Pt II: The task ahead…
2016
Great changes sometimes happen – a death, a broken relationship, any sudden loss – that shock us, create an opening into profounder perspective than we can access in ordinary life.
That’s what I felt on November 9, 2016, the day after the general election two cycles back: total betrayal. America had elected someone manifestly cruel, self-serving, vapid. We collectively fell for the con, and it completely contradicted my assumptions not just about shared American values in general, but the values I thought I shared with people I knew, personally.
I took for granted that there was a consensus: we reject dehumanization. If this legacy was part of our collective national shadow, it was something I casually assumed we were aware of, cognizantly tried to face and overcome. But I thought gross racism and misogyny were largely in the past.
Worse, those blinders marked my implicit racial bias, my blindness to my own internalized white supremacist beliefs. I had things to face about myself. Not only did I feel betrayed by my country, but I had to face my complicity in our national complacency about racial realities. I had so much work to do.
What I needed to do then
The challenges I knew were imminent in 2016 daunted me, and I felt like I didn’t have the inner heft to meet them. I needed to consolidate something deep in my core, to become a person with a more fully formed inner ballast to meet the immensity of the headwinds on the horizon. I needed to have the wherewithal to offer meaningful resistance and to put forward something different in return. Performance, external behavior would not cut it. It had to be integral, had to come from an anchored place.
In the maelstrom of change, I needed a firm stance, consolidation as a person, and then to act from that place with humility and compassion.
That was my task, and that is what I dedicated myself to from that moment in January 2016 until this day. I do sense a crystallization of something that wasn’t there before. I’m not saying by any means that I’ve eradicated my blindspots or overcome my implicit bias – that’s a lifelong undertaking. But I’ve learned a measure of humility, and I’m learning to face my own shadows, own them. I’ve logged hours on my meditation cushion, studying wisdom teachings, working to cohere around a cosmology, a psychology — a Self — that would support what was necessary: to move past the insecure reactive self, the small scared part of me, and live out of a more capacious place from which to take a stand, to be present, and to give help.
2024
Here we are again. With a full account of the undeniable: flagrant fraud, criminal predation, demonstrable incompetence. An insurrectionist with fascist affinities, who fundamentally misunderstands the office, the principles we stand on, and human empathy. We reelected this in full knowledge. Consciously chose this to lead our nation.
I think of all we stand to lose over the next four years.
First amendment rights – freedoms of peaceful assembly, press, speech. The fundamental doctrine of separation between church and state, judicial independence, Ukraine, Taiwan, Gaza. Protected national secrets, trust of allies, national security officials’ exercise of independent judgment; ethics and accountability for lawbreaking; voting rights. Military honor and independence; the rationality and professionalism of the civil service; regulations for health, safety and fairness; climate progress; protected public lands. An independent Fed and restrained economic policy. Access to healthcare as enshrined in law; women’s bodily agency; rights and dignities of LGBTQI persons; basic survival and security assistance for the economically insecure; rights to asylum and a tradition of humane treatment of immigrants. Guardrails. National honor. Guaranteed due process, an operative universal franchise, our role in the world as indispensable power and stalwart ally, counted on to defend democracies and serve humanitarian needs. The honorable struggle to achieve a truly multiracial democracy where immigrants flock for opportunity to thrive in peace.
What will happen to our Constitution – the document that adjudicates power and our collective rights and protections as citizens equal under the law – under a president without conscience? A president who fancies dictators and tyrants? Will it functionally endure?
The American people have committed me to walk a treacherous path that I did not choose.
What I must do now
As we entered that historic watershed eight years ago, I knew what my task was. Today, I learn I’m not finished.
What’s called for? Honest observation of my part in the intractable dynamic we find ourselves in; continued developing of that inner core; and a commitment to reconciliation.
What Lincoln called for at the conclusion of the Civil War is what we must strive for now (even as we continue to cleave apart as a nation): “With malice toward none; with charity to all let us bind up the wounds of this nation.” I was struck by this petition echoing through the ages in the urgings of former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. Both exhorted fidelity to democratic norms and constitutional principles, good faith and grace. To really listen to what people say through the vote: a failure to thrive in present circumstances, a demand for change. We have to heed this, bow to it, alleviate the suffering of our citizens.
Is such a thing even possible? I have to believe it is possible.
I heard Buddhist teacher Tara Brach suggest this week that we must ask what lies behind our fear, anger, grief, and there we find what we care about. Hook into that thing you want to protect and act passionately and positively to bring it forth. (In Eastern mystic, G.I. Gurdjieff’s Work, this is called “creating moon.” Taking negative energy as alchemical fuel for constructive action.)
It’s what I mean when I contemplate holding this time in “spacious mercy.” I don’t mean whitewashed ‘forgiveness,’ excusing wholesale the destruction we are bringing on ourselves. Rather, the word mercy signifies ‘exchange.’ (It derives from the stem, ‘merc,’ as in merchant, mercantile, market.) I cannot accept compromised values or abuse. But in the face of stalemate I can try to put something else in the mix that might soften the occasion, restore dignity and facilitate the mutual manifestation of our highest capabilities: compassion, courage, forgiveness, trust, shared hope.
This work has to come from a deep place. It cannot be a performance of virtue. That’s too shallow and too easily hijacked by the ego’s wish to be seen as good. Performed virtue will not make a difference, will not endure or help, may make things worse.
Rather, the call I hear now is to hold an open stance, a supple receptivity, not braced and defensive. This may be the only way if we seek a third way resolution to oppositional politics. Listen. And if indeed we are inexorably entering a ‘dark, retractive time’ that reshapes this nation, it doesn’t lessen the necessity of ‘being democracy’ and of sharing out of the goodness we are capable of.
Even if the institutions that formerly scaffolded our shared way of life and character start to fail, we have to recreate these things out of our own capacities. As a nation of equality, we all must be the democratic leaders we need. You matter, I matter.
What we put out there – all of it, all of us – matters and will deeply and materially shape what happens going forward.
I can’t imagine a harder task right now. We can’t relent in holding leaders accountable. That’s what democracy is and depends on. But something else is also being summoned at this moment: a real offering of deep humanity for our collective survival and for realizing the fullness of our capabilities to affect the worlds with the good sustenance so needed.