Peace Talk for Brentwood Inspired Living Center

First of all, I want to thank Amy for inviting me to speak to you all today.  It is a real joy and privilege to be asked to talk about something that I think is so important for us, always, but perhaps especially in today’s world.  “Peace” is very elusive, especially during this time.  People are stressed because of the pandemic, social unrest, the weather, the smoke – days moved to weeks moved to months and now we’ve had a half year of “shelter in place” and “social distancing” and people are beginning to act out.  

I think about the post a friend of mine made on FB where he detailed waking up to find an intruder in his home.  The intruder grabbed a couple things and left.  No one was hurt, my friend was able to replace the missing items with fairly little trauma.  It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t scarring either.  Still, the responses that he received on FB were things like “You should have shot and killed that guy!  That would have taught him!”  And “Too bad you weren’t able to beat him up with a bat and permanently ruin his life!”  I was shocked by these responses, but probably shouldn’t have been.  We live in a culture where violence tends to escalate, and where people react with such intense anger that nothing short of death satisfies some people as the appropriate consequence for a stolen watch.  This is the world in which we dare to breathe words such as “peace”.  And that action of looking for and seeking peace is an act of courage in such a world.

The other day I was walking in a parking lot with my daughter at the grocery store (both of us with our masks on) and we were just about to get to the car to put in the groceries, when some rage-filled person started cursing and screaming at us.  I have no idea why.  I assumed at the time that it was because they wanted us to move more quickly to get our groceries in the car so they could have my spot, but, putting aside the fact that there were other open spaces, that just didn’t explain the rage that this person (who I had never seen before) was expressing.   Of course, the temptation for me then, as it often is for many of us I think, is to respond to that kind of anger with anger in return.  The temptation was to turn and yell back, to sarcastically critique his lack of vocabulary or to do something else that would have hurt him as much as he was upsetting me and my daughter.    

But in that moment, I found Martin Luther King Jr.’s comment rattling in my head when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”  The reality is we cannot get to peace, true peace, through anger, rage, hate or violence.  Those angry attacking responses leave people hurting, damaged, and that damage and hurt festers, and usually builds resentment and pain.  While violence may lead to a time of non-violence, there is a difference between peace and non-violence.  Peace is when people are okay within themselves and within their world.  Peace is when people see each other for the deeply connected siblings that we all are.  Peace is when we remember our deep connections to and within all creation.  Peace is when each person and each part of creation has enough, has what they need to live, to breathe, to survive.  That peace can never be full, real or profound when even one person is hurting.  

But responding to anger, violence or hatred with peace is hard.  So in that moment in the parking lot, I also found myself thinking about a Star Trek Next Generation episode in which all these different species are fighting to get this “thing” first, pieces of which have been planted into the different DNAs of different species across the galaxies.  Some species think what they will find when they solve the puzzle by putting all these pieces from their DNA together will be extreme wealth.  Others think it is massive power.  Some specifically think it is a powerful weapon.  All think that they better get it first and they are willing to kill one another to get it. They need each other’s piece of the puzzle to find whatever it is however, so they are all at the final place together; all gathered with their weapons out, preparing to fight to get it and claim it first for their people, their world, their community.  When they finally gather everything together, what they have been given is a message about how important it is to work together and find peace together in order for all to live.  The hologram that is produced by their DNA puzzle pieces gives the message that within each of them is a piece of one another, that they are literally within as well as among one another, and that it is only together they are whole.  But once they hear the message of peace and deep connection to one another, they respond by still trying to fight each other.  “We cannot possibly have anything in common,” one declares in rage, and “I would have killed her if she were alive” another says in response to the Hologram’s message.  They are so caught up in their anger that they cannot hear or see, and peace remains a distant, elusive dream for them all.  

     In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Gandalf said, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check.  But that is not what I have found.  I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.  Small acts of kindness and love.” 

     As we seek to be people of peace, we have to start with the small, with the ordinary, with the opportunities we have to meet hatred and anger with kindness, compassion, and peace.    I thought about one of my heroes in life, Rev. Ben Weir.  He was a Presbyterian pastor who was working in Lebanon when he was kidnapped and held hostage.  He was held for 16 months as a hostage.  But after his experience, he did not come home seeking revenge, seeking the destruction of those who had kidnapped him.  Instead, he remained a voice for peace, for non-violent resolutions to problems.  I personally knew the man and he was, until the end, the most compassionate, sweetest man I have ever met.   

     There is a wonderful book titled “Tattoos of the Heart” written by Father Gregory Boyle.  He is a priest who works with gangs in LA, giving them work, jobs, a sense of belonging to something and to people who do not require violence or aggression as part of their membership rituals.  He writes about his experiences with these boys, these men, these families.  But his book begins with these words, “If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.  William Blake wrote, ‘We are put on earth for a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.’ Turns out this is what we all have in common, gang member and nongang member alike: we’re just trying to learn how to bear the beams of love.” (pxiii).

     The idea of Ubuntu is that “a person becomes a person through other people” – we are deeply and completely connected to one another.  When I am injuring you, it is me, myself who is damaged in the process.  And when I am kind to you, I am offering that kindness to myself as well.  

     These ideas are the foundation of peace: the recognition of our interdependence, our interconnection, with all people, but more, with all of life.  

     All of these examples and thoughts flashed through my head in response to the man screaming at me at the parking lot.  And I made the decision in that moment to do other than I wanted to do.  I chose then to wave, to smile (though I’m sure he could not see that behind my mask), and to quickly get my groceries into the car so that he could have the spot.  Fortunately, the space across from me was empty so I pulled forward and out of the spot.  I saw that he did not take the spot, but continued to shriek at me and even follow me out of the parking lot.  I still have not one clue about why.  I asked my daughter who was with me if she could see why he was so angry, but she said "no", and finally we were able to pull away from the man and to drive home.  I acted the way I wanted to act.  I did not give him power to change my behavior from the peace I wanted to communicate and exude.  I did not give him the ability to make me angry or hateful or destructive.  I acted with the peace and compassion I choose to demonstrate.  But I have to admit, I did not feel peace after that interaction.  I was shaking with fear, with anger, with visions of yelling back, or calling the police or something else.  I felt torn up inside by a person I don't know, will never meet, who was just... ANGRY.  It didn't make me feel better to act with kindness.  It did not make me feel better to be kind in the face of that kind of anger/hate.  But it didn't make me feel worse either.  If I'd acted in anger, I would have felt more angry.  If I'd chosen rage, I probably would have felt guilt on top of everything else, if only for giving that example to my daughter.  Instead, after a few minutes had passed, I felt a bit of triumph that I had not allowed myself to be controlled or changed by his behavior.  And my soul moved to a place of acceptance, wondering what that man was suffering with, and peace within myself much more quickly than it would have done if I had acted in any other way.  

     There is a saying in many 12 step programs which is "Act as If."  The theory behind it is that you act your way into being someone else.  Act as if you are a peaceful person and you will become one. Act as if you are no longer angry and you will stop being angry.  Act happy and calm and confident and those feelings and attributes will follow.  That is my choice for now.  I don't know that it will always work.  I don't know that I can always think of the kind way to respond in the face of anger or hate.  But I can try.   And perhaps in trying, I will become more the person of peace that I want to be.

I may not change the world.  I may make no difference at all in the scheme of things.  But I also will not let the world make me more angry, hateful or fearful.  I don't choose that, for myself or for those around me who are affected by my behavior.  For today, I hope that is enough.  

Peace is elusive in this time.  But it must start and end with each one of us choosing to be beacons, voices, examples of the peace we hope to find.  We create the world around us one word, one act, one choice at a time.  For today, let that choice be for peace.

Violent Responses

          I was browsing FB the other day and saw a post by a friend of mine who was describing a terrible and scary incident in which he awoke to find an intruder in his home.  The man grabbed a couple things and left. No one was hurt, my friend was able to replace the missing items with fairly little trauma.  It wasn't a pleasant experience but neither was it scarring.  What I found more interesting (here translated "disturbing") was the responses of some of his friends.  Several posted in response that he should have shot and killed the guy.  And that was usually followed by "that would have taught him".
        I have to admit, I find this response shocking and upsetting for so many reasons.  The first is simply the obvious one: once you're dead, there are no more lessons to be learned, folk.  Killing somebody doesn't actually teach them anything.
        But beyond that, why do we feel that we should react to unpleasant things by escalating the violence?  This is a mind-set that seems to have taken over the U.S. at this point in time.  We seem to greet every slight and every affront with an incredibly disproportionate response of revenge and increased harm. This must be a long time human flaw.  In the Hebrew scriptures, we are told "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." This was a law put in place to limit the amount of damage that could be returned in response to an injury of any kind.  It was necessary to make those statements at that time because people DID tend to escalate the problems.  "An eye for an eye" meant that you could only return in equal amount what was done to you.  So in this case, you could take something from the other person in response to their taking something of yours (NOT their life, by the way.  That's NOT what you could take in response to their stealing an item.  That is not an equal response.).  The Christian scriptures take it much further.  (Mt. 5:38-42): "You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and a tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.  And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.  Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."  This takes the actions of love and kindness exponentially further.  Not only are we supposed to refrain from killing the people who upset us, not only are we to refrain from retaliating by inflicting the same injury to a person who has injured us, but we are to take loving a giant step further and try to respond to evil with goodness, try to respond to hate with love, try to answer anger with peace, and try to meet injury with caring.  
           Is this hard?  Of course.  Does it bring justice?  Not in the way we have come to understand it, that's for certain.  Is this normal behavior, even for people of faith? Not by any stretch of the imagination.  These tend to be passages that people of faith ignore, "forget," or simply fail to apply to real life.  It is hard to walk with love towards those offering hate.  It is difficult to not want revenge when someone has hurt us.  It is absolutely counter-cultural to not hit back when we are hit.
          But as I say in my sermons almost every week, the things we are asked to do by our faith traditions, while they may appear hard, are always things that invite us into wholeness as well: they aren't just for the "other".  They are meant for our own good, for our own betterment, for our own growth.
          So looking at it from that perspective, what are the consequences for different responses in this case?  Let's say my friend had shot the guy who broke into his home.  Instead of dealing with the, not minor, but not overwhelming either, trauma of an invasive house break in and theft, he would carry the scars for the rest of his life of having taken someone else's life.  Maybe there are people out there who can just dismiss another life as somehow not worthy of continuance.  Maybe there are people who would feel proud of putting out the life of someone who is making a bad choice. But my friend is a thinking person: he knows that just because someone does bad things does not mean they are an evil or worthless human being.  We never know the stories behind other people's actions.  We never know if someone is truly beyond redemption. We never know what has led up to that moment, nor where someone will go next in their life. To quote Gandalf, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."  For those of us who believe in the sanctity of life, taking life away from another human is something you just simply cannot heal from.  Ever.  Even if he could heal from it, he would end up going through the court system as a result of his actions: and that, too, is frankly extremely hard to get over, even if he were exonerated.  He also pointed out to me that since he didn't see the person very well, at first he wasn't even sure it was an intruder.  It could easily have been his wife returning from work.  Would you really want to go out shooting and risk hitting your spouse?
         In contrast, there are many stories of a response of love changing the hearts of anger and evil in the other. How does it affect us to behave with love?  It helps us build resilience, loving builds more love, even in our own hearts; forgiveness helps us to completely let go of the anger and pain we carry. In this case, their ability to forgive has meant that a terrible incident is truly over for them, not something they need to carry forward into any other situations.  In reality, there wasn't time for any response on the part of my friend to the intruder.  But if there had been, we never know how a choice for kindness will affect others, and even our own hearts, down the road.  We never know.  And it isn't our job to determine.  Our job is to be kind, to be compassionate, to "love our enemies" as Jesus would tell us, and to be open to allowing the love we have to grow and change us. The results of that are just not up to us.  
          I find this quick response of "you should have shot the guy" extremely disturbing because it shows an inability to seek empathy for those who are different, for anyone who has done wrong, for someone who has hurt us. It shows a way of thinking that is violent, aggressive, and non-sympathetic.  It reflects a lack of ability to see the humanity in people who harm us. It is an action that also demonstrates a forgetfulness of our own mistakes.  While we may say, "Well, I've never done anything that bad," I don't know that rating our mistakes is very healthy or even fair. Again, we don't know what has led up to that moment for the person choosing that behavior.  This reaction also fails to see beyond this moment into the future consequences of our choice to react with violence and revenge.  
           I would hope for us that we could start the pendulum swinging back towards greater compassion, towards a deeper understanding that the difference between me and you is only time and space: that when we hurt the other, we are injuring ourselves: and when we choose love, we are also choosing love for ourselves.  I think that road may be long, but it's an important journey to walk.

Commitment to Kindness?

        I feel that my commitment to my personal Lenten discipline of looking for and acting with kindness has been sorely tested as of late.  This last week has included one event after another of interacting in unpleasant ways with other people.
         A couple of examples: I was walking through the grocery store parking lot and one of those monster trucks with the 6 foot radius wheels was pulling out of a parking spot.  I was far behind him, as far as I could go actually, walking against the parked cars on the other side, but of course, he could not see me because of the huge height of his cab.  I wasn't concerned about being hit: if he hit me, he would have hit the cars I was walking next to as well.  None the less, when he started to pull forward he did see me, after which he blocked me in at my car and scolded me for walking behind his truck.  I'll admit, all kinds of unkind, angry responses were running through my head, everything from, "Well, maybe you should rethink having a truck with such huge tires that you can't see well enough to drive!" to "It isn't other people's responsibility to help you see.  If you can't see well enough to pull out of a spot, don't park there in the first place."  Instead, at the point at which he said, "because if I were to hit you I'd be libel!" I responded with the really stupid, not kind, non-nonsensical response of, "well, if you hit me, I'd be dead and wouldn't really care anymore if you were libel."  I wasn't able to respond with kindness. I couldn't think of a kind thing to say at the time that wasn't angry or snippy.  I didn't like being scolded by a stranger, I felt I was in the right, I was already fighting some inner prejudice I admit I have against people who drive trucks with unnecessarily huge wheels, and I just wanted to be out of the situation. So I responded with a stupid, snippy response and moved on.
       Second example: I came home after a long, hard day at work today dealing with other conflicted issues and was exhausted.  I haven't been sleeping well because I've been worried about a large number of things lately, both personal and professional.  So I was also tired from lack of sleep.  I realized I could lie down for about 15 minutes before making dinner, taking the kids to dance and heading back to church for two meetings this evening, and so I made my way to the couch.  I had just fallen asleep when the door bell rang.  It didn't ring just once, but three times and then the loud knocking began.  I hauled myself out of my sleep and headed towards the door.  "Hi, I'm from x company and we are selling y.  I hope I am not disturbing you..."  Again, an opportunity to practice being kind.  After all, that's my Lenten discipline, right?  But I couldn't do it.  "Actually, you are disturbing me.  I was trying to take a nap, I need to help my kids with their homework, and I do not have time for this conversation.  I'm sorry, but goodbye."  And I shut the door.  Of course, going back to sleep was out of the question. Instead, I stared into space for the last ten minutes because I couldn't get out of my head that it was another opportunity for kindness and another fail on my part. 
       I am gifted, every day, with opportunities to put into practice what I claim I want to do, to try to be the person I want to be.  I see these situations as the chances that they are.  But these interactions (as well as others I've had this week) have shown me that it is not enough to just say I want to do something. I have to prepare. I have to actually think through what might be kind responses in difficult situations, what might be ways to diffuse an angry encounter. "I hear you are upset. I am sorry if I have contributed to upsetting you,"  "Thank you for that advice. I will think about that. I hope the rest of your day goes better."  "I realize you have the difficult job of being a door to door sales-person, so to save you time in the future, I'm telling you now that we are not going to buy from anyone coming to our door. But I wish you the best of luck."
          I realize I won't be able to prepare for every potential situation because I don't know what they all are.  But I can prepare somewhat by thinking of positive ways to interact with difficult people, by reflecting back on situations that I have not handled well, and I can strive to try to adapt thought -through responses when those situations arise.
        I've used this story in sermons before: One day a woman hopped in a taxi and they took off for the airport. They were driving in the right lane when suddenly a red car jumped out of a parking space right in front of them. The taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at them. The taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. The passenger asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!' The taxi driver said that many people were like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment.  As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. "Don't take it personally," he said.  "Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. Do not let garbage trucks take over your day."
       It's a great story.  But again, I think it takes more than simply a commitment to behaving with kindness and grace.  It also requires practice.  So I will continue to look for the good around me.  And I will also look for the opportunities to practice kindness in the face of anger, rudeness, and other "garbage."  I saw the look of disappointment on the face of the salesman today.  And while it was too bad my nap was disturbed, I also don't ever want to be the one responsible for making someone else's day worse.  That's a choice I can try to make, each time there is an opportunity to choose between reactive anger or kindness.