Even as they try to kill us with cars and guns, I understand Trump Supporters Now—They’re Addicts

To Trump Supporters, 

I understand you now. My breakthrough is this: the way the recovery community treats an addict or alcoholic is the way I ought to treat you.  

I’ll say this: the people I have met in the rooms of Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous are the most loving people I know. They live the principles of compassion, generosity, and humility. They do more good in the world than most churchgoers.  

But they also recognize their limitations, especially when helping other drunks and addicts. They won’t force anyone into recovery, even if it means that person will die of their disease. The individual has to choose recovery. 

That brings me to you. I’m realizing that I need to let you hit rock bottom before you will ever accept a hand up, a different way, or a better way. Any “helping” I do before you reach that point shields you from the consequences of your poor choices.  

Your drug of choice is the self-affirming feedback loop of conservative media. The messages fed to you by these “dealers” validate your resentments, inflame your hatred, and give you a false “high” of superiority. They leave you comfortable in your ignorance and free of moral responsibilities—to the point where running down and shooting at peaceful protestors feels justified, as happened in my home city of Seattle last Sunday. 

Your drug is intoxicating, liberating, and soothing at once. It makes sense of the world. It confirms to you that a black man writing forged checks is a deadly threat. Medical workers decrying lack of personal protective gear are whiners. Armed protestors at a state capital are patriots. Police are morally pure. Folks picketing because they can’t get their hair cut are defenders of liberty, while those protesting police violence are terrorists.  

As with any drunk, or addict, you have a problem with the truth, mostly telling it to yourself. Even as Covid cases in your regions spike, jobs disappear, opioid addiction surges, and suicides by firearms climb, you insist nothing is wrong in “real” America. “Snowflakes,” advocating for gun control, prison, police, health, and/or education reform, they are the real threats whose heresies will ruin the “heartland,” and squash the “American dream.”  

For those of you who do want to keep protesting for a haircut, a firearm, and against universal health care, I have learned from the recovery community that the loving thing to do is to let you. It may destroy you, yes, but it also might allow things to get bad enough that you realize you want something different. And like a drunk who has finally reached that jumping off point, we’ll be here, waiting for you with a seat at the table. 

They tell you that if you join AA or NA, that you need to “buy a black suit.” It’s because not everyone makes it. Not everyone comes in from the cold. In that sense, I will respect your argument (fetishization) of liberty—even if you choose to use your liberty to utterly wreck yourself with your own fear, hatred, and resentment. 

You are free to get high on your indignation, your victimhood, your superiority, but don’t ask us to participate in it and don’t destroy us in the process. Stop killing black and brown people. Stop supporting polices that result in their deaths. I’m not black or brown. I’m white. I love people who are black and brown. As my friends, they carry pieces of my heart within them, their safety is my safety, their well-being is my well-being. So please, destroy yourself, but leave them, and me, alone. 

I once heard a recalcitrant teen in drug treatment say he was tired of all the adults telling him what he should do with his life. A veteran counselor chuckled and replied, “Kid, you should be grateful people are bothering to talk to you. It’s when they stop talking to you that you should really be worried.” 

I’m just about there. I can’t turn my back on you, as much as I want to, because if I deny your humanity, (or anyone’s) then I’ve joined your side. That is what distinguishes us. So, my standing message will remain the same: there is a seat at the table, a place in our community for you, when you’re ready to take it. It requires you to recognize the humanity of all people and to stop debasing your own by destroying yourself and others. It requires you to quit your drug of choice, reexamine your fallacies, and let go of the twin idols of superiority and victimhood.  

But like they say, it’s a free country. Just like a drug addict, needle in arm, passed out in a pool of vomit, you can choose to stay as you are, but we know how that story ends.

On Forgiveness

So much has already been written, from people more qualified than myself, on the racial, spiritual, social, and political dynamics/implications in the above image that it’s best for me to link to their work here rather than running the risk of “whitesplaining” it. (The subsequent murder of Joshua Brown, a key witness in convicting Guyger, has been a deeply troubling development that merits its own blog post).

The One-Sided Nature of Black Forgiveness 

Botham Jean, Amber Guyger and the Delusion of Forgiveness 

Amber Guyger was hugged by her victim’s brother and a judge, igniting a debate about forgiveness and race

Dear White People: About Botham Jean, Forgiveness, Justice, and Cheap Grace 

Adam Serwer, one of my favorite writers, wrote this in his Twitter feed: “We would be living in a very different world if many of the people who exult in black displays of forgiveness reciprocated that grace and mercy but that’s not reflected at all in our criminal justice policy, and it makes you question what they really find compelling about it.”

Even before this week, many other influential writers have written on this same topic. Links to two of those pieces are below in the footnotes.[1]

The story of Brandt Jean’s forgiveness for his brother’s killer has stirred passionate discussion within my social and professional circles. To a great extent I agree with writers such as Sophia Nelson, Anne Branigin, Hannah Knowles, Karyn Carlo, Jenn M. Jackson, Roxane Gay, and Adam Serwer. As a white male writer, there isn’t much I can add to their words on the racial dynamics of this and how it fits into a larger context of racism in the US. I would not presume to be able to write from their perspectives on this deeply personal issue. 

Instead, for what it’s worth, I’m interpreting Brandt Jean’s gesture of forgiveness through the lens of what I’ve learned from the recovery community, and that is the angle I’m using for this blog post. 

For regular readers of this blog, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of the recovery community, specifically 12-step programs such as AA, NA, Al-Anon, ACA, etc. I first came into serious contact with them when I was suicidal and hospitalized for depression in 2012. It changed my life. Although I have never struggled with addiction or alcoholism, suicidal ideation is a sort of compulsion in itself. What I learned from my brothers and sisters in the recovery community has helped me with my mental and spiritual health since. Because of them, and what I learned from the wisdom of these programs, I’ve learned to live with my mental illness. I’m deeply grateful for all I’ve gained from their fellowship. So much so that I frequently tell people that my near-suicide and hospitalization was the “best worst thing” that ever happened to me. And, like many in the AA community, I often feel like everything I own should be stamped with “Property of Alcoholics Anonymous” because everything I have today I owe to these programs of recovery and the way of living I learned from them. 

Since September 25, 2012 (the day of my hospitalization), I’ve worked through the 12 steps twice. I attend open AA meetings regularly. I meet with a sponsor each week. My sponsor, Terry B., has thirty-eight years of sobriety and serves as my spiritual director as well as friend.[2]  

It’s a story my sponsor told me this very week on the nature of forgiveness and acceptance that I thought of while looking at that photo of Brandt Jean embracing Amber Guyger. Terry was telling me about a sponsee he had years ago. We’ll call him Jack. Jack was bitter and angry with so many of the people in his life, including his wife and his mother. Terry was trying to help Jack through a step 4 inventory,[3] wherein a sponsor guides a sponsee through their transgressions, their resentments, and their fears. The ultimate goal is to help the sponsee recognize their part in these lingering sources of toxic thoughts so they can remedy that. But Jack simply could not let go of his anger, his resentment, and thus his sense of persecution and victimization—especially from his wife and mother. Sensing they were reaching a critical juncture, Terry got up, walked around the table he and Jack were working at, and sat down next to Jack. Terry looked him in the eye and said, “Listen Jack, if you can’t find a way to forgive your wife and mother, it will kill you.” 

Jack couldn’t.  

He was dead within a year. 

I’ve heard many speakers and many folks disclose in AA meetings how, despite never being apologized to by those parents/spouses/family members/bosses/friends/strangers who had hurt them in the past, they HAD to find it in their hearts to forgive them. They didn’t do this because grace required it of them. They did it because their own sobriety depends on it. They have to let go.[4] They have to forgive because they know that resentments, over time, are toxic and otherwise will lead to poor spiritual health, a loss of sobriety, and death.  

The stakes are that high with alcohol, addiction, and I would say, many other forms of mental illness, like my own.  

So when I see Brandt Jean embracing Amber Guyger and forgiving her, I see him doing it less for her and more for himself. It is part of his own healing process. To an extent, many writers and commentators have acknowledged this in the articles linked to above. 

And then there are the people of the world who are claiming this act to be more than it is. These folks (mostly white) want to see it as absolution for all white people who have benefited from racial injustice.[5] These white folks see this gesture as an example for all black people to follow. They see it as a justification for black people to abandon black rage all together. 

Writers of color and their allies are right to push back against this gross misinterpretation. And I agree with the theologians and essayists pointing out how, throughout history, the Christian notion of “turn the other cheek” has been perverted—even weaponized—by white oppressors and their enablers. “Turn the other cheek” has been used to justify enslavement, discrimination, and to delegitimize the righteous anger of many oppressed communities.  

And I agree with Sophia Nelson in the Washington Post: it is by no means fair that forgiveness only goes one way. Full stop. It just ain’t. Add to that, I don’t think it’s fair that so many of my friends in the recovery community have had to forgive deadbeat dads, abusive spouses, and exploitative pimps, even though some of these individuals never asked for it.  

It’s not fair . . . but . . . what do we do? . . . what do I do with that lingering sense of injustice? 

It certainly motivates me in my work for social change, whether that is on the page or hands on. But humility forces me to recognize that my sphere of influence is much, much smaller than I’d like to admit. Friends in AA have insisted to me that I should envision a hula hoop around me. That gives me a clear picture of how wide my circle of influence and control really is. That sucks. The hard truth I have to admit is that, through my power and influence alone, I’ll never be able to right all the wrongs and restore justice to the world.  

My fellow journeyers in the recovery community, with more years than I, have said to me, “Ted, life doesn’t offer justice. It just is.” Terry would tell me that 99.99 percent of the world’s problems don’t have my name on them and that the 00.01 percent that do will keep me more than busy. So I’m left to practice humility, recognize it’s not on me to fix everything wrong with the world. I need to practice acceptance that I won’t be able to fix it all. And I need to practice trust that my higher power/God will.  

In other words, I should stop trying to play God, fixer, and/or savior and just keep my side of the street clean, or in my sponsor Terry B.’s words, “I want people to heal, to get better, especially my sponsees, but I have to love them whether they do or not. And if they get better or not, ultimately, its none of my f***ing business. It’s their business and God’s business. When my service to them turns into ‘saving’ them, that is just another form of pride.” 

How is that for humility and radical acceptance? 

It’s not that Terry would ask me to forget the slights and injustices in the world. He’s moved by them as much as I am. I’m certain of that. And he certainly encourages me in my own work to try to affect positive change. But Terry reminds me of the importance of letting go, of not making my anger at injustice or unfairness too deep a part of my identity. He’s warned me that holding on to resentments for the world’s injustices—the ones that affect me directly or the ones that affect others—can be toxic for the soul. 

Like it was for his sponsee Jack. 

Boy, that is hard to hear. Really hard to hear for a recovering control freak, do-gooder, aid worker, with a history of poor boundaries, virtue signaling, and a chronic case of “white savior-dom.”  

But I think Brandt Jean knows this even better than I do. 

This “letting go” certainly doesn’t excuse us from the work of social change. Not at all. Although I think that is what some white folks, looking for absolution, want to read into Brandt’s gesture. They shouldn’t. But keeping in mind our humility should right-size us, help us (or at least me) see our selves and our work in perspective.  

I wouldn’t want to go as far as to say Brandt was making a statement on race relations or racial justice. Those things are way outside his hula hoop. But what was in his sphere of influence right then and there was Amber Guyger. And faced with the opportunity to forgive, he took it. Might that have an impact outside that courtroom, outside his hula hoop? Maybe, but (fortunately) that’s not on his shoulders either. As for how our personal and intrapersonal interactions go out into the universe as a force for good, a force for change, that is an answer that is beyond our pay grade, and I think is the very “mystery” theologians talk about when they talk about the mystery of grace and the paradox at the center of it. We’re either all deserving or none of us are. 

I’m afraid the answer is that both statements are true. 

But it’s 12 steps, not four. And for spiritual health there are other steps that I lean on for understanding the contradiction in that. It’s steps 8 and 9: making a list of those we have harmed and making amends to them. 

Bear with me. 

See, step 4 deals with how we have been victims (or perceived victims). Steps 8 and 9 deal with how we have victimized others. Part of the transformational practice of the 12 steps is to be responsible for what you can control (what is inside your hula hoop). If you have harmed others, and if you wish for your own spiritual healing, then not only are you called upon to apologize, but you are required to go further and make amends.  

Amends means more than saying “sorry.” Making amends implies that true healing comes in four parts: (1) expression of regret; (2) acceptance of responsibility; (3) acknowledgement of the impact on others; (4) a remedy, an act of restitution to the injured party or (when that route is unavailable) paying it forward to others. 

But here’s the thing: AA will tell us that if we’re the injured party, we can’t wait around for amends from others! They might never come. What I’ve heard folks say in meetings is that, “I had to forgive [my father/my abusive ex-spouse/my pimp], otherwise I would be a victim of them for the rest of my life.” And in recovery we must accept that we have no control over that person and/or whether they ever apologize. They are outside our hula hoop. 

Yep, we have to let it, let them, go. 

On the other side of the victim/victimizer equation, if you are the party that injured others (the victimizer, e.g. Amber Guyger), then these steps of making amends are part of your path back to wholeness. Again, I don’t confuse Brandt Jean’s forgiveness of Amber Guyger with absolution for her (or all white people—it’s definitely not that). Brandt’s graciousness is inviting Amber down a long road of reflection, restitution, and reconciliation. Amber’s admission of responsibility certainly makes it easier for Brandt to forgive her, but he likely knows he would have had to forgive her whether she asked for it or not—for the sake of his own healing. Just like so many of my friends in the AA fellowship have learned. If they didn’t want to be eaten alive, defined completely by their hurt and anger, they’d have to forgive—even the victimizers who never asked for it. 

It’s not fair. It’s not justice. It just is. 

As for Amber Guyger, she still has a long road ahead of her. But no one is irredeemable. Her jailtime and (hopefully) the inter- and intrapersonal work she will do in the future will all be part of her road to healing.  

In closing, when I see Brandt Jean embrace his brother’s killer, I see a man taking care of himself and his soul. No more, no less. It’s rarely the easy path. I admire him for taking it. I hope that, for Amber Guyger, it’s the first step to redemption. But that work will be within the exclusive domain of her and her creator, in the space of her own hula hoop.

_______________________________

[1] Jenn M. Jackson: Why Is Forgiveness Always Expected from the Black Community After Violence Occurs?; Roxane Gay: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/opinion/why-i-cant-forgive-dylann-roof.html

[2] Although many members of the AA fellowship would not claim it, I’d say that the people I have met in the rooms of AA are better “Christians” than many of the people I meet who vaingloriously claim that label for themselves.

[3] To make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

[4] “Let go and let God [handle it]” is a frequent manta in AA.

[5] That is 99.99 percent of white people, if you are wondering.

Understanding & Hope in the wake of El Paso and Dayton Shootings

This has been a hard week to choose the words, links, articles to share for a blog. I imagine so many of us are feeling overwhelmed by the coverage of the loss, the disbelief, and anger—not to mention feeling all those things. I don’t want to add to that. 

But I don’t want to be silent either. So, I’m dedicating this week’s brief to the issue of white supremacy, which has been on my mind anyway since, with the help of friends, I’ve already begun slipping copies of Reaper Moon, my novel meant to be a counter to white supremacy and white nationalism, into free lending libraries across the country. We hope to have one thousand free copies out there in this fashion over the next few months. It will be available on all online retailers the first week of September (this year). 

There is so much hurt out there this week. As a counter, I really wanted to be thorough and lean into the spiritual in this post. I’ll share examples of understanding and hope that have provided me some solace. 

First: Understanding. From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew firsthand about facing down race supremacists and how they emerge from an ecosystem of hurt and hate—a collective failure on the part of society to love. Bonhoeffer writes in Letters, Papers from Prison that the individual “supremacist” (or in his words “fool”) substitutes slogans for critical thinking while being exploited himself:  

“The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent. One feels that when talking to him, one is dealing with slogans, catchwords and the like, which have taken hold of him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil . . . reasoning is no use; facts that contradict prejudices can simply be disbelieved.” 

(I’m struck here by the themes of blindness—raised so often by Daniel Hill[1] in his anti-racism work—as well as this notion of alternative facts, a phenomenon from the past reminding us that this work is cyclical and, likely, never completed but rather constant). 

Secondly: Hope, from Christain Picciolini. Picciolini puts these concepts of transformation, reconciliation, and redemption into practice. He is a former white supremacist who works to get people OUT of the movement. This interview[2] with him is fascinating for its parallels with what Bonhoeffer wrote 75 years ago. When asked what sways people to leave these movements, Picciolini says that it is: 

“Certainly not facts. It’s very emotional. I try to take [white supremacists & neo nazis] through an emotional journey where they come to the conclusion that they’ve changed, and it’s not me telling them that they’ve changed. What I’ve found least effective is me telling them that they’re wrong, or me telling them that they need to think a certain way. Typically these people are pretty idealistic, although they’re lost, typically pretty bruised emotionally, and they have very low self-esteem . . . folks in these movements, they have their own set of facts. Two plus two equals five, so you can’t argue that two plus two equals four, even though we know that that’s the case. You have to take them through situations where they challenge themselves . . . it’s not an easy process; it’s a very, very long process.” 

Picciolini is very much against using the term “lone wolf.” He emphasizes that we need to see these people in their context (if we don’t understand someone, it’s because we don’t understand their context). He points out how supremacists are caught up in a movement they turned to as a result of loneliness and alienation. What he emphasizes is that for many supremacists, there is trauma, hurt, and deep self-hate in their stories that led them down this destructive path. They lacked positive communities in their past and must be steered towards them in the present and future. Picciolini’s approach truly sees the human even in folks who struggle to see it in others. It’s a deeply spiritual path and really, probably the best antidote to hate. As Dorothy Day once said, “Love and more love is the only solution.”  

And while it also might be controversial to say, I believe all these approaches, Bonhoeffer’s, Picciolini’s, Day’s require a certain amount of personal engagement, personal effort, and sacrifice even when it’s with people and ideas we find offensive. It is sort of the burden we’re left with to advocate for change. While I’m always one to encourage advocates to step back into the embrace of community, seeking spaces where we can recharge, I’m also struck at how this continuing engagement is the opposite of the disengagement and implied exclusion driving in the demarcation of “safe spaces” on places like college campuses—exactly the places where young people should be learning about the variety of perspectives in the world. . .even if only to fight them. While I believe we do need these spaces of safety, I don’t know if retreating from the conflict of the world in a permanent fashion will make it any “safer” for those who don’t have the privilege to retreat. 

Unfortunately, if there is one thing I’m learning, the price of fighting hate, racism, injustice is to engage it. That takes energy and engaging can leave us bruised. But if love is to be our antidote, we must remember the first ingredient of love is paying attention.[3] As Bonhoeffer, Picciolini, and Day show, the power of their approach comes from close examination and personal encounters with injustice, with flawed social structures, and with people spouting deplorable ideologies. To dismantle these things, we have to understand them. Not fair. Not easy. Not something we can do without self care and occasional retreats, but that is indeed the nature of the work. 

Be well. Be Blessed. Take care of yourselves and continue to do good work.

__________________________

[1] https://pastordanielhill.com/

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/conversation-christian-picciolini/595543/

[3] Thich Nhat Hanh

"Never Again" and the importance of Historical Analogy

By now, many of us have heard about the appalling conditions in the detention centers where Latinx migrants are being kept. If not, link here: ‘There Is a Stench’: Soiled Clothes and No Baths for Migrant Children at a Texas Center . There has also been the photo of the father and daughter downed in the Rio Grande (above) and accompanying articles like this one Perspective | We used to think photos like this could change the world. What needs to change is who we are.

Amid all this bad news, the story of Dr. Satusuki Ina stood out to me: Japanese-Americans held in U.S. internment camps to lead protest against Fort Sill child detention: "It's never too late to do the right thing" Dr. Ina was born in an internment camp for Japanese Americans in the 1940s. Internment left such an impact on her and her family that she became a professor and psychotherapist specializing in trauma. Last Saturday Dr. Ina led a group of formerly detained Japanese Americans joined by a number of Native American groups to protest plans to use Fort Sill in Oklahoma as a detention center for migrant children. In the past, Fort Sill has served as an internment site for Japanese Americans and, before that, Native Americans.

The point that historical parallels are key for interpreting the crises and injustices of today, feels especially salient not only as I read about the descendants and former detainees of Fort Sill protesting this last weekend, but also as this week I am in Nebraska on book tour talking about my grandfather’s World War Two memoir. In pulling together my grandfather’s account (and others) who fought against fascism and Nazism in the 1940s, I am struck by the parallels with our own time, with our country of today. Sadly, they’ve always been there and even some recent work has uncovered how even the Nazi’s ideas of racial supremacy and ethnic segregation were imported from the white supremacists of the United States: White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots. But what I find myself grieving today is the contrast between the heroism of the men and women of a generation that fought to end Nazism, fascism, and what they stood for, and the quagmire of inaction/division we are in today. Why does the gulf between the moral resolve and the courage of the 1940s and the 2010s feel so wide? (Not that they were perfect, FDR was putting Japanese Americans in cages and there was still legal segregation of people of color throughout the US, but there seemed to be no doubt that the Third Reich had to be defeated).

Picture taken by Gordon E. Cross, medic in the 134th Infantry Regiment of the Army National Guard while his division (the 35th, also my grandfather’s) was en-route to the Battle of the Bulge. Cross and my grandfather’s accounts are included in the book Finding St. Lo: A Memoir of War and Family link here: Ted Neill

In the work of dismantling racism, we’re often called to see beyond our “categories” our “tribes”, and our self identifying labels, to recognize the humanity in everyone, regardless of ethnicity, creed, or nationality. To bring it back to the Newsweek article, I see Dr. Ina and those joining her (Native Americans and Japanese Americans) as doing just that. The children in these concentration camps (and yes I called them concentration camps because that is what they are) may not look like Dr. Ina, but she and her protest partners see their plight as their own. Recognizing that we are all children of God, with universal humanity and universal rights, Dr. Ina and others are allowing themselves to be moved to action, their hearts to be broken, by the same things that break God’s heart too. Their courage, their moral resolve, their moral clarity, are refreshingly strong and clear. I suspect history will see them as the greatest of their generation.

Post Note: these articles on the importance of historical analogies being central to the spirit of “never again” are great reads I’ve also included Caitlyn Flannigan’s (influenced by Catholic social teachings like myself) impassioned appeal to Christians.

Opinion | ‘Never forget’ is dead. And it was killed on our watch.

Holocaust Museum's Awful Intervention In the Concentration Camp Debate

Christ in the Camps

Allies Stand in the Gap

Racism is alive and well in the United States. Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

One of this week’s news story is a sober reminder of why dismantling racism remains a priority, even in 2019.

From the May 29th edition of the Washington Post:

“Franklin and Jessica Richardson had planned for a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. They would spend Sunday picnicking on the sandy shores of Oktibbeha County Lake, a popular fishing destination on the outskirts of Starkville, Miss . . . Instead, within minutes of their arrival, the young black couple were facing down a white campground manager who pulled out a gun and told them to leave . . . The experience was made all the more harrowing — and somewhat ironic — by the fact that Franklin, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, had recently returned from a nine-month deployment in the Middle East, “It’s kind of crazy,” [Franklin Richardson said] “You go over there and don’t have a gun pointed at you, and you come back home and the first thing that happens is you have a gun pointed at you.”[1]

This is a raw example of blatant racism. It is illustrative of the constant threat violence our black brothers and sisters must always be vigilant for. The comparison to the US as being more dangerous than a war zone for African Americans a poignant and powerful.

It is also a challenge to those of us who consider ourselves allies. Caught in such a situation, there is little moral obligation upon our black brothers and sisters but to preserve their lives and flee. But what of the rest of us? For me, as despicable and repulsive as I find that white woman, as evil as I find her words, I can’t help but feel my knee-jerk instinct to shun her, to label her, to alienate her as a “racist” is only a marginal improvement over her own hate.

Do I answer hate with my own hate? Or something different? What actually would engender change?

In keeping with examples from activists such as Deeyah Khan,[2] I wonder if I might be called to swallow my indignation and at least try to engage first. Ask this woman she holds such views, why she might do such a thing. Instead of shunning her and immediately walking away, are those of us with privilege are we called to engage? To plant a seed of change?

I’d venture an emphatic YES.

It’s the harder choice, certainly. I don’t want to talk to this cruel and ignorant woman. I would never require such of my friends of color. They would be staring down the barrel of a gun. But for those of us don't have the gun pointed at us, I feel our principles require us to engage, to inquire, to speak up, on behalf of those who do. Even if it means engaging with a woman who, on the surface, comes off as morally repugnant. If I don’t, then all my “Black Lives Matter,” T-Shirts and bracelets really are just empty, trendy, virtue signaling.

And maybe I’m not going to run into this exact woman, but I think I’m safe in saying most of us have some neighbor, some relative who, although they might not chase our black friends off with a loaded gun, may harbor some archaic notions on race. I’m not saying we have to make it our life’s mission to change their minds, but I think love and commitment to justice, manifests in the difficult conversations where we confront these attitudes in whatever way will allow the most productive conversation. Maybe that is with righteous indignation (but probably not). More likely, its through humble inquiry, which takes mountains of restraint and patience. The cost to us is might be some energy, some time, and definitely some discomfort.

Where as to people of color like the Richardson’s, the cost could have been their lives.

The work continues.

____________________________________________

[1] A black couple were having a picnic. Then a white campground manager pulled out her gun.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeyah_Khan

Deeyah Khan: SHERO for our time. A message of engagement, resistance, and LOVE for Valentines Day.

When I was working for CARE in the early 2000s our CEO Dr. Helene Gayle presented us with a revised mission. Yes, we at CARE would still be a poverty fighting organization but Dr. Gayle introduced a new focus for how we would do this: an emphasis on empowering women and girls.

I was sold on day one. My own experience living and working in depressed neighborhoods in the US as well as East Africa aligned with the same facts that had influenced Dr. Gayle’s vision. Poverty, violence, illness, lack of opportunities, lack of rights, and legal protections disproportionately affect women and girls—often women and girls of color, too. Trying to address poverty while ignoring the additional barriers and vulnerabilities that half the world’s population experience because of their gender is futile.

While traveling in my career to 34 countries, I have witnessed some the abuse and indignities women suffer—my country of the US is no exception. Often the deeply entrenched chauvinism and patriarchy that benefits men like me is at the root of this. I’ve also witnessed, despite these odds, how it is frequently women who are the sheros of their families and communities. Research has shown that female caregivers are consistently more dependable stewards of social support funds than their male counterparts who are, sadly, more likely to drink or gamble money—earned and donated—away.

But at CARE, as we worked to promote and empower women, I frequently was worried that we were still only addressing half the problem. I wondered how we could make lasting change for women if we didn’t engage the men in their societies. Women’s and men’s self-concepts needed to evolve. If we didn’t do something about the deeply entrenched chauvinism and patriarchy that warps the thinking of boys so that they grow up into men who think they are entitled, who think they are better, than their female counterparts would the future be any different?

Men are half the problem and (conversely) half the solution. We need different roles to offer them, different models of masculinity.

By now the term “toxic masculinity” has entered the mainstream. In recent years I’ve been somewhat encouraged by the increasing number of books, research, and documentary films examining this phenomenon. Toxic masculinity has been a valuable way to encapsulate the beliefs and practices that men feel obliged to follow, even if these behaviors only end up being pernicious to them and those around them. The Netflix documentary, The Mask You Live In[1] is one of my favorite summaries of the challenges facing boys and young men today who are trying to chart a different course. It is also encouraging to see so many fathers, mentors, and coaches who are teaching their sons that being a man is not measured by physical strength, sexual conquest, or material wealth, but rather by our capacity to love and be loved.

Another important angle in all of this is how toxic masculinity is also in a mutually reinforcing cycle with racism and white supremacy as many commentators have pointed out.[2]

After years of asking myself, “What does it mean to be a good man?” or “What makes a good man?” I realized my own question was all wrong and reflected my own ingrained biases. I realized that the virtues I was seeking out to apply to “good men” don’t belong to only men, women, or nongendered individuals. They belong to everyone. The question is not, what makes a good man/woman. The question should be: What makes a good person? A good human.

Period.

But we have such a long way to go. Recently, after watching a smattering of commercials during a break in an NFL game (I’ve boycotted watching actual NFL games so far this year) I was reminded just how prevalent motifs of toxic masculinity are. Aside from football itself,[3] the commercials between brain-jarring plays included fast food ads with slovenly dopey men enslaved to their appetites for bacon cheeseburgers, breathless previews for pay-per-view boxing matches, and one car ad where a man is so busy playing computer games on a VR headset he doesn’t even notice his girlfriend moving out of their apartment until she slams the door and he takes off the headset to see all the furniture gone.

Enter Deeyah Khan, a shero for our time. She is a documentary film maker with a courageous approach to the issues of hate, violence, religious extremism, and white supremacy. Tired of avoiding it, avoiding the men who wanted to exterminate her and people like her, Khan decided to engage them through her art, setting out to interview them on camera. The results are two films, one focused on white supremacists and the other of Muslim extremists: White Right: Meeting the Enemy and Jihad: A Story of the Others. Both are available on Netflix.

I don’t have enough words to describe Khan’s courage to do this, as she was often threatened with violence from the men she encountered, either because she was a woman of color, or because she was a Muslim woman who resisted subjugation. Here is the link to a powerful interview with her by Vox.[4]

Now even Khan herself says that she does not recommend this approach for everyone. For members of targeted communities, doing what Khan did was risky, physically, emotionally, and psychically. Khan is the first person to say engagement, teaching others, trying to influence others, even win hearts, is something one should only engage in if they have the capacity to. It can be exhausting. So she (and I) definitely give a pass to members of oppressed communities who don’t want to spend their energy doing this type of work (especially when just BEING feels like an act of defiance). But Khan, for her part, was tired with non-engagement and in her own words she “just wanted to try something, different.”

There are parts of the interview I could only do a disservice to if I paraphrased further so I’m including Khan’s words verbatim below. Click the link in the footnotes for the full interview. It’s worth a read.

On how we can only drive out hate with love, Khan says we must:

“. . .not become hysterical, [the key is] not to dance to [extremists’] instructions, it’s to not behave how they want us to behave. They want us to become really afraid; they want us to become divided; they want us to join their ‘us and them’ thing. On a larger scale, I think we have to resist that. It’s an argument for celebrating and nurturing our diversity and nurturing our multicultural society, and our pluralism.”

Khan on what happened to one of the white supremacists (Ken) she interviewed a number of times:

“. . .he actually became friends with the pastor of a mostly black church who lived in his apartment complex. The pastor invited him and his fiancée to his church, and Ken basically stood in front of everyone there and said, “I used to be in the Klan, now I’m in a neo-Nazi organization, these are the views I hold ...”

And after he was done, people came up to him and hugged him and said, “Look, we detest what you stand for, but it takes a lot of courage for somebody like you to come in here and share what you have shared.”

That was the last straw for [Ken], where he realized that the people he hated so deeply are showing him nothing but kindness and compassion and an open heart, and are showing it to him even though he doesn’t deserve it. His whole ideology fell apart.

Mind. Blown.

Khan is definitely a shero for our time. I’m in awe. I don’t know if I have been living up to her example of courage, perseverance, radical love, and patient engagement, but I recognize two really valuable lessons here:

Lesson One: Khan’s is an example I want to emulate. I will fall short, but I’ll try.

Lesson Two: Love Wins.

[1] http://therepresentationproject.org/film/the-mask-you-live-in-film/

[2] https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/una-mullaly-toxic-masculinity-the-common-thread-in-american-hate-1.3190602

[3] American Football itself, especially the NFL, could be its own case study in toxic masculinity as well as institutional and interpersonal racism. It’s no wonder that the commercials align so closely with this, the irony being, that the men in the commercials—the obese an dreaming of cheeseburgers and the man addicted to videogames—are complicit in their own loser-dom, which (paradoxically) doesn’t seem to phase the men watching.

[4] https://www.vox.com/world/2019/1/14/18151799/extremism-white-supremacy-jihadism-deeyah-khan

Daniel Hill & White Awake Part 2

We here at the Belong Blog are BIG fans of Daniel Hill (see earlier post[1]) – so it was with real excitement that I attended his talk at Bethany Community Church on January 28th. His full talk and the panel discussion after are all available on Bethany’s website (link here[2]).

There was so much to draw from Daniel’s talk and even more from his insightful book White Awake[3]. But for me, as a white person of privilege, one of the most valuable takeaways was the insight Daniel provided in a sit-down Q&A before his talk (not on the video—sorry, but I’ll share what I learned below. Keep reading!).

A member of the Bethany’s Ministry of Racial Justice and Reconciliation Committee asked Daniel what to say to well intentioned people of privilege (often but not always white) who feel convicted and moved to become engaged, to “help,” and to DO something to fight racism.

Daniel’s answer was brilliant and although he began with an examination of white culture (particularly White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant culture) it led to some valuable insights and practices when it comes to ally-ship in general.

Daniel pointed out that often times, white people, early in their journeys of awakening and combating racism, ask “What can I DO?” As Daniel points out in his book White Awake, “DOING” is not the starting point for those of us who have likely been blinded by a lifetime of privilege. Privilege is its own sort of pernicious disadvantage as it warps our own perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world. We need to do our own work, healing even, to rid ourselves of the blindness it causes us. What Daniel calls for is a more humble approach. He urges the newly inspired to ask, not “What can I DO,” but rather “How am I SEEING,” this.

How am I SEEING this is a call for greater reflection, additional learning, and listening. What Daniel points out is that for people of WASP-y backgrounds, to “DO” something often means to SOLVE something.

And as white people, many of us have benefited from and even perpetuated racial inequality without even realizing it. We have been spiritually warped and handicapped by our own privilege. We are the last people to be leading the charge to solve racism.

But having lived in a position of privilege, with so many resources at our disposal and fewer barriers, we whites . . . well we like to DO and SOLVE. It’s the WASP-y way. To counter this, Daniel counsels newly enthusiastic white friends to slow down. He reminds them, if they want to DO something so desperately, they should remember that LISTENING, LEARNING, READING, and REFLECTING, are all actions too. Maybe they are not “SOLVING” and maybe listening, learning, reading, and reflecting don’t put us in the middle of the spotlight, but part of joining this work (as my friends in AA would say) is to “right size” yourself. Shrink your ego down and be teachable.

And this was where Daniel shared his brilliant insight on ally-ship and how he tries to check himself from being “overly” helpful (read: harmful) to the work. As a white heterosexual man of privilege, Daniel’s DEFAULT position on all this work is not to solve but to listen, learn, read, and reflect and then. . .nothing.

That’s right. Nothing else. He sticks to listening, learning, reading, and reflecting at least, until he is called and/or invited by members of the community he wishes to “help” whether it is the African American community, Latinx, Native American, etc. . . . And when the day comes that they are no longer asking him to help, well then he essentially “sits back down” to wait his turn until called again. This way, it’s the members of these communities who determine whether what Daniel has to offer has any value or merit. They are the gatekeepers, as they should be, to the work that most directly affects them. Something I admire about Daniel is that he recognizes that no matter how much of this work he engages in, no matter how much reading, listening, dialoguing, etc. . . that he does, he will never understand what it is like to be a person of color. He will never understand the psychological cost of living in a world where his humanity is under assault 24/7. Never. That is why he holds to this approach. It ensures that he does not presume to take action, make a choice, or speak to a topic that would affect people of color, without seeking them out for their input first.

It may seem, at first, to be a high bar to clear for some of us, but it is absolutely necessary.

Daniel’s is a superb model of humility. It is also a great practical checklist for folks like myself who want to join this work. If you get a chance, I’d recommend Daniel’s book and the link to his talk. I’d call him a great role model, (and he IS), but I’m sure he’d modestly point out how white supremacy and the tendency for white-centeredness is so powerful, that the focus should not be on him, but the work.

Contrast Daniel’s approach with the epic mess two prominent white males find themselves in: Liam Neeson[4] and Ralph Northam.[5] What is common to the gaffs on the part of both Neeson and Northam is that they appear to confuse transparent and honest disclosure of their “racist” thoughts/actions as exoneration and evidence of them being “woke.”

To their surprise, they have found that it’s not. Admitting you have done racist things can be transformative. It’s a first step. Perhaps that is what they had hoped to do (I’m trying to be generous here). But without sincere remorse or sufficient reflection on the why what you have said or done is harmful, disclosure like Neeson’s and Northam’s is woefully incomplete. It only reveals your flawed inner thoughts without sufficient shame. It’s probably not helping that both men, so far, are digging in and on the defensive.

Disclosure alone does not earn you a pass. Transparency does not equal an I’m-not-racist trophy. And confessions of past bigotry followed by statements of “but I’m not a racist,” – as Neeson has done – probably reads to others (it does to me) that you still have a lot of learning and listening to do. To be clear, I wouldn't go as far to say Neeson IS a racist. I can't judge that from here. But one could categorize what Neeson said and did as racist. Phrased that way, it may be easier for all of us to admit we have said and done racist things.

As for the Northam controversy, the should-or-shouldn't he resign . . . plenty of people have written on that already so I won't add to the noise. I'd rather focus on what these men might do at this point for their own personal growth. How do they become better allies after these debacles? How could any of us? What is there to learn?

My fear is that the way Neeson and Northam seemed to anticipate a that-a-boy-pat-on-the-back from the public for their honesty, may indicate a sense of entitlement in both men. This is the pernicious effect of privilege. The antidote, as Daniel Hill demonstrates, is humility. The way out of our blind spots is to be teachable. To date, neither Neeson or Northam seem to have demonstrated sufficient remorse or reflection to convince others that they have grown enough or learned enough to merit forgiveness.

I hope, in time, they will. It comes full circle, for me, highlighting Daniel Hill's more modest and measured approach. Neeson, Northam, all of us, would benefit from following his example: DO LESS. LISTEN MORE. BE TEACHABLE.

[1] https://www.tenebraypress.com/new-blog/2018/7/4/white-awake-by-daniel-hill-a-must-read

[2] https://churchbcc.sermon.net/main/DanielHill/21320745

[3] https://www.amazon.com/White-Awake-Honest-Look-Means/dp/0830843930/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1549132885&sr=8-2&keywords=daniel+hill+white+awake

[4] https://www.thedailybeast.com/liam-neeson-says-he-considered-carrying-out-a-racist-murder-after-someone-close-to-him-was-raped

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/05/yearbook-scoopster-people-are-uniting-their-hatred-ralph-northam/?utm_term=.3fec15f685ca

Self-Righteous Anger vs. Love - Humbling realizations on MLK Day

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt have recently published an important book called “The Coddling of the American Mind,” based on their 2015 article in the Atlantic by the same name. Their premise is that the vocal efforts to police language and stop all microaggressions with vigorous, vociferous correction and confrontation—most prominently on American college campuses but in other spaces as well—can have unintended negative consequences. These consequences are important for any of us engaged in the work of reconciliation, racial or otherwise.

Most notably Lukianoff and Haidt have pointed out how the hyper-focus on language, and the attribution of racist intent behind insensitive comments, has unhealthy parallels to the very cognitive distortions and logical fallacies that contribute to a rise in anxiety and increased levels of depression and mental illness amongst college students. Yes, they say, our work to counter racism can, in some cases, contribute to mental health disorders!

Now I am all for uncovering our unconscious biases. We need careful reexamination of how we can harm others, even when that is not our intent. But the work of Lukianoff and Haidt has made me realize, there have been times even I’ve veered into what they call “vindictive protectiveness.” And that is not love and it’s not productive. It’s just a pointless performance.

Lukianoff and Haidt are not bomb throwers or provocateurs. They are thoughtful researchers and professors concerned for the mental health of their students and society at large. They are urging us to foster resilience and not reinforce fragility.

Most of the time, in this work, I’m countering “white fragility.” But this concept of “vindictive protectiveness” is something different. It’s our default tendency for stridency when doing this work. It’s when, instead of thoughtfully engaging others, we sanctimoniously police their language and browbeat them. I’ve witnessed this among my allies and definitely in myself. We’re the overzealous social justice warriors and campus protestors who would counter arrogance with our own condescension, thereby we become the mirror image of the very narrow-mindedness we are aligned against.

Humbly, I’ve realized my tendency for stridency, unchecked, only serves to bolster my own fragile ego—while alienating people who are just starting off on this work. Again, that is not real love, which I know is the antidote to this. It’s just my own insecurities run amok.

In his sermon just before Christmas Eve, the senior teaching pastor at my church reminded us that our Higher Power (God) never promises to hermetically seal us away from suffering. I came to recognize my own efforts over-protect and over-police others whom I perceived as less “woke” than me, rested on the very ungodly assumption that we could create a zone absolutely free of offense and a life free of suffering. I can’t do this or even promise this. No one can.

I don’t claim to know where the perfect balance between constructive dialogue that leads to helpful correction and overreaction that just leads to digging in is . . . but I’m aware I’ve erred on the side of the latter at times and need to course-correct.

This year I’m trying to reign in my self-righteous anger. Anger can be good, it can lead to social change, but it also can be self-indulgent and smug. I can’t make that choice for others, but I can make it for me. Half the time when I let myself get too publicly spun up, I’m engaging in a sort of self-righteous display to flaunt my credibility to others (virtue signaling[1] or slacktivism[2] as some sociologists call it). The risk I run with that, is that my performance of outrage will alienate people taking their first steps in this work (and, moreover, I’ll look like a fool).

The link to the article by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is below. It’s a good read and certainly moved me into new places of reflection and started some great discussions in my own circles on how to approach the work of living and realizing MLK’s Beloved Community.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

[1] The action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue e.g. "It's remarkable how often virtue signaling consists of saying you hate things." (Wikipedia)

[2] A pejorative term for "feel-good" measures in support of an issue or social cause. Slacktivism is showing support for a cause with the main purpose of boosting the egos of participants in the movement. The action may have little effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfied that they have contributed. The underlying assumption being promoted by the term is that these low-cost efforts substitute for more substantive actions rather than supplementing them. (Wikipedia)

If you can't spread your gospel without the receipients dying. . .then don't.

Last month an American missionary John Allen Chau, 26, of Vancouver, Washington (pictured above lower left) was killed by members of the Sentinelese tribe as he landed on the beach of their remote island in an effort to “convert” them to Christianity.

This is one of those blogposts wherein I want to pay my respects to the family and friends of the deceased and recognize the loss they are suffering as well as the intense emotional pain they have endured. I don’t wish this loss on anyone.

It’s for the very same reason that I also feel deep frustration at what this young man was trying to do, no less in the name of a faith—which I practice—whose central principle is love. Although Chau may have had good intentions, his actions were frightfully misguided and misaligned with the beliefs he professed.

I’ve been to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. I was there working for CARE as part of the rebuilding efforts after the devastating 2004 tsunami. The Sentinelese are not the only isolated tribe in this island chain. The Jarawa are another and they were not so “lucky” to be isolated on a tiny island of their own.

The Jarawa did their best to avoid contact with outsiders, for centuries. However, as India took a greater interest in the island chain, especially because its strategic importance just off the coast of Myanmar, contact became harder to avoid. With the completion of the “Great” Andaman Trunk Road through the Jarawa’s territory in the 1970s, more frequent contact became inevitable.

The Jarawa suffered for it.

As a tribe, isolated for centuries, the Jarawa have no immunity to many of the diseases we carry. Measles and flu can be fatal for them—as they were along with small pox for so many Native Americans. Aside from the disease outbreaks (which become an immediate threat to life after every incident of outside contact) the socio-cultural impact of contact can have similar effects on indigenous people. This leads to the collapse of traditional social structures. In the eighteenth century, different waves of colonial occupiers (British and Japanese) tried to exterminate the Jarawa population through the introduction of alcohol and opium and encouraging overuse. This at all different from the introduction of alcohol and the “gifting” of small pox infected blankets by the US government to Native Americans in the nineteenth century. It was nothing less than a conscious attempt at genocide.

Substance abuse is still a threat today among the Jarawa. I saw this first hand and I witnessed the heart-breaking impact of the Andaman Trunk Road on the Jarawa’s way of life. From the window of my white Land Cruiser, that ubiquitous vehicle of international NGOs everywhere, I saw Jarawa teens stumbling around jetties at ferry crossings, mothers begging for handouts from passing vehicles, and children playing with trash discarded on the side of the trunk road. I saw just over 20 Jarawa during my trip through Andaman-Nicobar. Considering that their numbers are estimated to be around 270 surviving individuals, I realized that I had “seen” nearly 10 percent of their total population.

Human rights groups have called for the closure of the trunk road for decades. A Supreme Court ban against “human safaris” has been implemented and then lifted, amid controversy, in 2013. Today, Survival International reports that hundreds of people travel along the truck road daily, many throwing biscuits at Jarawa in hopes of making them dance for pictures.[1]

Witnessing what I did along the trunk road led me to openly question within CARE whether or not it was even right for CARE to help Indian nationals rebuild their homes and schools after the tsunami, especially in light of the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling that the encroachment of the trunk road on the Jarawa land was unconstitutional and human rights activists calling for its closure. (To my knowledge this was never honored and CARE India continued to work in the region years after, despite a stated commitment in their founding principles to respect and protect indigenous people).

All this brings me to Chau, this young American missionary who decided to try to land on Sentinel Island.

Anyone who visits the region will hear about Sentinel Island and how it is completely isolated. After the 2004 tsunami, when helicopters flew close to the island to investigate if any of the people needed “help,” warriors emerged from the forest shooting arrows and throwing spears as if to say, “We’re doing just fine, thank you. Please take your help/interference and bug off.”

Today, the regional and national governments have done their best to honor this. Sentinel Island is off limits by Indian law. It’s common knowledge that outside contact with these tribes can lead to huge disease outbreaks, loss of life, and possible destruction of their entire society.

So why did this young man want to make contact?

For Jesus.

We’re told, by the words of Mr. Chau’s own journal, that as he set foot on the beach he cried out, “My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you.”

I read these words and cringe. As an American and a Christian, I feel shame at the peril Mr. Chau’s actions posed to these people. And for whose benefit? I feel that deeper introspection, self-reflection, or better spiritual mentoring might have revealed to Mr. Chau that his efforts were more about his own gratification than the benefit of these people—whose death sentences he was signing by setting foot on that beach.

There is simply no doubt that prolonged contact and Chau’s presence on that island would have led to the deaths of people. So I’m a little gob smacked that he would attempt it, especially as a follower of a faith based on love for others. It’s misguided at best, selfish at worst. While it feels callous to be writing these words so shortly after news of Chau’s death, as his family is experiencing a sorrowful holiday season facing an empty place at the table, and contemplating many more. But I feel like we also have to point out the even more massive loss of life that would have ensued had the Sentinelese not defended themselves.

What choice did Mr. Chau leave them but to use force to turn him away? I’m pretty sure the Jesus Chau claims to follow would not want to kill the Sentinelese with disease or threaten their civilization with collapse. Not in His name. In Matthew 10:14 Jesus even cautions against converting people against their will and encourages his disciples to move on and find more receptive listeners, listeners you don’t have to force to listen—as such coercion is antithetical to the spirit of the gospel.

So we’re left with this tragedy. A young man, with an earnest heart and good intentions, is dead. His family and community are in mourning.

This is not the first time I’ve felt this toxic mix of emotions: horror, anger, sorrow, shame. As I have described in my memoir Two Years of Wonder, in 2003 I was working for an NGO focused on pediatric HIV/AIDS in Nairobi. We had set up a mobile clinic in an impoverished slum in Nairobi and were immediately flooded with patients. The line was out the door while a volunteer doctor from the UK worked tirelessly to administer what care he could to people who otherwise had no other access to health care. We could not even provide the patients much privacy. We examined them in a classroom with dirty floor and without curtains while other anxious patients waited in child sized chairs against the walls.

Our nurse that day was an American missionary, driven by kindness, compassion, and her need to bring Jesus into people’s lives. When there was a break between patients the nurse asked me if she could try to “convert” some of the people while they waited. She opened a bag and showed me a clutch of Bibles she had brought for parents and toys for children. I was shocked. According to the demographics of Kenya, and personal experience, I knew most of our patients were already Christian. But what struck me most was the coercive nature of the conversion and her obliviousness to it. Here was the only medical attention these people could receive. Some of them were seriously ill. Some of their children were dying. I imagined they would tell us they believed in Baal, Zeus, or Thor, if we—the ones holding power over their health and their children’s health—asked them to.

I would say and do a lot of outrageous things if the only doctor available to treat my child asked me to.

I said “no” to the kind nurse. Whenever we are presenting others with a choice between “Christ” or death, or (in Chau’s case) Christ and death, it doesn’t seem to be an action grounded in a message of love in the least. Chau might not have known the risk he posed to the Sentinelese, but if he had done his homework, he would have. To what extent his earnest faith and zeal for helping others overrule knowledge and good judgment? How often do we see other Christian’s acting in similar ways? How often do we?

And this is where Chau’s actions on that beach feel so personal for me. As someone who was raised Christian, who is a deacon in a Christian church, I’m horrified at what some people are willing to do, what people are willing to risk, in the name of the spiritual teacher and moral genius—Jesus—whom I attempt to follow. This is compounded by the fact that both these instances I’ve shared (and as often is the case) the perpetrators are Americans and this is another identity that is deeply meaningful and personal to me.

So the coercive conversion of oppressed, impoverished, vulnerable people, I hope, will never be done in my name (and I’m fairly certain the Jesus I’ve read about wouldn’t want it in His name either). And if He truly is God, as Christian’s believe, I’m willing to believe He can orchestrate a way to get the gospel to the Sentinelese without decimating their population with disease.

Furthermore, this flagrant disregard for the rights and lives of others that I see all too often among “Christian” missionaries, is powerfully linked to a cultural and national arrogance that is endemic in the west. I feel remiss in not calling it out, criticizing, even condemning it from within, in hopes that it will stop. It must.

I can’t help but ask where were the leaders in Chau’s faith community, “The Way,” or his associates at Oral Roberts University? Isn’t it the role of elders in a faith community to speak wisdom to young people such as Chau, whose misguided impulses could otherwise cause serious harm to themselves and others? My wish is that this tragedy prompts deep and honest self-reflection and humility among those who counseled him. I pray his death does not inspire copy-cats who endeavor to go out and complete his “mission.” We should do everything we can to prevent another tragedy like this. No one should come to the end that Chau did and no family should have to bear such a tremendous loss of a young man who, despite making a poor choice, had so much life to offer the world.

I imagine some readers might counter, in sincerity, “What of the Sentinelese? What if they live their whole lives without hearing the name of Jesus? What if they are not ‘saved?’”

While I admire your piety, I’d answer that by leaving the Sentilese alone—which is obviously their preference—they will remain protected from influenza, measles, and pertussis. Given the choice, I certainly would prefer this outcome for myself. As for the Sentinelese people’s souls, I’m inclined to reference one of the pastors at my church who recently posed the same question in respect to a hypothetical Tibetan shepherd. His answer: “We always want to know ‘who is in, who is out, who is saved, who is not.’ It’s such a western question. How about this: it’s none of our business.”

In other words, if you believe in an all knowing, all powerful, all seeing God, who exists outside of time, well, He, She, It (whatever you want to call your deity) can sort it out. That question is above our pay grade, so we can relax. As my friends in AA say, “Let go and let God."

So consider, if you can’t spread your “gospel” without the recipients dying, then don’t. Please reflect on the fact that your methods might invalidate your message.

[1] https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/9008

Allowing Ourselves to be Transformed by the Stories of Others

A friend of mine recently said, “I miss the people of September 12, 2001.” She quickly pointed out she DID NOT want another 9/11. But in context of the deep divisions in our country right now, what she missed was the solidarity among Americans the day after 9/11, when there was not the factionalism and tribalism we see now. “Where are those people?” she lamented. “I know they are still out there.” 

I thought of her words when I came across the op-ed in the Washington Post this week by Chesley B. 'Sully' Sullenberger III, the airline captain who successfully made an emergency landing on the Hudson river January 15, 2009 saving 155 lives with the help of his crew. Link to the op-ed below.[1]  

Captain “Sully” poses a similar quandry as my friend, albeit in terms more familiar to military officers and leadership consultants. He asks where our “unit cohesion” has gone and points out that when a team, army, or community loses such cohesion, defeat and dissolution quickly follows. He goes on to say that as a country, [W]e are in a struggle for who and what we are as a people . . . The fabric of our nation is under attack.”

Both these observations take me back to a dinner I attended New Year’s Eve, 2001. As the final hours of a traumatic year ticked down, the meal, of course, turned to the tragedy still fresh on everyone’s mind. One relative at the table expressed his desire for a more aggressive stance on terrorism, insisting upon an eye for an eye approach. He asked those of us seated around the table, “If someone broke into your house, shot your family, wouldn’t you want to go out, find them, and shoot them back? Wouldn’t you be justified?”

My father was at that dinner—a former Catholic priest, retired federal judge, and my lifelong spiritual mentor. Dad answered him, “Well, yes, I probably would want that, but whether or not it would be ‘justified,’ who am I to say? That is why I, as an aggrieved party, should not be judge, jury, and executioner. I think—I hope—I would first try to understand why this person committed this act of violence against me and my family. Was it a case of mistaken identity? Was someone holding his family hostage, someone with a grudge against me, or whom I had wronged? I think I’d like to know all this before I contributed to perpetuating the cycle of violence.”

It was my father’s piety and his time as a priest, traveling to some of the poorest parts of the world that inspired me to move to Kenya and live and work at an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS in 2002—the story I chronicle in my memoir Two Years of Wonder. I left on that trip with my own biases, prejudices, and presuppositions. But I think my dad’s words December of 2001, planted a seed whether I knew it or not. Because in the subsequent years in Kenya and in a myriad of other countries after, I learned that the story was never about me. Reflecting on only myself, as a writer and as an activist, just leads to navel gazing, solipsism, and shitty writing.

The real story (or stories), were the stories of the people I met. The children I met while at the orphanage, not to mention the friends I made in rehab years later: the “junkies” and “drunks” who poured love and wisdom into me when the suffering and deaths of the children I witnessed in Kenya brought me close to suicide.

What does any of this have to do with today’s news cycle?

I’d say, everything.

I’ve seen wall to wall coverage of this migrant caravan in the past weeks leading up to this midterm election. I’ve listened to the breathless commentary from news hosts speculating about the “diseases” these people carry into our country. Consistently, in television coverage I see wide angled aerial shots, from helicopters or drones, showing the column of people moving north. Inevitably this leads the “migrant caravan” to be treated as a monolith. Individuals are lost in that river of bodies and when that happens, we can’t hear their stories.

And it’s those individual stories—I know this from experience—will transform us.

Some journalists have endeavored to cover the people, the individuals. Those profiles, those people, their stories stand out to me. There is José Luis Hernández, who, as Jonathan Blitzer points out in the New Yorker: “[T]ried three times to come to the United States. When he was sixteen, after gangsters in Honduras threatened to kill him, he made the trip with two other boys, but they were attacked by extortionists at the Mexican border, robbed, and eventually apprehended by Mexican authorities . . . Two years later, he undertook the journey again, this this time with a slightly larger group. In Mexico, he fell from a moving freight train and lost an arm, half of one leg, and part of his left hand. Once more he was deported to Honduras. When he finally left the hospital, after a two-year recovery, Hernández began planning another trip . . . In 2015, he joined a group of disabled Honduran asylum seekers who called themselves the Caravan of the Mutilated, and together they reached Texas.”[2]

There is the story of Chantal and Stefani, as profiled by CNN. Chantal, from Honduras, and Stephani from El Salvador both identify as transgender. As such, they face high rates of violence and persecution in many Latin American countries. They are traveling north in search of safety, as well as jobs as climate change (an overlooked actor in all this) has altered the labor landscape throughout Latin America. 

In the same CNN story we encounter Iris, a twenty-one-year-old woman fleeing violence and endemic poverty with her siblings, nephews, and nieces, who rest by the side of the road with her sleeping or playing with dirty stuffed animals.[3] Iris said she would take the first job available that she could find in the States. The risk of being captured by sex traffickers in transit (a real risk to women her age[4]) does not deter her.

A caravan is a thing. As such it can be painted into something threatening, a menace that we can project our deepest fears and insecurities onto to. But seeing these people as a threat is akin to that relative of mine at the dinner table New Year’s Eve 2001, the one who proffered that he would be justified executing his hypothetical home invader. Judge, jury, and executioner.But I feel compelled to try to live up to my father’s proposal: to understand, to comprehend, before I act. This was all the more striking to me since my father actually was a federal judge. His forbearance makes sense though. After all, lives are at stake. It’s only when we draw in closer, take the time to read profiles like the ones in the New Yorker and CNN that the humanity of Jose, Chantal, Stefani, and Iris comes through. These are not some abstract home invaders. They are human beings. As Emmanuel Lévinas, a Jewish philosopher once said, the only thing we are ever converted by is “the face of the other.”[5] The stories of others will transform us. If we let them.  

This was what I learned Kenya and it was, ultimately, why it is the children’s stories that make up the lion share of Two Years of Wonder, not my own.  

What is hardest for me to comprehend is that embracing the unknown was once such a defining feature of the American character. “The US is a country of immigrants,” teachers told us in school. “A place for every culture, creed, and ethnicity. Where everyone has a voice.” America (supposedly) is (was?) a country that pushes against boundaries and barriers, whether it was reaching the Moon or Mars, or diving into the realms of science, math, engineering and the arts. Innovation, exploration are supposed to be in our national DNA. But we can’t take a step towards either without facing and embracing the unknown, trying to comprehend what we don’t understand, even if what we don’t comprehend is another human being. That said, with their souls and our own at stake, isn’t the imperative that much greater to comprehend, to understand, to not shy away from the unknown, the unfamiliar, the alien? 

I think my father realized that, seventeen years ago, on New Year’s Eve. 

So today, in November 2018, on the eve of another divisive election, as we’re challenged to choose between fear or facts, ignorance or understanding, I DO wonder, where are the people of September 12, 2001? Did they all turn into my relative who wanted to chase down “invaders” with their guns? Or are they people like my father, who seeks understanding even today as he asks “Why are these people in the caravan migrating in the first place? What can we learn from their stories?” I learned in my travels that these questions, inevitably, lead us down a path of compassion and transformation.  

That is a place I would rather make my destination.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-saved-155-lives-on-the-hudson-now-lets-vote-for-leaders-wholl-protect-us-all/2018/10/29/554fd0e6-d87c-11e8-a10f-b51546b10756_story.html?utm_term=.af3835b48f67

 [2] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-the-trump-white-house-is-having-a-meltdown-over-the-migrant-caravan

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/28/americas/migrant-caravan-profiles/index.html

[4] https://iwantrest.com/blog/

[5] Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Lévinas, ed. Jill Robibns (Stanford University Press: 2001)