From "Fight" to "Friend"

     Today in my good news e-mag I saw an article about a new cancer breakthrough where cancer cells are "re-taught" to be normal cells rather than cancerous cells.  This is a huge breakthrough for many reasons but it also caused me, once again, to reflect on the deeper lessons being learned.  

    As humans, we appear to tend towards violence in all areas of our life.  When someone is nasty to us, we often will fight back, at least verbally, or up the ante, returning evil for evil.  When there are problems in the world, rather than negotiating or talking, we often jump into war, into fighting.  When we have problems within ourselves, we talk about fighting - fighting the demons within or fighting the addiction, or fighting with our own anger.  As I've written about many times, when someone does something wrong in our society, we "fight" or seek to harm them in return with retributive justice prison sentences, too.  And with our diseases: we fight disease by trying to "kill" it.  

    Does it work?  Not so well, in any of these situations.  Might does not equal right, so our wars don't always favor the right.  Those who go to a punishing prison usually end up entrenched in their lives of crime.  The addictions and inner problems we fight with tend to just fight back.  And even the diseases we fight by killing what is within usually do more damage to us in the end.  The things we use to kill diseases kill us as well.  

    I actually believe that this is a metaphor for all of life: in trying to kill what we deem to be the "other", whether it is a disease or issue within us or an "enemy" without, we end up destroying or damaging ourselves as well.  

    There are alternatives and we are just beginning to really figure those out.  Restorative justice is a much better approach in terms of our legal system, for example: bringing healing to all those involved in a situation where a crime has happened, rather than an escalating revenge/punishment.  This is true in our raising of children as well: when we yell at our kids, they aren't as able to hear, to learn.  But when we work with them, seeing the mistakes as invitations for learning, invitations for growth, not only is the growth more permanent and effective, but it builds their self esteem as well.  If we were to learn to talk to each other rather than going to war, relationships and lives would not be torn apart or ended in the name of justice.  

    I loved the children's book series, "The Secrets of Droon" by Tony Abbott.  One of the things I loved most about this series, was that the children were not encouraged or taught to kill the "bad guys."  Instead, they were encouraged to understand them, and to grow with them so that those "bad guys" might be met with enough compassion that they would change.  We have the same opportunites throughout our lives in all areas.

    I've seen a person screeming at someone else about something who was met with patience and an open heart, and as a result they calmed down, were able to be rational and to have real conversations, moving from stances of enemies across a line to friends, working together to solve a problem. I saw my own son, as a kindergartener, make the decision to befriend a kid who bullied everyone.  My son was able to change the stance of the other child by doing so, and as a result, the "bully" was finally able to ask for the help he needed, learning to trust that not everyone was against him, that some were truly there who would love and care for him, even when he told the truth about what had been happening in his home life.

    I've also experienced people trying to fight off the grief and pain within their own hearts who, when encouraged instead to befriend that pain and grief, were able to truly work it through and therefore to let it move through them and out. It is a different way to approach our inner struggles and pain, but an effective way to really work through and come out the other side.  When we fight our inner problems, the best we can hope for is to suppress them.  But when we befriend our shadow side, we can learn and grow together until we are changed for the better.

    This new way of approaching cancer is incredibly hopeful to me.  It recognizes that change, rather than destruction, is a better way to deal with cancers of all kinds, within our bodies and within our lives.

    

Restorative Justice at the College Level

           For my youngest child's spring break we went and looked at colleges that had interested her.  Without naming names, I want to talk about one of those colleges very briefly.  Most of what this college had to say for itself was very positive and seemed like a good match for Youngest.  They talked about being inclusive and aware, though aparently one of their professors had made an inappropriate comment in a fit of anger that was caught on video and was being shown all over the place.  

           This college also talked about using a restorative model for justice on campus rather than a retributive model.  I've written about this before, but to explain again: In a retributive model for justice, misdeeds, mistakes, errors are dealt with by punishing the person who made the error.  Those who use this method seek revenge on the person, often an escalated revenge of what was done in the first place.  This model has many problems with it, beginning with the fact that punishment simply does not work to effectively change behavior.  In fact, the extremely high rate of recidivism in the United States prisons, for example, shows that the punishment we exact on our prisoners ends up cementing their identity as criminals most of the time.  They then have extremely little chance of changing, doing better, or choosing a different way of life.  We also make it almost impossible for those who've been incarcerated to find housing, jobs, or a way of getting out of that system.  We make them into criminals, even if they weren't actually criminals before.  It is also estimated that at least 10% of those who end up incarcerated are not actually guilty of the crimes they were incarcerated for.  Additionally, our retributive system does not provide healing for the victims either.  In our legal system, in fact, our retributive justice system usually ends up revictimizing the victims as they must tell their story in a court of law and have that story attacked and dismantled by lawyers seeking to defend the accused.  

        In contrast to the restributive justice system, a restorative model seeks to understand and provide healing for both victims and those who have done wrong.  There are still consequences for the offenders.  But the consequences tend of be logical or natural consequences: ways for the offenders to correct their mistakes, fix them, look at their own issues that caused the offenders to behave badly in the first place, and invites them to choose to start on a different path.  

       Many of our native tribes (throughout the world!  New Zealand has a wonderful restorative justic program based on the methods of the Maori) have used a restorative model rather than a retributive model with great success.  It sees everyone involved as people not "bad guys" and "good guys" but human beings, all in need of growth and healing.

       Our child development strategies are tending more and more towards a restorative model as we learn that children act out when there is something that needs healing, something that needs training, something that needs help.  It has moved from identifying kids as simply "bad" or "good" into recognizing that all of us are mixes of bad and good and are all on a path of growth.  Many of our schools are also learning and moving more towards a restorative rather than a retributive model.  For example, rather than expelling a child who has done wrong, many schools now work with the child, their family, the victims, and the school system to try to understand what wrong has happened and to do the work to make sure the offenders are not continuing in their behavior.  They are also working more to help the victims obtain healing help.  Expulsion, for many kids, was not only an uneffective punishment, but sometimes was experienced by kids to be a kind of backwards reward.  It encouraged further "bad" behavior rather than correcting what was wrong, teaching more fully about empathy, and helping everyone involved in these situations to heal, grow and do better.  

         So, this college we visited prided itself on teaching and using a restorative model of justice.  It proclaimed that when something happened that was "wrong" that it was explored, analyzed, and addressed individually, working with those who made the mistakes to correct them, to learn from them, and to fix the mistakes rather than to simply be punished, expelled or thrown out as "bad".  

        That's awesome.  I believe deeply in restorative justice and was very excited to find a school that declared its commitment to that system at the outset.

        HOWEVER, many students at the school were protesting, demanding for the firing of the above mentioned professor.  The firing of a teacher follows a retributive model of justice.  It does nothing to correct the problem or even address it.  It does nothing towards healing the victims.  It also simply dismisses the professor, leaving him and his family without income or without a way to correct the problems.  It responds to an error (or even a series of errors) by adding to the list of what is harmful, destructive and angry, rather than offering a way forward that teaches, heals and restores relationships.  It stops conversation, rather than exploring, learning together and working together to truly address the issues in productive and constructive ways.  It also entrenches the professor in a place of simply defending his comments rather than inviting him to do the self-reflection a more restorative process would encourage.  

       I continue to be amazed at the lack of compassion that humans show to one another.  I continue to be deeply saddened by the ease with which people choose to label, categorize and "other" those around them.  This professor stopped being a person to these students.  He is just a "bad guy" now to throw out, another person to be "gotten rid of,"  to punish, to condemn.  It was obvious that for all the rhetoric at the school claiming to follow and teach a restorative justice model that they have not been able to actually instill that value into the student body.  We have a long way to go.

Broken Systems

      I woke up upset this morning.  Okay, admittedly there actually was a good reason for this.  I was awakened at 5:30 this morning by a woman insisting that I needed to file a whole mess of papers so that I could continue to get the $1.33 per month in child support for my eldest daughter for the next 3 weeks (so really $1 total) since, although she has turned 18, she still has three weeks from her birthday yet to graduate from high school.  When I told her it would cost me more to file the papers than the $1 I'd be receiving on Eldest's behalf, she laid this bizarre and weird guilt trip on me about how it wasn't the money that mattered, but the support they got from their father, and that I should care more about the kids than about money.  Um...
     I just published my Pentecost sermon which was about striving to understand those we really don't understand.  I believe that my best sermons are the ones I write to myself as I struggle with the reality of deeply held beliefs that are difficult to live up to.  This, while very short (since we had a play that filled most of the sermon time), was one of those sermons.  I believe we are called to look deeper at each person we encounter, to get to see beyond what people say and do to the reasons why they say and do those things... I believe, in other words, that we are to strive to mirror the loving Divine who knows us more fully than we know ourselves and loves us not only into being but through all of our mistakes, our pains, our struggles because of that deep understanding of who we ultimately are, what we have experienced, and what we are striving to become.
    So, as is often the case for me, when I am struggling with something, I am given quick and direct opportunities to practice what I preach.  In this case, I've been given the opportunity to try to see beneath, beyond and through what this woman was saying and attempt to decipher why she was so quick to judge and so pushy about me filing these papers so Eldest could receive this extra $1 in child support. In reflecting on our conversation, I think she was simply trying to get the paper work her job requires her to obtain.  She is probably used to working with people who don't pay their required support, who don't fulfill their obligations, and as a result, she has probably learned to use guilt as an affective weapon in order to be able to do the job she is paid to do.  She doesn't know me, she doesn't know our situation, she doesn't know the big picture here.  She undoubtedly was not paying attention to the fact that a phone call made from Ohio to California meant that when she went to call me at 8:30am her time, she was in fact calling me at 5:30am PDT time.  She simply had a job to do and she was trying to do it to the best of her ability.  That is probably why the guilt trip is working a bit on me as well.  While I cannot justify all the time and effort it would take to file the papers she requires in order to receive that extra total $1 in child support, I know that it would be helpful to her in her job to have that neatly tied up by having the proper papers that track my daughter's graduation from high school.  So I debate... do I do this for this woman?  Or do I let it go knowing that I will in fact just be one of the many who don't do the final paper work for various reasons, including a lack of time or the resources necessary, or (as in my case) no real incentive to fax the appropriate papers.
        More than this, then, I felt called to look more deeply at my own upset this morning because I felt it was an extreme reaction in response to a woman just doing her job.  What about this really pushed my buttons?  Why did this simple request set me so far off this morning?  There are layers and layers here... frustration, anger and despair built up over the last few weeks that has a long list attached to it: divisions, hate and anger of others, the increasing violence, the fear for my children in just going to school now, the nastiness of comments on social media (not aimed at me, but affecting me none the less), the outrageous behavior of human beings who, I used to believe were moving towards more compassion, but who instead, with the anonymity of social media and the current political atmosphere seem actually much more attuned to judgment, hate, violence, an inability to empathize and a desire to harm those who are different from "us".  All of that gets in, turns, twists, hurts and, in the face of a sense of helplessness to heal it or to bring insight and compassion to this broken world, expresses itself in extreme emotional reactions.  But more than that, this specific situation raised in me all the upset, once again, at a justice system that has taken so much from my family and myself.  The fact that I have collected $4 a month for my kids, while paying out about $150 a month for the last 6 years, and almost $100K in legal fees before that is overwhelmingly difficult for me to swallow right now as I look at the cost of education for my three kids over the next 9 years and the fear of the huge debts we will incur to get them through school.  The reality of being a 50 year old adult who has had to, once again, rely on family for financial help, is shaming and humiliating.  The struggle of being a single working mother in a career that was never meant to pay well but which requires more than full time attention is still overwhelming at times, even now when I have a very helpful fiancé.  And the pain I deal with in my kids, still, that will never go away, that will be their defining story of humiliation, of isolation, and of loss still breaks my heart on a daily basis.
        The point I am making with this?  My own story is only one, a small one actually, a small example that is just a tiny part of why I do not believe in retributive justice.  Retributive justice does not work, as we know by the huge recidivism rate in the United States.  Retributive justice is an acting out of anger, a desire to hurt those who have hurt us. It does absolutely nothing to bring healing to the victims, but instead usually revictimizes them through the court systems.  It also does nothing to change the perpetrators so they might choose something different in the future.  The system creates more victims: families and communities of both the victims and the perpetrators are deeply harmed by the retributive system itself.  Additionally, conservative estimates say that one out of every ten incarcerated persons are completely innocent, (which, since, as of the Dec 31, 2016 justice statistics said there were 6,613,500 people under the corrections institutions in the US means we are looking at over 600,000 innocent people unfairly incarcerated).  But while they may have been innocent before going to prison, their chances of remaining so after being released are slim.  What prison teaches is how to survive by crime, how to seek revenge through more outrageous behavior, how to respond to a violent world with more violence. And since it is extremely difficult for a person with a criminal record to be employed, options become limited for self-support after incarceration.  Add to this that much of our "justice" is bought. The lawyers we interacted with were unanimously quick to tell us that justice was a theological concept, and that what we have in our country is simply, no more and no less, than a business.  Therefore the poor and those with less resources cannot buy their way to "justice" (even those who are guilty are often guilty of a much lesser crime that what they receive punishment for, and mitigating circumstances are seldom considered) and those with resources can get away with anything if they pay the right people enough.
         This does not mean that I believe there should be no consequences.  Of course there should.  But a restorative model works for consequences that genuinely bring healing to victims, understanding across the board, and "punishment" that heals and restores both individuals and communities.  This is a quick summary of a very complex system, but I believe in it very strongly.  Having lived through and experienced the retributive justice system up close and personally I feel this more strongly than ever.  Our retributive justice system is a racist, classist, revenge-punishment business that harms more people, percentage wise, in the United States than in any other developed country.  It is barbaric, and when I think about it the rage within me is strong.  The phone call this morning was just the end of a long list of reminders of a broken and destructive system.
      I will write more about restorative justice in the future.  But for now, let me just say that as I navigate the emotional storm that I'm experiencing this morning, I know the only solution to these feelings is to fight for change.  I hope to do more work towards restorative justice.  If you are interested in joining me on this path, let me know.

Violence and some terrible reactions to it.

       I'm going to say some things that may not be very popular, and I am saying them from a place of anger, so beware: if you are uncomfortable hearing a different opinion than your own, or if you are uneasy with my anger, you might want to stop reading right now.

       In response to the recent mass shooting, I read some very disturbing posts on Facebook.  One blamed the kids for not reporting that the shooter seemed to be having a hard time, and blamed their parents for not encouraging profiling. There is no other way to put this.  It put people in boxes and told us we should all do the same to prevent violence, never mind that this shooter was a white, heterosexual male. This rant stated that the shooter should have been reported and then locked up before he did anything because he was clearly having a hard time and the solution to people having a hard time is to throw them in prison, which would have prevented the shootings.  It went on to blame liberals who don't want to indiscriminately lock people up, as being the problem and said that if someone at school names another person as having an issue, that kid should be imprisoned.  Another comment I read on Facebook indicated with joy that one community did imprison a student who appeared to be struggling with mental illness, thereby preventing him from shooting anybody.
        I think I was almost as disturbed by the suggestions in these posts as I was by the shootings themselves for several reasons.  First of all, if we set up situations where, when a kid doesn't like someone else, they can just "report" that child as being disturbed with the reaction that the child reported will then be imprisoned, we are inviting a whole different kind of very serious bullying.  What happened to innocent until proven guilty?  Are we now saying it is okay to imprison someone on the chance that they MIGHT hurt someone else?  Forget proving guilt, this is even suggesting arresting someone before they have done anything wrong!  And again, what an invitation to bullies.  I can see it now.  Bully says, "If you don't give me your money or do exactly what I tell you to do then I will report you as seeming 'off' and they will throw you in prison!"  Bully says, "I don't like you - I'm going to get you thrown into prison just because I can!"
       Second, and more importantly, if we start dealing with people who have problems, are disturbed, and are struggling by throwing them into a prison where undoubtedly their problems will be exacerbated and emphasized, we are creating the very villains we are hoping to prevent.  What happens when they are released, then, from prison?  Or are we thinking we just lock them up for life because they are mentally ill or are struggling?  And if we expect them to eventually be released, are we thinking that because of their time in hell (no exaggeration here... I've visited enough prisons and talked with enough inmates to know that American prisons are hell, despite what certain media may tell us), they will be calmer, better able to handle the stressors in life, better qualified to deal with their anger and less likely to go on a shooting rampage?!  We would have to be insane to believe this.  Prison creates and hardens criminals, it increases rage, it cements hatred, and it gives people no skills for dealing with those feelings, make no mistake about that.  When a child is struggling with mental illness, anger, depression, rage, and other problems they need help.  Our prisons do not help people.
        There are so many aspects of our society and culture that must be addressed here; so very many, starting with how we help one another, how we care for one another, and how we learn to love one another.  People who are struggling should not be put into a box we call "other" or "bad" and then simply locked away.  They are us: they are our family, they are our siblings and our parents and our children and they need us to help them. I write this from the personal experience of having kids who are "different".  Yes, I admit it, my kids are different. They don't fit in in the same way many other kids do, they've gone through some hard things, they struggle at times, and they are sometimes bullied. I deal with this with counseling, love, resources, and as a result they are doing well in school, doing well at home, they are balanced and healthy, they have skills for dealing with their anger and pain, though they undoubtedly will always be a little "different".  But many kids do not have those resources.  And I can see it being all too easy for those kids without those resources to be thrown into prison for their pain.  We have to stop separating ourselves into "us" and "them".  We have to be willing to love people who are different from ourselves and to recognize that for a society to be truly healthy, everyone in it must be healthy.  We have a responsibility to create the opportunities for care, opportunities for growth and learning.  We have a responsibility to care for one another, and to heal ourselves in the healing of each other.
      We also need to address our justice system and move into a more restorative justice model where both victims and offenders are recognized as needing help and healing, and are given the help to change and to heal. Societies that use restorative justice models have an extremely small recidivism rate: people learn how to be better, how to do better, which lowers crime in those places substantially.  The victims also truly achieve healing, unlike our current system where they are often re-traumatized by the court processes.  The revenge-punishment model we have for our prisons does NOT work to deter crime, to lessen crime or to help the victims.
       Mental health care needs to be funded and seen as a priority.  Again, we do this for all of us: when we create a society where people with mental health issues cannot afford or obtain help, we create societies where violence is inevitable.  We also need to teach how to deal with anger and rage.  That too is a mental health and emotional health issue that as a society we need to begin to address.
       Gun control also must be addressed: yes, it must.  But I will allow others who are more knowledgeable and articulate to speak on that at this point: there are so many who do so much better than I ever could.  I will only say that from a Christian perspective, I see absolutely no justification for our turning towards violence as a solution.  Jesus was clear that killing was never acceptable.  He was clear about turning the other cheek.  Our arming ourselves with weapons whose only purpose is destruction of another is antithetical to everything he taught about seeing the other, even our enemies, as people we are called to love.  Period.  And our responding to violence with more violence escalates the problems.  It does not bring peace.
       Perhaps more than anything else, these tragedies call us to show who we really are.  Are we people who take seriously the call to love one another, even those we consider "enemies"?  Or are we fear based people who want to destroy, put away, and get rid of anyone who is different than ourselves?  It is truly worth thinking over.