacy and kindness in community, we remember that “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=v_X_i7I_i3sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+force+of+kindness&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XADSUPrvH7O02AXnl4CIAg&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=in%20the%20absence%20of%20receiving%20this%20kindness&f=false">in the absence of receiving this kindness, something in us does die, at least for a while, unless and until it can be restored through love</a>.” If we take this seriously, we can connect this to all the ways that our unhealthy, unjust society has been killing us off. Knowing those tender places better is painful, and often enraging, but it also opens the door for us to learn to love ourselves and each other in ways that can restore and transform that suffering into understanding and compassion. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>And this is where I’d like to add at least a third element, that of trust. Our gratitude and kindness help us create this safe environment where we can be open to change, but we also need to be intentional and explicit about how to sustain that safety. Trust is something we create and re-create together. This is why <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2022/05/a-spectrum-of-trust.html">we’ve emphasized</a> - </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“the importance of centering the voices and needs of marginalized people. Oppression is the most severe and cruel normalization of harm, and it destroys the possibility of trust. This means that prioritizing justice and equity are part of the restoration of trust and the healing of both people and society. Similarly, the wellbeing of marginalized and oppressed people is the measure of the health of a society. Any work we are doing that ignores this dynamic will ultimately undermine our efforts, whatever our intentions.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">When we are able to create that kind of trust, sustained by gratitude and kindness, then openness to change is more natural and joyful. We feel freedom to breathe and be ourselves, and we can thrive. <a href="https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/the-force-of-kindness/">Salzberg called this</a>: </span></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">“one of the great fruits of the kindness we receive from others – it supports our sense of being someone deserving of love, someone who can in turn accomplish something, who can vanquish difficulties, who can make it through the travails of life, who can be a good person.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is a more sustainable, even regenerative pathway for changing ourselves and our society. It connects us to a shared vision of justice and equity, where every voice can be heard and need can be heard. I know I repeat those words often, but I need to repeat them. Nurturing that aspiration keeps me grounded, even when the difficulties are overwhelming. And when I stay open to change, I know that I am holding a door open for others to change, too. This is true, even when things don’t go the way I hope, when life-saving legislation is overturned, when the powers-that-be protect a violent and corrupt system, when the change we desperately need seems so far away. With kindness joined with self-efficacy, I know my capacity for change is not a limited commodity. I am part of a long line of people who refused to give up, who nourished their own capacity to grow in love and understanding in themselves and each other, and who passed on that aspiration for justice and compassion to all of us who are willing to follow in their footsteps. I can do the same, and so can you. </span></p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-91015867424471669612023-02-11T14:57:00.003-06:002023-02-11T14:58:03.486-06:00Mindless Consumption and Grateful Contentment<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">There are some conversations with your mother that you can never forget. One of those, for me, was on the occasion of my twenty-first birthday. I had rushed through my university studies, but not so much because of some special educational virtue on my part. The truth was that I thoroughly disliked the whole experience, I didn’t know how long I could endure it, and I thought graduating as quickly as possible was preferable to dropping out. So I graduated early and found myself moving west for graduate school at the tender age of twenty. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I turned twenty one while living close to Highway 1 in northern California. An eccentric friend of mine thought my relative youth made for a funny anecdote and couldn’t pass up the chance to take me for a celebration dinner at a winery, where I could take my first sip of alcohol.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Growing up, I was taught that drinking alcohol was fundamentally wrong. My Southern Baptist church officially condemned it, and there were enough tales of caution to keep a child both fascinated and terrified. Growing up in the 1980s, our public school experience was also incomplete without visits from presentations from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and the Just Say No! campaign added drug use to the list of dangerous, taboo items to avoid. Some of my extended family members struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse, so I had heard and sometimes seen the real world risks involved. Still, there were also voices calling for moderation, including my Dad. And we all knew not to touch the bottle with the balloon on top in Grandma’s refrigerator, which appeared each year after the grapes she grew in the backyard ripened. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So I accepted my friend’s invitation and we headed up the coast. Dinner was lovely, and the wine was expensive. It was white wine, and that’s about all I can tell you. It turned out that I did not have a discerning palate, and my friend was simultaneously amused and disappointed that I wasn’t suitably impressed by the quality and taste. Still, I had fun, and I called home later to tell my parents how I’d celebrated. When I mentioned the wine, you could hear the silence on the other end. My mom was not angry; she was scared. “Oh God, David, you’re going to become an alcoholic.” <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I thought it was funny and laughed it off. I assured her that I was not in danger, if for no other reason than that I was a poor student and, whatever little spending money I might have, I liked buying and reading books much more than I could ever enjoy buying and drinking alcohol. (This, by the way, has been true as long as I can remember. Given the choice between most things and a book, and I will usually buy a book. According to my Dad, this habit began when I was a child. At the grocery store, he would give me a choice between getting a candy bar and getting a Little Golden book. He resolved that the first time I chose the candy bar would be the last time he offered the choice to me. And so my childhood bookshelf was overfilled with those tales of poky puppies, shy kittens, snuggly bunnies, and especially <i>The Monster at the End of this Book</i>.) <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But this did not comfort my mom, and we had later had a long conversation about it. Her concern was not the rigid, “you’ll displease God and go to hell if you drink” message I’d heard enough times. Instead, her plea was more of a “I’ve seen too many people get addicted and create a hell of their lives” message. And that is, tragically, true enough. And although I have never personally struggled with a substance use disorder, I appreciated her care, and I recognized that care like hers is one of the reasons I have not struggled. I was glad to have voices in my life that taught a different way to think about these kinds of decisions and habits, instead of the two oversimplified choices I was otherwise given: harsh condemnation or unbridled consumption. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I recognized my mother’s voice when I read two verses in <a href="https://suttacentral.net/snp2.4/en/brahmali?reference=none&highlight=false">the Discourse on Happiness</a>, that bring out a similar contrast: </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“To refrain from what is unwholesome, <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">To abstain from all intoxicants,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">And to be steadfast in good qualities,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is the greatest good fortune.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />“Respect and humility,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Contentment and gratitude,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">And the timely hearing of Dharma:<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is the greatest good fortune.” <br />(tr. by Bhikkhu Brahmali)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At first glance, it may seem like an opportunity for more of the same moralizing that I grew up hearing. But a closer look reveals a lot more. If we want to hear it, we often need to begin with examining what gets in the way. For many of us, restraint and renunciation are often negative experiences, grounded in a life-denying and antagonistic attitude. This is especially the case where there is a high degree of control, often exerted through coercion, threat, shame, and guilt. Anyone who has experienced that kind of restraint is unlikely to associate it with happiness. It’s much more likely that we’ll get caught in a desire to get rid of or annihilate whatever we’ve come to view as the problem. This often involves our threat-response: we’ve identified an obstacle to our happiness, and we think that we must avoid - or destroy - whatever is in the way. Our capacity for identifying dangers helps keep us safe, but attaching to that kind of craving easily leads to suffering. It’s not a recipe for happiness, and it can make enemies out of our experiences and our friends. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Instead, refraining from what is unwholesome focuses on the impacts of what we think, say, and do. As <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2023/02/the-linchpin-of-chariot-caring-for-one.html">I've mentioned before</a>, our skillfulness in not harming one another depends in large part on “our ability to pay attention and practice discernment.” Instead of getting stuck in a loop of approving or disapproving, praising or blaming, we give ourselves “the opportunity to understand our needs and our experiences,” and then to act on that understanding. And this is why refraining “from what is unwholesome,” from what causes harm to others, is linked with abstaining “from all intoxicants.” Discernment requires a clear mind. Whatever clouds the mind can make it easier to either not perceive the harm that could take place, or to justify harming yourself or another person. It can be challenging enough to understand ourselves, each other, and our experiences when we have a clear head; adding another layer of fogginess makes it that much harder. It’s the same reason we have rules about using heavy machinery or driving a car when taking certain medications. We want to be safe, and to make safe decisions. This is a helpful and simple way to make decisions about using intoxicants, whether you completely abstain or use them responsibly. When using them would impair your ability to make a good decision or protect the safety of yourself and others, don’t use them. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Reflecting in this way, we can also see that there are other ways that we can delude our minds and make it difficult to have a clear head. This is why, for example, the Plum Village tradition enlarges the focus from intoxicants in particular to “unmindful consumption” in general. You can be intoxicant-free and still cloud the mind with ideas and habits that make it very difficult to make healthy, happy choices. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So, while <a href="https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/the-5-mindfulness-trainings/">the Mindfulness Training</a> includes the aspiration to not use drugs and alcohol, it puts that aspiration in the context of not harming one another. It concludes by resolving to “contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society and the Earth.” So, again, this is a helpful and simple way to help us make decisions. Whatever we are doing, we pay attention. If doing that impairs our ability to make a good decision or protect the safety of ourselves and others, we can make a choice: “refrain from what is unwholesome.” <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This kind of framework also helps us move from an oversimplified condemnation of using drugs and alcohol to a deeper understanding of how our unmindful consumption is linked to so much suffering. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">For example, <a href="https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates#:~:text=Opioid%2Dinvolved%20overdose%20deaths%20rose,(Source%3A%20CDC%20WONDER).">in 2010, there were 21,089 opioid-involved overdose deaths. In 2021, there were 80,411</a>. Those are terrifying, tragic numbers. But it is now such a common problem that I have friends who are <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/naloxone/training/index.html">trained to administer Narcan</a> in the case of witnessing an overdose. I am so grateful that they offer this compassionate service, but there is a shadow here. That we need them to do this at all points to a terrible reality. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">To reflect on one of the social factors involved in that reality, we have a growing awareness of the role of self-medication and its connection to substance use disorders. Many of my friends self-medicate, which is consistent with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6175215/">statistics from 2018 that over 20% of people with mood or anxiety disorders self-medicated</a> with alcohol or drugs. We also cannot separate self-medication from experiences of violence, abuse, injustice, and oppression. Sometimes, relying on alcohol and drugs to cope with the unbearable may feel like the only option available. Sometimes, a human being feels like they cannot bear to see things clearly. But in these situations, the root of the problem is not in the intoxicants, but in the failure of our society to provide the basic medical and social supports people need in order to enjoy life and thrive.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Unfortunately, this trend seems likely to continue. Discussing studies by the <i>Pew Research Center</i>, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/31/concern-about-drug-addiction-has-declined-in-u-s-even-in-areas-where-fatal-overdoses-have-risen-the-most/">Meltem Odabas pointed out</a> that, while fatal drug overdose rates increased in every social setting – “urban, suburban, and rural” - in the USA from 2017 to 2020, Americans who thought drug addiction was an important issue in their community actually decreased over the same time period. She wrote: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“Nearly 92,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2020, up from around 70,000 in 2017 … . During the same period, the rate of fatal overdoses rose from 21.7 to 28.3 per 100,000 people. / Despite these increases, the share of Americans who say drug addiction is a major problem in their local community <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-are-less-likely-than-before-covid-19-to-want-to-live-in-cities-more-likely-to-prefer-suburbs/#rising-share-of-americans-say-availability-of-affordable-housing-is-a-major-problem-in-their-area">declined by 7 percentage points</a> … – from 42% in 2018 to 35% in 2021. And in <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/02/16/publics-top-priority-for-2022-strengthening-the-nations-economy/">a separate Center survey</a> in early 2022, dealing with drug addiction ranked lowest out of 18 priorities for the president and Congress to address this year.” </span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is not a problem that will get better by ignoring it, and yet ignoring it seems like the course our society is choosing. We cannot refrain from harm, or cultivate good qualities like wisdom and kindness, if we aren’t willing to understand the conditions as they actually are. At a personal level, we can do our part by taking mindful consumption seriously, and paying attention to how our actions impact one another. How do we want to treat one another? How do we want to respond to the ups and downs of life? What good qualities do we want to make sure we are turning into habits? What harmful actions do we want to make sure we avoid? And how can we care for our hearts and minds in such a way that we have clarity and compassion, instead of confusion and contempt? <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Training our hearts and minds in this way makes happiness possible, because we are cultivating understanding alongside kindness. When we understand how suffering arises, we can let go joyfully, because we don’t want to suffer or cause others to suffer. When we understand how wellbeing arises, we can practice joyfully, because we see how it brings about happiness for ourselves and happiness for others. And when we do so, we find that “contentment and gratitude” are not far away. In fact, I cannot conceive of a way that mindful consumption is even possible without contentment and gratitude. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span><a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2021/11/gratitude-is-practice.html">I’ve mentioned the “Five Contemplations” as one practice</a> to help us cultivate gratitude, but, like all habits, it is worth another look. It is offered as a way of mindfully pausing before eating a meal. If practiced regularly, it can also help us pay more attention to being grateful for more and more of the daily gifts that keep us alive: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“This food is the gift of the whole universe – the earth, the sky, and much hard work. May we eat in mindfulness so as to nourish our gratitude. May we transform our unskillful states of mind and learn to eat with moderation. May we take only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. We accept this food to realize the path of understanding, love, and joy.” (<a href="https://www.stillwatermpc.org/dharma-topics/the-five-contemplations-as-a-daily-practice/">Adapted by the Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center</a>)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>Again, we don’t recite these things in order to deny suffering or pretend that everything is all right.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><a href="https://onbeing.org/programs/david-steindl-rast-how-to-be-grateful-in-every-moment/">As Brother David Steindl-Rast has helpfully observed</a>, “You can’t be grateful for war in a given situation, or violence, or sickness, things like that. So the key, when people ask, ‘Can you be grateful for everything?’ — no, not for everything, but in every moment.” Even in the midst of difficulties and injustice, I can find that, at the least, I can call to mind the people who have faced similar difficulties in the past, those who have been my teachers so that I could have resources and skills to respond today, and all those who are similarly deciding to think, speak, and act in ways that can bring about healing, justice, and happiness. I am not grateful for everything, but I can be grateful in every moment. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>In reflecting on this second verse, I started with contentment and gratitude, rather than respect and humility, because I’ve found this is often a gentler approach. So many people have experienced respect and humility in humiliating, degrading ways. <a href="https://soycrates.tumblr.com/post/115633137923/stimmyabby-sometimes-people-use-respect-to-mean">A Tumblr user named Stimmyabby put this in a particularly powerful way</a> many years ago: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“Sometimes people use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like a person’ and sometimes they use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like an authority’<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say ‘if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you’ and they mean ‘if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person’<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When we cultivate contentment and gratitude, respect and humility comes more naturally and easier, and is less prone to the misuse of meaning “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person.” When we understand how much our wellbeing depends on the wholesome decisions that we are all making together, we feel gratitude for our mutual care and cooperation, and we want to treat ourselves and one another with respect. The more we understand all the ways that suffering can arise, the more humble and grateful we feel when the conditions are right for wellbeing to arise. So, again, we are not coercing ourselves to show respect or feel humble. Instead, by practicing in a way that brings about understanding of suffering and wellbeing, respect and humility naturally arise, and they are part of our happiness. When they do, that is a sign that we are practicing skillfully, and another cause for gratitude. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This respect, humility, gratitude, and contentment are also keys for being able to learn and grow. The last line of the verse, “the timely hearing of the Dharma,” refers specifically to hearing the Buddha’s teachings about how to practice in a way that helps us understand and come to an end to suffering. (You can reflect on it in a more broad way, if that is more appropriate for you.) But the idea that is prominent to me in this particular context is the timeliness of learning and growing in insight and compassion. We only have so much time, and the more I understand that, the more I want to spend my time in the most skillful, happy ways possible. There are many variables that are out of my control when it comes to learning like this, so it is important that I do my part to be ready to learn. I don’t want a timely opportunity to pass me by, because time is passing so very quickly. How can I learn to fashion happiness out of the days and years that I do have, and to do my part to make that happiness available to all beings? I want to be ready to learn, and ready to practice, when a timely teaching comes my way. I want to make the most of this brief life, this amazing opportunity, and I hope you do, too. </span></p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-48860888434586396032023-02-04T21:56:00.005-06:002023-02-04T21:56:56.737-06:00The Linchpin of a Chariot: Caring for One Another<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s <a href="https://karlbarthfordummies.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/heaven/">a story passed around about Karl Barth</a>. I don’t know if it is a true story, but it’s the kind of story that tells the truth, whether it happened or not. The setup is simple: the community is asking pressing questions of the theologian. One concerned and earnest woman asks, “Is it true that we’ll see our loved ones again in heaven?” It feels clear that this question was about the existence and nature of the afterlife. So - “Is it true that we’ll see our loved ones again in heaven?” And the doctor replies, “Not only the loved ones.” <br /><br /></span><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">People have argued about the afterlife for centuries, passionately and even violently, but Barth’s answer pointed to what is probably the more important question. Heaven is idealized as a place of perfection, where we experience joy at all times and with all people. But that is quite a different experience than what happens for a lot of us, a lot of the time. Barth is giving us a chance to think about what an unending life in community with others would really mean. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As things stand now, it’s likely that you would encounter at least someone that you would rather avoid, and that at least someone would rather avoid you. Perhaps we can put it stronger and say that it’s likely that every one of us would spoil heaven for at least one other person. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“But,” I can hear some folks saying, “in heaven, we’ll all be changed! It will be easy to love each other there, because everything will be perfect!” And that is what always catches my attention; this aspiration is something we can work with, even in the here and now. The ability to imagine a world, even a heaven, where people can joyfully and peacefully live in community is one of the defining features that makes us human. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/201510/caring-others-is-what-made-our-species-unique">Dr. Samuel Paul Veissière wrote</a> that: </span><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“Altruism, cooperation, and caring for the vulnerable is what made our species unique. It is empathy and cooperation, not self-interest and competition, that drove our physiological, cognitive, linguistic, cultural, social, and technological evolution. We wouldn’t be the large-brained, neurally-plastic, intelligent, cumulatively-learning, empathetic beings that we are without the mutual help that characterizes our everyday interactions. Our evolutionary history is one of collective child-rearing, cooperative hunting and gathering, caring for elders and the sick, and freely sharing information.”</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is, as he described it, a “collective miracle” that came “before we domesticated plants and animals and settled in cities,” connecting us to each other across geography and history. This capacity is obviously not a guarantee. The injustice and suffering that has characterized the last several thousand years of human history and today’s headlines demonstrate that clearly enough. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/201510/caring-others-is-what-made-our-species-unique">As Veissière pointed out, we have other capacities, too, that can lead us astray</a>. For example,</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“We behave according to the way we expects others to expect us to behave in any given context. This is a highly complex embodied cognitive operation that we engage in without conscious effort in all but the most trying of everyday actions, from knowing how and where to sit on a bus or waiting room to ignoring the homeless or experiencing xenophobic shivers. Bystander experiments in social psychology have shed ominous light on this angle on our social minds: as strange as it may seem, someone being harassed in public is more likely to be helped by a stranger if there are less people around; if the collective mode of attention is one of callousness and ignorance, breaking that spell becomes counter-intuitive and very difficult for all involved.”</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So when this is the case, what can we do when our social norms have come to embody injustice, oppression, and violence? First, let’s remember that there is no virtue in staying in unhealthy, especially abusive, relationships and communities. And you cannot coerce yourself into having trust or gratitude. But we hold this caution alongside our capacity for cooperative, kind relationships. And we use the wisdom of both to learn how to establish wellbeing in ourselves and healthy relationships with others. This “both” aspect is very important. We aren’t pretending that there aren’t ways for this to go wrong, or that we can guarantee that we won’t hurt each other, intentionally or unintentionally. But by honestly looking at and learning from how community can become unhealthy, we can be intentional about cultivating the skills we need to make those wounds less likely, and to heal from them when they do occur. And we know it is worth our effort, because we also recognize that capacity within and between us for cooperative, kind relationships. And we understand how important and joyful it is to have those kinds of relationships. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span>One of my favorite reminders of how we can practice this comes from the Buddha. In a teaching called “<a href="https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.032.than.html">The Bonds of Fellowship</a>,” he described four “grounds” or habits that nurture healthy, mutually caring relationships: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Generosity, kind words, beneficial help,<br />& consistency in the face of events,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">in line with what's appropriate<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">in each case, each case.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">These bonds of fellowship [function] in the world<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">like the linchpin in a moving cart.”<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">(<a href="https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.032.than.html">AN 4.32</a>, tr. by Thanissaro Bhikkhu) </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The linchpin is what prevented a chariot wheel from sliding off the axle and causing the cart to crash. It’s a small part that plays a big role. It doesn’t matter how wonderful and fancy the chariot is, it will come apart without the linchpin. That is the role of our practice in maintaining healthy relationships, helping us relate to our suffering in a more skillful way and create conditions that support compassion and wisdom. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Generosity is something that is easy for us to take for granted, especially in an age where more and more of our interactions are reduced to transactions. We very easily lose touch of how we are part of the complex web of life, both wellbeing and suffering. Losing that awareness, it is easy to get lost and miss how generosity is a vital part of building relationships. Generosity is an opportunity for us to recognize our mutual dependence and intentionally connect this with our empathy and kindness. I often think about <a href="https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.057.than.html">a short teaching the Buddha gave</a> that, “even if a person throws the rinsings of a bowl or a cup into a village pool or pond, thinking, 'May whatever animals live here feed on this,' that would be a source of merit, to say nothing of what is given to human beings.” Recognizing and naming the value of our generosity and mutuality is also part of the practice. It connects us. We learn to listen to each other, understand what our needs are, find ways to meet those needs together, and celebrate. Generosity allows us to cultivate mutuality and solidarity, so that community can flourish. And we directly experience how our wellbeing is bound together. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Reflecting on “Kind words” is a remembrance that communication is not neutral.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> As Thich Nhat Hanh taught, “Every time we communicate, we either produce more compassion, love, and harmony or we produce more suffering and violence. Our communication is what we put out into the world and what remains after we have left it.” (<i><a href="https://www.parallax.org/product/the-art-of-communicating/">The Art of Communicating</a></i>) Every time we speak is an opportunity to express care or contempt, and to build cultures and communities of care or contempt. When we carry with us a deep remembrance that “<a href="http://dharmateacherorder.org/practice/the-five-wonderful-precepts/">words can create happiness or suffering</a>,” we can increasingly use our words as a gift. By paying attention to how our words impact one another, we become more skillful in choosing what to say and when to say it in a way that helps, instead of hurts. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Practicing “beneficial help” is an invitation to not just give a helping hand, but also to encourage each other in developing virtue, kindness, and wisdom. We take the time to learn how to 1) refrain from hurting one another and 2) actively support one another’s wellbeing. This is another example of how our wellbeing is bound up together. Restraining from harming and supporting wellbeing are vital skills, and they depend on our ability to pay attention and practice discernment. Discernment depends on the relationship we have with our experiences, ourselves, each other, and impacts. When I teach meditation, one of the most common questions I hear is, "am I doing this right?" This is fine, except that it often is connected to a very antagonistic relationship with our experience. We get stuck in a loop of approval and disapproval, praise and blame, without ever giving ourselves the opportunity to understand our needs and our experiences. This is not beneficial help. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So I try to help people shift more into the question, "what happens when I do it this way?" Pay attention; does this lead to well-being in myself, others, and the world? Or to suffering? Start training the heart-mind in these small, more neutral moments. Learn how wisdom and compassion can arise naturally with discernment. Restraint is not difficult when it arises out of discernment and a commitment to non-harming. And acting with the confidence born of discernment empowers us to more fully be present with and enjoy what we choose to do. We also know that, if a hurt does arise, we have the tools we need to notice and address it, and to do so before it grows so large as to become intractable. This allows us to be more relaxed and present with ourselves and each other. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In another teaching, the way we treat one another is also connected to gratitude.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Put simply, “<a href="https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an02/an02.031.than.html#s32">A person of integrity is grateful & thankful</a>.” This is a wonderful insight: we can’t separate gratitude from ethics. If we are really paying attention, we begin to understand how much our ability to live ethically is connected to the decisions that others make. If a feeling of self-righteousness is developing in us, that we are somehow separate from or better than others, that’s a sign that we need to pause. There is ultimately no way for me to cultivate my wellbeing at the expense of your wellbeing, and there is no way for you to cultivate your wellbeing at the expense of my wellbeing. Our wellbeing depends on one another. If we cultivate awareness of this, then when the conditions are supportive for virtue, generosity, compassion, and wisdom, we will naturally feel gratitude. We just need to learn to pay attention. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">And we do all this consistently, over time. This isn’t haphazard; it is a habit. And it is the consistency that allows it to become something real. In each situation we find ourselves in, we discern the most skillful way to respond, “in line with what’s appropriate in each case”. In time, these choices become cultures and processes that support wellbeing. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Saying all this, we realize that community is a practice and, again, there are no guarantees. We know what it feels like to be crushed by injustice, wounded by conflict, traumatized by violence and abuse. Sometimes, there is no linchpin and the only path for us is to go our separate ways, to break a cycle of harm, hopefully before the wheel flies off the axle. There is pain in that, but also peace and even some happiness. This is a very hopeful and practical approach, even when our family relationships are not ideal, and even when our parents, partners, or children are strained or even broken. We are helping create conditions where the possibility of healthy, wise relationships is something real, and that is a great gift and a cause for happiness. Our growing wellbeing becomes an invitation and an example that invites others to cultivate wellbeing – because, again, our wellbeing is bound up together. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>This is something we can do. It is part of our deep history, the gift of unfathomable millennia of evolution: “collective child-rearing, cooperative hunting and gathering, caring for elders and the sick, and freely sharing information.” We can be intentional about consistently practicing generosity, kind words, and beneficial help. We can reconnect with these evolutionary roots, both honoring all that is good and healing all the harm that we inherited from our ancestors. We might not ever make this a heaven on earth, but we can surely make it a lot less like hell. </span></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-30735034659406740292023-02-02T21:14:00.034-06:002023-07-20T10:37:28.072-05:00"Out of Hand": Tyre Nichols, Police Brutality, and Nonviolence<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Even as we begin Black History Month in 2023, the powers-that-be insist on adding new entries into our long history of violence and inequality. Fresh in many of our hearts is the brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police in early January. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/memphis-emts-terminated-response-fatal-beating-tyre-nichols-rcna68284">There has been some initial accountability</a>, as five police officers have been fired and charged, and three EMTs were fired for failing “to conduct an adequate patient assessment.” But that accountability cannot erase the tragedy of Tyre’s death, or the continued brutal assault on marginalized, especially Black, communities by those with power and authority. <br /></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>There is much to be said and done in response to this violence and in honor of Tyre’s life. As a White person, I especially urge White folks to seek out and listen to Black voices at this time. I do feel compelled, however, to respond at least briefly to one specific issue. I have lately and repeatedly heard the cries around me, mainly by people who are not Black, demanding that protests of Tyre’s murder be peaceful and nonviolent. We’ve heard it even from the highest levels, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and President Joe Biden. <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/parents-of-tyre-nichols-call-for-peaceful-protests-in-memphis/6937292.html">Garland went out of his way to say</a>: </span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“I do want to say, and I want to repeat what the family has said, that expressions of concern when people see this video, we urge that they be peaceful and nonviolent.” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/26/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-tyre-nichols-case/">President Biden’s official statement</a> similarly reminded us that:</span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Outrage is understandable, but violence is never acceptable. Violence is destructive and against the law. It has no place in peaceful protests seeking justice.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>And Wray, while emphasizing how appalled he was by seeing the video of Nichols’ beating, also <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-director-appalled-seeing-tyre-170733317.html">emphasized that</a>: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“As far as preparation, all of our field offices have been alerted to work closely with their state and local partners, including in particular, of course, in Memphis in the event of something getting out of hand. … there's a right way and a wrong way in this country to express being upset or angry about something. And we need to make sure that if there is that sentiment expressed here, it's done in the right way.” (Wray)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In each of these cases, there is a firm awareness that what was done to Tyre Nichols was wrong. It was so wrong that they can anticipate that people’s grief and anger will be justifiably strong. But their shared concerns about violence betray our history of inaction. It is an admission that we, especially marginalized communities, have little to no trust in our justice system to be fair and impartial. At the most, we may see some limited accountability, but I do not know of anyone who thinks that this time, we’ll get it right. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">People within marginalized communities have the right to frank conversations about what their response to injustice will be and decide what is best for their personal and collective wellbeing. But it is a very bad look for outsiders to those communities, especially those who wield power and influence over the violent systems themselves, to tell victims of violence that they must be nonviolent. I say this as a person who has spent a lifetime deeply committed to both the ideals and the practices of nonviolence. The calls for nonviolence by people who lead violent systems ring hollow to me and feels hypocritical. I have not, for example, heard any of our leaders call for the police to act nonviolently in response to protestors. Instead, I see authorities preparing to enact violence on protestors if their grief and rage “get out of hand.” You know what is out of hand? Police brutality and systemic racism, to name just two. But this violence is part of the status quo; it is normalized and not viewed as a threat. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Martin Luther King, Jr. knew well this pain of always being asked to bear the burden of this acceptable, state-sanctioned violence. His “<a href="https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf">Letter from Birmingham Jail</a>” put it into words the exhausting frustration that comes from the constant demand to protest in an acceptable way: </span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was ‘well timed’ according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘wait.’ … This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never.’ It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>If we spent more time and preparation considering the right way to establish justice, dismantle White supremacy, end poverty, and otherwise bring about an end to oppressive systems and cultures, people wouldn’t have so many reasons “to express being upset or angry.” People’s anger and grief at injustice is not the root problem here; what is out of hand is over five centuries of violence, so much of which has been tolerated and often protected by the powers that be. <a href="https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf">As Dr. King wrote</a>: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the [Black] community with no other alternative.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The best way to prevent violent protests is to create a just, equitable, compassionate society. We would love to simply celebrate Black lives, creativity, persistence, and joy this Black History Month. We would rather not grieve again, now for Tyre Nichols and Anthony Lowe. We would rather celebrate their lives. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>We would rather not have to protest at all. </span></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-38786638750156005482023-02-01T15:30:00.039-06:002023-02-08T21:40:28.246-06:00Black History Month, the College Board, and Accountability <p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> T</span>he continued attacks on studying Black History have ramped up, even as we begin a month dedicated to celebrating that very history. If you haven't heard - in late January, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/01/27/1151725129/florida-advanced-placement-african-american-studies-backlash">Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida’s Department of Education rejected the Advanced Placement course on African American studies</a>. DeSantis called the move the “pursuit of truth,” accusing the AP course as being “the imposition of ideology or the advancement of a political agenda.” Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. went further, calling it "<a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/01/1153434464/college-boards-revised-ap-african-american-studies-course-draws-new-criticism">woke indoctrination masquerading as education</a>."<br /></span><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>While the College Board has insisted that it neither “indoctrinates students” or “has bowed to political pressure,” the new revisions to the course they announced this week are substantial and would allow the course to be taught without engaging with many of the most pressing and important themes with which our nation is currently wrestling. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/01/1153434464/college-boards-revised-ap-african-american-studies-course-draws-new-criticism">Giulia Heyward and Juma Sei documented those changes</a>, included:</span><p></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Of the units that appeared in the pilot course, those about intersectionality and activism, Black feminist literary thought, and Black Queer Studies are not in the final curriculum. / The framework also drops its exploration of the origins, mission and global influence of the Movement for Black Lives. Instead, Black Lives Matter is listed alongside Black conservatism as a sample course project, labeled ‘Illustrative Only.’ / With these revisions, works by scholars including Roderick Ferguson, a professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Yale University, are now removed from the curriculum entirely.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> All of this looks like a collective admission that we, and especially White folks, are unwilling to honestly engage with our past. It is too easy a thing to want a version of history that doesn’t cost us anything in the present. But one of the gifts of studying history is to better understand ourselves now: how we arrived here and how we want to respond to this moment. As <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2021/07/a-true-civic-education-1619-1776-and.html#more">I wrote about in 2021</a>, "</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px;">although the outrage over 1619 or Critical Race Theory feels new, it’s important for us to remember that there is nothing new about these kinds of controversies." In fact, we have long been stuck in an ongoing conflict between different visions of civic education. As <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416710">Adam </a></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px; text-indent: 24px;"><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416710">Laats pointed out</a>, anti-progressive activists “were fiercely committed to a view of the curriculum that inculcated love of country, reinforced traditional gender roles and family structures, allowed no alternatives to capitalism, and granted religion a central role in civic life.” </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px; text-indent: 24px;"><span> </span><span> This is a key reason why the attempts to block the full study of Black History are so significant: </span><br /></span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px;">" ... </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px; text-indent: 24px;">these different visions of civic education keeps controversies repeating on a loop, using eerily similar language to attack educators, historians, social scientists, activists, and others advocating for just, equitable, and compassionate communities.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px;"> ... </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px;">The social sciences offer tools to help us avoid this kind of trap, encouraging us to think and live reflectively. We want to learn, change, and grow. And this means we should expect these controversies to keep coming, generation after generation, until there is a shift in our national educational culture. As part of this process, we can create more opportunities and support for teachers and administrators from marginalized communities, who have often been most responsible for keeping true civic education alive.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px;"> ... </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 15.4px; text-indent: 48px;">There is no reason to be threatened with history if you are willing to learn from it. At its best, history is the study of the human experience, giving us humility in the face of our mistakes (from the most laughable to the most cruel) and hope in the face of our greatest challenges. It is an opportunity to remember that we are making history right now, and we can make a better future not only possible, but something real."</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> Thank you for being part of community that honors history, including Black History. Thank you for being part of a community that refuses to stand idly by. And thank you for being part of the ongoing work of learning how to live together in ways in which we help, instead of hurt, one another. </span></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-59067383642240244592023-01-28T20:28:00.002-06:002023-01-30T09:22:04.786-06:00Gun Violence, Trauma, and Wholeness<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>While I was working at Peace Bridges in Cambodia, my friend and colleague Mony once explained how terrifying it was to live through the civil war. One description particularly stuck in my heart: it was cheaper to buy bullets than rice. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I spent a very busy weekend last week welcoming the Lunar New Year with my Buddhist community. It was a great joy. We chanted and meditated, packed emergency meal kits for a local shelter, drank tea, shared delicious meals, sang karaoke, gave and received new year dollars and oranges and red envelopes, bowed in gratitude, took group photos, cleaned up after ourselves (more than once!), and generally celebrated the joy of sharing life together. I felt at home and safe. And yet, in the back of my mind, I was aware of the grieving communities in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, California. Then, on Monday, two high school students were shot and killed at a charter school in Des Moines, Iowa in an apparent feud between rival gangs. Three days, three shootings, three settings: community dance center, workplace, and school. As <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/us/american-epidemic-mass-shootings/index.html">Stephen Collinson observed on Tuesday</a>, “Everyday life is a soft target. Anywhere can become the venue for the next preventable tragedy.”<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Everywhere we go, whatever we do, there is a background sadness that, in our society, bullets may not be cheaper than rice, but life is cheaper than bullets.<br /><span><br /> </span><span> </span>We are not even through the first month of 2023, and yet we have already had thousands of reminders of how violent, desperate, and afraid we feel, living in this society. As of the morning of January 26, 2023, the <a href="https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/">Gun Violence Archive</a> had documented 3,030 gun violence deaths in the first weeks of of January (1,314 due to homicide, accidents, and defensive uses; 1,716 from suicide). We already have witnessed 40 deaths from mass shootings and 6 deaths from mass murders. 21 children (age 0-11) have already died, alongside 102 teens (age 12-17). Again, these statistics are from January 1 to January 26, 2023. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We talk pretty frequently about gun violence because, unfortunately, we have to talk frequently about gun violence. <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When we experience violence on this scale, you can’t go far without encountering it. The reminders are nearly constant, as are the justifications. One of the criticisms I heard most often in response to my last reflection on gun violence, for example, was that I didn’t talk about all the lives that guns had saved. To be honest, that’s not a conversation I’m very interested in having. At the most, it seems to me that we are simply proving that we have managed to create a very dangerous, desperate society where we must be constantly hypervigilant, always aware that violence can break forth anywhere, at any time. It simply affirms what has been apparent to those who have lived as part of a marginalized community, or to those who have studied history, or to those who have the courage and empathy to step into solidarity with those who suffer: our society is sick. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Gun violence is obviously a problem, but there is at least one glimmer of truth in the terribly callous and ubiquitous response that “guns don’t kill people; people do.” Gun violence is a symptom of our collective dis-ease; it both perpetuates and is sustained by social norms that have blossomed out of a history of shared trauma and violence. What is it about our society that so effectively waters the seeds of violence in us?<br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span> In the case of the shooter at Monterey Park, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/monterey-park-shooter-was-mad-world-not-just-ex-former-friends-say-rcna67331">a person who spoke daily with the man said </a>that</span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“his whole life was going down, … . He had no job, he sold his property, very few friends, and I believe that he had no close friends, … . No family, no kids, no job, no money. He was hopeless and desperate.”</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>And in Half Moon Bay, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/us/half-moon-bay-shooting-suspect-chunli-zhao-what-we-know/index.html">the San Mateo County Sheriff explained</a> that “There was nothing that would have … raised us to have any concern with [the shooter] at this time, prior to this incident,” that this was just one of those times where someone “snaps.” But the man had at least some history of workplace violence; one situation even resulted in a restraining order that included a restriction from owning or buying a gun for a short period of time. That was about a decade ago. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>In the case of schools, <a href="https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/topic-research/safety/physical-safety">the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments makes the connections clear</a>: </span></p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “For students to learn, they need to feel safe. It is essential that all students be able to attend schools that provide a safe environment where they can thrive and fully engage in their studies without the distraction and worry about physical safety concerns.<br /> •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Physical safety is essential for a safe and supportive learning environment in which students and staff can thrive.<br /> o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Physical safety is related to higher academic performance, fewer risky behaviors, and lower dropout rates. <br /> •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Risky behaviors, such as acts of violence, imperil safety for students and staff, and undermine the teaching and learning climate. <br /> o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Students who feel safe are more likely to stay in school and achieve academically.<br /> •<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Physical safety is important for students’ feelings of connection and belonging to school and their educational experience.<br /> o<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Students who are not fearful or worried about their safety feel more connected to their school and care more about their educational experience.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>These things are well understood and supported by both research and pedagogical wisdom. But we also all know the reality. The <i><a href="https://safeandsoundschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/State-of-School-Safety-Report-FINAL.pdf">2022 State of School Safety Report</a></i> (a project of <i>Safe and Sound Schools</i>) reported that “Only 68 percent of students reported feeling safe at school.” This means that about a third of our children do not feel safe at school. There are many more details to this experience, and the entire study is important and worth your time. However, for the moment I want to simply bring attention to the public safety concerns that are included in the research, including: active shooter/attack, intruder/unauthorized visitor, bomb threats, bullying/cyberbullying, aggression/discrimination (“toward a minority individual/group”), sexual assault/abuse, substance abuse, gang activity and recruitment, youth trafficking, food insecurity, neglect/abuse, and homelessness. These are all real problems, and the report is very correct in addressing them in this study. But lurking behind their reality is, again, the question of why these public safety concerns are so commonplace that we need to address them like this? <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Meanwhile, three more communities have joined the already thousands of US communities in processing the trauma of a mass shooting and the heartbreak of losing loved ones. Everywhere we look, we see the indications that our society is very ill. As a nation, we hold space, tending these open wounds, these seemingly unending cycles of violence. And we are back to that question: What is it about our society that so effectively waters the seeds of violence in us? <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>There is not just one answer, but, over the years, we are gradually understanding ourselves and the conditions that make both violence and wholeness more likely. To take just one example, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">in 2003, Steven Wineman was asking some very similar questions, resulting in a wonderfully helpful book titled </span><i style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.traumaandnonviolence.com/">Power Under: Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change</a></i><span style="font-family: arial;">. Reflecting on how Sandra Bloom and Michael Reichert described the USA as “a traumaorganized society’ in which people are routinely exposed to ‘traumatogenic environments,” Wineman pointed out that social justice movements, especially “since the women’s movement began to unmask childhood sexual abuse,” have helped us have more awareness and understanding of how violence causes trauma, and how unhealed trauma can create conditions where we are more likely to choose to act violently. Oppression, he wrote, </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“is generically traumatizing. Racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and economic brutality all routinely violate people’s integrity and repeatedly render people powerless in the face of overwhelming personal and institutional forces. The social experience of people of color, gay people, women, workers, poor people, children, and disabled people is saturated with abuse, humiliation, violence, and negation of personal worth.”</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span> Building on the insight that Aurora Levins Morales offered, that “abuse is the local eruption of systemic oppression, and oppression the accumulation of millions of small systematic abuses,” Wineman pointed out that no one can “emerge unscathed” – “ours is a sickening society — a society in which toxic social conditions create psychological and physical illness by routinely traumatizing people.” I’ve come to understand this as a kind of generic oppression, where we learn from an early age to accommodate injustice. We internalize the notion that injustice, and the trauma that goes with it, is inevitable if not natural. It is simply normal, the way things are. And so we consider it unsurprising, for example, that it is possible for our co-workers, friends, and family members to one day “snap” and murder others. That the notion of “snapping” in this way is a common concept should bewilder and shock us. It should not be an explanation; it should be understood as a symptom of our society’s illness, an indication of our need for healing and change. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Having an environment – at home, school, work, and in the community – where we both feel and are safe is a major component of social and personal well-being. It feels like this should go without saying, but our constant exposure to violence and collective inability or unwillingness to do anything substantive about it makes it important to say these things aloud. Take, for example, last Monday’s school shooting in Iowa. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/school-shooting-des-moines-iowa-rcna67070">Des Moines Police Sgt. Paul Parizek explained </a>that :</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"These are supposed to be our safe spaces, and this school in particular, it's one that the police department works very closely with, … . The school is designed to pick up the slack and help kids who need the help the most, the ones who aren't getting the services they need for a variety of different reasons. To have it happen here, it's going to be a horrible impact on the community."</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>Part of that horrible impact is, to return to Wineman’s words, the way in “which toxic social conditions create psychological and physical illness by routinely traumatizing people.” This includes both acute stress (such as directly experiencing or witnessing a violent act) and chronic stress (such as living with the anxiety that violence is always a possibility). These stressors undermine our wellbeing and limit our ability to thrive. Combined with our broader sociopolitical contexts and histories, and we are also increasingly vulnerable to <a href="http://www.traumaandnonviolence.com/chapter4.html">what Wineman described as "mass scapegoating"</a> - <br /></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"</span><span style="font-family: arial;">People's sense of victimization is commonly played out politically through the mobilization of fear, hatred, and scapegoating of targeted groups (or institutions or nations) who in various ways are identified as threats to their well-being and as sources of their victimization. The major actors on the right surely understand the vulnerability of traumatized people to populist appeals for mass scapegoating - though undoubtedly they would not describe their politics in these terms. The manipulation of traumatic victimization into political expressions of rage and hatred downward at stigmatized and relatively powerless targets - rather than upward at power elites and at structures of domination and oppression - is one of the lynch pins that sustains the status quo.<span style="white-space: pre;">" </span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>I have friends and acquaintances, on both the right and the left, who passionately believe the solution to these problems is for more people to have more guns. They have told me, more than once, and often quite passionately, of how naïve I am to disagree with them. But I remain unconvinced, and not least because many of these same folks view the other as their enemy. Their guns are, at least in part, to protect themselves from each other. It appears much more likely to me that this faith in violence, and the guns that both embody and symbolize the power of this violence to impose their will on others, is naïve. At the very most, violence is a short-term solution that, if left unhealed, creates more long-term problems. Even the protection that guns promise come at the expense of the threat of violence, and often with violent acts. We cannot heal ourselves with guns, but we can traumatize ourselves with gun violence. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>So many of our solutions focus on ramping up threats, stockpiling weapons, training more and more people to be prepared to use violence, and generally reinforcing our habits to reach for violent solutions. I understand this. I understand that we have created a society where these things feel like the best options available. But I cannot see any way in which these are healthy long-term solutions. At the very least, I urge you to consider these as short-term measures to help us deal with the constant, crisis-filled emergencies we have come to accept as everyday life. At the very least, let’s increase our support for developing and funding trauma healing for wounds that already exist, and social programming for addressing the injustices that marginalize and traumatize people in the first place. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>This approach may be especially hopeful for all of us who belong to oppressed communities and felt torn between the hope for a healthy, healing, whole life and world, and the helplessness mixed with an often overwhelming rage that simmers in our traumatic grief. As </span><a href="http://www.traumaandnonviolence.com/files/Power_Under.pdf" style="font-family: arial;">Wineman noted</a><span style="font-family: arial;">, </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“When we view trauma from a political perspective, two truths emerge which stand in stark tension with each other: that trauma can psychologically debilitate people in ways that help to perpetuate domination and oppression; and that trauma can help to spark personal and political resistance to domination and oppression. I believe that it is critical to develop our understanding of both sides of this tension. It is in the push and pull between the ways that traumatized people are damaged and defeated by oppression and the ways that traumatized people stand up to oppression that our prospects for mobilizing effective social change movements rise or fall.” </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As another day begins in the USA, always potentially filled with violence, I choose again for my grief “to spark personal and political resistance to domination and oppression.” I dream of a day when my friends no longer feel the need to carry a gun to a grocery store. I dream of a day when someone “snapping” and committing acts of violence is unheard of and bewildering. I dream of a day when we’ve learned to live together in such a way that no one has to depend on marginalizing, exploiting, or traumatizing another human being to try to meet their own needs. And I dream of a day when no one feels the need to harass me into buying a weapon, because we have made it possible to live together with compassion and wisdom, where everyone feels and is safe. </span></p><div><br /></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-11645907672810838812023-01-21T19:24:00.007-06:002023-01-21T19:26:27.857-06:00Claiming Space, Disrupting Structures: Communities of Resistance & Social Determinants of Health <p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>The tragedy was set in motion in August, 2020, but, like probably many of you, I didn’t learn the story until last week. That was when the family of Larry Eugene Price, Jr. filed a civil rights and wrongful death lawsuit after he died in solitary confinement in 2021 in an Arkansas jail. The 2020 arrest wasn’t the first time Larry had encountered the police. After all, he was a Black man with multiple mental health issues who was often homeless.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/2023/01/20/starved-death-american-jail-man-who-couldnt-pay-100-bail-1773459.html">As <i>Newsweek</i> reported</a>, “Price’s hometown police knew him well,” “mostly for criminal mischief, squatting in buildings, disorderly conduct and for wellbeing checks when he, for example, would hurt himself.” But when Larry wandered into the Fort Smith police station on August 19, 2020, and pointed his finger like a gun, “threatening and cursing,” police “arrested him on a state felony – terroristic threatening in the first degree.” <br /></span><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Bond was $1,000, but Larry did not have the $100 he needed for bail, and so he languished in a cage – for more than an year. Please note that no one was injured during the mental health crisis that provoked his arrest. Please especially note that Larry Price wasn’t convicted of any crime; he was awaiting trial. And while he waited, he drew closer and closer to death. When emergency services arrived and tried to help him, Larry, who normally weighed around 200 pounds, weighed only 90 pounds. And though the Sebastian County Sheriff insisted that staff provided food and water each day, Larry’s official cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration. The details are horrifying, so much so that, when the Fort Smith police spokesman learned the actual circumstances of Larry’s death, he replied, “Oh dear God, that's horrendous<br /></span><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">State inspectors making compliance checks had already noted more than once that this jail was overpopulated and understaffed. The lawsuit connects these audits with an inability of the jail to adequately meet the needs of inmates, especially those with disabilities and mental illness. From the information available, this seems to be tragically true for Larry Price. The lawsuit focuses on Sebastian County Detention Center, where Price was imprisoned, and Oklahoma City’s Turn Key, the health care provider contracted with the jail. The suit notes that staff did not properly monitor and document Larry’s mental health, medications, or nutrition. He was also not allowed his daily hour outside of solitary confinement, because his behaviors were erratic. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Despite obvious signs of deteriorating mental health and dramatic weight loss, staff “did not even alert a higher-level medical or mental health provider.” And please remember that this was happening over the course of an entire year. Staff were required to check him every fifteen minutes, resulting in tens of thousands of basically meaningless log entries. According to the suit,</span><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> "Between August 1 and August 29, 2021, … jail guards logged over 4,000 consecutive wellbeing checks of Mr. Price, and each time they made the exact same entry: 'Inmate and Cell OK.'...In the last 48 hours of Mr. Price's confinement alone, they made this entry more than 300 successive times. They continued to log these same words, at least four times an hour, even in the hours and minutes leading up to his death — when Mr. Price was visibly malnourished, dying of starvation and dehydration. … Shockingly, … they made at least ten additional entries, 'Inmate and Cell OK,' after Mr. Price was pronounced dead." (<i><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/2023/01/20/starved-death-american-jail-man-who-couldnt-pay-100-bail-1773459.html">Newsweek</a></i>) </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">It settles in me as a gruesome mantra to the horrors of our status quo: 'Inmate and Cell OK.' 'Inmate and Cell OK.' 'Inmate and Cell OK.'<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Larry’s death was a preventable, terrible tragedy. As the attorney representing Price’s family put it, </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"I have never seen a case where a pretrial detainee, innocent in the eyes of the law, was held in solitary confinement for a year, without ever having his day in court, and was so neglected that he wasted away and died looking like a starving prisoner of war." (<i><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/2023/01/20/starved-death-american-jail-man-who-couldnt-pay-100-bail-1773459.html">Newsweek</a></i>) </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>This loss is also in stark contrast to the love and joy Larry shared with his family and friends. They are now left to grieve both how he was treated and the shocking failure of the system. Larry’s brother, who works in corrections, believed the jail could even be helpful: </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Price was homeless and in need of mental health help. I thought the jail would at least provide a roof over my brother's head where he would be fed and watched over and where he might get some psychiatric help and treatment. And the family was kept in the dark about what was happening inside the jail. No one would provide answers when I called. And the jail would not allow anyone to visit."</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Another friend lamented not being more active to help Larry, feeling like she could have done more. She tried to visit him many times, but was not allowed. She never learned that he could have been released by paying $100 bail. “They could have told me...I would have given up $100 to get him out of there so he didn't pass away like he did." (<i><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/2023/01/20/starved-death-american-jail-man-who-couldnt-pay-100-bail-1773459.html">Newsweek</a></i>) <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">There are layers and layers to this tragedy, and Larry’s death is part of a larger story of how unsafe and unjust life is for countless human beings. He was criminalized and marginalized in so many ways: he was a Black man, developmentally delayed, mentally ill, and destitute. But instead of being met with compassion and given the resources and support he needed to enjoy a full life, he was criminalized and locked out of sight, left to die. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The painful reality is that we have managed to create a society where these kinds of tragedies happen with shocking regularity. The settings change: prisons, hospitals, schools, workplaces, religious institutions, homes. The relationships between the inequities and oppressive systems shift emphasis: race, gender, class and poverty, disability, age, sexuality, and more. And each person’s story is unique. But these experiences also form a pattern. External factors, such as our living and working conditions, make it more difficult for many people to enjoy a full life. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Although we’ve been talking about aspects of the concept for hundreds of years, a useful framework for helping us understand this dynamic is called the Social Determinants of Health.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health#tab=tab_1">The World Health Organization explains that social determinants</a> “are the non-medical factors” that impact our health. These include issues such as income protection, access to education, food security, access to housing and basic amenities, “social inclusion and non-discrimination,” structural conflict and issues of justice, and access to affordable healthcare. </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. These forces and systems include economic policies and systems, development agendas, social norms, social policies and political systems. … In countries at all levels of income, health and illness follow a social gradient: the lower the socioeconomic position, the worse the health.” </span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Importantly, research has demonstrated that social determinants are often even more influential than individual health and lifestyle choices on a person’s health. Studies put the impact of social determinants between 30% and 55%. The good news is that these social determinants are almost entirely within our collective sphere of influence. The bad news is that, though we’ve made progress, we still have a long way to go. <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health#tab=tab_3">The WHO explains</a> that - </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“Such trends within and between countries are unfair, unjust and avoidable. Many of these health differences are caused by the decision-making processes, policies, social norms and structures which exist at all levels in society. / Inequities in health are socially determined, preventing poorer populations from moving up in society and making the most of their potential. / Pursuing health equity means striving for the highest possible standard of health for all people and giving special attention to the needs of those at greatest risk of poor health, based on social conditions.”</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Social determinants give us one practical toolkit for both understanding the realities of social and health inequities and why it is essential for us to transform them. And its framework can help us link our actions in the community with larger policies and movement. But the scope of the social determinants can also be overwhelming; it is easy to feel powerless, both in the wake of devastating injustices we witness and experience, and in the face of monolithic systems that make these tragedies mundane. Even the most effective framework becomes useless if it cannot be translated into meaningful action. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://personal.lse.ac.uk/lewisd/images/Lewis-D&C2002.pdf">David Lewis, analyzing the concept of civil society, encouraged exploring concepts “along two dimensions</a>: “on the one hand, the concept … may be ‘useful to think with’ in the sense of supporting analysis which can help to make sense of political and social realities, while on the other it may be ‘useful to act with’, by helping to inspire action on the ground.” The joining of these two things is key. If we only have understanding, we may just make ourselves more miserable. Understanding oppressive systems, for example, is vitally important, but only if we do not stop with understanding. That understanding must also empower us, to know how best to act. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span><a href="https://academic.oup.com/jhrp/article-abstract/8/2/198/1751573?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Kristi Heather Kenyon and Regiane A. Garcia made this point again in 2016</a>, that “social determinants can and should also be understood as processes of participation and engagement whereby individuals are able, through their own knowledge and actions, to improve health outcomes for themselves and others.” </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Their table of “Types of Health Activism” is a great example of translating theory into practice, and a good model for how we can reflect on how our own actions can become part of powerful movements. This is what empowerment looks like: “claiming space and, in doing so, disrupting existing structures and the power they reflect and reinforce.”<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>And even at the most mundane levels of daily life, we can also be paying attention. Social determinants can help us become more aware of the gaps in our own lives and communities. They can also help us become more aware of the things that are going well, where we find support and our needs are met. These supportive factors then can nourish our gratitude, teach us how to build community and social capital, and become sources of learning and strength to empower our activism and social change. If you live with others and get along with them, that is a great happiness. If they encourage you in establishing a practice that brings well-being in yourself and others, that is a great happiness. If they practice with you, that is a great happiness. Living with mutual care and support is both what keeps us going now and makes a pathway for greater wellbeing, equity, and justice in the future. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Instead of becoming passive and powerless, we can learn to be more collectively aware and intentional about how we interact with, resist, challenge, and transform the social forces that otherwise dominate our lives and deaths. It may be premature to say that we can make avoidable tragedies impossible, but we can keep working together to make them increasingly improbable. It’s a change that will take all of us. It takes what D<a href="https://wildgeesezen.org/2017/02/15/communities-of-resistance/">aniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh called “communities of resistance” </a>in <i>The Raft is Not the Shore.</i> Thich Nhat Hanh remarked that:</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“It is a resistance against all kinds of things that are like war. Because living in modern society, one feels that he cannot easily retain integrity, wholeness. One is robbed permanently of humanness, the capacity of being oneself. … And there are so many things like that in modern life that make you lose yourself. So perhaps, first of all, resistance means opposition to being invaded, occupied, assaulted, and destroyed by the system. … communities of resistance should be places where people can return to themselves more easily, where the conditions are such that they can heal themselves and recover their wholeness.” (129)</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">We have inherited a long history of tragedies, and we are witnesses to, and too often complicit with, a society that manufactures new tragedies every day. If we are not to lose ourselves, we must be intentional about facing those tragedies. But that is not enough. We must also transform the witnessing into understanding. But that is also not enough. We must transform understanding into action, so that there will always be communities of resistance, places where we can return to ourselves, places where we “can heal [our]elves and recover [our] wholeness.” </span></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-59892002592352431622023-01-16T18:22:00.006-06:002023-02-14T17:53:08.838-06:00“Thinly Veiled Attempts” – Thinking about CRT and MLK<p><span> </span><span> </span>On January 10, newly inaugurated Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed seven executive orders. <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3810325-huckabee-sanders-targets-critical-race-theory-in-executive-order/">One of these banned teaching critical race theory in Arkansas schools</a>, continuing a trend we’ve consistently seen over the last two years. <a href="https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-attack/2021/06">EducationWeek has documented</a> that:<br /></p><blockquote>“42 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an Education Week analysis. Eighteen states have imposed these bans and restrictions either through legislation or other avenues.”<span><a name='more'></a></span></blockquote><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://governor.arkansas.gov/executive_orders/executive-order-to-prohibit-indoctrination-and-critical-race-theory-in-schools/">Arkansas’ ban </a>extols the virtues of education over indoctrination, insisting that educators “should teach students how to think—not what to think.” It then states that: <p></p><p></p><blockquote>“Critical Race Theory (CRT) is antithetical to the traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness. It emphasizes skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, thereby resurrecting segregationist values, which America has fought so hard to reject; … .” </blockquote><p></p><p><span> </span><span> </span>For anyone who has followed the ongoing and surreal journey, you might not need <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/kimberle-crenshaw-on-teaching-the-truth-about-race-in-america">an explanation of why this pushback continues</a> whenever we attempt a fuller reckoning with our racist past and present. But it probably is good to remember at least some of the reasons why CRT has been targeted in this way. As <a href="https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-attack/2021/06">EducationWeek points out,</a> CRT simply </p><p></p><blockquote><p>“refers to a decades-old academic theory that holds that racism is systemic, perpetrated by structural forces rather than individual acts of bias. But over the past two years, the phrase has been warped from its original meaning, used by opponents to refer to anything that makes race or gender salient in conversations about history, current events, or literature.” </p></blockquote><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To put this another way, this is an overt attempt to discredit and erase a set of ideas and practices that helps us understand how racism works in the world. And it replaces CRT’s analysis of how racism operates within structures and cultures with an emphasis on individual bias. This very conveniently allows discussions about racism to focus on individuals, shielding the true engines driving White supremacy from view or change. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>This is why, last year, <a href="https://twitter.com/ACLU_MS/status/1503453063171956736">the ACLU rightly observed</a> that “At their core, anti ‘CRT’ laws are thinly veiled attempts to silence discussions of race and gender amongst student and educators.” The language is often vague, creating confusion and putting teachers in stressful situations, uncertain about what they are and are not allowed to say and teach. For example, in 2021, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/29/us/tennessee-law-hb-580-book-debate/index.html">a group of Tennessee parents appealed to the state’s anti-CRT law</a> to remove books from the curricula that teach about the Civil Rights Movement. The books labeled as offensive included a children’s book about the March on Washington, two books about Ruby Bridges and school desegregation, and a picture book about the integration of southern California schools in the 1940s. The basis for the appeal is that: </p><p></p><blockquote>“the Tennessee law makes lesson plans illegal if students ‘feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish.’ / [One parent explained that] the Williamson County curriculum makes students feel bad about their race, meaning the law should invalidate it.”</blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The practical result is that teachers are pressured to self-censor, in order to avoid any controversy. And children are robbed of the opportunity to learn about how humans have hurt one another, how they have stood up for what is right, and how they have healed those wounds and created – or tried to create - communities where we learn to live with justice, equity, and compassion. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This all feels particularly relevant on the annual observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The King Center at Stanford University identified “<a href="https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/">Six Steps of Nonviolent Social Change</a>,” “based on Dr. King’s nonviolent campaigns and teachings that emphasize love in action.” These bans directly undermine and attempt to disempower the approach that King championed and that was a vital part of the Civil Rights movement. We can observe this especially in the first two steps, “Information Gathering” and “Education”: </p><p></p><blockquote><p>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Information Gathering<br />“To understand and articulate an issue, problem or injustice facing a person, community, or institution you must do research. You must investigate and gather all vital information from all sides of the argument or issue so as to increase your understanding of the problem. You must become an expert on your opponent’s position</p><p>•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Education<br />“It is essential to inform others, including your opposition, about your issue. This minimizes misunderstandings and gains you support and sympathy.”</p></blockquote><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To counter these troubling trends opposing free access to information and education requires more than outrage. Another of <a href="https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/">King’s six steps</a> is Direct Action, “taken when the opponent is unwilling to enter into, or remain in, discussion/negotiation.” We intentionally try to bring “a ‘creative tension’ into the conflict, supplying moral pressure on your opponent to work with you in resolving the injustice.” The bans on CRT strike me as a collective unwillingness “to enter into, or remain in, discussion” on the continued issues of racial terrorism in the United States. And they represent another instance in a long history of deflection, of those in power seeking to silence the voices and the histories of Black liberation in the face of White supremacist violence. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In whatever way you honor Martin Luther King, Jr., I hope you can add a few commitments that last longer than this one day. Especially for White folks, please study, listen, and learn. Read history books, listen to podcasts, study Critical Race Theory. Do the work to gather information and educate yourself, so you can more intentionally and strategically support and participate in anti-racist efforts. And link this to your conversations and community actions. Locally, we continue to be engaged in actions to support our educators dealing with these issues. But alongside these efforts, since history and critical thinking are being banned from our schools, wouldn’t it be great to see more and more of these classes being offered in churches, libraries, after-school clubs, bookstores, and cafes? And wouldn’t it be great if you helped make that happen? <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And while doing so, let’s keep in mind the wisdom that a very young <a href="https://edtrust.org/the-equity-line/martin-luther-king-jr-chief-aim-education-save-man-morass-propaganda/">Martin Luther King also shared</a>, that: </p><p></p><blockquote>“To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction. / The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals. … We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.”</blockquote><p></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This is exactly the kind of education we need for this time, joining compassion together with wisdom, and refusing to be distracted or discouraged by the “morass of propaganda” that would keep us from living more fully into the Beloved Community that MLK so passionately described and so determinedly pursued. </p><div><br /></div><p></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-48428258055067443572022-12-11T08:49:00.005-06:002022-12-11T11:53:51.211-06:00“Give Up All the Other Worlds” (Learning to Hope)<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">How you feel about hope likely depends on your own experiences and circumstances. It’s been portrayed as both salvation and delusion, and many things in between. An important criticism is that passive hope may give us the excuse to just stand idly by, waiting for others to do something. Meanwhile, we can get lost in an imaginary future, postponing our personal and collective wellbeing to some other time. We can even use hope as an excuse to avoid confronting difficulties, from places in ourselves that need healing to unhealthy situations that need to be addressed. This “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave">pie in the sky</a>” kind of hope can too easily just become a practice of accommodating injustice and oppression. As Joe Hill observed, it also makes you an easy mark for religious hucksters looking to get your money and your labor. <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">On the other hand, we can hold so tightly to a specific version of hope, that our expectations become a cage. Attachment to outcomes can stifle our flexibility and creativity, so that we miss out on real opportunities to work for change. As some psychologists have put it, expectations are just “premeditated resentments.” Or we might find ourselves in the trap called “False Hope Syndrome,” with unrealistic goals. When this is the case, it doesn’t matter how much confidence and energy we put into our efforts. Distorted beliefs doom the effort to failures, no matter how many times we try. We end up devoting time and resources into what is essentially a lost cause. That makes it easy to get stuck and discouraged. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">And then there is the difficult reality that sometimes we don’t need to hope so much as we need to grieve. We need to come to terms with the state of our lives, families, communities, and world. Sometimes, what we call hopelessness is just honesty. And this is what makes navigating hope and hopelessness, grief and despair, rest and apathy, action and futility, something of a craft or an art. It is also why the words don’t always fit, because we are often at different places on this messy spectrum of grieving, healing, acting, or giving up. But behind our differences of experience and perspectives, there are questions that can be useful to most of us. What is it that keeps us from giving up, giving in, or standing idly by while honestly facing the devastating challenges of the day? What are some principles and practices that help us transform our anger, grief, and despair in meaningful action? <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">To revisit a psychological perspective, and as part of preparing for these reflections, I took the <a href="https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/resources/questionnaires-researchers/adult-hope-scale">Snyder Adult Hope Scale</a>. The scale conceives of hope in terms of two qualities, agency (how we direct energy toward a goal) and pathway (how we plan to meet a goal). And this can be a practical approach that may help us avoid getting caught in those ways that hope can go wrong and make things worse. These are skills we can work on, and habits we can form. Sometimes, hope is just the resolution to keep taking small steps, even when the outcome is unclear. Sometimes, it is finding a resource or support that keeps a possibility of change alive. As it turns out, this scale ranks me as a person with “high hope.” This was interesting to me, because it touches all those tender places of despair, rage, and grief inside of me. I would not describe myself as a hopeful person so much as a persistent person. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Seeing the connection between those two in this context has helped me be more intentional about exploring what nurtures that energy and persistence. It is something like a vow to not give up, nor to give in to actions that undermine the long-term health of myself, others, or our communities and movements. I’ve known for most of my life that I depend on my spiritual and reflective practices to keep me steady, to help me consistently engage with people and processes in the midst of difficult and painful circumstances. This is why I’ve felt most at home in Quaker and Buddhist contexts, and why I’ve spent so much of my time teaching and practicing skills like meditation and mediation. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>I would also include staying in touch with creativity and beauty as vital reflective practices. I have always relied on singing, poetry, and humor to carry me through. Here we can gather words, sounds, and images together in ways that allow us to recognize and heal one another. This is obviously not inevitable or automatic; this is something we do on purpose. As David Whyte has beautifully written in “<a href="https://onbeing.org/poetry/sweet-darkness/">Sweet Darkness</a>,” <br /></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “You must learn one thing. <br />The world was made to be free in. <br />Give up all the other worlds <br />except the one to which you belong. <br />Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet <br />confinement of your aloneness <br />to learn <br />anything or anyone <br />that does not bring you alive <br />is too small for you.”</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The difficult news that we know all too well is that this is not usually simple to do. The good news is that we know that it is possible. In studying the history of people and movements, it is easy to miss this lesson. But if we are willing to stay with the story, we find not only the oppressors, but those who resist oppression. We find not only those who hurt, but those who heal. We find not only those who go along with the cruelty of the world, maybe even profiting from it, but those who do not. And all along the way, we find the artists and creatives who give voice, not only to the pain, but to the great insistence that things will not be this way forever – because we will always work to make those changes. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In 1993, Carolyn Forche edited what became and remains one of my favorite collections of poetry, <i><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393309768">Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness</a></i>. It beautifully and achingly bears “witness to extremity,” to all the horrors of the last century’s wars, torture, exploitation, exile, and oppression, in the voices of over 140 poets from all over the world, “from the Armenian genocide to Tiananmen Square.” One of those poets was Otto Rene Castillo. He was a celebrated poet in Central America, but that didn’t save him from exile from his home in Guatemala for his work as a student organizer. (His first exile was in 1954 and the result of the CIA-backed coup that overthrew President Arbenz. Arbenz’ great crime was to advocate for agrarian reform policies that provided compensation and redistribution of land to exploited and impoverished laborers, many of them indigenous. The United Fruit Company had much to lose, and they lobbied for the US-backed coup.) When Castillo secretly returned to Guatemala in 1964 with an insurgent group, he was arrested, brutally tortured, and killed. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">His witness is not an idle one, nor one that stood idly by. He wrote about the “Apolitical Intellectuals” who refused to act when they were most needed: </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><blockquote>“No one will ask them <br />about their dress <br />or their long<br />siestas <br />after lunch, <br />or about their futile struggles <br />against ‘nothingness,’ <br />or about their ontological <br />way <br />to make money. … <br />They will be asked nothing <br />about their absurd <br />justifications <br />nurtured in the shadow <br />of a huge lie. <br />On that day, <br />the humble people will come, … <br />and they will ask: <br />‘What did you do when the poor <br />suffered, when tenderness and life <br />were dangerously burning out in them?’”</blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">And he also knew the uselessness of that ‘pie-in-the-sky’ hope, that substitutes platitudes for grief and rage, as he wrote in “Distances” – </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><blockquote>“Under the bitter December air <br />a friend says <br />'I’m disillusioned. Everything goes <br />so slowly. The dictatorship is strong. <br />I’m desperate and pained <br />by the calvary of my people.’ <br />And I, sensing his anguish, the gray <br />and noble sadness of my friend, <br />knowing his fight <br />to keep on fighting, <br />do not say: coward or go to the mountains <br />or lazy or pessimist, <br />rigid, poor devil. <br />I only put my arm around his shoulder, <br />so the tearing cruelty of his cold <br />be less.” </blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yet his voice is most clear in his simple poem, “Before the Scales, Tomorrow” (tr. by Barbara Paschke and David Volpendesta): </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And when the enthusiastic<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />story of our time<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">is told,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">for those<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">who are yet to be born<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">but announce themselves<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">with more generous face,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">we will come out ahead<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">—those who have suffered most from it.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />And that<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">being ahead of your time<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">means suffering much from it.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />But it’s beautiful to love the world<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">with eyes<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">that have not yet<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">been born.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />And splendid<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">to know yourself victorious<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">when all around you<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">it’s all still so cold,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">so dark.</span></p><p></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is my favorite description that I have encountered of what feels like hope: “being ahead of your time / means suffering much from it. / But it’s beautiful to love the world / with eyes / that have not yet / been born.” Cruelly and tragically, Castillo never got to see that world with any other eyes. But his work and his art helped make change possible, and can help keep the possibility of change alive in us, as well.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">While I was re-reading this poem, I remembered <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2021/11/we-take-our-space-in-world-transgender.html">a guided meditation I offered at a local 2021 Transgender Day of Remembrance</a>. I envisioned it as a way to “get in touch with our bodies and feelings; reconnect with our community and aspirations; and recommit to working together to create a world where justice, equity, and joy are the norms.” It was a concrete expression of loving the world “with eyes / that have not yet / been born.” We began with our deep sense of loss, making space for bearing witness to our collective and personal suffering: “Each time we gather like this, we can’t help but remember the world we live in. It is a world that makes it very clear that we are misunderstood and unwelcome.” That loss is in stark contrast to the possibilities we feel within ourselves and witness in others: “We live beautiful, vibrant, and even joyful lives. We exist in the face of all this violence, hatred, and grief, and insist on living, loving, and thriving. We create new worlds.” <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Holding that pain while also making space for what is possible is the task of each moment. The practice I suggested then was to reconnect with three intentions: <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“<b>We affirm and love ourselves</b>. Take a deep breath and remember a time when you or another person affirmed who are you, who welcomed you without reservation and didn’t make you hide your self. Knowing that gift, offer this same affirmation and love to yourself and to everyone gathered here. … <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />“<b>We care for each other: elders, youth, and everyone in between</b>. … We cherish our history. We honor our elders. We celebrate our youth. We care for each other. Call to mind our … ancestors who walked this path before us, who also dared to be themselves. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />“<b>We take our space in the world.</b> We know the world we need is possible, a world … [where we] feel and are safe. We dream of a world where we easily access the medical care, housing, food, employment, and enjoyment we need. We know it is not unreasonable to demand a world where [we] get to decide what supports our well-being, and where all people are free and equal. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">“<b>We affirm and love ourselves. We care for each other. We take our space in the world.</b> We hear and honor our grief, anger, and fear. We also hear our community’s passionate insistence for all the good things that support our well-being. We hold both with fierce determination. This energy can carry and sustain us, as we continue to work together to create a world where everyone, without exception, can live with freedom, safety, and joy.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">This is what I take David Whyte to mean when he wrote “Give up all the other worlds / except the one to which you belong,” and “to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.” This is what it means to me when Otto Rene Castillo powerfully teaches us “that / being ahead of your time / means suffering much from it. / But it’s beautiful to love the world / with eyes / that have not yet / been born.” <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>After all these explorations, I still do not think I understand or can define hope. But I can commit to cultivate compassion and wisdom, without giving up. Without getting lost in “premediated resentments” or false hope, I can practice affirming and loving myself, offering and receiving care, and taking space in the world so that others can glimpse the possibility that everyone, without exception, can live with freedom, safety, and joy. Maybe this is what hope is, or maybe this is as close to hope as someone like me can get. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>We know how exhausting it is to keep trying, and I don't know how realistic it is to insist on this kind of world. But we also know that if we give up completely, there is no possibility that humanity will ever heal, change, and grow. So let’s put our arms around each other’s shoulders in the time of disillusionment and despair, give up all the worlds that fail us, and keep loving ourselves and each other, until the world is able to love us back. </span><p></p><div><br /></div></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-66474735903131150172022-11-20T09:34:00.002-06:002022-11-20T09:34:29.079-06:00Reflections on the UN Convention on The Rights of the Child <p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I didn’t learn about the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child">UN Convention on the Rights of the Child</a> until I was living in Cambodia, where it was an important framework for helping us address family violence, human trafficking, and community development. Maybe this isn’t too surprising, since the Convention is still young. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child#cite_note-UN_ARES4425-10">It was adopted on this day (November 20) in 1989 by the UN General Assembly</a> and became effective on September 2, 1990, after it was ratified by the required number of members. It is a very basic commitment to honoring and protecting the dignity and humanity of children, and 196 nations, including every member of the United Nations except one, has made that commitment. The one UN member that is still holding out, three decades later, is the USA. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To our credit, the USA has ratified two Optional Protocols on restricting “Children in Armed Conflict” and the “Sale of Children.” But, as President Barack Obama described it in his 2008 campaign, our collective failure to ratify the Convention is “embarrassing.” Nevertheless, even embarrassment has been insufficient to muster the political will to address this issue, as no US president has even submitted the Convention to the US Senate for ratification. Today’s anniversary of the Convention’s initial adoption is a good opportunity for us to reflect a little on why we might be in this situation and what it means. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the United States, the arguments against ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child with which I’m most familiar usually boil down to parental or state sovereignty, or both. At the heart of the resistance is who gets to choose what is in “the best interest of the child.” Many detractors of the Convention insist that parents should get to make that decision. If there is evidence of abuse or neglect, they may make allowances for the state to intervene. Intervention beyond this is usually resisted, and the idea of a UN committee being empowered to determine international standards of care is seen as a threat to both national and parental sovereignty. This is despite the fact that Article 5 of the Convention explicitly names and protects - <br /><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> “the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention.”</p></blockquote><p><span> </span><span> </span><a href="https://www.unicef.org/cambodia/convention-rights-child-childrens-version">The children’s version</a> puts it more simply: “Governments should let families and communities guide their children so that, as they grow up, they learn to use their rights in the best way. The more children grow, the less guidance they will need.” These protections are one of the reasons that the ACLU has described popular opposition to the Convention as “<a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/theres-only-one-country-hasnt-ratified-convention-childrens">based on incorrect assumptions</a>”. But they also correctly and importantly point out that, underneath these false assumptions, we are avoiding “some hard truths about the exceptionally bad way we treat children in the United States” and the related hard work we need to do “to bring our laws and practices in line with human rights.” <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Doing that hard work is the priority, whether the USA ever ratifies the Convention or not. And while I personally support ratification, there continues to be discussion on what is the most practical way forward. I can understand those who say the objections will likely never be met, and that this means we should focus on more local and statewide movements and legislation for protecting children. Where we agree, and where we can work together, is on transforming our systems and cultures to actually protect the wellbeing and humanity of our children. This is where we can begin. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R40484/25#:~:text=Opponents%20argue%20that%20ratification%20would,educate%20or%20discipline%20their%20children.">The Congressional Research Service provided a report on the Convention in 2015 </a>that continues to be helpful in understanding the issues, and their summary of objections based in parental authority is especially interesting. Rather than seeing value in protecting a child’s privacy, a provision intended to protect children from government and corporate invasions of privacy, objecting parties wanted to ensure that parents “have the right to search their children’s rooms or be notified if a child is arrested or undergoes an abortion.” Instead of supporting a child’s freedom of expression, objectors feared that the provision “could be interpreted to allow children to speak their minds at all times”, in opposition to parental authority. Similarly, they objected to a child’s right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion because they feared it “might give children the right to object to their parents’ religious beliefs or training.” <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Objectors resist a child’s access to information and education because they do not want children to access materials “they find objectionable.” A similar reasoning leads to rejection of freedom of association, to restrict a child’s “right to associate with people that his or her parents do not approve of”. Finally, Article 19(1)’s declaration that “no child should be subjected to physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation,” at school or by a parent or legal guardian” was rejected because parents could maintain their right to use corporal punishment. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I can’t help but reflect on these ideas through the lens of my own experiences of authoritarian cultures. Whether consciously sought or not, this focus on parental rights to control and coerce their children also connects with the ability of leaders to maintain their own power. It is a self-perpetuating cycle, reinforcing cultural assumptions that also reinforces the status quo. While authoritarian tendencies exist across the religious and political spectrums, I have only personally experienced it in a conservative context. However, I oppose authoritarianism in any form, whether it is from the right or the left. And I can remember several key moments in my own spiritual journey when I had to recognize, resist, and heal from such an abuse of authority. For all our sakes, I’ll only share only two examples today, both from experiences I had in the early 2000s. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>First, one of the notoriously difficult passages in the Christian scriptures comes from <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%202&version=NIV">1 Timothy 2:11-15 (NRSVUE)</a> –<br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”</p></blockquote><p><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Most preachers and exegetes I heard comment on this passage went out of their way to either interpret it in a creative way or dismiss it as a corruption of earlier and more egalitarian teachings. So I was surprised when I began encountering preachers who increasingly leaned into and even celebrated an explicitly misogynistic interpretation. I remember clearly hearing a prominent preacher explain that the greatest temptation for women was to usurp the role of men and their headship. Men were divinely appointed to lead and dominate women, and women would need to be content with caring for and dominating children, under the umbrella of the man’s authority. Usurping a man’s place meant doing anything independently, from earning an income to teaching a man. This was literally an argument along the lines of “<a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a19934409/gender-stereotypes-study/">women belong in the kitchen</a>.” Moreover, everything needed to be under the authority of a girl’s father, a woman’s husband, and/or their male pastor. You couldn’t act without a man’s permission, which could be revoked at any time. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>And yet, this control was presented as a benevolent gift. All of this was “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/45464/for-her-own-good-by-barbara-ehrenreich-and-deirdre-english/">for her own good</a>.” Remember that this entire argument was framed within the context that usurping a man’s authority was the greatest temptation and sin for a woman. The best deterrent against such rebellion, this preacher argued, was to have children. Motherhood would give them a meaningful life while keeping them busy and tired, reducing their likelihood of falling into sin. On another occasion, I was incredulous as I sat and listened to a robust debate between church members about the age a boy became too old to be taught by a woman, since women should only teach other women and children, lest they “assume authority over a man.” In conversations and sermons of this sort, I never heard any awareness of the vulnerability of this kind of relationship to domestic violence. And I never heard any discussion of the rights and wellbeing of either women or children. The goal was to maintain the power of male leaders (in the home and in the church), taught with the assumption that maintaining patriarchal power would doubtless protect women and children. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"><span> </span> </span>My second example was even more shocking to me. I had gone to listen to a prominent leader of the Missouri Baptist Convention, who was going to be a guest preacher at a nearby church event. I was used to some version of the talks about male headship and the authority of men, but my childhood church had still generally accepted the goodness of human life and the innocence of babies. I was confronted with my own naïveté when I heard this leader describe how babies were selfish from the start, and that their cries were proof of their inherent, total depravity. He lamented that babies don’t think at all about the needs of their parents and will cry incessantly until they get what they want. This, he said, was evidence of their sinfulness. It followed, in his thinking, that parents had a responsibility to punish and control their children: to keep them from indulging their sinful impulses, to convince them of their sinfulness, and to warn them that their sinfulness deserved eternal punishment. I was already a parent by this time, and I couldn’t fathom viewing my child as this kind of enemy, intent on thwarting my wellbeing and deserving my threats and coercion to bend them to my will. But the pattern was becoming clear. There was no awareness of the vulnerability of this kind of relationship to authoritarian and even abusive parenting. And there was no awareness of the rights and wellbeing of children. The goal was to maintain the power of male leaders (in the home and in the church), with the assumption that maintaining men’s power would doubtless protect women and children. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"><span> </span> </span>It was not my experience, and I am not aware of research that demonstrates, that people who hold conservative religious and political views are more likely to abuse or neglect children. However, my experience is that cultures that uphold authoritarian parenting and leadership (whether left or right) create an atmosphere that helps empower and shield abusers. (This is in contrast with permissive parenting styles, which tend toward neglect.) Psychological research is helping us better understand how this works. For example,<a href="https://news.utexas.edu/2015/06/22/authoritarian-parenting-can-affect-latino-children/"> a 2015 study on authoritarian parenting</a> “found that almost 50 percent of children were at risk for anxiety, and 10 percent for depression and somatization, with these rates persisting over time.” And <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/experimentations/202009/what-parenting-styles-set-kids-emotional-abuse">Dr. Grant Brenner summarized the results of a 2020 study</a> demonstrating that:<br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“All other factors equal, when parents violate psychological boundaries in an attempt to control the inner world of their children, they are setting them up to be vulnerable to abusive future relationships.” </p></blockquote><p><br />The particular mechanisms for achieving this are familiar to many of us: <br /><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“Psychological control of others means gaslighting, making others feel ashamed of their own valid feelings and thoughts, using guilt and blame to turn others against themselves and manipulate them, and even sadistically and exploitatively ‘messing with their heads’ for parents high on dark personality traits.” </p></blockquote><p><br /><span> </span><span> </span>These mechanisms also happen to complement the objections to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that we discussed earlier. And it aligns with my own experience of rigid, authoritarian religious communities. I personally was trained by my extended religious community and culture to feel ashamed of my basic human inclinations and needs (especially related to gender and sexuality), experience guilt that blossomed into self-loathing, and become vulnerable to manipulation, all while I was a child. The lack of protection and resources meant that I spent years doing intensive healing work to grow into my own well-being. We are still repeating tragic versions of this experience in the lives of so many children. And the justification for sacrificing the wellbeing of our children is often that emphasis on maintaining parental and religious authority, grounded in a fear of losing power to socialize children through psychological control. If I could give a message to those who treated me this way, or who treat other children like this, it is simply this: it didn’t work. You hurt me instead. All your insistence on loving and protecting me, of having my best interests in mind, didn’t change the reality of that harm. <br /><br /><span> </span><span> </span>And it is not only psychological control and harm. We can also ask: what are the broader, structural results of our failure to protect children? What kind of world have we created? In the United States, as <a href="https://farzadlaw.com/united-states-not-ratified-uncrc">Farzad and Ochoa Familiy Law has pointed out</a>: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>“At least one in seven children suffer <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/fastfact.html">child abuse </a>(Article 19).</li><li>Approximately 4.3 million children do not have any <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/uninsured-rate-for-children-in-2018.html">health insurance</a> (Article 24).</li><li>Nearly 1.5 million children experience <a href="https://schoolhouseconnection.org/public-schools-report-over-1-5-million-homeless-children-and-youth/">homelessness</a> (Article 27).</li><li>About 10,000 children are forced into the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/nation-now/2018/01/30/sex-trafficking-column/1073459001/">commercial sex trade</a> (Article 34). …</li><li>U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have over <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/544187-number-of-migrant-children-in-us-custody-passed-15000-report">15,500 unaccompanied children</a> detained in overcrowded facilities (Article 22).</li><li>Children as young as 12 can labor <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/12/04/more-us-child-workers-die-agriculture-any-other-industry">limitless hours</a> in agriculture work (Article 32).</li><li>Approximately 80% of the over <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/child-marriage-united-states-donna-pollard/">200,000 child brides</a> between 2000 and 2015 were married to an adult (Article 34).</li><li>Juvenile detention centers and prisons house around <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/youth-incarceration/americas-addiction-juvenile-incarceration-state-state#:%3C/s%3E%20:text=On%20any%20given%20day%2C%20nearly,These%20rates%20vary%20widely.">60,000 minors</a> on any given day (Article 40).”</li></ul><p></p><p><span> </span><span> </span>In September, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/feature/2022/09/13/how-do-states-measure-up-child-rights"><i>Human Rights Watch</i> released a report card</a> grading each US state on four representative issues protecting children and their rights, based on the Convention: “child marriage, corporal punishment, child labor, and juvenile justice.” The highest overall grade was a C, achieved by just four states. 26 states received D’s, and the remaining 20 received F’s. Missouri ranked #32, earning an F. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/13/us-record-protecting-our-children-abysmal">As <i>Human Rights Watch</i> observed</a>, “The US is the only UN member country that has not ratified the international treaty on children’s rights. Most people might think this isn’t such a big deal because the US is good to children. But it turns out we aren’t and our state laws don’t help.”<br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>These problems demonstrate the actual dangers that our children are facing across the United States. We have a good idea what policies would make a difference, and we can support them as much and as often as we can. But this is another area where an important part of our work is in transforming our cultures, because our cultural assumptions are standing in the way of our children’s wellbeing. Our collective hesitation to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child can help us understand just how important this cultural transformation is making real progress as a society. And we can all be engaged in meaningful work, personally and in our communities, to help make this happen. <br /><br /><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>For many of us adults, we can do the internal work. Even if you did not get directly wounded, most of us did not escape being socialized into these cultural assumptions. This is especially important for anyone who works with children, including parents, caregivers, teachers, social works, and, increasingly, law enforcement officials. A good foundation for the kind of shift we need is <a href="https://connectionparenting.com/">described by Pam Leo as “connection parenting”</a> – “parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear.” She points out that authoritarian parenting “is based on the child’s fear of losing the parent’s love,” while permissive parenting “is based on the parent’s fear of losing the child’s love.” They are both reactive, and neither consistently support healthy relationships or child development. In particular, coercion is a quick fix that may get short-term results but undermines long-term wellbeing. Shifting to connection is a long-term commitment, because a healthy relationship takes time. But it is precisely this commitment that we need to collectively make, if we want to open up a way to actually protecting children and their capacity to thrive. As Leo put it, “Let’s raise children who won’t have to recover from their childhood.”</p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-76687033454977854162022-11-13T12:20:00.003-06:002022-11-13T12:53:24.408-06:00“Even Where We Mean to Mend Her”: Transforming Culture in an Age of Catastrophic Climate Change<p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">In 1879, Gerard Manley Hopkins celebrated a row of trees and grieved that they had been cut down. His grief expanded from those trees to the hubris of humanity, elegantly and painfully describing how quickly we alter the living world of which we are a part – often to its (and our own) devastation. The result was "<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44390/binsey-poplars">Binsey Poplars</a>": </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">All felled, felled, are all felled;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Of a fresh and following folded rank<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Not spared, not one<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> That dandled a sandalled<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Shadow that swam or sank<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.<span><a name='more'></a></span><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> O if we but knew what we do<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> When we delve or hew—<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Hack and rack the growing green!<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Since country is so tender<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> To touch, her being so slender,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> That, like this sleek and seeing ball<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> But a prick will make no eye at all,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Where we, even where we mean<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> To mend her we end her,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> When we hew or delve:<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Strokes of havoc unselve<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> The sweet especial scene,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Rural scene, a rural scene,<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Sweet especial rural scene. </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Within these short verses is the haunting thought that no one could have cut down those trees if they knew and loved them like Hopkins did. Or, if the trees had to be removed, no one could have done it without a great deal of care and with the sorrow of losing a friend. And you certainly couldn’t fell the trees without a keen sense of humility. Their growth is counted slowly, in years and decades, while their death is over in seconds and minutes, needing only ten or twelve “strokes of havoc.” Once done, it is done for a long time; there is no quick remedy if you make a mistake. And once done, that beautiful chance to know and love them is gone. “After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.” So care must be taken, and will be taken, if you know what it is you are doing and know the love that binds all of us living things together. If you have ever watched a tree, dancing in the wind, you might know the feeling. </span><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Most haunting to me was that insight that “even where we mean / To mend her we end her, / When we hew or delve”. This isn’t a comment on human nature; there is nothing inherent in humanity that makes us automatically destructive to the earth to which we belong. But it is possible for humans to create cultures and systems that operate with such hubris that “even where we mean / To mend [the earth] we end her”. This is, tragically, where we find ourselves.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Even as we reflect together today, global leaders are gathered for the <a href="https://unfccc.int/cop27">UN Climate Change Conference (COP27)</a> in Egypt. It’s the 27th of these gatherings, which <a href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/what-is-cop-and-why-is-it-important/">Oxfam calls</a> “crucial opportunities to show commitment and progress towards climate justice”. There is important work to be done, but also the reality that the dominating systems, currently <a href="https://www.welcomingpath.com/2019/04/climate-change-and-economic-inequality.html">driven by economic considerations that value short-term profit over everything</a>. We cannot consume our way toward a sustainable, regenerative, equitable future. We’ve known this for years. As <a href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/what-is-cop-and-why-is-it-important/">Oxfam put it last week</a>, <br /><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> “Every year since the historic Paris Agreement we have hoped for concrete global action on climate. And each year, while world leaders claim to be taking action (or, during the Trump years, proudly reject climate action), we are forced to confront the fact that we are still far away from meeting emissions reduction and finance goals laid out in 2015. And that even the goals set out are far below what is needed to protect humanity from dangerous climate change. / This year, in the face of the <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/rich-countries-fail-submit-ambitious-plans-cut-emissions-oxfam-reaction">realization</a> that countries’ current combined climate plans will increase global emissions by over 10 percent by 2030, real leadership that is more than platitudes can feel far away.”</span> </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"> </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The words return to us: “even where we mean / To mend her we end her”. </span></div></blockquote><div><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span>Hopkins understood this because of similar dynamics wreaked devastation in his own time. The nineteenth century was on fire with a relentless pursuit of capital and industry, with seemingly little care for the impacts on the wellbeing of people or the earth. Hopkins’ world and concerns were different than our concerns today, but they rhyme. In both eras, the problems threatened catastrophe, with grief and helplessness in their wakes. Hopkins put this into words in “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur">God’s Grandeur</a>,” where the earth, and with it, our spirits, were trampled under the heavy boots of extraction and exploitation: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;</span> <br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.”</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span> </span><span> </span> It can be bewildering to look honestly at such a world and ask: How can we effectively resist the exploitation of each other and the earth? What could possibly slow this destruction, let alone heal it? What could possibly slow the exuberant embrace of violence – direct, structural, and cultural - as a solution, let alone transform it? The crush of society (and our own broken hearts) would easily have us coalesce into the lifeless monotony of selfishness and apathy, asking us to look the other way, to let things be, to mind our own business on the way to an eventual and meaningless death. These questions are some of the reasons why I find voices like Hopkins’ remain meaningful and empowering. <br /></span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I was introduced to Hopkins’ poetry as a freshman in college, and they quickly found a place in my heart. I had the habit of climbing trees, especially the Osage Oranges lining our neighborhood or the young sycamores lining a creek: sometimes to make a splash (when the water was deep enough), usually to feel the gentle sway (as the branches opened their long fingers to catch the wind), and, when the night was friendly, to be that much closer to the stars and moon. If I had a chance in the daylight, I’d carry a book with me, reading while hidden away in the leaves. Most of the places where these friendly trees grew were bulldozed long ago, making room developments abundant in concrete. Grieving for felled trees was already a familiar feeling. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I say I was quickly at home with Hopkins’ poetry, but there was a bit of a rough start. The first time I read his poems, I felt off balance. Poetry had previously been overwhelmingly presented to me in rhymed couplets, and often with platitudinous meanings. So I stumbled over Hopkins’ sprung rhythm and unfamiliar images, but I kept coming back until I felt as familiar with the forms as I did with the meanings. Because reading one of his poems was like making a friend, the kind of friend that I could stay up with late into night, exploring all the wonder and beauty and terror of the world. Hopkins’ world and language were deeply religious, to be sure, but so was I, and he gave me words and images that helped me feel hope that there might be a place for someone like me in this wild and variegated world. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">For example, Hopkins wrote a poem called “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44399/pied-beauty">Pied Beauty</a>.” (Before you get too disappointed, pied is an adjective that means the object has two or more colors. This can apply to pies, however, so please feel at liberty to imagine the fierce, purple-blue of baked blueberries against a flaky, golden crust.) “Pied Beauty” is an ode to the feast of colors and designs that surround us on every side, if we pause to notice: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “Glory be to God for dappled things –<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />“All things counter, original, spare, strange;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Praise him.” </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">All the things we rush by, that become so commonplace that we fail to notice them, become an opportunity to experience joy. The key was in my willingness to be present with them. This attention to detail, opening the door to gratitude and joy, was a theme in my young adult life, and I had a bookshelf and a backpack to prove it. Hopkins reminded me that resistance and change can be joyful. In fact, the joy cannot be contained. The divine beauty is to be found precisely in “All things counter, original, spare, strange: / Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)”. Being counter in the economy of joy is not negative or hostile; it is a celebration. ‘Counter’ in this case means the opposite of that mindless crush – trading death for life, apathy for courage, selfishness for joy. It is a delight that reveals the staggering beauty, intricacy, and diversity of life. Nature is not mono- anything. Hopkins’ praise is a litany of sky and earth; cow and trout; chestnuts and bird’s wings. Being counter is a reflection not of hostility, but of reconciliation – of recognizing the beauty and worth of people, animals, plants, and minerals, and of seeing in this recognition our own hope for peace. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Hopkins could see both of these contrasting worlds and hold them together. If we return to “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur">God’s Grandeur</a>,” we find that those lines that describe the trampling of the earth are sandwiched between a celebration of the irrepressible greatness and beauty of the world on the one hand and the divine hope that “nature is never spent” on the other: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"> “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />“And for all this, nature is never spent;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">And though the last lights off the black West went<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Because the Holy Ghost over the bent<br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>You don’t need to be religious, let alone Christian, to feel and appreciate the shift in the language. There is a movement from wonder (with grandeur flashing “like shining from shook foil”), to loss (trodden and seared, bleared, and smeared), and then to renewal (“the dearest freshness deep down things”). That is a movement for us today, to acknowledge honestly the seriousness of the ecological damage humans have inflicted, while learning from regenerative capacities of the earth to transform our cultures and support our common healing. The scarcity and alienation, born of exploitation, is not inevitable. And as the product of our own cultural assumptions and actions, its transformation is within our influence. As <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/261793-we-have-lived-by-the-assumption-that-what-was-good">Wendell Berry wrote</a>, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity - our own capacity for life - that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />“We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.” </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">“Recover” is a well-chosen word here, reminding us that other times and cultures have preserved this sense of gratitude, care, and contentment in relation to one another and the earth. More recently, Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote that: </span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">“The shortage is due not to how much material wealth there actually is, but to the way in which it is exchanged or circulated. The market system artificially creates scarcity by blocking the flow between the source and the consumer. Grain may rot in the warehouse while hungry people starve because they cannot pay for it. The result is famine for some and diseases of excess for others. The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. … And yet, while creating an alternative to destructive economic structures is imperative, it is not enough. It is not just changes in policies that we need, but also changes to the heart. Scarcity and plenty are as much qualities of the mind and spirit as they are of the economy. Gratitude plants the seed for abundance. ... It celebrates cultures of regenerative reciprocity, where wealth is understood to be having enough to share and riches are counted in mutually beneficial relationships. … Gratitude for all the earth has given us lends us courage to turn and face the Windigo that stalks us, to refuse to participate in an economy that destroys the beloved earth to line the pockets of the greedy, to demand an economy that is aligned with life, not stacked against it.” (<i><a href="https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass">Braiding Sweetgrass</a></i>)</span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">I don’t read Gerard Manley Hopkins as often as I did twenty years ago. But, for lovers of trees and books, I still have my old paperback copy of his poems, a Wordsworth Poetry Library edition which has accompanied me on many hikes and up many trees. His voice is part of me and continues to be a reminder of the type of relationship we can and need to have with this incredible earth. Returning to those well-loved poplars, we can reflect on how different and healthy our approach to development, industry, agriculture, entertainment, and our daily lives could be, if we cared for the earth like Hopkins cared for those trees. We couldn’t brazenly destroy the planet, provoke a mass extinction event, or accelerate climate change. We couldn’t do all this at the expense of the most vulnerable humans and ecosystems on earth. We would do everything with a great deal of care and, when development did require some level of destruction, we would proceed with the sorrow of losing a friend and with a keen sense of humility. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><span> </span><span> </span>Destruction is quick work, while life and ecological health is counted slowly, in decades and even centuries. There is little room for error, for “strokes of havoc.” Our scientists have told us this for decades, urging us to take seriously our belonging to the planet, to care for ourselves by caring for her. But there has been a gap; the dominant cultures brush all of this aside to continue to “Hack and rack the growing green” to accumulate wealth and power. So we must continually turn to voices and cultures that show this other way, that remind us that care must be taken, and will be taken, if we know what it is we are doing and know the intricate web that binds all living things together. (If you have ever watched a tree, dancing in the wind, you might know the feeling.) And joyful insights like these - birthed by the wisdom of our elders, the wonder of our children, the keen ears of our poets and eyes of our painters, the songs of our singers, the hands of our gardeners – will gather to a greatness, shine out like shook foil, and make a healthier, happier planet and people possible again. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4975466587821961297.post-65821093860178841402022-10-09T09:15:00.001-05:002022-10-09T09:15:11.142-05:00From Coercion to Connection <p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Several times in the last months, I have been unexpectedly called upon to discuss my commitment to nonviolence. This used to be a regular occurrence, but it hadn’t happened in some time. Still, I wasn’t exactly caught off guard; it turns out that sharing my experiences and aspirations regarding nonviolence and non-harming are a bit like remembering how to ride a bike. What did surprise me was the realization of how I had become accustomed to not talking about nonviolence. A few weeks ago, I sat in a park with a good friend, someone who has shared similar convictions and experiences, and we reflected together on how our own relationship with nonviolence has grown and changed over the years, and what the role of nonviolence might be now, in a world that is both the same and different from the one we grew up embracing nonviolence. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I grew up living in the tension between care and coercion, love and threat. I got those mixed messages all around me, from extended family to school to television, but especially my conservative religious community. Love was freely given, but the fear of that love being withdrawn hummed like fluorescent lights in the background. The threats were not empty, either. As I grew up, I learned that there were certain people that were expendable. When bad things happened to them, they deserved what they got. Violence against them was usually understandable, if not justified. And if we knew what was good for us, we would make sure we didn’t turn out like them – or we would end up like them. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Growing up at the end of the Cold War added another layer to this, with a steady diet of cultural artifacts that reinforced the idea that the USA’s violence was always good, bringing freedom to all, while our enemies’ violence was always bad, trying to rob us of our freedom in a fit of jealous rage. This worked itself down to even stories of personal redemption, where I learned that violence can even heal. (NOTE: While researchers continue to investigate how media violence does (and does not) directly impact behavior, that’s a complicated issue and that is not what I am referring to here. Instead, I am referring to the ways that popular (or, increasingly, corporate-driven) culture both reflects and, in turn, shapes society. At the most obvious level, just think about advertising. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/12/07/advertising-industry-revenue">expected to reach $1 trillion by 2025</a>, that operates on the premise that a consumer can be influenced to change their behavior - to buy or support something - based on how they respond to an ad. But a good ad must connect to the consumer in order to have that influence. So there is a feedback loop of reflecting and shaping society.) </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Violence as a Solution (Lessons from <i>Die Hard</i>)</b></p><p><span> </span><span> </span>With that in mind, let’s go back in time to 1988. The first R-rated movie I remember seeing in a theater was the eternally celebrated Die Hard, with its two redemption arcs. (Spoilers ahead!) The hero, John McClane, was flawed and relatable. He had trouble balancing his career and family life, a failure that was also the movie’s premise. John had traveled to California to try to make things better with his estranged wife, a successful businesswoman. And it worked! At the movie’s end, his marriage was saved – but not through the hard work of developing a healthy relationship. No, John McClane proved how much he loved his wife by single-handedly defeating the thieves-posing-as-terrorists in an exciting and dramatic exhibition of heroic violence. </p><p> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The supporting storyline featured LAPD Sergeant Al Powell. He also found healing, but of a different kind of wound. He was a cop, like McClane. But while Al seemingly had a healthy family life, he had lost his capacity for lethal force. He had spent his career on desk duty because he had shot and killed a thirteen-year-old child after mistaking a toy gun for a real one. At the movie’s end, Al (and his masculinity) is also saved – but not through the hard work of healing trauma and perhaps even working for social change. No, Al Powell resolves the tragedy of killing a child and proves he is still a man by fatally shooting the last remaining terrorist, saving McClane’s life. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That shooting carried another meaning, too: we can never rest, can never trust that things are okay, and must always be ready to act violently. The man that Al shot, Karl, was presumably killed earlier in the movie. We had forgotten him, as had John McClane. The movie was wrapping up, and we were getting our happy endings. John and wife Holly had already emerged from the chaos, locked eyes with Al, and were making grateful introductions. The music swelled as we enjoyed this very human connection between people who endured something terrible. (This was also the moment when we knew John’s marriage was saved, because, after John introduced Holly by her maiden name, she corrected him, reclaiming her identity as Holly McClane and assuring the audience that all is right in the world.) This peace was interrupted by an FBI bureaucrat’s attempt to confront McClane on his actions and, as if to prove that such accountability is also a threat to our safety, Karl erupted from the building, pointing a gun at our heroes. That’s when Al saved John, their redemptions both complete. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At least, these are the lessons I learned from Die Hard. I’m not asking you to agree or disagree that they exist in the movie, or with the points about life that they made. And I’m not trying to make any point about whether you should like or dislike the film, which remains incredibly popular and inspired a whole generation of kids to go around yelling “Yippie-ki-yay, m*f*er!” Instead, I mention these lessons because they formed part of the context for my own understanding of violence and nonviolence. Seeing that film helped me understand how I was expected to understand the world and the meaning and role of violence. Yet the more I experienced, the more unsatisfied I felt. And the more unsatisfied I felt, the more the world seemed to insist that violence and coercion were the answers, and that I better stop questioning the way things are and had to be. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Opening Another Path</b></p><p><span> </span><span> </span>A few years after I first watched Die Hard, that teen-aged version of myself came to something of a breaking point. I had lots of unresolved traumas, a deep pain that desperately wanted some place to go. I don’t know how I would have described it then, but I can try to put words now to the feelings I remember from that tumultuous time. The pain wanted to become something - something I could better understand and manage. The pain, by itself, was both inscrutable and overwhelming. I was afraid to look at it directly. For me, the pain wanted to become rage. And if it couldn’t become rage, it wanted to become despair. I was torn between those two poles. But I could sense that this becoming could hide the pain, but it could not heal it. My life could not be an action movie. I could not find answers in super-heroics or blazing guns, like John McClane. I could not silently set the pain aside by taking a desk job, like Al Powell. I would need to do something less exciting but more difficult. To heal, I needed to return to the pain and open to it. </p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ve specifically chosen “open” instead of “accept,” although they are often used interchangeably. I agree that either is fine, but I personally prefer reflecting on openness rather than acceptance. For me, acceptance carries the connotation of resignation; not only is this how things are, this is how things must be. It carries a feeling of giving up, being passive, and standing aside while the world burns. But openness is active. The easier paths are those well-worn ruts of rage and despair. To open to the pain is to open a path, to be a trailblazer of my own wellbeing. To open is to tend to the heart; it is the most active response I can imagine. And my own healing opens new possibilities around me, too, which were not possible before. Openness is creativity and hope. What kind of possibilities could we open? What beautiful world might we create together, if we traded coercion for connection, threat for goodwill, and violence for generosity, kindness, and justice? </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Nurturing a Commitment</b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The first tools available to me were the religious ones hidden under the dominant teachings in my community. I found a deep connection with Jesus and the prophets, and I found my home among mystics and mendicants, especially in the Quaker and Franciscan traditions. After spending many years in community programming, especially related to family conflict and violence, I eventually spent time as a peace advisor through the Mennonite Central Committee. These religious roots were enriched by studies in the social sciences, community development, conflict transformation, and transformative justice. As a teen, I understood nonviolence as mainly relating to my own personal response to the world. Over time, I came to understand nonviolence as part of a greater movement, such as <a href="https://rianeeisler.com/articles-papers/#partnership-and-domination-societies">the one Riane Eisler has described as moving from domination to partnership</a>. </p><p><span> </span><span> </span>Since 2005, I also increasingly relied on the teachings of the Buddha to open this path. Instead of being a basis for reward and punishment, practicing with <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sila/pancasila.html">the Five Precepts</a>, developing virtue, is a foundation for finding well-being within ourselves and as a society. These precepts begin with a commitment to refrain from taking life, and <a href="https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an11/an11.001.than.html">the Buddha taught</a> that “skillful virtues lead step-by-step” to Awakening, beginning with the gift of being free from remorse. He understood that, in harming others, we harm ourselves. And our willingness to use violence and coercion – through taking life, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct, uttering harmful speech, and using intoxicants – undermines our wellbeing. <a href="https://accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn03/sn03.004.than.html">The Buddha explained</a>: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> “That's the way it is! Those who engage in bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, & mental misconduct are not dear to themselves. Even though they may say, 'We are dear to ourselves,' still they aren't dear to themselves. Why is that? Of their own accord, they act toward themselves as an enemy would act toward an enemy; thus they aren't dear to themselves. But those who engage in good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, & good mental conduct are dear to themselves. … for happiness isn't easily gained by one who commits a wrong-doing.” </p></blockquote><p><span> </span><span> </span>Nurturing this commitment is a practice; it is not easy to cultivate a commitment to not taking life, the aspiration to not harm yourself, others, or the earth, in a society that is convinced that violence is inevitable, if not virtuous. Commenting on the endless cycle of the powers-that-be calling on violence, such as war, as the answer, <a href="https://tricycle.org/article/at-war-with-the-dharma/">Thanissaro Bhikkhu recently taught</a> that: </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">“The only way to keep yourself from getting sucked into this pattern is to have strong principles against killing, principles you hold to no matter what. … That’s as clear-cut and absolute as you can get, and it’s clear-cut for a reason: Clear-cut rules are easy to remember even when your emotional level is high—and that’s precisely when you need them most.”</p></blockquote><p><span> </span><span> </span>This is key: nurturing nonviolence requires ongoing energy, resources, and effort. Those clear-cut rules act as guard rails, reminding us of our commitments and aspirations. They call us back when we make mistakes and encourage us to learn: why some strategies are helpful and others are not, when they are helpful, and how to adapt them to complex, changing circumstances. This isn’t a casual commitment, but a dedicated path. It is a difficult, but also joyful, path. My commitment to nonviolence has carried me through so many desperate situations, as I worked with others to open up new avenues free from violence and coercion. I have experienced many of the hypothetical situations people propose to prove that nonviolence is impractical and dangerous, and worked with others who have navigated some of the most impossible-sounding scenarios with their wisdom and compassion intact. While there are always risks, and nonviolence does not come with guarantees, the tools and skills have shown that they are up to the challenge of each moment, and worth giving a chance. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>“Where Your Treasure is …”</b></p><p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But we have never collectively succeeded in giving nonviolence that opportunity. The world has changed a lot in the decades since I watched Die Hard, but the lessons I heard then are still alive and well. You can see it in <a href="https://www.warresisters.org/sites/default/files/fy2023_pie_chart.pdf">the share that military expenditures take up in the federal budget</a>, a mountain of money over time and currently ~37% of the budget ($1.665 trillion). <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/budget">The <i>Costs of War</i> project at Brown University </a>estimates that the post-9/11 wars alone carry an $8 trillion price tag. You can also see it in <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/how-are-police-departments-funded-5115578">the rapid expansion of police budgets</a>, which grew from $44 billion to $123 billion between 1977 and 2019. These increases did not translate into a feeling of safety, however, as civilians continued to hoard guns at record-breaking rates. Today, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/6-charts-show-rise-guns-us-people-dying-rcna30537">there are 120 guns for every 100 people in the USA</a>, and manufacturers have not produced less than 6 million guns a year in the US since 2010, “peaking at 11 million in 2016.” </p><p> <span> </span><span> </span>These patterns connect with the ongoing militarization of society. T<a href="https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2021/state-insecurity-cost-militarization-911/">he <i>National Priorities Project</i> estimates</a> that the USA “has spent $21 trillion on foreign and domestic militarization” since 9/11. <a href="https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2021/state-insecurity-cost-militarization-911/">They also point out</a> where we have <i>not</i> invested our money and effort: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>“<a href="https://www.woodmac.com/news/feature/deep-decarbonisation-the-multi-trillion-dollar-question/">$4.5 trillion</a> could fully decarbonize the U.S. electric grid. </li><li>“$2.3 trillion could create 5 million jobs at $15 per hour with benefits and cost-of-living adjustments for 10 years.</li><li>“<a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLOAS">$1.7 trillion</a> could erase student debt. </li><li>“<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/budget_fy22.pdf">$449 billion</a> could continue the extended Child Tax Credit for another 10 years. </li><li>“<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/28/fact-sheet-the-american-families-plan/">$200 billion</a> could guarantee free preschool for every 3-and-4-year old for 10 years, and raise teacher pay. </li><li>“<a href="https://www.citizen.org/article/25-billion-to-vaccinate-the-world/">$25 billion</a> could provide COVID vaccines for the populations of low-income countries.” </li></ul><p></p><p><span> </span><span> </span>Those are decisions we have not made but could have done so, even while maintaining a large military. (The USA continues to spend “more on defense than the next 9 countries combined,” <a href="https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison">as noted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation</a>.) This reflects our faith in coercion and violence as the most trustworthy solution, in contrast to other actions we could take. <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6%3A21&version=NRSVUE">As Jesus observed</a>, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” </p><p><span> </span><span> </span>The world is complicated, and there are plenty of reasons to be afraid. I understand that our systems that rely on violence and coercion are not going anywhere any time soon, and that many people dismiss the possibility of nonviolence as impractical and even dangerous. But surely we can temper our investments in violence with investments in human and social wellbeing. John McClane and Al Powell are not healthy role models for healing marriages or PTSD. In the real world, we need to invest in healthcare, childcare, education, social infrastructure, and other policies and programs that reduce social and economic disparities, that heal trauma, and support healthy communities where we can be and feel safe. Violence is not the answer; violence is a symptom of our society’s disease, and our faith in violence has undermined our ability to create a society where we can thrive. Even if you believe that violence is sometimes necessary, or inevitable, we all benefit from moving as much as possible from harming to healing, and from coercion to connection. </p><p><span> </span><span> </span>One of the gifts of nonviolence is that we are allowed to learn and grow, to open to the pain and find healing and health. I hope we increasingly open to at least the possibility that we can learn better ways to parent, teach, practice religion, do business, organize society, and treat one another that rely less on violence and coercion, and more on equity and goodwill. What kind of possibilities could blossom? What beautiful world might we create together, if we traded coercion for connection, threat for goodwill, and violence for generosity, kindness, and justice? If we truly care about ourselves, we will dare to find out. </p><div><br /></div><p></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16899011795547182810noreply@blogger.com