"In the quietness of this place, surrounded by the all-pervading presence of the Holy, my heart whispers: Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in good times or in tempests, I may not forget that to which my life is committed. Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve." (SLT #498)
Dear All-Pervading Presence,
Let our high resolve be perfect love, that we may live what we see.
When we see sunrise, bright promise, the beauty of the day and the laughter of friends, may we fully connect and live what we see.
When we see the suffering of the world, the hungry, homeless, refugees, oppression, may we also fully connect with that, live what we see, bring it into our hearts and live it through compassionate response.
When we see courage, may we live what we see. In Syria, an underground newspaper, Enab Baladi, has become the most prominent independent publication in the midst of that void of order and information. It is staffed largely by women. Three of its editors have been killed, eight reporters detained and tortured, yet this this so-called “gang of girls” continues to provide the only in-depth coverage of how the war affects civilians, families, and day-to-day life for millions of Syrians.
We remember, too, the courage of the six marines and two Nepalese soldiers lost when their helicopter, on a relief flight helping victims of Nepal’s earthquake went down in the mountains east of Kathmandu.
When we see creative beauty that lifts spirits, may we live what we see -- and hear. The brilliant blues guitarist B.B. King, who died this week, lived in his music what he saw of life’s sadness and wrought a music of transcendent power that helped millions rise up from loneliness, despair, disrespect, and alienation.
When we see committed service in places of greatest need, may we, too, live what we see. The Ebola outbreak is coming under control, thanks to more than 10,000 health workers and volunteers from around the world that gradually taught people to avoid unnecessary physical contact, go to a clinic the moment they displayed symptoms, and to forgo the traditional ritual of washing corpses.
Let our high resolve be perfect love, that we may live what we see.
And keep fresh before us the moments of our high resolve.
Too often we don’t notice the abundance and beauty that is around us at every moment. Rainbows, for instance. One of the questions in the May issue of “On The Journey” asks, “When was the last time you saw a rainbow and how did it make you feel?” Rainbows seem to have a power for a lot of us for pulling us out of ourselves, getting us to drop for a moment, the running story of who we are.
That story runs through our heads with ourselves as the noble hero, persecuted yet struggling on. The life of busy-ness we construct serves the purpose of sustaining the basic plot about a noble and important person carrying on amidst hardship, accomplishing worthy things. Have you had the feeling that life is the acting out of the movie about our life? We are the stars of our biopic. I’ve started to become a little self-aware of this tendency. Sometimes as I drive down a road, or walk up the path to the church, I’ll notice that this could the opening sequence of the movie about me. I can almost hear the theme music playing. The opening credits are flashing before me – only, since I’m on the other side of them, they’re backwards. Who’s the director of this thing? I wonder. I hope it’s not Tarantino. Hey, maybe this is going to be a Cecil B Demille production – whoah! There are days when my life feels like a movie by the Coen brothers. Or the Marx brothers. Where was I? Oh, yes: Rainbows.
Sometimes some of us find that a rainbow has the power to make that story about ourselves just fall away. The nearly constant playing of our inner narrative falls silent. All our busy strategizing for getting the next thing we want and avoiding the things we fear stops. There’s this thing of wonder and beauty – a rainbow – and nothing in all our busy-ness made it happen. It’s not our reward for being a good person. We didn’t earn that rainbow, and we don’t deserve it. It is a grace that is simply given. We just open our eyes and look.
If we can look at a rainbow that way, with the story on pause, then we can also look at a blue sky that way. And if we can look at a blue sky that way, then we can look at a gray sky that way. We can look at trees and buildings and one another’s faces that way. We can even look at a pile of dirty dishes and the socks on the floor that belong to children who seem incapable of picking them up that way. The invitation of the rainbow is: now look at everything that way.
Is there something more? Not more than what’s right around us right now, no. But certainly more than that storyline running through our heads about the setbacks we deserved and didn’t deserve, the triumphs we deserved and the lucky breaks we didn’t – the story about “dealing with things.”
There is something more than dealing with things. There is basking in them, loving them, being with them without any desires or fears or goals or purposes entering in. There is something more than all that we know, and that is the life of not knowing. The life of not-knowing is a receptive, curious openness to the wonder of the uniqueness of each circumstance, deciding not to bring it under the categories of your prior knowledge about what is present. It’s stepping down from the grand sweeping epic spectacle of the Cecil B. DeMille movie of your life, and into the step by step not-knowing described by his niece, the dancer and choreographer Agnes DeMille who said:
“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”
And not just the artist. The scientist, too, at her best, lives in the space of not-knowing, leaping and leaping in the dark. Someone with a scientific bent picked up that line, “the moment you know how, you begin to die a little,” and commented: “Which is to say, your wavefunction begins to collapse.” Right. Once something is determined, waves of open possibility collapse.
Transcendence
I have not as yet used this word, but I’ve been leading up to it all the way: Transcend -- from trans, beyond, and scandere, to climb. It means to escape inclusion in, lie beyond the scope of; surpass; climb over or beyond; surmount, overstep, rise above.
Transcendence, I submit, is not about climbing out of what’s here and now into some other realm. It is about climbing out of your story and your knowledge so that you can truly be with what’s here and now.
Transcendence is not about transcending the here and now. It’s about transcending your self -- your narrative, your purposes, your habitual categorization of things.
This month’s spiritual exercise asks, suppose you took 30 minutes to have a direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder, how would you do it? That is, what would you do to get out of your story, your plans, purposes, and judgments, and be as present as you can to the surprising wonder that’s all around you. You’ll probably find it helpful to be still and quiet. Look at each thought as it comes up – watch it fade away. Then another one comes. Watch it, until it fades.
Your thoughts aren’t you, and they don’t even seem to come from anyplace you have control of. Your thoughts are just these things that happen to you, like weather or traffic. Maybe, just maybe, in the pause between them, you’ll suddenly notice things are shining – like a rainbow. And there you’ll be smack in the middle of something so much more – that at the same time is not at all more than what you’ve always been in the middle of but were too busy making other plans to see. You’ll be directly experiencing transcending mystery and wonder.
“There is something more” risks becoming about consumerism – if not consumerism of things then consumerism of experiences. Experience this, go there, do that -- as if life were about collecting special experiences, as if everything you did were part of a bucket list.
Kick the Bucket List
You might remember the 2007 film, “The Bucket List” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman which further popularized the idea of having a list of things to do or places to go before dying – before "kicking the bucket." Dear friends, this is a bad idea. Don’t do it. Don’t make that list, and if you have one, throw it away. The measure of a life is not the length of the list of things done once, but the integrity of things done over and over, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, until they radiate with beauty and grow fresher with each repetition.
Too often have I myself said, and too often heard, “been there, done that” -- as if everything in the whole possible conceivable world was worth paying attention to once, at most, and never again. Go back to that place you have been and that thing you have done because last time you were there you didn’t stay. Go back to what you do know, but live as if you’ve forgotten. Touch that familiar cloth, and the electric jolt of mad implication: This is it. All of it. All of it right here.
There is nowhere to go except here. When Ecclesiastes says there is no new thing under the sun, it means that that's because all things are always new beneath this sun. So hanker not for the fresh and new but open your eyes to the wonder that is always before you.
Let us be a countercultural people, standing counter to the consumer culture exerting all its might to entice us to buy new experiences, a consumer culture that would sell water to a fish if it could, for we are as immersed in constantly shifting new experience as a fish in the ocean. Nothing could be more abundant than brand-new, fresh, never-before experience. Forget about making a list of the ones you want, and notice the amazing ones you have.
If religion is a way of living, an approach to life, the film “The Bucket List” is bad religion. For good religion in film, I would mention “Ground Hog Day.” Presented with the exact same circumstances every morning, Bill Murray makes each day different by how he responds to it. He learns at last to live in the moment and finds that when he does, his life becomes one of compassion and joy – right there in the same old small town, day after day. There's not anything more.
Nothing but Matter?
Is there something more than the world science describes? I know many of us feel it’s too reductive to say there is nothing but matter. Surely there is something more profound and mysterious than matter, mere lumps of stuff. Life has got to be more than just clods bumping into each other -- even in New York!
I understand. But have you looked at how profound and mysterious matter is? For one thing, matter actually is energy. How weird is that? Chairs, tables, my body, stones, lakes, this wide earth -- they are all congealed energy. Sounds like woo-woo spirituality, and maybe it is. It's also basic physics. Every gram of matter is 90 trillion joules of energy. One paper clip is the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. One five-pound bag of flour is the electrical energy that New York City's five boroughs plus Westchester consume in a year.
Consider that:
Everything with mass warps spacetime -- that warping is how gravity happens.
The faster you move through space the slower you move through time.
Observing a wave, without exerting any force or influence on it, merely observing it, makes it collapse into a particle.
You can determine the velocity of a particle, and you can determine the location of a particle, but not both because the very act of determining one renders the other indeterminate.
Right now you are spinning faster than the speed of sound; you're being bombarded by electromagnetic beams flying through your body, a hundred million signals are racing through your brain; and there’s a blueprint of your bones in every single cell of you.
Certain quantum phenomena defy causality.
Reality extends through 11 dimensions (maybe; maybe more) and, according to our current best guess, is made of superstrings.
Black holes, of which there are about 100 million in our galaxy, are surrounded by event horizons nothing inside of which can ever be seen or detected in any way by anyone outside of which.
Most of the matter in the universe is dark matter, which no one has ever seen or detected, but it's gotta be there (well, somewhere).
That's some deeply weird stuff! Far from being reductive, matter turns out to be expansive beyond our capacity to comprehend. For me, I’m seeing mystery and wonder in science, not beyond it.
And it seems to me that if I experience it, then it’s in my neurons, and my neurons are physical, and any force that influences physical things is a physical force because that’s what "physical force" means.
But I do agree that there’s something beyond science in this sense: there is the poetic.
T.S. Eliot says,
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
Shakespeare says,
“life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour on the stage and then is heard no more.”
Walt Whitman says,
“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
Jacob Trapp says that worship
"is the window of the moment open to the sky of the eternal." (Singing the Living Tradition #441)
These are important claims. They express vital truth, but they are not claims for science to assess. So, yes, there is something more than science – in the sense that there are important ways of talking beyond scientific ways of talking. There are insights that are not scientific insights.
Really? That perilous thought has seduced so many down dark paths -- indeed, all of us, I dare say, to some extent.
When you hear that inner voice whispering to you, “There is something more,” be careful. And when you don’t hear it, be more careful, because it may be an assumption so buried you don’t even hear it, but it’s at work in your life. “There is something more” is a truth that is in so many ways false.
Something more? More than what? Is not the path of wisdom, of peace, taken step by step in each moment, nothing but this. As the poet James Broughton says:
This is It
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That
O it is This
and it is Thus
and it is Them
and it is Us
and it is Now
and Here It is
and Here We are
so This is It
This is it, the whole thing, right here – there’s not some “more” to come later, right? Everything is given, nothing is lacking. Later, James Broughton wrote ‘This is It #2” to say it even more explicitly:
“This is It
This is really It.
This is all there is.
And it’s perfect as It is.
There is nowhere to go
but Here.
There is nothing here
but Now.
There is nothing now
but This.
And this is It.
This is really It.
This is all there is.
And It’s perfect as It is.”
The world's religious teachings agree, saying it in various ways. When Moses asks the burning bush, “who is this I'm speaking to?” the answer is, "I am who am." (Exodus 3:14) -- I am what is. God is what is. There's nothing more than that.
Later, Jesus teaches, "the kingdom [or kindom] of god is within (or among) you" (Luke 17:21). It's all right here.
“All the verities and realities of your existence,” as Kalidasa said, are now -- not yesterday, which is a dream -- not tomorrow, which is only a vision -- not any other time but now.
This “something more” talk is a trap. That voice that whispers there is something more has lured people down the theological paths that say this world, this life in relatively unimportant. There’s something more than this life, some theologians have said – there’s the eternity of hell or of heaven, for which this life is merely a testing ground. Our history as Unitarian Universalists is one of emphasizing this life.
Listening to that seductive whisper, we may be lured into consumerism. "Something more? Well, let me buy it. What’s it called? I’ll Google it right now and order it online."
But the voice keeps whispering, “There is something more.” So you buy more and more stuff, and, what happens? Either you use it or you don’t. If you don’t use it, well, that was a waste. I’ve got stuff I haven’t touched in years, except to pack it up for moving. What good is that?
And if you do use it, then it’s a convenience. But conveniences are double-edged swords. The fact that something can be done quicker is a convenience only if you want to do it quicker -- and the more you want things to be done quicker the more you find yourself living as though the purpose of life is to get as many things done as possible.
A dishwasher, for example, saves a little bit of time over washing dishes by hand – but it’s harder to enjoy loading a dishwasher than to enjoy hand washing them. And that’s only partly because you’re distracted by all the other tasks you’re rushing to get to.
“The bell is full of wind though it does not ring.
The bird is full of flight though it is still.
The sky is full of clouds though it is alone.
The word is full of voice though no one speaks it.
Everything is full of fleeing though there are no roads.
Everything is fleeing toward its presence.” (SLT #487)
Dear love and light and life,
We bear powerful compassion, though the demands of everyday life sometimes overtake us and we forget. We are fiercely committed to each other, to justice, to the care of our planet, though we sometimes neglect all of these.
Thus do we forgive ourselves and begin again.
We are thankful for this day, this breath, this community – the people sitting around us right now who, just like ourselves, are caring and loving and sometimes self-absorbed; wise and insightful and sometimes clueless; helpful and resourceful and sometimes needy.
We are thankful for all of them.
Our hearts especially go out to all mothers everywhere today: wealthy and poor; lesbian and straight; married and single; beginners and experienced; the mothers of large broods, the mothers of only children; the mothers who have lost children, the mothers with estranged children; the mothers who gave their child up for adoption, and the adoptive mothers; the mothers raising children in the ways their mothers and grandmothers showed them how, and the mothers following the latest books of one or another mothering movement; the helicopter moms and the free-ranger moms; the smotheringly present, the neglectfully absent, and the good enough moms; the working moms, the unemployed moms, and the don’t-have-to-work-outside-the-home moms; the abused moms struggling to break the cycle; the moms in shelters, and the moms who have always been sheltered and protected; the scared moms and the relaxed moms; the moms all wrapped up in their kids’ achievement, the moms all wrapped up in their own achievement, the moms without prospect of notable achievement, and the moms who just love, moment to moment, without concern for achievement.
Bless all the moms.
There is a love that surrounds us though we do not know it. And healing happens though we remain broken.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
So what do we make of two wrongs?
When there are two wrongs, one of which provokes the other, which one draws more of our attention, energy, and emphasis? Two recent events raise the question: the shootout in Garland, TX over an anti-Islam event that featured a contest of cartoon drawings of Muhammad, and the recent riots in Baltimore.
I think it's wrong -- not illegal, but still wrong -- to deliberately insult a group of people for no reason other than to insult them. I'm not going to use "the N word," display a swastika or confederate flag, burn a US flag, or make a drawing intended to represent Muhammad. I will urge anyone contemplating doing those things that they not do so.
I also really don't think people should be shot or arrested for doing any of those things.
On a different issue, I think our police culture is a problem.
"In many places, a self-supporting and insular police culture develops: In this culture no one understands police work except fellow officers; the training in the academy is useless; to do the job you’ve got to bend the rules and understand the law of the jungle; the world is divided into two sorts of people — cops and a — holes." (David Brooks, NYTimes, 2014 Dec 9)
This police culture encourages police abuse, especially toward the poor and minorities. In Baltimore, poorer and predominantly African American neighborhoods have been oppressed for decades by police with the tacit (at least) encouragement of politicians. I think that's wrong.
I also think looting and setting fire to drugstores is wrong.
So which wrongs should get more of our attention, energy, engagement? Whether our focus goes to the provocation or to the reaction does not always depend on the magnitude of the harm wrought. I offer no answers or formula. I offer merely that we view all such questions in the light of two calls: the call to understanding, and the call to inclusion in moral community.
We Are Called
We are called to the work of understanding: the work, that is, of understanding others and the needs we all share that lie behind the strategies they choose. Even if we believe they choose unskillfully, we must understand how it is that they have the skills they have and lack others. We can never do this perfectly, of course -- we cannot even understand ourselves perfectly. Nevertheless we are called to construct the most charitable interpretation of others' behavior that our imaginations can make at all plausible. This calling entails an obligation to "assume best possible motive," and also an obligation to learn about -- and thereby strengthen our imaginative capacity for putting ourselves in -- very different situations from any we have directly experienced.
We are also called to the work of inclusion within moral community: the work, that is, of engaging in moral discourse with a wide variety of others and including others, to the furthest extent their capacity allows, in relations of accountability, for accountability and belongingness entail each other. Much of this work, too, is imaginative: We may never encounter members of certain groups face to face, yet we may nevertheless reflect on what we would say, and on what they might say, and on the ways that social structures (which legislatures -- and therefore we, as voters, influence) may facilitate accountability. Part of what we do in moral discourse is assess culpability. Exclusion from accountability, that is, exclusion from moral community, places the excluded outside of possible culpability -- which gets them "off the hook," but also dehumanizes them. Moral discourse that over-relies on blaming slides into demonizing, but discourse that places a person or group outside of accountability, and therefore outside of possible culpability, also denies essential aspects of personhood.
The work of understanding and the work of inclusion in moral community are often mutually supportive. Sometimes, however, as when culpability assessment is in order, the work of understanding and the work of inclusion pull, or seem to, in opposite directions. We are then called to negotiate that tension creatively.
(If you're asking, "Called? By whom?" then take your pick: by God, by our true self, by the angels of our better nature, by our intrinsic aspiration, by the still small voice of conscience, by faith in the possibility of beloved community, by the onward urging of the universe, by our yearning for wholeness.)
The Cases
To understand the operation of these callings, consider these cases. The first three are included in order to expand and illustrate the concepts before applying them to the last two.
Two children, siblings Rob and Susie, squabble. Rob teases and provokes his sister until she overreacts and whacks him with a stick. Rob's cry brings parental involvement.
Outside a bar one fine New Hampshire evening, Jack levels a virulent insult at Red, who slugs him. A police officer, witnessing and overhearing the entire altercation, finds Jack's words so harshly insulting, offensive, and degrading that he arrests Jack, but not Red. Jack is charged under a New Hampshire statute making it illegal for anyone to address "any offensive, derisive or annoying word to anyone who is lawfully in any street or public place ... or to call him by an offensive or derisive name." The officer in this case decides to let Red off with a warning: "I ought to arrest you also, but I'm not going to because if anybody said that to me, I'd slug him too.".
On 2001 Sep 11, hijackers commandeered airplanes and flew them into, among other places, New York's Twin Towers.
Riots in Baltimore on 2015 Apr 27 included looting, the burning of a CVS drug store, destruction of two police cars, and a number of injuries to police and others.
Sometimes our moral deliberation follows the paradigm of a court judge deciding whether to rule in favor of plaintiff or defendant. The kind of discernment involved in the above five cases is quite different from that. We are not dealing with who is right and who is wrong, but with two sides that are both wrong. We must discern which of two wrongs is more salient -- which one gets more of our emphasis or attention.
In each case there are provoking conditions and there is a reaction. We may try to attend equally to each, but often one or the other rises to a greater salience, warrants more of our attention, or tugs more strongly for our moral engagement.
Case #1
In the first case, the parent, responding to this incident, will likely agree that both of the following are true:
(1a) Rob should not have teased his sister so unkindly.
(1b) Susie should not have reacted as she did by whacking her brother.
The parent might give equal attention to both points, and issue equal chastisement to both children. Or, for various reasons, one or the other statements might seem more salient. If the whack is slight, the parent's emphasis might be on the provoker: "Rob, stop harassing your sister." If the whack is more disturbing, the parent might focus on the reactor: "Susie, I don't care what he said, you can't hit him."
A significant factor in judging salience between two such statements, both acknowledged to be true, is whether one of the agents is seen as more susceptible to one's moral suasion than the other. If there's a notable age difference between Rob and Susie, then parental ire will likely be directed more toward the older child: "You're old enough to know better" ("... than to tease and provoke," if Rob is older; or "... than to so overreact," if Susie is older). Parents may treat the older child as more susceptible to moral suasion, which is to say, more responsible, more firmly within the community of those with whom the parent can reason. The older child's greater culpability is a product of the older child's greater inclusion within moral community of shared discourse and reflection. The younger child may also be included to the furthest extent her or his capacity allows, but the capacity, at a tender age, for participation in all levels of moral reasoning is more limited.
Case #2
The second case is a grown-up version of the first. This one is also hypothetical, though the New Hampshire statute quoted is real. (In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire [1942], the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that statute and upheld Chaplinsky's conviction under it.) The officer. let us suppose, agrees that both the following are true:
(2a) Jack should not have insulted as he did.
(2b) Red should not have slugged Jack.
Though he assents to the truth of both, the officer clearly finds (2a) the more salient truth. It is the provocation rather than the reaction in this case that commands this officer's greater attention. The officer understands Red, sympathizes entirely with Red's situation and his behavior. Jack, however -- to his chagrin in this incident -- is included in a relation of accountability. He may rue his arrest, but this very accountability also affirms his moral agency and personhood. If the system works as it should (which, alas, too often, it doesn't) the relation of accountability is mutual, and Jack's testimony about any police impropriety during the arrest will be taken seriously. Red, on the other hand, though extended the blessing of understanding is, by that very understanding, placed outside of the accountability to which most of us would agree he ought to have been held (except insofar as the officer's warning is one way a relation of accountability may express).
Case #3
I include this case because the US response to the the terrorist attacks on 2001 Sep 11 exemplifies failure to heed the call to understanding. In the months following the attacks there was in many quarters outright hostility to the very idea of trying to understand what made the hijackers do what they did. Even today traces of that hostility linger, along with, in most of the population, a lack of any interest in grasping the social and psychological sources of violent extremism. Most Americans labeled the attackers "evil" -- which labeling absolves the labeler of any responsibility to look into the matter any more deeply. "Evil" has become a word we use when we cherish our hatred so much that we're afraid that if we understood the hated thing, we wouldn’t be able to hate it anymore.
Something provoked those terrorists to their action. If evil it were, that evil was nurtured and brought to disastrous fruition by some combination of forces interacting with the human needs we all have. The US has responded to the 9/11 attacks by building up its security apparatus, but doing very little to address the conditions that turn normal healthy children into young adults willing to be walking bombs. Few Americans have regarded the provocations to terrorism as salient, but only the terrorism that is a reaction to that provocation.
We come now to the two cases that started me on this reflection:
Case #4
Two common reactions to the violence directed at cartoonists who drew pictures of Muhammad are:
(4a) I know people have a right to make offensive drawings, but it would be better not to draw pictures of Muhammad.
(4b) "It is not OK to shoot other people because you are offended by what they draw. Even if they drew it to offend you, no shooting of them."
The (4b) answer is, in fact, a quote from Jon Stewart (Daily Show, 2015 May 4).
Perhaps you would agree with both (4a) and (4b). But one thought or the other is likely to be more primary for you. Though both may be true, one is more salient. For one funny man, Jon Stewart, it's (4b). For another funny man, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, it's (4a).
In remarks delivered on 2015 Apr 10 at the Long Island University's George Polk Awards ceremony, where he received a Career Award, Garry Trudeau argued that the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were abusing satire by "punching downward."
"Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny — it’s just mean. By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech." (Gary Trudeau, "The Abuse of Satire," Atlantic Monthly online, 2015 Apr 11)
Writer and photogapher Teju Cole also saw (4a) as the point that needed making:
"It is not always easy to see the difference between a certain witty dissent from religion and a bullyingly racist agenda, but it is necessary to try....The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were not mere gadflies, not simple martyrs to the right to offend: they were ideologues. Just because one condemns their brutal murders doesn’t mean one must condone their ideology.” (Teju Cole, "Unmournable Bodies," New Yorker, 2015 Jan 9)
The subsequent shootout in Garland, TX centered on a contest of Muhammad cartoons. The event was organized by Pam Geller, who heads the American Freedom Defense Initiative and has run virulent anti-Islam advertising on buses and subways. If the Charlie cartoonists were Islamophobic ideologues, then Geller would also qualify.
Whether (4a) or (4b) rises to greater prominence in your mind will depend on who you regard as moral agents. Shooting people is a greater wrong than offending them, yet your attention may gravitate toward the provokers if you regard them as more susceptible to moral suasion. As David Frum writes of Trudeau's speech:
"Had the gunmen been 'privileged,' then presumably the cartoons would have been commendable satire. The cartoonists would then have been martyrs to free speech. But since the gunmen were 'non-privileged,' the responsibility for their actions shifts to the people they targeted, robbing them of agency. It’s almost as if he [Trudeau] thinks of underdogs as literal dogs. If a dog bites a person who touches its dinner, we don’t blame the dog. The dog can’t help itself. The person should have known better." ("Why Garry Trudeau is Wrong about Charlie Hebdo," Atlantic Monthly online, 2015 Apr 13)
If dogs, or violence-prone Muslims, are not within the community of those with whom we can reason, then our attention goes to those who are -- those who "should have known better." Frum's critique, in essence, is that Trudeau, in his effort to extend sympathetic understanding to the Muslim community has excluded them from moral community, denied them moral agency, set them outside of relations of accountability, rendered them ineligible for culpability -- and thereby denied them an essential part of personhood.
Stewart's response to the Garland incident -- "no shooting of them," delivered in the slow emphatic tones of an exasperated parent -- treats the shooters (or, rather, potential future shooters) as worthy of directing moral (moralizing, perhaps) discourse to. He thereby affirms their membership in moral community.
Case #5
With news of the looting in Baltimore and burning of a CVS broadcast into TVs in living rooms (and airports and a number of bars and restaurants) across the nation, two reactions were typical:
(5a) Theft, property destruction and injuries are certainly unfortunate, yet, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "A riot is the language of the unheard."
(5b) It is not OK to burn and loot. Even if you have been wronged, no looting or burning.
Again, you might, as I do, agree with both assertions. For many of us, though, one or the other is primary. Some of us find our moral energy focusing on the "provokers": the police and politicians who have allowed, and sometimes actively facilitated, decades of oppressive conditions in Baltimore's poor and minority neighborhoods -- that is, the leaders who failed to hear the legitimate complaints of those now rioting. Others of us find that condemnation of the "reactors" -- the looters and burners (a small minority of the total demonstrators) -- seems more salient.
The call to understanding in conjunction with the call to inclusion in moral community brings us to an appropriate regard for both truths, (5a) and (5b).
We are called to understanding. It behooves us to know what is going on in the poorer and predominantly minority sections of our cities; how the poor and minorities are treated by the police, politicians, civic leaders, media, and fellow citizens; what they experience in their schools and neighborhoods.
We are also called to inclusion in moral community. Our understanding of how a young black man might be prompted to ignite a drug store must not function to excuse, which is to say dismiss, him from culpability and thus from the ranks of moral agents. Recognizing all the factors that have disempowered him, it may be tempting to hold him blameless, let him "off the hook," -- that is, set him outside of moral community of accountability. Let us resist that temptation, for it only adds another level of dehumanization and alienation to that already in evidence. Respecting his personhood entails holding him responsible. If there is to be a path from disempowered alienation to empowered belonging, that path must be one of inclusion within relations of accountability.
For providing that accountability, our society relies heavily on a counterproductive retribution-based justice system. Even when arrest, trial, and sentencing are as fair as they are supposed to be, our system of retributive justice almost always does more harm than good to the interests of moral inclusion, empowerment, and reduced alienation. Instead, methods of restorative justice offer the sort of healing accountability that we all need. (See restorativejustice.org and my blog series that begins HERE.)
Those who riot, as King said, speak the language of the unheard. We must find ways for broader society to better hear the voices of poor and minority youth. They must be heard. Inclusion within the broader moral community, however, also requires that they, in turn, hear others, and are thus brought into relationship of mutuality where true accountability -- the accounting for ourselves to one another -- becomes possible.
Source of healing and wholeness we call by many names,
We pray in order to cultivate gratitude, for gratitude makes life’s beauty and glory present to us.
We are thankful for the longer, warmer, greener days of spring, for the flowers blooming, for gorgeous days.
We are thankful for our youth: their wisdom surprises, and their promise delights.
We are thankful as well for our elders: their wisdom is no surprise, and their fulfillment of their promise delights.
We are thankful for the eradication of Rubella from North and South America, and that child and maternal mortality rates in Rwanda over the last 15 years have declined by 50%.
We are thankful that in Mexico, drug-related murders are significantly down for the third year in a row, and that 460 Nigerian captives have been rescued from Boko Haram camps.
We pray in order to articulate our hopes, for the yearning of the heart should not be silent.
We hope the 300 schoolgirls still missing from Boko Haram abduction may yet be alive and be released.
We hope for recovery and healing for the thousands in Nepal, India, and Afghanistan struggling to deal with the results of the earthquake.
We hope for relief for the people from the Middle East and North and Sub-Saharan Africa seeking refuge and facing violence, hunger, disease, and death.
We hope for a new and serious commitment to address the many causes of conflict between police and minority communities.
We hope our country will awaken to pay attention to poor and minority communities not just when they march and demonstrate but all the time, as our president said, "because we consider those kids our kids."
We pray in order to orient our minds and hearts toward joy in all that is beautiful and good, and toward service that makes us instruments of the realization of our hopes.
.jpg)