Spirituality
I've been thinking a lot lately about where I fit into the Occupy movement - what kind of role I should play. Unlike some of my housemates, who have gotten arrested, and have been presences at Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, I've been pretty much on the sidelines. I helped start Occupy Technology (which is sort of moribund at the moment.) I've been to a few of the marches and actions, but otherwise not really involved.
For a long time now (since 2003) protest in its traditional form hasn't felt like the right thing for me, even though I had spent all of my adult life as an activist in a number of causes, including anti-nuclear, environmental, pro-choice, health issues, anti-death penalty, and others. In 2003, when the Iraq war started, I joined a group of folks who promised to fast for one day a week until the war ended. Of course even then, we didn't think the war would go on for 8 years! My personal fast ended late in 2004, when it seemed then that the war would go on for a very long time.
In general, I feel great resonance with the Occupy movement, particularly the strains of the movement (which are not especially mainstream, but they are definitely present and known) that talk about the need for the creation of a new society based on love, compassion, equality, and meaning. And getting from point A (where we are now) to point B (that new society) seems completely unrealistic, perhaps even impossible.
I was reminded in a conversation I had this afternoon with a friend (who I must give the credit for the title of this blog post) about the importance of what I'm calling now "holding the door open to hope." Many people would use different language for it. The basic idea is that although we can't necessarily see how to get from point A to point B, we need to remember that there is available to us a vast source of possibility - the possibility to live into the best of what it means to be human. Some people might language this vast source of possibility as God. Others might language it quite differently. But in the end, it's the same.
We can see evidence everywhere of how messed up things have gotten. And it is so easy to get weighted down by the despair and hopelessness of the world. I fall into that all the time (just ask my housemates.) We can see how many people are suffering, and how the planet is suffering, and how the systems in place are failing us at every turn. We can see how divided this country is, and the world is, and not see how it would ever be possible for it to be different.
But there is, along side it, evidence of how things could look, and be different. We miss these, because the media doesn't cover this, and for many of us, our brains are more wired to dwell on the negative than on the positive. People are already creating the alternatives, right now.
So maybe that's my role. Holding the door open to hope. Reminding myself (especially) and others, of Divine possibilities.
Oh, and food. I'll cook for the revolution. :-)
As you might have noticed, I haven't blogged much. Partially, it's because I've gotten out of the habit, and I'm going to work on changing that. Partially, though, it's because I have been trying to figure out what to say about Occupy. I've been only peripherally involved in OccupyOakland, and other Occupy efforts. I helped start OccupyTechnology, and I've been to OccupyOakland a couple of times.
I have been at times elated at what is happening all over the country (and world) with the Occupy movement. And, at times, I have been sorely dissapointed when people in the movement have done things that are violent or counter-productive, and when the discussion has gotten mired in what feels at somepoints to be arguments about non-violent tactics, who has claim to be most radical, or speak most for "the people."
The Occupy movement has brought out the absolute best in all of us, and has also brought out the worst - and I'm not just talking about police brutality, but that is certainly a big piece of it. Eve Ensler reminds us that even in the midst of a movement like Occupy, women still get raped. And people still get shot.
Above all, I am very clear that we're not going to get where we need to go without some kind of spiritual transformation. A video I saw recently (a great one, worth watching), is called "The Revolution is Love" and there is a comment in it about how we don't just want to knock down the 1% and put a different 1% in it's place. It's about changing the whole paradigm.
The good thing is that the language about transformation is in the air in the Occupy movement. My housemate and friend Nichola Torbett's organization, Seminary of the Street, is deep in the Occupy trenches, talking a lot about spiritual transformation, particularly with Jesus as the model.
And this spiritual transformation, from my perspective, isn't necessarily religious. It's not about religious conversion, or adoption of particular spiritual traditions or ideas. It is fully embracing our dependence on a healthy Mother Earth, the primacy of love and compassion, and realizing that each human being has great value, and that all of our lives can, and should have meaning beyond what money we can make, or what kind of house we can live in.
So as we Occupy cities and towns, abandoned buildings and vacant lots for the good of all, let's also Occupy Transformation.
As I imagine you know, right now, thousands of people all over the country (and the world, too) are taking to the streets to "Occupy" places like Wall Street and San Francisco. I myself will be showing up on Monday for OccupyOakland for a while. This blog post has been inspired and informed by this movement - this historic movement. But it's not just about this movement.
One of the things that I have been convinced of for some time (more than 20 years, I think) is that the means and the ends are the same. We cannot expect peace if we don't act peacefully. Jesus, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King all knew this. Monks fighting for freedom in Burma know this. We need to know it, and internalize it.
This is why I do Metta for the 1%. It's so easy to think of the 1% as people who are evil capitalists, or exploitative, or what have you. But the truth is, we all have some of that in us. We all are complicit in a system that is exploitative. We all need Metta (lovingkindness).
So this post is just to remind myself, and all of us, that the means are the ends, and that one of the best things we can do is remember that no one is either completely guilty, or completely innocent.
I wrote this sermon in 2006 for the Progressive Faith Bloggers Conference. I was thinking of it recently, and it just seemed so appropos for where I am, and where things are, so I thought I'd repost it.
Finding and claiming our prophetic voice
The readings this morning from Amos have, I think, something to teach us. Amos was a reluctant prophet. He didn't start out being a prophet. He was, in his own words, “a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” He was just your ordinary guy, your average joe herdsman and farmer. He was a reluctant prophet. He lived in one of the most prosperous times in the kingdom of Israel's history, during the reign of Jeraboam II, nearly more than 2700 years ago. Amos' primary message was to the wealthy, to remember their responsibility to the poor, and to those who were in religious leadership, to return the people to true faith, instead of empty ritual. These are, I think, things we could imagine saying today. He felt that God called him out of that ordinary life, into the extraordinary life of calling Israel's people to measure themselves against God's “plumb line” of justice. In many ways, probably, Amos was a lot like you and me.
Unlike a lot of other prophets of his time, Amos didn't rely much on apocalyptic language, or esoteric symbols. He was frank and straightforward in relaying what he perceived to be God's message to Israel's people. He saw the injustices of his time, and felt called to speak out against them, to remind Israel of God's demand for justice for all of its people.
I was telling a friend that I wanted to preach about the prophetic voice of bloggers, and she looked at me kind of puzzled. As we talked more, it came to be clear that when she thought of prophets, she thought of that more traditional view of prophecy, more like “fortune telling,” or forecasting the future. I explained that mostly, people used the words of prophets in retrospect to prove a particular point that the original prophets probably didn't have in mind. Not there is no such thing as the kind of prophecy that might indicate aspects of the future. But to my mind, it's not the most important kind of prophecy.
What I want to talk about today, is Amos' kind of prophecy, the prophecy that most of you in this room are quite familiar with, and perhaps even do on a daily basis, like on the aptly named community blog “Street Prophets.” This kind of prophecy sees the injustices of our time, and speaks plainly and forthrightly about them. Sometimes, this kind of prophecy does include “what if?” And the “what if's” are important too. What if we don't pay attention to the injustices in front of our face? What if we don't pay attention to the dangers that are facing us as a nation, and as a world? What might happen to us? Amos asked these questions, too.
We live in interesting times, times that need plain, ordinary jane and joe prophets like Amos. We live in dangerous times, and we need prophets like those of you in this room. But we also live in complicated times. Unlike Amos, who was, for the most part, speaking to one people, with the same faith tradition, we need to speak to many peoples, with multiple faith traditions, or, in some cases, no faith tradition. How do we find, and use, our prophetic voice in the cacophany of many voices, many agendas, many points of view and perspectives? How do we stretch our voices outside our own small pockets of progressive people of faith? How do we preach to more than just the choir? And, for those of us who are Christians, how do we express the caring, open and accepting gospel we know?
There are four guidelines that I try to live by, in exercising my own prophetic voice. I sometimes fail, but these are the standards that I try to meet. These are ways that I think may help us to get our message heard further out than our crowd, and engage others in dialogue. These guidelines have been deeply informed by both my Buddhist practice and my Christian faith. And, to some extent, by experience. The first guideline is to be in touch with, and speak from, your heart. Second, the means are the ends. Third, be willing to be wrong. And fourth, always assume good will on the part of others.
So, first, be in touch with, and speak from, your heart. Speak from your knowledge and understanding of God, however you define God. Or speak from some other perspective that comes from your heart. What does that mean, really? For one thing, for many of us, our faith and experience of the divine is a central part of our lives. If we can't speak from that place, if we feel the need to suppress, or to modify what we say, we compromise ourselves, and what we have to say. Also, it's usually not our rational minds that get us into trouble. We react and speak out of fear so often, sometimes we aren't even aware that we do it. Being in touch means being aware, and awake, to our attitudes, attachments and aversions, and learning to speak from that place of awareness. Being in touch with what's really important to us, being in touch with our hearts, with our experiences and knowledge of God, is important. And I think Amos would agree.
Second, the means are the ends. All three of you that read my blog know that's kind of a common topic for me. In fact, I think that if there was a broken record for me, it would play “means are the ends,” over and over again. I doubt that many people in this room, or in the progressive movement in general, would disagree with the quote by Ghandi “Be the change you want to see in the world.” But what does that really mean? It means that if we want to live in a world that is open, accepting, and peaceful, we have to be open, accepting and peaceful. Like that bumper sticker, there is no way to peace, peace is the way. Peaceful dialogue, peaceful language, that Buddhist concept of right speech, is the way. The energy I spend working for change using methods that are enemies to change ends up getting me nowhere. It's two steps forward, two steps backward. I'm still in the same exact place I was when I started.
One of the things I've learned from my years of Buddhist practice is that it is, really, all about me. That is, each of us has control over the decisions we make, and the ways we act, and react, the words we speak and write. If we really want to live in a different world, we have to live and act differently, be aware of what we do, and what we think about what we do, why we do it, and how we do it.
The third guideline I follow is: be willing to be wrong. Of course, I'm never wrong about anything. Actually, I'm probably wrong about almost everything, including a good bit of this sermon. One of the things that gets us into so much in trouble is our attachment to our own point of view. Do you know that there are two ways to hold a penny? You can hold it like this (show the downward fist) or like this (the upward palm). Sometimes, we hold so strongly onto our points of view because we are afraid we'll lose something. Holding our opinions like we hold the penny, in the open palm of our hand gives us opportunities to let other things influence us, it leaves us open to new ideas, and new ways of looking at things. And we still get to keep the penny.
We have come to our opinions through our experiences, and not everyone has the same experiences in life, so, it makes sense that people have different opinions. And what appears one way from our perspective, is quite different from another perspective. Unlike in Amos' time, when everyone had the same paradigm in which they lived in the world, and Amos could draw on that paradigm to explain to Israel where they are going wrong, we live in a time of many, many paradigms. Things that are clearly wrong in one paradigm are just fine in a different one. So as prophets, we need to both speak from the heart, from our own knowledge, and also accept that there are many other ways to understand the world. And what we need more than anything is dialogue between people with different perspectives. Thich Naht Hanh once said of dialogue, you don't really have dialogue unless both parties are willing to change. In order to be willing to change, we have to be willing to be wrong.
The last guideline is to always assume good will on the part of others. This one is sort of a sub guideline to the “means are the ends” one. It can be a tough one. Because, in fact, not everyone is of good will, so it seems, well, absurd, polyannish, naïve, fill in the blank, to assume everyone is of good will. We are, as Christians, encouraged to “see the God” in everyone we meet. Jesus would have us love them as we would love ourselves. Most of us don't assume that we ourselves are of bad will, so, why would we assume that of others? And, it is surprising what assuming the good will of others can do. If you assume someone you disagree with is of good will, you actually find yourself willing to listen to what they have to say. Listen to their point of view, listen to their perspectives.
Everyone has something to teach us. Every person we meet can teach us something about ourselves, about them, about the way the world works. And assuming good will is a way to help us be open to learning from people, and share goodwill, to spread it around. There are times when the favor will not be returned. Either someone will assume we are of ill will, or the other person will, in fact, wish us ill. That is unfortunate. It's happened to me. But the times that happens are far outweighed by the positive effects of being open. And, I think, like non-violence, it is a way of being that, frankly, can embarrass those who don't act in the same way.
These four guidelines have been really helpful to me in both my on-line electronic life, as well as my real, in person life. And I've yet to regret adopting these guidelines. They aren't necessarily for everyone, but they work well for me, and I think can be a good set of guidelines that might help our prophetic voice go beyond our little pocket. After all, if we want things to really change in this country, our voices have to be heard far and wide.
I've had a blog for three and a half years. I started my blog when it was becoming clear that Bush was going to invade Iraq. I felt completely powerless to have any effect on what was happening. Since then, blogs have changed the landscape of public discourse in this country. Yearly Kos is a nationally covered event, bloggers are talked about on TV and in the newspaper, politicians feel the need to talk with bloggers. Further, right now, people have begun to notice that there is, in fact, a religious left. That, contrary to the rhetoric of the right, there are progressive people of faith, whose politics are deeply informed by their faith. This is the time for us, as ordinary jane and joe reluctant prophet-bloggers (or not so reluctant) to speak from our hearts, to speak of injustice when we see it, to be like Amos.
I think often free enterprise is confused or conflated with capitalism. I thought it was worth a follow-up post to my "Inherent Violence of Wealth" post to talk a bit about it, since I don't think I was especially clear in my discussion that I was talking only about wealth gained from capitalism.
Free enterprise is the idea that you, or, me, or any group of people have the right to create an independent process whereby we make money from our own creative labor. I am absolutely a product of free enterprise (my father) and I have made a living via free enterprise for most of my working life. Free enterprises are small enterprises. Maybe it's one person running a web design shop, a collective grocery store, someone hiring some workers to print t-shirts, or an artist. Hallmarks of free enterprises are that they are business models that are local, small, and sustainable, and everyone employed gets a living wage. Many (most?) small businesses in the US fit this category.
Capitalism is a different animal entirely. Capitalism is the process whereby people with large amounts of money invest that money in business for the sole purpose of making more money. And capitalism, unlike free enterprise, requires one thing, and one thing only: increasing profits.
How do you increase profits continually? There are a few ways to do it. Every business has revenues and costs. On the revenue side, you increase revenues by convincing more and more people to buy what it is you have to sell. In some cases, that's easy because the product is good, and it's what people want. But that's not always the case. Often, it's done through the use of advertising (my definition of most advertising now is "stealing your self-respect and selling it back to you for the price of a product.") Some products, such as fast food, tobacco and alcohol, have their own ways of convincing people to buy more. Other products need some help from the government in the form of overly broad patents. Other products (like services) require ongoing, increasing fees. Some increase revenues by making products that are "designed for the dump," which means they need to be replaced more often.
Then there is the cost side. Ever increasing profits requires ever decreasing costs. There are two kinds of cost: labor and resources. Capitalist enterprises decrease labor costs by decreasing wages, decreasing benefits, shipping jobs to cheaper venues, and convincing the government to maintain a minimum wage that is far from a living wage. They externalize labor costs (such as health care benefits) onto the government.
Capitalist enterprises decrease resource costs by sourcing resources from countries with few regulations and by externalizing environmental costs (dumping waste, leaving open strip mines, dumping carbon into the atmosphere, the costs of landfilling all that shit we buy, etc.) They get tax breaks from governments, and the money is made up by individuals. They decrease resource costs by using the cheapest materials available.
This quote is attributed to Ghandi, and I can't agree with it more: "The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles"
This is a belated, and long-percolated response to a blog post by my friend Ryan Dowell Baum. I am going to focus my discussion on one particular point that Ryan makes in his post:
"The problem with liberal politics is that it incorrectly assumes that by voting to raise taxes and expand social programs, the American people are legitimately and voluntarily offering up their government’s money to provide for the needs of others. The flaw in this thinking is that it forgets that government has no money of its own, because government does not produce wealth. It only takes, by force, from those who do (or borrows from other governments, who take, by force, from those who do). And in the US, the government disproportionately takes from the rich. So when middle-class Americans vote to raise taxes to serve the poor, it is not primarily their money, or their government’s, that they are voluntarily offering up. They are manipulating the state into taking other (wealthier) people’s money against their will, under threat of imprisonment, and giving it to less wealthy people. This, it seems to me, is violence."
What I'm about to say is probably too radical for most people, Ryan included. And that's fine - I don't mind occupying the "lunatic fringe" for this. I can't begin to express how deeply core this philosophy is to me. For all of my life, I have had a deep sense that the way things were arranged in our capitalist society were very wrong. As a child of relative privilege, this sense did not come from a feeling of having been deprived in comparison to others as I grew up. I'm not sure where my sense of equality comes from, exactly - it is so inherent in my being. Perhaps it comes a bit from my parents - but definitely not completely. Perhaps it comes from my reading of the Bible, both as a child and as an adult - but it's not that either, since I do not take the Bible literally in any way, and I wouldn't even say at this point that it is the major source of my moral compass. But I could indeed argue that this is a philosophy that Jesus would likely agree with. Anyway, maybe it is just that this is core to the being whose soul inhabits this body. Who knows.
My philosophy is that all of creation, and in particular for us on Earth, all of the energy of our star, and all of the resources that come from that energy, is no ones to own or control. No one on this planet - not even any one species - has the right to own or control any part of creation. That is my starting point, and as you can imagine, that has pretty big implications for how far off we are from that ideal.
This planet does not have infinite resources. Only a tiny fraction of the energy of our star makes it to our planet. There are reserves of that energy stored underneath the ground in the form of the decomposed remains of plant life millions of years in our past. There are minerals of varied sorts under the Earth that we use. All of these are finite.
Wealth is basically the accumulation of those resources by individuals or groups of individuals. And that accumulation is always at the expense of others, because the fact of these finite resources means that economics - the use and distribution of those resources - is a zero-sum game. The idea of constant and infinite economic growth is false.
Sometimes, that wealth is at the expense of future beings - like our profligate use of fossil fuels (for which I am guilty). But often, that wealth is at the expense of current humans or other beings. I would argue anyone who has spent their life accumulating massive wealth has done it in a way that created and/or accentuated the present or future suffering of others - whether it be exploiting resources such as Coltan, or employing people at non-living wages, or allowing products to be made with slave or child labor. And many people (including many individuals in industrialized countries) have lived their lives in ways that create or accentuate the suffering of others in other parts of the world, or in the future. This is the inherent violence of wealth.
In order for capitalism to work, labor costs must remain relativey low. The two ways that happens is that 1) jobs get moved to regions with lower wages, and 2) there must be some level of unemployment, so that there are people who are willing to work for lower wages just so that they can survive. Capitalism requires growth, and that growth has largely come from the use of fossil fuels, as well as other finite resources of the Earth. This is the inherent violence of capitalism.
In our country, we have tried to mitigate this to some extent by asking those who are more wealthy to pay for programs for those who are either unable to work because of age, health (physical or mental), unemployment, or who, for reasons rarely of their own making, are caught in cycles of poverty. To call this policy violence completely ignores the violence of wealth creation.
We are in deep shit. The United States and the industrialized world is in economic deep shit that it won't get out of because we have hit our resource limits. The planet is in environmental deep shit. And we haven't woken up to the fact that economic systems that revolve around the accumulation of wealth are the culprits. (By the way, most forms of communism that have existed so far, which are simply systems of state-sponsored wealth accumulation, are just as problematic, and are just as inherently violent.)
I've spent a lot of time in my life trying to fit myself into varied spiritual boxes. I was a Presbyterian, then I was a Nazarne, then I was a humanist, then I was a Pagan, then a Buddhist, then a UU, and lastly a progressive Christian. Lately, I have come to realize that there are aspects of all of these identities in my spiritual and religious life at the moment, but none of them can singularly hold me. I've known for a long time that being a Progressive Christian wasn't really enough to describe me, and at many times I've called myself a "Buddheo-Christian" (this term did not originate with me.) But even that isn't really enough - it doesn't reflect the influence of other traditions in my spiritual life.
I was talking with Ruth yesterday, and she has a way of seeing things about me that I sometimes have a hard time seeing. She said that I was simply a contemplative.Somehow, that seemed so straightforward and true. That seems like a container that can fit me.
I was looking at the etymology of "contemplative". It's lingusitically connected to contemplation. Contemplation is from Latin, and includes such meaning as "act of looking at" and "to gaze attentively, observe" and to "to mark out a space for observation". I like that latter meaning - "to mark out a space" - I think of that in terms of both time and intention: to set aside time and effort to observe.
What is the observation? Rather often, it's my mind. But sometimes it's about observing creation - the natural world, and all beings in it.
This also feels like it allows for a more intimate connection between my scientist self, my writer self, and my spiritual self. And it feels like it can explain a lot of what I feel called to do in ways that being a Christian or a Buddhist didn't quite explain to me.
In 2005, I felt a call to go to seminary. I wrapped up my non-profit technology work, sold or gave away most of what I owned, and moved across country to go to Pacific School of Religion. For reasons you can read about here, I left seminary, and went back to technology work.
I think I would say that was a calling to substantially change the structure of my life.
Now, here it is, 2010, and I'm feeling another calling, or maybe it's the same calling, but it is manifesting very differently. I feel a strong desire to simplify my life - to strip away distractions. I've made radical changes to allow better work/life balance (I now commute to work most days to an office, allowing me to dismantle my home office - something I've not done for a very long time - and I've never really been a typical commuter before.) And I'm in the process of shedding again - selling or giving away a lot of what I own that I feel is unnecessary.
Ruth gave me a quote from Hans Hoffman which fits perfectly: “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
