Pondering Privilege

 

I watched as much of the confirmation hearings this week for Judge Sotomayor as I could stomach.  Couldn’t help but send expletives hurling towards my computer screen.  Seventeen years of court decisions, and certain members of the Senate couldn’t get away from a comment the judge made, not from the bench but in a speech.  Wise Latina.

 

The judge couldn’t or wouldn’t go there, but I will.  Those questioning her about it, over and over and over and over and over again were all well to do and very privileged white males.  And personally, I would certainly HOPE that a wise Latina would come up with better than they have over the past week.  One of the sad truths about those who live in the glass bubble of privilege is that they rarely have any idea of what they sound like.  The United States has been run throughout its history almost universally by white, Christian, males.  Why change a good thing? 

 

As one who is committed to Interfaith, the respect and honoring of all religious beliefs that lead to compassionate action, it is, I suppose, hardly surprising that I embrace the respect and honoring of all of humanity, male and female, older and young, any “race,” and any ethnicity as well – once again, if that person is committed to and striving for compassionate action in the world.

 

But it is fascinating, at least to me, where and when privilege rears its head.  And I don’t mean simply the U.S. Senate.  It’s otherwise “liberal” males not getting that our society is still slanted to favor men.  It’s Christian women not getting that our society is still slanted to favor Christians over Jews, Muslims, or those of any other faith.  It’s those who see an African American become president and say, “What need is there now for an NAACP?  Obviously racism is dead.”  Anyone who objectively listened to the Senate hearings knows racism is far, far from dead.

 

And I ponder.  It has for me been a long and continuing process, not simply pondering privilege but why it has been and continues to be so hard to overcome it. 

 

I don’t think it’s THE answer, but at least one answer remains the idea that there is only so much privilege to go around.  And, I fear it’s not so much that we want to abolish privilege as it is we want our own share of the gravy.

 

Yet if there’s only so much privilege to go around, and we want our share, what do we do when we see that others are lacking privilege as well?  All too often, it seems, we won’t commit fully to helping others up the rungs.  I think the fear remains that “others” on the rungs will clog up “our”  way to the top.

 

I can’t help but believe that, consciously or not, those at the top nurture this “scarcity” model.  Divide and conquer.  It works so well.  We invent the concept of “race” to help divide ourselves.  We use our differing approaches to the sacred to divide ourselves.  We use age and gender to divide ourselves.

 

And I find myself back to an old song.  So I’ll stop.  But bottom line, there is no “us” and “them.”  There is only “us.”  Until we realize it, and act upon it, we will remain a very unhappy species.

 

Choosing Words More Carefully

 

I have been reminded this week of how important words are.  On a personal level, the casualness of a nurse two weeks ago saying I might have cancer.  The emphatic statement by my doctor a couple of days ago that the tests show I don’t. 

 

On a more Interfaith level, I reread my blog for last week, where I slammed “the Muslim clergy” in Iran.  As if the despots who run Iran spoke for Islam.  They don’t.  As if the despots who run Iran spoke for the Muslim clergy in Iran.  They don’t do that either.  As the AP pointed out on Wednesday, “Among the nine ayatollahs holding the topmost clerical rank – ‘marja taqid,’ or a ‘model for imitation’ – only one has congratulated Ahmadinejad on his election victory.  Three of the have spoken out overtly against the election and the wave of arrests.”  The others have remained silent, at a time when remaining silent can be seen as disloyal.  The leaders of the Qom Seminary made their protest known.

 

What this reminds me of, beyond the hope that there may yet be change for the people of Iran, is how easy it is to generalize.  And what a trap a generalization can become.  “The Muslim clergy.”  How easy it is to generalize, and how wrong it usually is.  “Those Jews” comes to mind.  Nine times out of ten, when a person disagrees with what the Israelis are doing, s/he refers to “those Jews.”  I haven’t been as patient with such people in the past.  I shall strive to be in the future. 

 

Of course it doesn’t stop with “those Jews.  There’s also “those Americans.”  Or “those Russians.”  Or “those Christians.”

 

It’s as if we feel a need to have everything nicely packaged. I have spent a rather large part of my life fighting against such packaging.  It is humbling to see this disease in myself.  Humbling and disquieting. 

 

What we say matters.  How we say things matters.  If we who are committed to Interfaith are to help build a world where we truly respect one another, a world where the hopes of Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, Hillel, Black Elk, Bahá’u’lláh, and so many others may at last come to be realized, then once again it becomes important to remember that words matter. 

 

“Them” and “us” must disappear.  It’s all us.  All of it.  The despots who seek to run Iran through the lense of their “right” view of Allah’s will are no different than the would-be despots in Israel who seek to run Israel through the lense of their “right” view of the Lord’s will.  They just have, at least at this moment, more power.

 

Of late there appears to be a scandal brewing involving politics and a group of Christians who call themselves “the Fellowship.”

 

But it isn’t about Christians, and it isn’t about Jews, it isn’t about Muslims, or any “other.”  It is about us.  All of us.  We’re in this together, or we are lost.

 

Contemplating Mortality

 

It’s been a week since I got a call from my doctor’s office.  My blood tests had come back.  I would need to come back for additional tests.  It might be nothing.  It might be cancer.  More tests were needed to know.

 

I’d thought of blogging about that last week, but the immediacy of the injustice being done to the people of Iran took hold.  This will either make sense or not, but I could better cope with the possibility of my own death than I could with such a blatant and horrific example of humanity’s inhumanity.

 

This week, I still have had to come to grips with my need not simply to “move on,” but my need to hold the people of Iran in my heart and prayers.  I have decided that a way I can do so is to place a reminder at the end of this and future blogs.  It is not that Neda Agha-Soltan (I hope I have her name correct) is the only person to have suffered.  But she has become a symbol, a symbol, at least to me, of an ancient disease: the belief that one’s “right belief” about God gives him or her the right to act as a monster.  At one time or another, Jews have done it.  Christians have done it.  Buddhists and Hindus have done it.  Just now, in Iran, the Muslim clergy are engaged in it.  The whole of my being cries out against it.  The reason I am so committed to Interfaith is my belief that until we can truly respect each other’s spiritual paths, we doom ourselves to these bloodbaths.  Forever. 

 

It has to stop.  And so I have dedicated my life to trying, in whatever small way I am able, to try to stop it … or to nudge us towards stopping it.

 

And yet at this moment, in the stillness of this day, and as I wait to find out (next Tuesday) whether the blood tests show that it’s nothing, or perhaps that I have cancer, I am forced to contemplate my own mortality.

 

Few of us are fortunate as the Jimmy Stewart character in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” to have an angel show us that our lives have in fact had meaning.  And I wonder.  I hope, but I wonder.

 

Of course, for those of us who believe meaning comes with dollar signs and possessions, it is perhaps easier to track.  The bigger the bank account and the more toys we own, the greater our meaning.  And if that is the case, I wonder if anyone has tried to calculate the spiritual cost of so many losing so much of their savings in the market melt-down and Bush recession.

 

Yet for those of us who calculate our meaning based not on what we own, but who we’ve helped, things become far more obscure. 

 

And so I ponder.