In a way, we are all confronted with the same dilemma, it is something that binds all of us together as human beings living in America in October of 2020.
How do we feel the pain and fear and anger of the world beyond us without letting that pain define us?
No matter the burdens we are given – awful news, anger, argument, division, depression, pandemic, cruelty – we are faced again and again with the same choice: how do we keep our humanity, when humanity, like truth, often seems to be in hiding?
Painful and disturbing things are difficult enough to experience once in a while. We are asked to experience them all day, every day, month after month, year after year.
The impact of this can kill the peace of mind, hope, even love itself.
Our civil life has become a cesspool of inhumanity, chaos, and cruelty A country that once boasted it could do the impossible is paralyzed, unable to do much of anything.
This is the challenge of being angry or wounded: not turning the best parts of ourselves over to what one spiritual writer calls the way of the wound. This is the challenge of Trump and Trumpism – there is so much anger, grievance, and anger in it.
I can either deal with it spiritually or another way. I choose to Donald Trump make me a better person. And choose to treat him and his supporters with dignity and respect, even as I challenge and criticize him.
I am no saint and don’t need to be a saint to do better and be better. You don’t deal with hurtful and hateful people by becoming one of them. Each day is a chance to go in a different way.
He has made me stronger, like so many other people.
Do I become the wound, or do I choose to heal the better parts of myself?
In the Book Of Awakening, author Mark Nepo writes that the nature of the human spirit is irrepressible. No matter how often it is angry or wounded or frightened, it can keep growing to the light, the human heart, to reassert the humanity and community we want to have, even if we lose it over and over again.
This struggle never has to end.
After John Lewis and his fellow civil right activists had been beaten, gassed, kicked by horses, bitten by dogs, had their skulls fractured by club-wielding police, knocked to the ground by powerful fire hoses, Lewis recommitted himself, again and again, to keep up the work, it could only stop, he said, with the coming of the Kingdom, the Beloved Community, a nation of economic and social justice.
The savage beatings brought him to the mountaintop, he said. The Selma, Alabama protests had changed America. After joining Martin Luther King for the fabled March On Washington, he returned to protest voter suppression in Alabama and wound up in jail again.
Author Jon Meacham, in his new autobiography of Lewis, John Lewis, John Lewis And The Power Of Hope, describes how Lewis was at peace, as he sat in jail for the 40th time at the age of 25.
On the way to jail, Lewis recalled, “I had what I call an executive session with myself. I said, ‘I’m not going to hate. I’m not going to become bitter. I’m not going to live a hostile life. I’m going to treat my fellow human being as a human being.’ So when I was beaten on the Freedom Rides or in a march, I never hated. I respected the dignity and the worth of that person. Because we are all human and we must be human toward each other and love each other.”
Every morning, I ask myself the same questions. How can I keep true to myself in the midst of this chaos and madness? How can I make sure to treat everyone – even the people who threaten me – with dignity and respect.
How do I process my frequent failure to meet this standard in a world full of anger, grievance, suspicion, and hatred? How do I love the people who are so full of contempt and fury and who hate the people who oppose or defy them?
I’m not a saint, and I know I will stumble and fall again and again. But I’m not going to hate. I’m not going to become bitter. I am not going to live a hostile life.
I cannot control what happens in the world. I can only control what lives inside of me.
We’re only flesh, John Lewis told an audience two years after Selma’s Bloody Sunday.
This was helpful for me. I just had a Covid Test this morning because of an upcoming surgical procedure that has been delayed by months because of Covid. So Trump’s making light of this evil virus was making my blood boil. But your right Jon I don’t won’t to be what Trump is – a hateful person. I also giggled when I saw your picture. Too cute for words! Thank you for making a bad day into a better day.
Thank you!
“As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
Jon…
Much wisdom in this posting. Some time ago, I realized I was becoming infected by a similar political hate, driven from the opposite polarity. I put an end to it. I affirmed that such an attitude was not going to become part of me.
I have neighbors and friends with much in common. I’m not willing to give them up because of any political differences. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” That law applies in physics, but not to human behavior.
I’m reminded of this quote attributed to Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” As you wrote, John Lewis came to realize this: “‘I’m not going to hate. I’m not going to become bitter. I’m not going to live a hostile life.”
The near future will hold many challenges for our country. We cannot successfully address them with the current mindset.
The Prophet of Bedlam Farm.
Thank you for sharing your peace, Jom.