No More Anger and Fear

Since the November election in America, I've been moaning and groaning.  Like many, shock, anger and fear hung over me.  

But recently, there's begun a transition...It began happening with the Million Women March in Washington, DC.

NY Times photo

With my friends, Jan and Bruce, we're making our way to the Washington Mall. Soon we are caught up in the crowd, shoulder to shoulder.

I look around. Millennials, aging Baby Boomers, Families. Grandmothers with grandchildren. Grand fathers too. Gay families and straight couples. Veterans, Disabled, Women with pink hair and others wearing hijabs.

Jan wears her pink pussy-hat as do so many others. 

The organizers of the March had suggested that people knit these hats as a somewhat gleeful way to say “NO” to the ugliness of misogyny.

I step up on the curb to get a better look. As far as my eyes can see, crowds occupy the space from the step of the Capitol to the Washington Monument and beyond.

Maybe It's not a million, but it's more people in one place than I have ever seen and over the years I've been to more than a few marches.

Everywhere I see signs. “Love Trumps Hate; Dump Trump; Not my President.” 

Among the many jabs, there are others promoting core American values - freedom, equality, justice, and kindness to refugees.

My sign says, “No more hate and fear.” 

I didn't know it at the time, but these simple words became my harbinger for a more sustainable activism.

In the evening we make our way to All Souls Church.  About 800 of us are gathering to learn four part harmony to Leonard Cohen's Anthem. 

Candles are passed out and we perform it for one another. 

Volunteers with cam recorders circulate so that a YouTube video can be made. 

It's quite inspiring. 

Take a moment to see and listen for yourself.

(For a second 1:10, my friend Sally and I are on the stairs in a human chain from historic bell to singers below) 

The March activities are soon over and there's a nagging question. Now what? 

I continue attending All Souls. Along with so many others, we are discussing next steps and trying to figure it out.  I know we are not alone. The same kind of discussions are happening across the Nation.  

One Sunday the minister says with such a big bully in the White House, we need an even bigger love for one another. This begins a discussion about resistance.

Resistance is what you do when faith is tested by the “principalities and powers” of this world, says our minister. It's a response to core values being assaulted. 

It's a relentless effort to meet false tweets with truthfulness; intolerance with understanding; and hate with love.

Another Sunday, the minister gives some guidance for those, like me, who are struggling to find our way during these difficult times. She outlines five tips for resistance.

1.Seek some form of spiritual practice. “We need it to sustain us.” It's not that everyone should sit in a circle humming Kumbaya. No, there are many ways to develop spiritual practice. Find your own way to become more nourished in love for others and connected to God, the source of all being.

2. Take seriously what is being said by the “principalities and powers”. Recently Bannon, chief strategist for the administration, said, “If you look at these Cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.” Deconstruction of agencies and institutions?

Does that mean no more civil rights enforcement by the Justice Department; and no more clean water regulations by the EPA; and no more safety in food and drugs because the FDA has been deconstructed.

Is it the deconstruction of the Peace Corps too? Agricultural Department; Labor Department; Medicaid; Veteran Affairs and more? 

Pay attention. Amidst the clowning and tweeting distractions, they’re saying what they intend to do.

3. Stay close to the ones being marginalized. Some of us are fortunate enough to know people who are immigrants, green card holders, Muslim, Black, transgendered or other likely targets. 

What's our plan for supporting them if and when (we all hope never) their time comes?

All Souls and many churches are taking steps to become Sanctuary Churches. 

You can read more about it here in the Washington City Paper. 

People are organizing and preparing just in case. I begin thinking is there something I could be doing?

4. Be positive in our approach. Many Americans are struggling to understand the chaos since Inauguration Day no mater who they voted for. The minister reminds us “to keep kindness in our resistance.” 

As Martin Luther King practiced and St. Paul wrote, “Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21) For me that means letting go of post election anger and fear.

5. Be relentless in our resistance. This is not a time to give up on democracy or a nation we love. 

I was so proud to be an American while serving in the US Peace Corps.  For two years in Ukraine and and another year in Macedonia, I served my Country. When I worked with people, I could tell that they respected America. But now?

It's not a time to destroy the social progress of the past decades. Immigrants and refugees are human sisters and brothers and children. It's not a time to compromise away bed-rock values.  Human rights belong to all.

We have a constitution, institutions and the rule of law. It matters.

A statue lifts a lighted torch over New York's harbor and speaks to me, America and the heart of humanity -

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

With the help of others, I'm looking for ways to support values that are true and dear to my heart. I've joined a new public policy and witness group at Church. Another group is working on voting rights. I'm attending their meetings too.

Whatever emerges, I realize that it's time for more justice work. No more moaning and groaning.  No more anger and fear. 

As Henry David Thoreau once said and still says to us, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” 

I guess it's time to get walking...again.

What About God's Justice?

Social justice is the topic for this month's issue of Лице в Лице, our street magazine.

Klimentina, our Director, invited me to write a guest column.  I was honored, but...I didn't know what to say.  For almost two weeks I procrastinated with the deadline looming ever closer.  Then late one night, I Mind Mapped this article. 

***

I have a habit of talking in my sleep.  Once as a young man, I woke up an entire household of friends yelling, “What about God's Justice?”   

It was a startling awakening for them and me too.  Ever since, it's become a question for my life. 

I started my career in 1972 after graduating from seminary.  Instead of church work, I soon began organizing social service and social change projects.  I remember going to work and seeing dozens of families waiting for some form of emergency help.  We paid for rent and utilities and gave out many bags of food thinking it was the least we could do. 

Once we discovered a homeless man sleeping in a crawl space under our front door.   A couple of old blankets and a half burnt candle on top of a cardboard box were home for him. That sight led to the creation of our community's first homeless shelter.  Nightly, we began giving warm meals and beds to people who had next to nothing thinking again it was the least we could do.  

I went on to promote social justice in Washington, DC.  I organized a national network of partner organizations to end childhood hunger.  Our research showed that 15 million children in America were at risk of hunger.  It was too much. 

Through my work, I became acutely aware of injustice, prejudice and the plight of marginalized people.  

Once I remember writing:

 "Poverty is a terrible thief.  More than depriving a neighbor of food or shelter or warmth, it steals away hope.  While other thieves may take things from the past, poverty steals a person's self-respect and future.”

Since coming to Macedonia, I’ve had conversations about social justice with my new friends.  I discovered that we share many of the same yearnings. 

Sometimes we look nostalgically to the past of what was or might have been.   For me it's remembering President John F Kennedy who among many things started the Peace Corps.  Maybe for Macedonians, it's Tito or another leader from another time.  Whatever the details, we remember the good old days.  Those were years filled with hope and promise or so we think. 

Unfortunately too often, we see the past through rose colored glasses.  We gloss over blemishes and ignore problems.  We make our leaders heroic and forget that they are imperfect humans, just like us. 

This year both Macedonia and America will have elections.  It seems that no matter from what political party, candidates make lots of promises. It can sound almost Utopian and we’re tempted to believe everything wholeheartedly. 

But I think we know better.  While some changes can move towards justice, others do not.  It seems that just when we rejoice over a new day dawning, another change comes along and moves us in the opposite direction.  

As Reinhold Niebuhr, an American Theologian and Ethicist famously said,

“Nothing worth doing is complete in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope.  Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we are saved by faith.  

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. 

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of friend or foe as from our own; therefore we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”  (Irony of American History, page 63)

So what are we to do? 

Meeting with two of our Vendors.  They're our sales force for our street magazine and receive fifty percent of the cover price. More importantly, they've become friends.  

I’ve learned to live in the tension between the ideals of justice and political reality that falls short.  While some may despair, I think it’s good to still have ideals and to work for social justice.  

But we need to be vigilant about Utopian agendas that promise too much.  I think Niebuhr is right when he reminds us that we live in a world of partial justice. What we do will have flaws, but we do the best we know how to do at the time. 

Like a Macedonian friend reminds me, “We don’t know…what we don’t know.”   So it's a good idea to remain open to new possibilities and humble enough to realize that we too are blind in many areas.  What we manage to do for others is not perfect, but we can hope that it's making a difference. 

So I say, be more positive and do not dwell on negativity.  

An old proverb asks a question.  Is a glass of water half-empty or half-full?  

It's always half-full when people care with act of kindness especially to the marginalized of every background, race and religion.  It’s filling up when neighbors welcome strangers from Syria and beyond.  

It's almost brimming over when leaders forsake self-interest and strike out for social justice in laws and policies.  The glass becomes full whenever people join together for the common good. 

I think this outlook counters modern pessimism and the paralysis of negativity.  It does not deny that life is hard and unfair at times because it certainly is.  But it does urge us to live a life where our actions, in whatever partial and halting way, can and do make a difference.     

I found these words from Robert F Kennedy, an American leader, who like his brother was assassinated. They still speak to our time.   

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped….

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” (Address in South Africa, June 1966)

What about God's justice?  It's a question each of us answer as we live lives that can make a difference or not.