Love That Goes to the Wall
by: Nichola Torbett on October 5th, 2009 | 6 Comments »
How many of us know what it is like to have someone love us enough to go all the way to the wall for us?
I was thinking about this question yesterday, and about how it relates to our struggles for social justice. In the “praise and worship” part of our service, we sang “Everybody Ought to Know,” a song that often makes me squirm amidst our extremely diverse congregation, which draws people from a variety of faith traditions to walk together what we call the “Jesus path” (which doesn’t require that you identify as Christian). The lyrics go
Everybody oughtta know
Everybody oughtta know
Everybody oughtta know
Who Jesus is.
Oh, he’s the lily of the valley.
He’s the bright and morning star.
He’s the fairest of ten thousand, and
Everybody oughtta know.
See what I mean? It smacks of Christian exceptionalism and easily conjures up theologies that threaten nonchristians with eternal hellfire. I’m way too much of a universalist for that.
But yesterday I heard it differently. Yesterday, what I heard was “Everybody ought to know what it’s like to be loved so much that someone will go to the wall for you.” That is what Jesus did, or what God did in Jesus. (The crucifixion was a political assassination, and Jesus’ response was spiritually grounded nonviolent civil disobedience on behalf of suffering humanity and a groaning creation.) I stood there, tears rolling down my face, as I realized how few people actually do know that experience, and about the fact that one of the few ways someone would know it would be for me (and others of us) to embody it. The song became a prayer that the Spirit would transform me in such a way that I could love others that much — not in some sentimental, easy way, but in the fierce “I will lay my life down for you” way.
And Jesus says that we are called to love, not just our friends, which is easy, and not even those who are up close as part of our own identity groups, but our enemies and those who are very different from us.
I struggle to know what kind of social justice action this leads to. It’s on my mind today because I’ve been in touch with a gregarious and committed organizer named d’Andre who is helping to put together an October 22 protest of “police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of a generation.” At Seminary of the Street, we’ve offered classes and discussions on the prison system, and I’m very clear about the ways that our police forces serve (systemically, not necessarily consciously) as command and control centers that hold racism and economic injustice in place. I also live in Oakland, where we have seen multiple incidents of police brutality in recent years, a history that erupted in violent protests last winter.
I haven’t decided what role Seminary of the Street, or I as an individual, will pay in the October 22 protests. I am somewhat hopeless about protests. I’m just not sure anyone is listening, so I feel a lot of frustration trying to communicate to a hearer who is deaf to our cries. I also recognize that some of that deafness on the part of “targets” comes from an inability to hear painful information about the role one is playing, information that is often expressed in ways that don’t recognize the humanity of the perpetrators.
At the same time, love drives me to try to do SOMETHING. I have some small vision of a group of us going to be prayerful, centered, and loving presences at the protest. (The Buddhist Peace Fellowship has a history of such work, and recently, a band of folks from Bay-Area Nonviolent Communication have formed a street team who may be up for joining us.) I welcome thoughts from readers. I am also planning to organize a meeting at Seminary of the Street to discuss this and will post the date here when it has been set.
In the meantime and beyond, “everybody oughtta know….”
My deafness to painful information about my role in creating my own bad shit has kept me cuffed. People who go to the mat for you, who love ya what ever, that’s what leads you out. Thanks for a thoughtful posting.
Okay, we have now set the date for our planning meeting regarding our presence at the October 22 protest of police brutality. It will be Saturday, October 17, at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. in Oakland, California. See this page for details: http://seminaryofthestreet.org/id25.html.
The link has a flaw (the period “.” at the end of the URL). It’s hard to resist the urge to put a period at the end of the sentence, which in this case is at the end of the URL. But browsers don’t do grammar like we do. [copy and paste, delete the period and it works fine then]
I can’t stop thinking that if you give yourself up for someone else, you are sacrificing your self and must not think much of that self. Or in comparing that self to your own self, you come up short. Bad trade off.
If you don’t think enough of yourself to save it, who else will? The police brutality is by the ‘police.’ Find out who the persom is in the police role(s). What is condoned by the way ‘the police’THINK . It’s the role, not the man. And the ‘we’ who allow it. Change the THINKING (PERCEIVING) and you may change the behavior. It’s the hardest thing to do. Maybe no one should give their life for a cause at all, but simply not fear dying when in their earnest pursuit of activities they think will improve mankind or the environment in which mankind lives…..
one does indeed die. (First rule of the rethinking process: Don’t term everything a WAR….from the war on fat to the war against terrorists. Even terrorists are people too. If you only knew their story (their culture, their thoughts, their understanding of their reality). I bet you might think differently about them. It happens all the time when people put their roles aside and engage each other in a way that permits them to recognize their common humanity. The commonality could be anything: It could be finding food. Where did he put his gogles? See a video. Where’s the bathroom? We make so many assumptions when we interact with others and most of them could be wrong. REALITY is complex and most of us don’t give it enough time to know we really don’t know anything for certain. So you set up a task for to ‘study group behavior’ or crowd behavior or whatever concept seems to be connected to it and might explain it. I’ts people with uniforms, guns, rules of engagement and authority acting badly. It’s a phenomena we don’t like to see, for sure. But no one should be asking you to give up your life per se. So be it, if in the pursuit of xy or z this happens. This thinking dimentia applies to the good guys as well as the ‘bad.’ And the resulting institutions that confer power and authority (or frustrate and undermine) people indiscriminately as a result of their being part of this group. It could be a congress, a gang, a court, a school, a family, a hospital s staff, a bureaucracy, a corporation. It’s people! One at a time and then two, three, four and it gets hairy, sticky, messy…..whatever your metaphor.
The most dangerous weapon is words (in the mouth, in the head, on the page). The best solution is increasing awareness re how you use them. One’s thinking plays a part (even when it’s ‘not thinking). It’s hard.
I am somewhat hopeless about protests. I’m just not sure anyone is listening, so I feel a lot of frustration trying to communicate to a hearer who is deaf to our cries. I also recognize that some of that deafness on the part of “targets” comes from an inability to hear painful information about the role one is playing, information that is often expressed in ways that don’t recognize the humanity of the perpetrators.
Well said. Which is why I’m grateful to others for continuing to constantly bring up that painful information in public and why I had to set that type of action aside for my kids’ protection. Once they’re gone I plan to go back to it. In the meantime I’m trying to find ways I can still mirror that painful information those with power don’t want to hear. I’m interested in checking in to see what you’ve done too… if you don’t mind me borrowing ideas.
Oh, the last sentence I reread and it settled differently.
I also recognize that some of that deafness on the part of “targets” comes from an inability to hear painful information . . . that is often expressed in ways that don’t recognize the humanity of the perpetrators.
That’s the key to efficacy isn’t it? How to share information that’s painful in a manner that recognizes the oppressor’s humanity… nothing like a tall order, huh?
Aside from cutting off an owning/ruling-class person’s personal money and financial resources, how are they going to hear what they don’t want to? We cannot cross their will, they do not seem to have a conscience as we experience conscience… there’s where I get stuck.
I’m a simple lower class guy, yeah I have nine years of college education, but I earn just above poverty and my neighbors and community are also in that boat (most minus the college degree). You can win my heart with a well-cooked meal, a song well-sung, a book well crafted, a film, even a nice warm campfire, etc. Simple things.
But how to get to the heart of someone so vastly different than us? I’ve known owning class do-gooders who’ve done simple things like take a CEO pal camping and such and it had no net impact on the CEO in the end. But if such people are human still, how can they be impacted and turn away from the profit and the mindset of uncaring and unconcern for Other? What gets to their stomachs? How will we at the bottom ever find this out?