The line dividing good and evil

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

My first job out of college over 30 years ago was as a counselor in a residential program for chemically addicted teenagers. I had lived an extremely sheltered life as a "good girl" and trained to be a teacher. When I graduated, there were no teaching jobs available. This one came along, so I took it. I didn't have to wait very long to learn I was in way over my head.

The kids in the program lived there for 6 months. During the first few weeks, we didn't see their families at all. After that, they joined us once a week for family therapy groups. I still remember one young man in the program who told me his story during those first few weeks. The abuse he had suffered at the hands of his mother was horrific. In some ways I dreaded meeting her. In other ways, I was anxious to do so and give her a piece of my mind.

I'll never forget what happened when I finally got that opportunity. I interviewed her privately before the group session and heard her story. The terrible things she had done to her son paled in comparison to what had been done to her as a child. My heart broke as she cried with me and I realized that she had actually come a long way in her life and was trying to do her best as a mother.

That experience early on in my career laid the groundwork for me in many ways both professionally and personally. I guess the old adage about never judging someone until you've had a chance to walk in their shoes sort of sums it up. I've found that no matter how evil someone has been in this life, if they're willing to honestly tell you their story...it all begins to make sense.

That doesn't mean I think we should excuse people for their behavior. When dealing with the mother I referred to above, we were all very clear with her that she was to NEVER hurt a child in any way ever again. And she was in the midst of paying the consequences for her actions. But when I heard her story - I felt a human connection with her and the compassion that comes from knowing that in her place, I might very well have behaved the same way.

I have recently been having similar questions since the Republican Convention was here in my town and I saw the way security was handled. The problem for me was that many of the people involved in all of that...the Mayor, the Police Chief, the Sheriff, the City Attorney, and the President of the City Council...are all people I have known for over 20 years. I consider most of them my friends. Beyond that, I know them well enough to know they are good people. But they were all involved in doing something that was horrific to me.

So I end up asking myself alot of questions about human beings and human nature...our capacity for good and evil. And I wonder about my own capacity for the later in all its many and varied forms. We are always much more adept at seeing it in others than we are at seeing it in ourselves.

As Solzhenitsyn says, there is no such thing as an evil "them" to be banished from our midst. If we're going to get rid of or reduce evil in the world, we're going to have to find a way to sort it out in our own hearts.

Writing while black

From The Field Negro this week, we learn the story of Fatimah Ali, a writer with the Philadelphia Daily News.

On September 2nd, Ms. Ali wrote a column titled We need Obama, not 4 more years of George Bush. In it she laid out the case that McCain and the Republicans will continue to deepen the divide between the haves and the have-nots in this country.

AMERICA is on the brink of a long, harsh and bitterly cold winter, with a looming recession that the GOP won't even admit to.

The policies of the current White House have brutalized our economy, yet the wealthiest think that everything is fine.

Rich Republicans just don't understand that millions are suffering. But many of their working class do, and they're beginning to abandon their own party.

After laying out the different economic focus of each candidate running for President, she says this.

If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness - and hopelessness!

Plenty of Americans would rather stay in their dream state than to recognize the poverty sweeping across the country, right here, right now.

Matt Drudge picked up on the column and headlined his link "Philadelphia columnist warns if McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race war."

Of course he missed the whole point of her article and its focus on class instead of race. But his business is to inflame, not inform. And inflame he did. As a result of his headline, Ms. Ali was the recipient of all the hate Drudge knew he would stir up. She gives us a few of the more mild examples from the over 2000 she received in a follow-up column titled 'Race War' in America.

Pleeeeease bring it, we'll extinguish you.

I'd rather have an all out war than have [Obama] for president.

There will be race wars either way. Why? Because he's black.

I just realized after I saw your last name you're a damn rag head. You stupid S.O.B.'s want to take us back to the seventh century.

Syndicated talker Jim Quinn wondered if I'm some "liberal black Muslim" and (according to MediaWatch.org) fumed, "Get an American name if you want to be an American."

What struck me about all this is not the awareness that outright bigotry is alive and well in this country. If we don't know that, we're living with our heads in the sand. And Matt Drudge is a magnet for folks like that.

I think about what it means to be a person of color - especially one with a non-western name - in this country, and the reality that at any moment, words that would be dismissed as harmless if spoken by a white person become grounds for this kind of attack. Just as young black men need to be wary about "driving while black," columnists like Fatimah Ali need to be aware of what it means to be "writing while black." That is as much the legacy of racism as the words/actions of ignorant bigots.

The next layer

One of the things I value most in life is onoing growth and learning. I don't know if its genetic or learned, but there's nothing that I dislike more than stasis. This leads me to an almost knee-jerk reaction to conventional wisdom. There are certainly times that convention proves to be wise, but I almost always need to ask questions and learn why.

Over the course of my life, that has led to a kind of slow burn rebellion rather than the burst that I've seen so often when young people reject the status quo and/or authority. Perhaps I never had the courage to just outright rebel, but I think its also linked to not wanting to let go without really understanding where I'm heading as an alternative.

Questions that are easily solved or answered don't interest me that much. But when understanding or learning is more like peeling back the layers of an onion a little bit at a time...that's when I tend to get truly engaged.

A few years ago a friend of mine went to Russia. She brought back a set of nesting dolls as a gift. Little did she know that toys like this were my absolute favorite as a child...opening one to find a smaller one in side over and over again.



For years now, a topic that has provided fertile ground for this kind of peeling and learning in my life has been racism, or my own white privilege. What I have found is that once a part of it is observed and understood, another layer emerges for exploration.

For example, just last week I was talking with a young Latino man about some of my recent struggles with racism. Comparing his reactions to mine, I could see that I approached it all with an assumption about my role in the world that says I can fix anything that's wrong...including racism. It was clear that he's lived this issue so much longer and more deeply than I have that his reactions were completely different than mine. Sure, he validated that when I see things that are racist in nature, it is my obligation to stand up and do what I can to make changes. But he also recognized that if people can't hear, you move on to a place where that is a possibility. You let go. His was definitely not the voice of resignation to the status quo. It was the voice of experience in the world with what it means to be "other."

It reminded me of something Nezua wrote at The Unapologetic Mexican in his post titled The Skin of My Soul.

Mi novia says that it really frustrates White people that no matter how much they know or want to know, there may be an area of experience or knowledge that they cannot access. Bingo, Gringo.

This is another way of saying White Privilege....

The voice of privilege thinks no seat is unavailable, no land unconquerable, no food untasteable, no right deniable, no experience out of reach.

And then there's Jay Elias' sig line that really knocked me out recently. It's a quote from H.L. Menken.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it.

Doesn't that get to the heart of what US exceptionalism is all about? And isn't US exceptionalism just white privilege writ large? We know what's best for the world and we'll fix it for you. Oh, and since that's the case, of course you won't mind that we're in charge.

All that took me to one of my favorite passages in Alice Walker's book The Color Purple. Its a conversation that takes place between Celie and Mr.___ towards the end of the book when they have reconciled as friends.

Anyhow, he say, you know how it is. You ast yourself one question, it will lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period.

So what you think? I ast.

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.

So I'm wresting a bit these days with all of that. I'm still busy asking questions. But I'm also trying to figure out what it means to experience the "wonder" that lives in them and to accept the fact that I'm not likely to always find the answers. But most of all, I'm trying to find that fine line between wanting to contribute to making things better and the seductive slide into savior mode. It's the next layer of this fascinating journey.

Sunday morning poetry and music

As I sit to try and write something for this morning, I realize that rather than having anything meaningful to share, I'm needing some nourishment myself. I've spent alot of time this week watching the convention and thinking about electoral politics. And as Nightprowlkitty and Jay Elias so beautifully captured - some of us have experienced a journey between head and heart...and it has been draining for me.

In addition to that, we know that Gustav is bearing down on the Gulf Coast. That not only brings concerns about the welfare of people who are most vulnerable in that region, it rekindles memories of all the horrors of Katrina.

Finally, I am deeply disappointed already in the gestapo-like tactics my city seems to be employing to deal with potential protesters at the RNC. Due to the nature of my work over the last 20 years, many of the people involved in the city, law enforcement, and courts are friends of mine. I had hoped that they and my home town would rise above what we have seen from other cities in the past. I know its happened before, but this time its personal for me.

All these things combine to leave me feeling a bit empty this morning. So I thought that perhaps the best thing I could do is to try to fill myself up with music and poetry. While I'm at it - I'll share it with you.

Here's one from Marge Piercy.

A just anger

Anger shines through me.
Anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush.
My rage is a cloud of flame.
My rage is a cloud of flame
in which I walk
seeking justice
like a precipice.
How the streets
of the iron city
flicker, flicker,
and the dirty air
fumes.
Anger storms
between me and things,
transfiguring,
transfiguring.
A good anger acted upon
is beautiful as lightning
and swift with power.
A good anger swallowed,
a good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime.

And here's David Whyte.

Imagine My Surprise

Imagine my surprise;
sitting a full hour
in silent and irremediable
fear of the world,

to find the body
forgetting
its own fear the instant
it opened and placed
those unassuming hands
on life's enduring pain,

and the world for one
moment
closed its terrifying eyes
in gratitude.

Saying,
"This is my body, I am found."

And finally, one from Mary Oliver.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Ovarian Lottery

Seems that some enterprising reporters have managed to find Barack Obama's half brother in Kenya.

The Italian edition of Vanity Fair said that it had found George Hussein Onyango Obama living in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate's half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender.

"No-one knows who I am," he told the magazine, before claiming: "I live here on less than a dollar a month."

I'm sure that if the MSM really picks up on this, we'll see all kinds of stories insinuating that it is Barack's responsibility/fault that his half-brother lives in these kinds of conditions. I doubt, however, that many reporters and pundits would take the perspective of kyledeb from Citizen Orange - even though I think he got it just about right.

I think a huge part of what motivates me to develop myself as a global citizen is the following: at least one of every two children that is born into the world today lives in conditions that those reading this can't even imagine. Half the world lives on under $2 a day, and it's a world that people with access to a computer can't hope to relate to.

It would be a lot easier for me to live in this world if I believed half the world deserved that fate. It would be a lot easier for me to live in this world everyone has a chance at success. I know the truth, though. The truth is success and privilege has more to do with chance than ability. I've known to many good, hard-working people that have landed on the wrong side of chance to believe otherwise. Their only sins are the circumstances they were born into.

My thought is that Barack Obama is no more and no less responsible for the plight of his half brother than I am. As kyledeb points out, the lives of these two men clearly demonstrate what Warren Buffet calls The Ovarian Lottery.

The world is unfair, and I have been very lucky. I was born white - and male - in the world's richest country, to parents that took care of me, and inspired me. I could, for example, have been born a woman - in Bangladesh - with few possibilities of development. It's a big lottery.

From this vantage point, I have something in common with Barack Obama that is very fundamental to the paths that our lives have taken. I was born white and female in an upper middle class family where my success in life was never doubted. That's not to say that I haven't struggled in life or that I have not faced barriers. But ultimately, most of the doors I contemplated passing through were fairly easily opened. I don't feel guilty about that - guilt is a waste of energy. What I do feel is the need to remember the fact that I was a "winner" in the lottery and to embrace that with humility and gratitude.

If you keep your food in a refrigerator, your clothes in a closet
if you have a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head,
You are richer than 75% of the world's population.

Saying goodbye to comfort

For years, my co-worker Mary and I have gone to the same Chinese buffet every Thursday for our weekly lunch meeting. One day, another co-worker teased us about being in a rut. When we came back at him with the fact that he has lunch every Monday at Subway, he said, "Oh, that's not a rut, its a tradition."



I think traditions are important for all of us as human beings. And for me, there are certain things (like where I go for lunch) that are much more easily decided by being in a rut than they are by having to devote alot of time and attention to them on a regular basis.

On the other hand, those I work with also tend to refer to me as a "change junkie." I've often thought that my addiction to change is a result of the fact that from birth to my 30's I moved across this country 8 times and overseas twice. Its kind of hard to get in much of a rut when you're constantly facing the challenge of "starting over." So, being in a leadership position at work, I've had to learn to be more sensitive to people for whom the kind of change I've grown accustomed causes a tremendous amount of stress. And there are times I'm envious of those who, when they go home to visit their parents, sleep in the same room they grew up in. There is certainly a place for constancy as well as for change.

But I would guess that most of us blog and engage in activism because we feel strongly about the need for change in our politics and culture. The ruts we find ourselves in are unbearable and unsustainable. And for some of us, Gandhi's words "be the change you want to see" are the cornerstone of how to make that happen. But the challenge of when to hold on to someone/something and when to let go is difficult and is often impacted by our discomfort with change.

What is it that makes change so difficult?

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another.

Anatole France

Unless you are prepared to give up something valuable you will never be able to truly change at all, because you'll be forever in the control of things you can't give up.

Andy Law

For me, change means that you have to be willing to embrace the grief process of letting go of the people/beliefs/things of the present. We usually don't do that unless the present has become so unbearable that we're willing to live with the grief of saying goodbye. It also means being willing to risk the fact that the change we move towards might turn out to be better, worse, or more of the same. Most of the time we really have little information on what the outcome of change will be.

All of this makes staying in the same place a whole lot easier than changing - until that place becomes more uncomfortable than the process of change. The uncomfortability of our current situation is certainly motivating more folks to be ready to step out of their ruts and prepare for change. As that happens, I think we can expect alot of uncertainty in the air and alot of grief over the goodbyes that will need to be said.

CHANGE

If you knew that you would die today
If you saw the face of God and Love
Would you change?
Would you change?
If you knew that love can break your heart
When you're down so low you cannot fall
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect
Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you forgive and forget
Makes you change
Makes you change

If you knew that you would be alone
Knowing right being wrong
Would you change?
Would you change?
If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings a pain that can't be soothed
Would you change?
Would you change?

Are you so upright you can't be bent
if it comes to blows
Are you so sure you won't be crawling
If not for the good why risk falling
Why risk falling

If everything you think you know
Makes your life unbearable
Would you change?
Would you change?
If you'd broken every rule and vow
And hard times come to bring you down
Would you change?
Would you change?

What does it mean to be "an American?"

I think its wonderful news from Beijing about Henry Cejudo winning the gold medal in freestyle wrestling. In case you haven't heard his story, his mother raised he and his six siblings in the US after coming here from Mexico as an undocumented migrant at the age of 14.

By Henry Cejudo's count, they moved at least 50 times. Sometimes they moved across state lines: California, New Mexico, Arizona. Sometimes they moved downstairs in the same apartment building.

Sometimes Henry's mom and his six siblings didn't even bother unpacking their bags.

Yet no matter where they were at the moment, no matter how many places they lived, Nelly Rico's message didn't change.

"My mom would always say, 'Whatever you want to do, you can do. You want to be an astronaut? You can be an astronaut. You want to be a doctor? You can be a doctor.'"

With tears streaming down his face following his victory Tuesday over Japan's Tomohiro Matsunaga in the 121-pound freestyle wrestling final, Cejudo, Olympic gold medalist and U.S. citizen, said softly, "This is what I always wanted."

The 21-year-old son of illegal immigrants from Mexico pinched himself as he stood on the podium and the U.S. flag was raised during the national anthem. He had dreamed about this so many nights, he wanted to make sure the moment was real.

"I am living the American dream right now," Cejudo said.

But to the nativists in this country, Henry is what they call an anchor baby and their goal is to change the 14th Amendment (ratified in 1858) to the Constitution so that he would not be a US citizen. I don't know about you, but I'd say these folks are wrong and that Henry and his mother Nelly represent everything we want folks in this country to stand for. His words echo those of almost every generation of immigrants to this country - no matter their place of origin.

But its about more than that. I took a look over at freeperville to see what they are saying about all this. One comment stood out to me:

So, um, when the last WASP leaves L.A. - sometime in 2010, at the rate we're going - and Joe Arpaio is frog marched out of Phoenix in 2020 by Mestizo warriors - will you call the remaining people "Americans"? Simply because they managed to occupy the land?

If so, then is invasion just another civil right?

The ignorance in a statement like that is breathtaking, given that it was the United States that invaded and took land from Henry and Nelly's ancestors back in the 1840's during the Mexican-American War in our obsession with Manifest Destiny.

As the debate about immigration continues to brew in this country, I think its important for us to remember history and to think about how these lines on our maps were drawn. Lets at least be informed about who were the "invaders" and "occupiers."

Of course, its also important to remember people like Henry and Nelly.