So what’s a progressive spirit to do?
by: Dave Belden on July 30th, 2009 | 18 Comments »
The term “spiritual progressive” is problematic for various reasons, not least that some think one is claiming to be more spiritual than thou rather than aspiring to bring a deeper sense of life’s meaning into political struggle. Others object that “spiritual” is too, well, spiritual. But that’s on the surface.
The reality is even more problematic. How do we, in practice, put together these two aspects of our lives, the spiritual and political? The vision of something like the Network of Spiritual Progressives is one thing, the reality of what its members do and think, another.
I just posted two items laying out what a mess we are in in our national politics, as if we didn’t know. And I’m writing from California, a state going bankrupt, cutting all kinds of critical programs for the poor, the sick, children and the elderly, while today we hear the Governator has insisted on keeping in the construction of a new death row at San Quentin.
Often the “spiritual” is a response to that kind of news that’s the dead opposite of the “political.” We throw up our hands in disgust at politics. To save ourselves from going completely cynical, or despairing, we find solace in prayer, meditation, hiking or whatever practice we have to connect ourselves with life; and we do the things for people we know will have an effect, the very local things of caring for each other at home and work, maybe keeping a soup kitchen or congregation going; or we go back to square one to learn the skills of listening and dialogue with people with whom we vehemently disagree; or we skip the quick high carbon fix (car to grocery store?) and go to more time-consuming low carbon alternative (vegetable patch in yard, bike to work. install solar panels).
Many political people who strove to change the world in big ways have learned through burnout that they have to cultivate their spirit in these kinds of private and very local ways. We know that if everyone cared for each other, the world would change. People like to say these local things are the only way the world changes, but we know that isn’t true: we have read our history, we know what a difference slavery abolition made, factory reform, universal suffrage, social security, and any government that declined a war (for a thorough nightmare think of a George W. Bush in the White House instead a Kennedy during a Cuban Missile Crisis when the Pentagon Generals are aching to drop nukes–we are in fact lucky to be here at all).
The hope and promise of a Network of Spiritual Progressives for many of us is that there is a way to do national politics that doesn’t violate what we have learned about how to care for each other and restore spirits.
It is not only that national politics could aspire to policies that truly embody care, for example that our promoting the idea of a Global Marshall Plan could change the discourse around foreign policy and make the utopian become possible. It’s that we could nourish each other’s spirits in the doing of it, rather than burn each other out with the typical personality conflicts of the Left.
But the pull of the small scale is so powerful, once you have discovered the difference you can make, and the need for spirit connection so great for many of us and sometimes so time consuming (a full Sabbath day a week is reviving for many), that it becomes so much easier–as a progressive spirit–to neglect national politics. For any middle class person used to the consumerist trance, removed from daily contact with people who are in poverty or jail or in chronic ill health without health insurance, the care of one’s own soul and one’s immediate circle can be all consuming. I know: that’s my life.
No wonder the Network of Spiritual Progressives is not living up to its promise. There’s something missing, in us as much as our leaders (we are the leaders we have been waiting for, as we well know) and this blog is in part a way to find out what that is: a place to hear each other as we struggle to maintain the big perspective, to fight for national health care, for a foreign policy based on generosity; a place to support each other with shared experience and encouragement.
And speaking of the Governator — his budget that allocates funding to build another condemned row at San Quentin also cut ALL funding to domestic violence shelters.
http://www.feministing.com/archives/016975.html
You hit a home run with this one! Not enough is being said about our lack of really caring for one another. We have the power within ourselves to ignite the spirit and share that with others in a meaningful way. Getting through all the hate and self promotions are taking more of our spiritual energy than we’d like to expend. Thus, and I’m guilty of this too, we throw up our hands and proclaim ‘I give up’!
Thanks for saying what really needs to be a topic for all in this country.
We (progressives) have compt our values far too much and for way too long. And I see this still in the health care reform debate going on all across this country. I viewed an old film last evening which is more true now than ever- ‘The Power of One’. If each One of us came together, really came together, WE could be that power.
Dave, Another marvelous post. But…
We can’t do it all. Each of us has to do what each of us can. We have to support each other, write letters, demonstrate, join hands across differences, love each other, go to the homeless shelter, plant our vegetable gardens, clean our houses, but we can’t do it all in one day. So we do what we can, despite the feeling of urgency we have (and as we all know there’s real reason for that urgency). But if we continue to feel urgent, we burn out. So we meditate, pray, play, laugh, watch a movie. We breathe deeply. And if we breathe deeply while doing what we can, maybe it will get done.
This is a terrific post, Mr. Belden. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
The journey of the religious or spiritual liberal is so often frustrating. The twin responsibilities of cultivating a healthy, helpful universal spirit and being a good citizen – this latter responsibility necessitates, I believe, political awareness and activity – can often seem at loggerheads. If one thing, above all others, gives rise to the poison of resentment in my heart and mind, it’s politics!
Each day I start fresh, and each day I make the recommended calls or send the emails to this or that senator or congressional representative, but the change affected (or hopefully affected) in this way is never as satisfying as the forest hike, the evening read, the day spent in enthusiastic labor, or even the change deposited in a beggar’s empty coffee cup. Politics so rarely feels like true communion. It seems as though the soul is compromised as soon as you move into the political mode. I suppose I’m more Thomas Paine than Thomas Jefferson, more ideologue than political pragmatist. I certainly don’t envy Barack Obama’s position! I believe that he is a good man, but a good man thrust into a position that is not that of the prophet, not that of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Abraham Joshua Heschel. He must compromise…but still I trust in the steady pulse of of humanity’s progress.
This article captures what is distinguishes NSP from other progressive activist organizations–reflecting on the interface of spirituality in practice in the context of our present society with its domination by self serving neoconservatives that give capitalism and free enterprise a bad name. Shouldn’t there be a criminal consequence for blatant lies and hate mongering that is purposely directed towards undermining and defeating the Obama administration and any progressive policies that benefit the common good? How about looking at that as anti-American extremism/terrorism? Let’s call in Homeland security! Lou Dobbs is getting censure from CNN for spreading the lie about Obama not having a birth certificate to proove he is a U.S citizen. More of that is necessary. Ethics ahould not be politicized.
Lerner’s position in The Left Hand of God encouraged liberals to embrace ethics and spirituality because the secular, neutral marketplace has become psychopathic in its identification with corporate values (to make profit above any other considerations). The Religious Right is pushing Christianity for the same reason Islam is getting more fundamentalist–in reaction to the commonplace corruption and lack of practice of humane, caring values. How can we be effective in changing our culture to a caring compassionate, partenership society when we are asked to put our personal values aside (compartmentalize) when working for a company that requires allegience to its corporate goals or for the military which trains us to function automatically as a killing machiene. Remember Eichman, who was just following orders and doing his duty.
I think NSP needs to emphacize and expose the interface between spirituality and politics in their local meetings and not separate the spiritual from the action. Yes, it causes conflict, but it should–and that is the hard work to be done that we need to mobilize together to change the context!
Judith, could you explain more what you mean in your last paragraph? You have been to NSP meetings where the spiritual was separated from the politics: as in having a spiritual component, like prayers/songs/meditation, and then putting that aside and having a regular political meeting like any other? What does merging the two look like to you, and what is the conflict that is caused when you try to do it?
Our local chapter just met yesterday to map out the year’s events, and we discussed how spirituality ideally expands into social activism, which needs to confront the problems in our society which are oppressive, destructive, and against the common good. This creates both a need to escape into a self soothing, regenerative spirituality through solitary meditation, communing with nature, seeking stillness, yoga, etc.and a need to confront the problems and work on repair, and transformation. To some, activism means being angry and fighting against–which contradicts the peaceloving, non-violent spiritual soul. We arrived at a statement that we could all endorse of “standing against the barriers to living NSP values, and needing the NSP spiritual community to support each of us in our activist efforts alone and together.” (The reality of working for this kind of change often produce frustration, conflict, depletes energy and leads to hopelessness.)
We want NSP meetings to be more than what religious services or political meetings offer by making the connection between radical hospitality (encountering people and hearing them deeply, validating them), spirituality, and political activism. Our programs vary–some being more spiritual, others being more about institutional and cultural problems (political). We are going to make an effort to integrate both so that the whole experience is cohesive and leads to a higher consciousness and is motivating, so we increase our numbers for the movement.
Judy, please do let us know about your efforts to integrate both the spiritual and the political in your meetings and your work. That’s what we are trying to do here, to share practical experience as well as conceptual insights. Please email me at dave@tikkun.org whenever you have something to share on these lines.
Politics is typically thought of as all that goes with getting into power – through getting elected or otherwise – and staying in power, and then making judgments and seemingly prudent decisions about what should be done in the process of governing. But there is another aspect of politics that is seldom mentioned. Politics has to do with what we do in order to get along (or not) with each other. It has to do with our relationships with each other. All of the “politics as usual” that we constantly live (and die) with is a rather limited and distorted version of this.
“We know that if everyone cared for each other, the world would change.”
Yes, this is the key to the solution to dealing with all of the problems we face, most of which have been created by us ignoring our long standing awareness of this. Only through learning to listen to our hearts, our inner voices of guidance, will we learn to work together to find the solutions that our lives and the quality of our lives depend upon.
The mind is a powerful tool for us to work with, but if the mind alone is allowed to dominate our lives (as so typically happens) we will continue to be bogged down by arguments, both within ourselves and between one another. This is because the mind can come up with reasons to justify any position it is inclined towards. Only the heart can know what is right thought, right feeling and right action. After one has listened to one’s true inner voice of heart-felt guidance and come to know the most appropriate course to take, then the mind should be employed, in service to the heart, to determine how best to take that course of action.
We are all in this together – in this world, in these messes we have created for ourselves. We are each the keepers of our brothers and sisters, and of all beings. What we do to each other, we do to ourselves. What we do for each other, we do for ourselves. A spiritual progressive is one who knows this, who understands this, who realizes that this is the only sane way to live one’s life. Anything less than this will only perpetuate the problems we have already created for ourselves and for all beings on planet Earth, and will only create more problems.
We must constantly strive to become stronger as individuals while also striving to become stronger as a community where we can, with an unshakable unity of caring and purpose, share the strengths of our diverse interests, talents, knowledge, understandings and realizations for the benefit of all beings. This is what truly following a path of inner spiritual guidance means in terms of manifesting the spiritual here in this material world. This is the calling of a spiritual progressive. How many of us can say we heed and follow this calling?
Diana Butler Bass’ new book “A People’s History of Christianity” is built around the tension noted here. Her language is “Devotion” and “Ethics”. These words work in parallel with Spiritual Progressive – Devoted Ethicists and in reverse parallel – Ethical Devotees. They don’t ring as well as Spiritual Progressive, which is still working and a work in process, but the tension is important.
From my United Methodist background this is what John Wesley was about as he used the language of his day to hold together “Acts of Piety” and Acts of Mercy”. In this polarity, his sermon “On Zeal” is clear that mercy takes precedence over piety – “Whenever, therefore, one interferes with the other, works of mercy are to be preferred. Even reading, hearing, prayer, are to be omitted, or to be postponed, “at charity’s almighty call, when we are called to relieve the distress of our neighbor, whether in body or soul.”
I feel compelled to add to this discussion. I am a practicing Catholic who is disaffected with much of what I see happening in the American Church (rejection of much of Vatican II, a return to an hierarchical rather than a communal Church, doctrinal/doctrinaire positions on everything, less openness to the Spirit, emphasis on piety rather than action, etc.) but remain convinced that the only hope for our society is for ordinary people to re-engage in doing the “public work”. I do it through my Church. This is based on my belief that we all share dreams, visions, ideals and ideas if we would only all talk to each other and disconnect ourselves from: 1) ideologies formed and fueled by a constant barrage of ads from commercial and business interests; 2) from our over-simplified caricatures of government perpetrated through talk radio (no country that I know of works withinn the confines of only two political parties); and 3) divisions, mistruct, and hatred between different faith traditions.
These conversations have to take place in mosques, in temples, in churches, within fraternal and charitable organizations, through organizations like Tikkun, etc. and fueled by ideas and ideals that come from places other than professional politicians, spokespersons for commerical interests, or talk radio (e.g. from our faith traditions).
I am retired and have been using my time and energy to learn about and to impact both my Church and the world around me. For me, I believe very strongly that the message of the Gospel can be practiced in real life with real people. But more than that, I believe that the core original message of Christianity is a radical rethinking of who we are, who God is, and what that means for the world. That vision, combined with the vision of people from other churches or religious traditions, artists and poets, workers, parents, and children can literally transform the world and impact the structures of the society we live in.
As an organizer within a local community organizing group (IAF-VIP) I am quite familiar with the burnout and disappointments involved with trying to change or even impact the poisonous political environment in a place like Arizona (my home State). But politics is doing public’s work (res publica) and is not restricted to politicians, political parties, lobbyists, legislators and government officials. The US Constitution says that the purpose of the government is “to promote the general Welfare”: i.e. “work for the Common Good”. And, by God, I can think of nothing better to do than to spend my “free” time in retirement to both become a better person and to try to be an agent of change for the common good. I want to give reality to my vision of a world where fear is not used to drive our decisions or control us, where justice means giving everyone a chance to sit at the table rather than to dole out access and to use it to make sure everyone pays for his/her transgressions, where those in power use that power for the common good (not to repay those who helped them get in power), where families matter, where the human worth of every individual (black or white, citizen or non-citizen) is respected and protected, where reason and clearing thinking is priced more than a person’s wealth/power/influence, where government protects and furthers the human values important to a healthy society……..
I vote for helping each other to a “big perspective”. If Tikkun and this blog can help, yeah!
PS: The recent Encyclical by the Pope “Caritas In Veritate” is surprisingly good and recommend reading it – even though it is written like a fairly wordy text book it has good stuff in it.
Dave, you obviously hit a nerve (actually several, I think) with this post. I had to write a whole blog post in response. Thanks for starting this very important conversation. (“Individualism Won’t Get Us There”).
Hi again folks. I had to come back and re-read Daves post after reading Nancy’s. Both are coversations that we need to be having all over this country.
I’m glad I did revisit here, so I could read the other comments also. All are aspects of what has been going on for some time.
I can also relate with Judith above, if I’m understanding her correctly. I haven’t found meetings to be attentive due to folks unable/unwilling to include the spiritual w/ the political/action. As such, we didn’t schedule anymore.
I also made sure I sent both of these post to our chapter and tweeted them. I hope more folks will join these two very important coversations. We need them.
http://www.twitter.com/WA_NSP
Thanks Dave and the others for picking on the issue of individual/ism and collective notions of society and common good. Your post reminded me of the classic piece by Charles beard “The Myth of American individualism” that appeared in 1931 (see http://braddelong.posterous.com/beard-the-myth-of-rugged-ameri) in which he speaks of the problems of individualism in America — all of which have unfortunately come true in our times — corporatism, militarism, profiteering, war on the poor, and neglect of public health and education.
Thinking about how to go about overcoming this “creed” in order to build movements such as NSP, requires us to spend time dispelling some common myths:
1. One is the confusion of the notion of “individual” with the principle of “individualism”. Many people I have met think that if they are not individualistic (i.e., self-centered to the point of becoming selfish) then they are losing their identity as an individual. But this is not necessarily the case. Once could be very group oriented and still have a strong sense of being an individual (without some of the bagagge that neoliberal or neoclassical economics has bequeathed to us).
2. Another myth is that individualism is what defines being an American. But this notion has a very short history, not a long one in America. And it is also not the only one present — there were cooperative movements in the same agrarian society that Jefferson with his notion of individualism spoke for as if that was the only America.
3. A third myth that we have to find ways to creatively address among potential NSPs is what some of the above commentators have touched upon: the myth that the world is made up of discrete units (different societies, nations, economies, polities, etc.) Of course, some of this (esp. with respect to economies) has been shown to be mythology with the ways they all suffered as a domino effect in recent times. But by and large, people are not able to see in any clear ways the numerous fundamental ways in which our lives are interdependent. This is quite reasonable (something like an objective illusion — like a mirage which you have to see if you have a normal vision and ona very hot day on the interstate) since our world is made in a neoliberal foundation today which likes this kind of thinking among people.
4. Of course the fourth myth is that spirituality is only to do with supranatural or metaphysical phenomena. Will leave that for another time.
I will stop here since this will go on to become a separate blog itself:) Enjoyed participating on this thread. Thank you once again!
Murli
I would like to send this by email to our NSP members. Is it possible to add that to this site, or have I missed something? I’ll just advise them to get on the Tikkun Daily site. This is a great thing to share. Thanks, Dave.
I think the NSP needs to loosen up its platform and try to create a broader coalition. I think the category “spiritual progressives” is very useful, but I think requesting that people read detailed manifestos and asking them to endorse them point by point is going to guarantee that you have a very small network. The longer and more detailed the program, the smaller the group. There are all kinds of spiritual progressive groups out there, and bringing them together could create a large, diverse coalition that could offer an alternative to the “spiritual regressives” of the fundamentalist movements and the materialist, undemocratic left. Remember how MLK inspired all kinds of people and brought them together? (Actually, I don’t – I was just a little too young at the time, but I understand it). That’s the kind of energy we should be trying to generate. It’s great to have objectives, but they should be sort of broad and open to compromise.
Here’s a story about a coalition of “religious left” groups uniting to support health care reform:
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE57947020090810
Thanks Ed. And I just posted about it myself on this site at http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2009/08/10/obama-and-the-religious-health-care-reformers/
Reuters calls the group the Religious Left. I would call them the religious liberals.
The question is whether the NSP itself should have attempted to do what Faith in Public Life and PICO are doing, or whether its role is to be on the more prophetic end of things. The center is defined by the wings, by the extremes. The extremes actually open up space in which the centrists can breathe and expand and become more radical than they could otherwise have been.