paradigm shift

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This Precious Present Moment

Yes, I too cast my vote for four more years of stability, of moving certain good policies forward step by incremental step while tabling other concerns as too complicated, too intractable, too much a part of the fabric of who we are to really engage with right now. I voted for the status quo. I voted for Clinton. But that’s not who we got (or so, at least, it seems, though I know some out there are working to overturn this outcome at the electoral college and other levels).

We got Trump. I didn’t want Trump – I REALLY didn’t want Trump – but we got ‘im.

And it feels to me like we’re now in a new era. The Trump era. The era in which Trump has been elected president. Maybe it will be over before the inauguration in 2017. Maybe it will go for eight years. We don’t know. All we know is that we are in it now.

In this now, in this present moment, which is the only moment there ever is, a large enough number of Americans have come together to successfully elect Trump as president to be. 

And I’m like,

Ok. 

This is where we are. 

What now?

And I’m drawing on my faith, and my education (I have a PhD in American Studies, though I’ve chosen to live outside of academia), and the power of creative vision to try and discern – 

What to do NOW? 

Now that here is where we are?

And my answer is the same as James Baldwin’s answer was in The Fire Next Time: Practice radical, transformative, revolutionary love. 

And I’m going to be offering, here in this space, and in every other platform that’s mine, and in every instance in which my opinion is asked for (or even just allowed), my ideas about what that radical, transformative, revolutionary love might or could look like in action.  

And I think that what I will have to offer may be challenging for some. It probably won’t be conventional. It may or may not be what you want to hear or what you’re ready for. And that is totally ok. I know we are all in different places on this. You be where you are. Be there fully, authentically, so you can speak the words you need to speak and ask for the care and support you need. I ask you to honor your rage, pain, hurt, grief, anger, fear, despondency, disappointment, alarm, and anything else you’re justifiably feeling, and let it move through you. Let the free flow of emotion clean you out from the inside. 

And if and when you wish to begin (or get back to) the work of healing this nation, may we find ourselves standing together. 

Because healing is what needs to happen here. Not reconquering. Not showing those so-and-so’s what’s what. Not smashing the “bad” people with our “good” “right” “truth.” 
(Challenging yet?) 

Not winning. Healing. 

I know I’ve said a lot already, but it has all been a lead-up to this, the “first thing” I want to say. 

I live mostly in a liberal bubble between Denver and Boulder, Colorado. But right now I just happen to be back in the area where I grew up, an extremely impoverished region of rural southwest Pennsylvania, visiting my mom, who is seriously ill. It goes almost without saying that this is deep Trump territory. When the results came in, I was wishing desperately that I could be back in my home community, comforting and being comforted by my friends, expressing my solidarity by standing together, singing together, praying together. 

But I that’s not where I was. So I stood, sang, prayed here – alone but connected. Together in spirit with not just my friends, but ALL the people. 

And then I went out. Into the world. Among the people. The people who are here. The ones that some of my liberal friends might consciously or unconsciously think of as hicks, rednecks, uneducated poor white trash. Racist, bigoted, homophobic, misogynist or simply duped and misled Trump supporters. My family. My relatives. The people I grew up with. The people I came from. Who shaped the course of my early life. 

And I saw

Their hearts. 

I saw their hearts. 

I FELT their hearts. 

And I recognized 

what I felt

because I have felt it 

in me. 

The opening in the chest when the fear, pain, hurt, anger that have been pent up inside, get to finally be spoken. 

The sudden shaky lightness of having been delivered of a weight of feeling that was crushing the soul with its heaviness, strangling the spirit with frustration, suffocating the life force with the despair of never being allowed to be spoken. 

And I see, above these hearts that have this sudden shaky lightness about them, jaws that are still clenched, facial muscles tense and twitching, necks stiff and unbending: People determined and ready to fight to keep from being forced back into silence. 

And what came to me was Marshall Rosenberg’s work on nonviolent communication, in which we recognize that people who are lashing out are doing so be they have needs that aren’t being met, and they’ve lost faith in peaceful means of getting their needs met, and they’re resorting to aggression out of desperation and hopelessness. 

And so you witness. 

You let them speak. You let them know you hear. You ask, Is there more?

You welcome them to speak until enough pressure has been released to make space to talk about other solutions. Effective solutions. Sustainable solutions. Solutions in which another person does not have to be harmed for the needs of the first to be met. 

Really met. Fully met. Lovingly met. 

So in the face of this group of people collectively waving their fists and shouting, I’M ANGRY! I’M UPSET! I’M SUFFERING AND I BLAME, I BLAME, I BLAME!

I’m going to say, Wow. I see that you are angry. 

I hear your words. 

I hear you when you say you’re frustrated. 

And I feel the fear and pain you’re in, underneath that anger. 

It must feel really bad. 

I’m really sorry you’re feeling that way. 

I hear you. 

I see you. 

I feel you. 

I love you. 

And I am committed with every cell and holy atom of my being to building a nation, a world where you, and you, and you, and I, and ALL of us, EVERY ONE of us, can have our needs met. 

In solidarity. 

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Guns and Paradigms

It’s Friday afternoon.  I’m driving home from the school where I teach (way on the other side of Denver from where I live), moving slowly, because everyone’s doing what I’m doing at the exact same time.  It’s been a long week and my brain is fried.  The news is playing on the car radio, senators are debating gun laws, but it’s really more of a background noise for my drifting thoughts.   At this point, in this mental state,  I wonder if it is really about more gun control versus less gun control, or about our collective, cultural willingness or unwillingness to find new, nonviolent, empowering, peace-promoting, effective responses to whatever it is that makes humans want to shoot or otherwise harm other humans on ANY scale, from personal assault to mass murder to war.  Maybe this whole debate is a distraction that keeps our national attention away from other, deeper, more entrenched problems.  Eh?????

One one point, at least, both sides are the same: they both envision a world where guns are necessary for wielding against other people, or against other beings.  One side wants to reserve the right to use guns to prevent other people from using them against people (themselves or others).  The other side wants to reserve the right to use guns against the people on the first side, if it should ever come to that.  And yes, there are many sub-arguments on either side.  I honestly see where both sides are coming from, and I see both as having valid concerns within the framework of the current conversation.  But they are both based on a worldview in which it is necessary to have guns and to have the right to use them against other people in certain specific circumstances.  And I do not believe that that worldview is either necessary or predetermined.  I do believe that as a group, the direction we humans need to go in is beyond the debate about whether and how to regulate firearms and who can use them and how and when, and what happens to us when we break those rules.

Earlier, on the way TO said job on the other side of the city, I heard this archeologist talking on Science Friday about the work of figuring out what exactly made the dinosaurs go extinct, and he made a comment to this effect: that though we can’t do something now, or even imagine how we would do it, that’s no reason to assume we won’t be able to do it in the future, possibly even the near future.  He noted that even scientists tend to underestimate the magnitude of advances we’ll make, and how quickly we’ll make them.  That’s in the field of research technology, of course, but I think the same is true of any area of human learning, any field in which we increase in understanding over time.  We don’t know what we’re going to be able to do, we are unable to picture what it would be like to do a thing, and then suddenly someone experiences a paradigm shift, and is able to see it, able to conceive it, able to actually do the thing that did not even have a name before.  This was the first thing we learned about in the H.C. at IUP: Thomas Kuhn and the idea of the paradigm shift, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Back then my professor took me out for pizza because he thought it was so nutty of me to apply that theory to the spread of Christianity in my final paper.  Since that time, though, I’ve seen repeatedly how true it is of any area of human development or spiritual evolution.  To make dramatic shifts in consciousness, in understanding, to let go of problems and let them be transformed, we need to look for, cultivate, and encourage the conditions under which paradigm shifts are likely to occur.  Such shifts are possible when, and only when, we believe they are.  Although we cannot see the next step on our path, or even that there is a path, and not a gaping void, we can’t (and we don’t) let that stop us from walking forward.

So how is this related to gun laws?  The debate will play itself out how it will.  If there really are specific regulations or liberties that will lead to fewer acts of violence being committed, then I hope those are the ones that get passed.  From what I have read (like this piece), it seems like the most powerful players in this game are the gun manufacturers, and they aren’t interested in liberty OR saving lives — just money.  So I’m just saying.  The whole debate is taking place on the surface of the issue.  I’d love to see the profit factor be acknowledged regularly in the public debate for the huge force that it really is.  And at the same time as we (at least those who are participating in this conversation in good faith) are collectively looking for the best, most responsible ways to manage the use and sale of guns on a practical, this-moment basis,  I would ask Americans to also do whatever they can to open their minds to the idea that the real issue might be something else, and that by meeting and addressing and solving this real issue — the real causes of violence, of fear, rage, the urge to hurt others or ourselves — we will solve so much more than just “the gun debate.”  We need to look for solutions to the suffering that exists, and take responsibility for our roles in causing it.  It will necessarily involve advancing in our understanding of how connected we all are, and how if we harm any being, we are truly and literally harming ourselves.  That goes for you, too, corporations.  ESPECIALLY for you.

Ok, that’s all I’m going to say on the topic.  May peace be with us on Earth.