Of Race and Us

 

I will confess it.  My heart is heavy. 

 

Just a week ago, it soared.  Barack Obama gave the speech on race and racism that I have been waiting to hear my entire life.  He spoke to everyone.  He spoke without pandering.  It was, if you will, a first move towards what might be called “interrace” – where those who belong to what are called the races actually speak to each other openly and with respect.

 

Good people will differ on who would make the better president, but whether one prefers Obama or Clinton or McCain, surely, I thought, this incredible chance at long last to begin a national healing will transcend politics. 

 

I’d hoped Senator Hillary Clinton would say was something like, “I agree with Senator Obama.  Race has divided this country for much too long.  I agree with him that the time has come to better understand each other and to turn the page.  We disagree on other issues.  But on this we do agree.  We need to talk about race.  We need to be honest about race.  We cannot heal if we are not honest.”  It didn’t happen. 

 

Surely, I thought, Senator John McCain of the “straight talk express” would say that the healing of the country transcends partisan mud-flinging.  That didn’t happen either. 

 

It was Governor Mike Huckabee, he of the impeccable conservative credentials, who spoke clearly and publicly.  It was Governor Huckabee who witnessed to what a person of color has had to endure in this country, and acknowledged that he, Huckabee, might be even angrier than Wright had the situation been reversed.  It was Governor Huckabee who said that words spoken from the pulpit should not be treated like a crafted campaign speech – and I thought of some of the inflammatory words my gentle, loving Rabbi spoke from the pulpit some forty years ago about America and Viet Nam.

 

Surely, I thought, our media will now be inspired, inspired, not only to put on the air more lengthy examples of Reverend Wright’s messages, but also some background about him, what he has said and done throughout his life as a way of continuing the conversation.  Surely now we can begin a true dialogue about race, now that we have been shown the way, now that Senator Obama has had the class to show us the way. 

 

But thus far our news media are interested only in the most outrageous sound bites they can find, interrupting them only for the latest batch of puff punditry, fresh from the 24-hour hot air ovens at FOX, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC. 

 

Edward Murrow, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite: how I miss you.

 

When will we learn to talk to each other?  If not now, when?

 

I realize that interrace will be ever so much harder than interfaith.  And interfaith is no picnic.  How we love to divide ourselves.  How we love to build walls between “us” and “them.”  We seem to possess a need to feel superior … to someone.  If not superior to African Americans, then superior to women.  If not superior to women then superior to Jews.  If not superior to Jews, then superior to those whose poverty in their home country has brought them here, to ours, to find a job. 

 

When do we rise up and say enough with dividing!? 

 

How do we rid ourselves of this vision of “them” and “us” that has so poisoned human relations for so many thousands of years?   Surely, surely the first step is to learn to speak to each to other, to speak respectfully to each other.  It’s called dialogue. 

 

What is perhaps a once in a lifetime chance will slip through our fingers if we let it.  Posterity will judge us.  More importantly, our children will judge us by what we do now. 

An Interfaith Easter

 

One of the challenges of Interfaith is how to observe a deeply significant holy day from a specific religious tradition.  How do we inclusively honor and respect the beliefs of a tradition not necessarily our own?  Much too often, it seems to me, and with the best of intentions – at least I hope it’s with the best of intentions – we appropriate someone else’s deeply held beliefs for our own use and call that a celebration.  Over the years I have heard a number of well meaning sermons on what Jesus  means to “us.”  I’ve heard from the pulpit, as example, that to “us” Jesus was a great prophet and deeply spiritual man, but still, just a human being.  The issue, of course, is that any person in the congregation who believes that Jesus was the son of God has just been told that s/he is not one of “us.”  That’s not a problem if we’re in a synagogue or mosque.  It is a problem if we say we are Interfaith.

 

A practice we have taken up at the Interfaith Community Church may provide a possible answer (not the only answer, certainly, but a possible one).  We have taken to honoring holidays by looking at them from differing perspectives (without trying to name a “right” perspective).  At Christmas, as example, we celebrate Jesus as the son of God, Jesus as the son of Mary, the importance of both Jesus and Mary to Islam, and Peace on Earth Good Will to All as a universal hope and goal: four differing ways of honoring Christmas. 

                                                                                   

Easter is a chance to celebrate resurrection.  For the Christians in our congregation, Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus: the Messiah, the Christ.  That indeed is something to celebrate.  The Word made flesh is risen from the dead.  Powerful and important beliefs to be respected.

 

But I am not Christian, and though I delight in the promise of Easter because I love and honor my Christian friends, the question remains: what does resurrection mean to me?  I’ve been pondering this, and the answer surprises me – for it means, in fact, a very great deal.

 

We all suffer setbacks.  If we are fortunate, only a few times in our lives do we suffer life-altering setbacks.  But life-altering does not necessarily mean life-extinguishing.  Like the phoenix, rising from the ashes, we can come back.  From the most horrid of calamities, from the most trying of times: we can resurrect ourselves and our lives.

 

Of course, we will never be the same as we were.  Our resurrected self is different.  Changed.  And, we must hope, changed for the better.

 

Indeed the words resurrection and hope are, for me, inevitably linked – whether we hope for the resurrection of the dead, or resurrection of life from within the living.  Easter, and the spring, and resurrection remind us that hope is to be cherished and held in our hearts alongside of love.   

 

And so a heart-felt Happy Easter, to my fellow Jews and Unitarian Universalists, and to my Muslim, Buddhist, Earth Centered, Humanist and Christian friends as well.  Whatever Easter may mean to you, however you may celebrate resurrection, may it bring you hope and guide you to love.

The Challenge of Non-Violence

 

I was watching Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” the other night (it had been years since I read the autobiography).  Here’s a man who moves from a violent, self-loathing street punk through many changes until he becomes an eloquent, thoughtful, accepting man of peace.  And that’s when he’s assassinated.

 

It hit me once again, how dangerous it is to embody compassionate peace.  Gandhi, who never hurt anyone … assassinated.  Martin Luther King Jr., who preached love and non-violence all his life … assassinated.   Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar al-Sadat, both men of war, who survived their wars, but when they struggled to bring peace to a war-torn caldron of hatred … assassinated.  Oscar Romero, who preached non-violent liberation theology … assassinated.  Abraham Lincoln, who, after a wrenching and horrific Civil War wanted to rebuild the South, not punish it, and who said, “With malice towards none, with charity towards all” … assassinated. 

 

With all due respect to Mathew: Blessed are the peacemakers? 

 

Life is complex.  I know that.  There’s no single “answer” to anything.  I know that too.  Still, I am moved to wonder: what makes a compassionate person of peace so dangerous, so threatening,  that it moves another person to violence?  I have no answers.  Just questions.

 

Is it that we are we so tied to attacking our problems (I can’t say solving them) with fist and gun and bomb, so tied to a paradigm of violence, that a leader who lives compassionate non-violence becomes a threat to society?

 

And there is the religious aspect.  Crucifixions, crusades, inquisitions, heretic burnings, holy wars.  Is it that we believe God so decrepit, so impotent, so feeble that we imperfect humans feel we must torture and slaughter each other to protect God’s name? 

 

I’ve pondered this for over a week now, and have begun to wonder if non-violence, and particularly a compassionate non-violence that shuns verbal as well as physical abuse, I wonder if it isn’t the ultimate democratic tool.  Is it that a truly non-violent society allows all of us an equal say, the poor as much say as the wealthy, that makes it so dangerous?  In religious terms, is perhaps not democracy truly the ultimate threat to persons who believe they have the one and only right answer to the question of God?   

 

Can that be why a compassionate person of peace is so dangerous?  That person challenges all power structures – all of them: religious, political, you name it.  Can it be that compassionate  non-violence and not revolution is the ultimate fear of the elite – any elite?

 

It’s worth pondering.  Embracing non-violence, of course, means a spiritual as well as physical commitment.  Is that commitment not the real and tangible manifestation of the love that all of our religions, all of them,  have tried and tried and tried again to teach us? 

 

Easter is a week from Sunday.  It would be interesting to hear a sermon on the price Jesus may have paid for preaching compassionate non-violence: love of neighbor and turning the other cheek.

 

Passover, a celebration of freedom, visits us next month.  The ten plagues notwithstanding, can we ever truly be free unless we are also compassionately non-violent?  Is it time to realize that there can be no real freedom without compassionate non-violence?  And if so, what are we going to do about it?

A Meaningful Life

 

A friend died yesterday.  She had ALS.  Lou Gehrig’s disease.  Since her family may well want privacy, and I won’t use her name.  But I will always use what she taught me.

 

I first met her, her husband and her son some seven years ago.  She was a member of a choir I had taken over.  So was her son in the beginning, but I quickly lost him to soccer practice.  She was always cheerful.  Buoyant.  With a quick wit.  At that time she had just a little trouble walking.

 

Over time she needed a cane to walk.  Then the time came when she could no longer stand and needed to sit when the rest of the choir stood to sing.  All of these were mere facts.  She never lost her joy of singing, her joy of community, her joy of life.

 

The time came when she couldn’t move without a walker.  Another mere fact.  Her supportive husband got her a specially equipped van, and she drove to rehearsal and the back of the van came down in a ramp and she got her walker and came to rehearsal.  Still cheerful.  Still loving every day granted to her.  Still kidding me mercilessly if I dropped a beat or missed a cue, or sometimes just on general principles.

 

The time came when she couldn’t come to rehearsals any more.  By then she had a caregiver during the day.  We would visit once a month or so.  At that point she needed help with her food.  Later she couldn’t move to feed herself.  Another mere fact.  She was the one to point out to me the beauty of the sky, or the wonder of the hawk that had just flown over head, or the latest accomplishments of her son in whom she took so much pleasure, or the insanity of the current political situation.

 

Then she needed oxygen four times a day.  Another fact.  Can’t argue with facts.  But still she loved and lived every moment of her life.  And I’m here to tell you it’s infectious.  She didn’t dwell on the facts, so I didn’t.  She was a delight to be around.  She took joy from the play of squirrels, from the sun on the water, from guacamole (especially from guacamole!) … from life.

 

She taught me about courage every time I saw her.  But she taught me so much more.  She taught me about life.  And more than that, she taught me about a meaningful life.  She had a full career, not surprisingly helping people, before her illness forced her to retire.  And then she took whatever lemons life threw at her and made lemonade … day after day, week after week, month after month. 

 

She couldn’t have done it without friends, and a husband who was right with her all the way.  But she also couldn’t have done it if she had given in to the “facts.” 

 

A meaningful life.  There was no meaning to the pain she suffered.  But there was meaning to the way she dealt with it.  No one, no one who met her could be anything but the better for having known her.  What a legacy.  I know of no greater meaning that a life can have.