Which Lives Matter and Which Don't

Mary Erickson 1988

Ever since the Black Lives Matter movement began 7 years ago, some people have countered with All Lives Matter. I believe this is true, but the problem is, it doesn’t get us anywhere, until we reach the point where Each Life Matters. And, as difficult as it is, the only way all lives and each life will matter is if we begin by asking Which Lives Matter and Which Don’t right now. It is abundantly clear our society is acting like black lives don't matter. Black Lives Matter has been relentless in pointing that out, and has given us a path forward as we address the painful reality that right now so many different people are being treated as if there lives really don't matter (like the elderly in this pandemic, including the black elderly), and it is only as we make sure each life matters that we can get to the point where all lives matter. 

Mary Erickson 1989

When Mary and I lived and worked in Mexico and Central America, we witnessed a traditional Catholic church that said that All Lives Matter. However, the poor of Latin America, who are the vast majority, did not feel like that was the case. They lived in poverty and abuse and constant oppression.  Finally, following Vatican II, a small portion of the church made a “preferential option for the poor,” and began to take seriously the needs of the poor, the marginalized, the powerless. Only as their needs were taken seriously and steps were taken to correct the constant injustices under which they suffered, could the church truly be a church in which All People Mattered.

This was the church's way of following Jesus, who lived in a time when   male Jews controlled the synagogue and had all the power. And they left out all kinds of people: lepers, women, the poor, non-Jews like the Samaritans. Interesting, isn’t it, that they left out people with pre-existing conditions and others on the basis of gender, economic status, race, and religion.

Jesus realized that the only way you make all lives matter is by analyzing  which people seem to matter, and which don’t, in the given culture. Oh, he could have fraternized with the male Jews if he had wanted, but he spent most of his time criticizing them and hanging out with all the people mentioned above, trying to find ways to let them know that they were loved and needed and important. In Matthew 25:35-36, for example, we are admonished to reach out to the hungry, thirsty, stranger (Greek xenos, which means foreigner), naked, sick and imprisoned.

He began his ministry by returning to his home town of Nazareth and announcing in his home synagogue:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. [Luke 4:16-19]

     

Later in his ministry, he was invited to a dinner with a leader of the Pharisees, the group responsible for the rules and regulations of Judaism:

He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed.’ [Luke 14:12-14]

Of course, it would not be long before the tables would be turned by the Romans, who killed some 100,000 Jews and sold others into slavery, and ever since there have been many times when and places where the world has acted as if the Jews didn’t matter.

Courtesy Vivien Feyer

Mary, my wife, has spent most of her working career (even though her first degree was in art) as a Montessori teacher of grades 1-3. In her last position, just outside of Washington DC, her class was usually about 1/3 African-American, mainly from poor families, and sometimes homeless; 1/3 Latino, also poor and sometimes undocumented; 1/3 more affluent white children who were bused in to her school because their families wanted them in a Montessori classroom, and from time to time Asian-American and African students.

She began each year loving all of her students, believing that each of them mattered, and her classroom could be a wonderful microcosm of the world.  And the only way she could do that was by treating them each differently, according to their situation and needs, trying to overcome the structures of society that give children uneven opportunities to excel. Some of her students were hungry. Some had no access to the internet at home. Some had learning disabilities. Some had parents who had never gone to school, and could not help them with their homework. Some were abused at home. Some were bullied in school. Some lacked access to medical care.

Courtesy of Vivien Feyer

She helped make all of her students matter by figuring out and responding to what each needed.

We bought this poster at the King Center in Atlanta, and it hung in Mary's classroom.

Yesterday, on television, Representative John Lewis (See post: Meeting John Lewis ) reminded us of Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to form a Beloved Community, “a society in which all are embraced and none discriminated against,” [Dr. Jeff Ritterman], and is further defined by The King Center:

In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated. . . Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.

What is Spirituality? Part VIII : Hostility

We have reflected on our Own 

Heart, moving from Loneliness to Solitude, then on the Heart of God, moving from Illusion to Prayer, and now we focus on the Hearts of Others, which is the movement from Hostility to Hospitality, from Conflict to Compassion and Community. This “is the movement by which our hostilities can be converted into hospitality. It is there that our changing relationship to our self can be brought to fruition in an ever-changing relationship to our fellow human beings.” [Nouwen, Reaching Out, 46]

As we come to a deeper understanding of what God wants through Prayer, and make peace with ourselves through Confession and acceptance of what cannot be changed (Grace), we are then ready to enter into relationship with others in a way in which hostilities can be overcome as we increasingly learn to also accept others as they are, and treat them graciously in the way God treats us with grace and unconditional love.

Spiritually and theologically, there are two places to which we go to begin to overcome the hostility we may feel towards others. The first place is to God’s creation, and what it means that God created us not as gods, but as human beings. The very first stories in the Bible deal with this issue, from Adam and Eve deciding they didn’t want to be humans (they wanted to be gods) to Cain deciding that he didn’t like the world God had created: he would much prefer that Abel not be a part of it.

Marcus Borg explains this issue: “Our fall into exile is very deep. The biblical picture of the human condition is bleak. Separated and self-concerned, the self becomes blind, self-preoccupied, prideful; worry-filled, grasping, miserable; insensitive, angry, violent; somebody great, or only okay, or ‘not much.’” [The Heart of Christianity, 117]

Traditionally we have labeled this description the “human condition.” It is the painful situation in which we find ourselves, and our tendency, therefore, is to view others as competitors out to take away our possessions, our security, our status, our enjoyment of life.

This brings us to the second place spiritually and theologically: the cross of Christ. An old hymn put it this way: 

      The ground is level at the foot of the cross,

      Anyone may come there for there is no cost.

       Rich or poor man, bonded or free.

      The ground was leveled that day at Calvary.  [Beverly Lowry]

The idea that we might be better than others, or more worthy of God’s love, is shattered by the cross of Christ. It is the great leveler, the great equalizer. We are all in the same boat, as the old expression puts it.

1906-1945

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor assassinated by the Nazis at the end of World War II, put it this way:  “Anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned in the Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all humans and of his own heart, will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him.” [Life Together, 118]

This understanding is captured in the 16^th century statement of John Bradford: “There but for the grace of God go I.” It is the admittance to ourselves that we are capable of all kinds of cruelty and hostility, unless God’s love tempers us and shows us a better way. 

Again, we see how crucial “humility” and “confession” are in the spiritual life. Once we are honest with ourselves and thereby humbled by our own hostility and greed, the Cross leads us to begin to let that hostility go as we open ourselves to the world and to all other people. In the words of Thomas Merton: “The proud person loves their own illusion and self-sufficiency. The spiritually poor person loves their very insufficiency. The proud person claims honor for having what no one else has. The humble person begs for a share in what everybody else has received. They too desire to be filled to overflowing with the kindness and mercy of God. [Thoughts in Solitude, 44-45]

Thomas Merton, 1915-1968

This movement from Hostility to Hospitality thus becomes our new vocation in life. Merton again:

And this is the mystery of our vocation: not that we cease to be humans in order to become angels or gods, but that the love of my human heart can become God’s love for God and others, and my human tears can fall from my eyes as the tears of God because they well up from God’s Spirit in the heart of God’s incarnate Son.

When this is learned, then our love of other humans becomes pure and strong. We can go out to them without vanity and without complacency, loving them with something of the purity and gentleness and hiddenness of God’s love for us.” [Thoughts, 123-124]

                

What is Spirituality? Part VII: Prayer

Daughter Jessi

So what is prayer? In a way it is very simple. However, that does mean it is easy. We find it much more difficult than we thought to move beyond Illusion to Prayer.

The simple part is that Jesus makes it very clear what prayer at its deepest level is. He tells us, in the Lord’s Prayer--the prayer he gave us--“Thy will be done.” Then he demonstrates what this means at the end of his life. Going to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, he says: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup [of suffering] from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” [Luke 22:42; NRSV] Matthew puts it this way: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” [26:39b]

Garden of Gethsemane in Mount of Olives from a Trip in 2009

Now that would seem very simple. Yes, there are many different forms of prayer, from uplifting our fears and concerns to lamenting painful experiences in which we find ourselves to interceding on behalf of others. But the most profound prayer is finally giving up the illusion that we know what is best for ourselves and the world and turning all of life over to God. Yes, we, of course, will continue to share with God what we want and think we need and what we are hoping for. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, other places in Scripture encourage us to do just that. Yet, in the end, prayer pushes us beyond what we want to submit to what God wants for us and the world.

The classic spiritual discipline that corresponds to this is submission, or obedience. These are not concepts we love much in our culture, and it is true that they can be used in negative and at times abusive ways. But, as Richard Foster points out in his book on the twelve classic spiritual disciplines, each, properly understood, has a kind of freedom. He writes: “What freedom corresponds to submission? It is the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way. The obsession to demand that things go the way we want them to go is one of the greatest bondages in human society today. . . . . Self-denial is simply a way of coming to understand that we do not have to have our own way. Our happiness is not dependent upon getting what we want.” [Celebration of Discipline, 97, 99]

The 14^th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, put it this way: “Obedience has no cares; it lacks no blessing. In the best prayer a person may offer, he will not say: ‘Give me virtue or a way,’ nor ‘Yes, Lord, give me thyself or life eternal,’ but only, ‘Lord, give me nothing but what you will . . . . .Perfectly to will what God wills, to want what God wants, is to have joy.” [3-4, 42]

The reason this is so difficult for us spiritually is the same reason it is so difficult for us psychologically. Most of us have several areas of life where we are “control freaks.” We try to control what is going on around us and we try to control our friends and children and partners. We keep finding that, in contrast, “letting go” is extremely difficult for us.

My daughter, Jessi, has struggled with depression and suicidal ideations since she was fifteen years old [which she has written about extensively; see a previous post: The Thing I Can’t Write About]. Her mother and I tried for weeks and months and years to do everything we could to try to protect her and keep her from death. We still keep doing those things. And we still worry, of course.

But eventually it became absolutely overwhelming to try to control her future: reading every expression, analyzing every behavior, constantly quizzing her about every place she went, whom she was with, what she was doing. Rather than becoming closer to her, we were driving her further away. Rather than helping her feel supported and loved, she was feeling we did not understand what she was going through and did not trust her.

One night I collapsed in a chair in grief and worry and fear. I turned to God and cried out: “Lord, I can’t do this anymore. This is destroying me and driving Jessi further from me. Lord, I know now that I can’t protect her. I can’t keep her safe. And so I turn her over to you. I place her in your hands. I will let go, and give her to you. From now on I will try to let you take the lead, and show me the way to love and support her.”

I’m not saying the worry and grief and fear disappeared, but I was finally able to breathe again. More importantly, once I quit trying to control Jessi’s life we were able to begin to build a new relationship of love and trust and understanding that keeps getting stronger every day. Now, several times a week, I will get a text: “Dad, do you want to chat?”

Jessi and Me at our Cabin, 2007

We so limit what life can be for ourselves and those we love when we only see prayer as a way to try to get what we think we want and need. We miss out on the grander vision God always has for us. We miss out on the great adventure life can be. Henri Nouwen describes this so well:

Prayer is often considered a weakness, a support system, which is used when we can no longer help ourselves. But this is only true when the God of our prayer is created in our own image and adapted to our own needs and concerns. When, however, prayer makes us reach out to God, not on our own, but on God’s terms, then prayer pulls us away from self-preoccupation, encourages us to leave familiar ground, and challenges us to enter into a new world which cannot be contained within the narrow boundaries of our mind or heart. Prayer, therefore, is a great adventure because the God with whom we enter into a new relationship is greater than we are and defies all our calculations and predictions. The movement from illusion to prayer is hard to make since it leads us from an easy support system to a risky surrender and from the many “safe” gods, to the God whose love has no limits. [Reaching Out, 89-90]