Who deserves your compassion?

Sam Harris tells about attending a TED conference. The speaker at the moment was someone he considered to be an enemy. This person had distorted some of his writing to make Harris look like a racist, a sexist, or just an idiot. So Harris was listening with a very judgmental ear. Then about two thirds of the way into the talk, the speaker mentioned that he had had a hard week because he had just learned that his four-year-old daughter had stage four liver cancer. Harris reports that being caught in negativity at that moment, “reveals in an instant that that's not the kind of mind I want to have. All my enemies…all of the different people in the world, are going to suffer immensely at some point in their lives. Everyone is going to lose everything. We can and should and must have compassion, even for the people who despise us and try to make our lives miserable."

Note: I don't think this can be found on line. I found it on a daily meditation that he gives. After one day, it disappears and a new one appears.

What Is True?

I spent many weeks reading this three pound, 789-page book. Last week I finally finished it. I’m overwhelmed. It is a history of the United States starting with the arrival of Columbus up until the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. Lepore recounts our country’s struggles to find the “truths” that will make up our constitution, laws, and government. How they change. How they are wonderfully idealistic and yet so often hypocritical. How they claim to protect us from harm and yet often condone cruelty. And how they are an endless source of argument, bickering, and once, even war.

As I read I often shared (pestered?) friends with interesting facts I was learning about U.S. history. Yet when I arrived at the last part of the book, the part that happened during my lifetime, I started to feel swamped and exhausted. Too many unfair and hurtful things happened, often, things I had never heard about. While it was a fascinating book, what was the point? All during my reading of the book I avoided reading reviews. I just wanted to read and judge for myself.

I guess I would say the main message of all these pages is that this country has always struggled to agree on its guiding values. Mostly, it's a book about that struggle. Our constitution’s idealistic basis, “All men are created equal” really only applied to white men and just some white men at that. The ways African Americans were treated during the first years of our country continue to shock me, and I had known much of it before this book. Up until the Civil War, slavery played a role in almost every political decision made. After the Civil War, the 14^th amendment, ratified in 1868, included as citizens all persons born in American. Of course, this still just meant men. Over the years we have continued to discuss the same issues. Racism still exists though one can see incremental improvement as we go along. And while race may be one of our biggest struggles, there are others: poverty, heath care, immigration, trade, taxation, and our relationships with other countries. But it seems that it all boils down to this--the meaning of equality for all. And I do recommend this book.

I’ve been looking through some old books lately. I imagine it has been 30 years or more since I’ve read The Road Less Traveled (1978). Author M. Scott Pecks starts with the main idea of Buddhism and all of the meditation reading and training I’ve done:

Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no long matters.

I been coming across this idea for years, but I haven’t really accepted it yet. Finding it unexpectedly as the first sentence of Peck’s book made it seem fresh food for thought. But who can really accomplish this acceptance?

“We dodged bullets (and body bags) in Indiana last week,” wrote Brian Howey after a school schooter attacked in Noblesville, Indiana but didn't manage to kill anyone. Howey made some interesting comments about the sad state of school safety including this:

Hoosier parents are now demanding “hardened” schools, which will come at a big cost to taxpayers. Consider it a payment to protect unfettered gun rights in a nation awash in firearms. There are more guns in the United States than people. There have been 23 school shootings in the first 21 weeks of this year to date, resulting in at least 34 deaths. Dozens more have been wounded. Noblesville students described the scene on Friday as “sheer chaos.” A parent told WTHR-TV, “This is a war on our kids.”

I'm a little late posting this.

Tomorrow afternoon, May 29, Starbucks will close its shops to provide “racial bias training” for its employees. This was precipitated by an event in one of their Philadelphia stores earlier this year when a white employee called the police because two black men used the rest room and were sitting at a table without ordering. The men were accused of trespassing.

Nalani Cobb writes about this in the New Yorker and includes the list of reasons white people have recently called the police about black people. It's a list I've read before. I guess that's why the statement below seems particularly interesting.

The crucial aspect of the Starbucks story isn’t whether a company can, in a single training session, diminish bias among its employees. It’s the implied acknowledgment that such attitudes are so pervasive in America that a company has to shoulder the responsibility of mitigating them in its workforce.

As Cobbs says, there is always skepticism about such attempts. But that is no reason not to try. I look forward to the end of bias in public spaces.

I recently read a month-old issue of Time magazine and found a fascinating article, "6 Ways We Can Reduce Gun Violence in America." They are all sensible, and I think, helpful. I sent this link to all of my legislators, both national state. If hundreds of people did this, they might actually listen. Here's part of the intro:

No other developed country has such a high rate of gun violence. A March 2016 study in the American Journal of Medicine found that Americans are 25 times more likely to die from gun homicide than people in other wealthy countries. There are commonsense steps we can take to reduce that toll, but they require acknowledging certain truths. The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, and there are approximately 265 million privately owned guns in the U.S., according to researchers from Northeastern and Harvard universities. Any sensible discussion about America’s gun-violence problem must acknowledge that guns aren’t going away. “We have to admit to ourselves that in a country with so many guns, progress is going to be measured incrementally,” says Jeff Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine.

Finding Peace

In The Last 100 Days, David B. Woolner quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt: “...today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace.”

How, oh how?

Just Write

From Naomi Shihab Nye” “Very rarely do you hear anyone say they write things down and feel worse. It's an act that helps you, preserves you, energizes you in the very doing of it." (Interviewed on OnBeing)

Presidential Prerequisites

 

If I were running things, before a person could become president, he or she would need at least a minor in history. I believe the president—legislators too—should know and understand the past. However, I can't imagine this really becoming a law. I just wish voters would demand that their politicians be well-informed. The presidential primary debates could be part history test. How can we understand the present if we don't understand how we got here?

I written about the importance of studying history before, here and here.

The Problem?

From James Baldwin: “White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other. And when they have achieved this, which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never, the Negro problem will no longer exist or will no longer be needed.”

Understanding Anger

Recently two friends recommended the book The Heart of the Soul by Gary Zukav. I've just been jumping around the book, and the passages below remind me of interesting ideas I've read before. They ring true. And during this time when the daily news is filled with stories of anger, these reflections on anger seem relevant. (The bold print is by Zukav.)

Anger is an iceberg phenomenon. It is the apex of a larger structure, all of which is invisible except the very top....There is no such thing as anger without an immense emotional substructure. Anger is the peak protruding above the clouds. Beneath every experience of anger is a huge body of emotional experience.....

Anger lashes out at a target. That target is another person, group of people, or the Universe. Anger is righteous and self-important. Anger does not listen to, respect, or care about others....Anger wants what it wants, when it wants it...

Angry outbursts are painful experiences, but they are not emotional explorations. Each outburst of anger is a barrier to the exploration of emotions. It is a fortress from which an individual who has no power does his or her best to face a frightening world.

All hostility originates in fear. Fear is the birthplace of every impulse that is not loving. A loving individual is fearless. An angry, jealous, vengeful, depressed, or avaricious person is filled with fear....Love is fearless.

Between terror and anger lies another experience—pain. In other words, beneath anger lies pain, and beneath that pain lies fear. It is not possible to experience the fear without first experiencing the pain. The pain may appear to be caused by the loss of a job, the death of a child, or a diagnosis of a terminal illness. The pain of these things is intense, and the experience of it is very much like feeling a white-hot piece of metal. That is why it is easier to become angry than to touch the pain. This is what most people do, but the pain does not go away when you become angry. It gets buried. (129-133)

I have looked at some of my own emotions through these lenses of anger-pain-fear. It's amazing how nearly impenetrable unpleasant and painful emotions can be. But these ideas from Zukav help one travel through the fog.

Words Matter

In 2016, Krista Tippet gave a talk a to the Unitarian Universalist Association's General Assembly. I

read it at the time and liked it. I reread it recently and liked it again. It is frustrating that these ideas can so easily become forgotten. This passage makes me want to use better words, but I'm not sure I know how.

Words Matter:...The words we use shape how we understand ourselves, how we interpret the world, how we treat others. And the world right now needs the most vivid, transformative universe of words that you and I can draw on and give voice to.

We chose too small a word in the decade of my birth, the 1960s, to grapple with the onset of genuine diversity in this country. And it does bear remembering that it was only in the 1960s that America truly began to integrate racial, religious, ethnic, and social differences into its national sense of self. We did so by pursuing the reasonable order that would be achieved by a civic mandate of tolerance.

Tolerance has value as a civic tool. But as I say, it's not big enough in human, ethical, or spiritual terms. Tolerance connotes allowing   

Tolerance, the word itself, connotes allowing, enduring, and indulging. And in the medical context, it is about the limits of thriving an unfavorable environment. Tolerance is not a lived virtue. It is kind of a cerebral assent and too cerebral for animate guts and behavior when the going gets rough. Tolerance has not taught or asked us to engage, much less to care about the stranger. Tolerance doesn't even invite us to understand, to be curious, to be open, to be moved or surprised by each other.

"Tolerance is not a lived virtue." Very good Krista. You can listen to or read her talk here. If you listen, the talk starts around 34 minutes.

Taking the Knee

I haven't figured out why this is so offensive to some.

My background teaches me it is a respectful and humble posture.

It seems commendable in so many places.

To Write or not to Write?

For many years, on and off, I have written this blog. I have been ignoring it for some time now. Last night I came back to look and discovered I had not written at all this year and only eight entries in the last half of 2017. Yet, when I read the entries, I saw that I was writing about things that concerned and moved me, things that still move me. And surely I was not the only one interested in these issues. Yet, for some reason, I have not felt moved to share in these last months. Have I not been moved? Has the strange climate in this country left me mute? I think, for awhile, I would like to try sharing again. I'll see how it goes.

You Own This

Here's something to remember in times like these.

Maybe you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but like every American, you carry a deed to 635 million acres of public lands. That's right. Even if you don't own a house or the latest computer on the market, you own Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and many other natural treasures. (John Garamendi)

Moo

I don't eat meat. There are a number of reasons for this. One is it just seems cruel to slaughter animals and eat them. I still eat eggs and dairy, but I know that is not free from cruelty either. Those animals, when they stop producing, will also be slaughtered. Then, I read the numbers below, and I have begun to think more seriously about cutting back on dairy.

In 1950 the average cow yielded 5,300 pounds of milk. Last year the average cow yielded 23,000 pounds of milk. A Wisconsin Holstein recently yielded nearly 75,000 pounds of milk in a year, which amounts to roughly 24 gallons a day. 

I grew up on a farm, and I did occasionally milk a cow. I hated it, but never considered the ethics of it. The cows did, most of the time, seem content. I moved away from the farm, and for the most part, had no contact with cows. Then, a few years ago, I visited a farm and noticed the cows were different from the cows of my milking days. Their udders were much larger. It looked burdensome. I suspected they were being bred for that, but until I read the above statistics, I had no idea how much. I found it rather horrifying. The cows were being treated like machines. I need to move away from this cruelty.

(These statistics come from a Vanity Fair article about the Department of Agriculture. Find it here. Also, here is an earlier article I wrote about cows here before. When I went back and read it, I realized how long I've been concerned about this.)

I don't know when I first heard “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the black national anthem. It's a lovely song, and reading a recent article by Brandon Patterson at the Mother Jones site, it brought to mind the recent protests during the standard anthem that are getting so much attention at football games.

I like this anthem better and it's making me consider, what is my definition of patriotism?

Not my problem?

Last week Krista Tippet interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates on her radio show "On Being." As a long time follower of Coates and Tippet, I found it a fascinating conversation. Sometimes in his writing Coates can sound rather hopeless about racial equality in this country and hopeless that white American will understand racial oppression. I suspected that Tippet was slightly intimidated by Coates, but she pressed Coates in ways that helped us all better understand this country's problems.

Coates made many interesting remarks, but below is one I particularly liked. He was explaining why the argument that one has nothing to do with racial inequality and so on just doesn't work.

...what people will tell you is, “Well, I didn’t have any slaves. I wasn’t alive when this happened. My ancestors just got here.” And what became clear to me, reading that, is: OK, but you cook out on the Fourth of July. Your ancestors weren’t here. They played no role in that. They had nothing to do with it. You take off for President’s Day, but you had no part in that. Your ancestors weren’t here. There are a number of patriotic rituals that folks have no problem participating in, as long as they can get credit for it.

But they don’t want the debits, see: “I want the paycheck; I don’t want to have to write a check, though.” And that is a kind of — in the piece, I think I talk about it as à la carte patriotism. It’s like sometimes-friendship: I’m there when I can get some, but when it gets tough, man, I’m out. “I wasn’t there. I had nothing to do with that.”

But it’s like, either you’re in or you’re out. Either you’re part of it, or you’re not. I was not alive during the Korean War. I had nothing to do with it. But my taxes go to pay pensions for folks, to this day. It would not have been my choice to invade Iraq, but my tax dollars went to it. That’s the way a state works. And so I think what people want is, they want to be a part of the state as long as it gives them something that they like.

Listen to the entire interview here.

Being Supported

Bryon Katie offers these reassurances for when you feel alone and unsupported:

...[S]uppose you've eaten your breakfast, sat down in your favorite chair, and picked up this book. Your neck and shoulders support your head. The bones and muscles of your chest support your breathing. Your chair supports your body. The floor supports your chair. The earth supports the building you live in. Various stars and planets hold the earth in its orbit. Outside your window a man walks down the street with his dog. Can you be sure that he isn't playing a part in your support? He may work every day in a cubicle, filing papers for the power company that makes your lights come on.

Among the people you see on the street, and the countless hands and eyes working behind the scenes, can you be sure that there is anyone who isn't supporting your existence? The same question applies to the generations of ancestors who preceded you and to the various plants and animals that had something to do with your breakfast. How many unlikely coincidences allow you to be here!

 From I Need Your Love--Is That True?

From Andrew Sullivan...
Believing that human beings are somehow inferior or superior because of their innate characteristics is not only to believe a lie; it is to live in a prison. It is putting you and others into a false category from which none of us can escape. To see nothing in one’s own body and soul but whiteness or blackness dehumanizes the self and others.