Spiritual Common Sense

It’s been a tough year. It’s hard to get passed the daily barrage of disasters we hear on the news. It sometimes seems like our country is coming apart and all is lost.

At times like this, it is important for us to remember who we are and what we believe.

I believe:

• …that love is stronger than hate.
• …that faith is stronger than fear.
• …that hope is stronger than despair.
• …that mankind is indivisible.
• …that we get what we give.
• …that you cannot help another without helping yourself.
• …that you cannot hurt another without hurting yourself.
• …that the better angels of our nature will always rise.
• …and that it only takes a single ray of light to penetrate the dark.

So, with that in mind, the question as always becomes: What are we going to do about it? How do we deal with the challenges we face.

• For my part, I know that while I cannot do everything, I can do something.
• I will not let the fact I can’t do everything keep me from doing the something I can.
• I can touch one.  
• I can teach one.  
• I can heal one.
• I can speak truth to power.
• I can be an instrument of peace.
• I can be a light in the darkness.

As we approach the New Year, let us go forth remembering, in the words of Anne Frank, that, “In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit. Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. Whoever is happy will make others happy.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

My father had Black Lung, the Coal Miner’s disease, causing his health to deteriorate progressively through the years.  The degeneration of his lungs put an increasing strain on his heart.  Heart problems were followed by kidney problems, kidney problems by diabetes.  It was as though his bodily systems were failing, one by one.

Then in the spring of l988, Dad developed cataracts and had to go in for surgery.  The operation on the first eye went well, but the second did not.  As he waited for things to heal enough to allow corrective surgery, he grew increasingly frustrated an angry.  His body had been betraying him for years.  This was the final insult. 

During that time, it seemed there was little he could do other than aggravate my mom.  Unable to work and uninterested in TV, Dad spent much of his time looking through the mail order catalogs that poured into the house.  Dad called them his “wish books.”  He examined each one that arrived in detail, thumbing through them for hours.

Watching this activity, day after day, and trying to guess why he seemed so preoccupied with something so trivial, frustrated my mother even more.  Her frustration was compounded whenever she asked him what he was doing.  “I am just looking,” Dad always responded defensively.  “Can’t I look?”

It seemed like a small thing in the midst of some many other things; but it grew to be the source of the greatest friction I ever saw between my parents.  Finally, it got so bad my brother and I felt we had to give mom a break.  We agreed he would take her to Hawaii on a mini vacation, while I stayed with dad and took care of him.

Almost as soon as we returned from taking them to the airport, Dad pulled out one his wish books.  “I have been looking for a ring like this,” he said, “and I need your help.”

Dad explained that when they were married he could not afford to buy my mother an engagement ring, but he had promised her that someday he would.  Their 45th anniversary was approaching.  In anticipation of that event, he had been searching for the perfect ring and a way to make good on his promise.

The ring had to have thirteen stones, Dad said, because they were married on July 13.  For the same reason, he wanted the center stone to be a ruby, the birthstone for July, flanked by a smaller ruby and by five diamonds on each side.  After months of looking, he said he thought he had finally found what he wanted in one of the catalogues.  He asked me to drive him to the store so that he could see it.

We did as Dad wanted, but the ring he had seen advertised was disappointing.  The stones were small and of poor quality.  There were some other nice rings in the store, but they did match the image he had in his mind and were priced well beyond his means.

Much of the week Mom was gone, we shopped for the ring he wanted without success.  My father was reluctant to give up but the time for her return was rapidly approaching.  To put his mind at ease, I assured him that I knew what he wanted and would keep looking until I found it.  Dad seemed satisfied with that, but he made me promise I would give him the bill.

With that I went to a jeweler in downtown Washington and told him I wanted him to make a ring for me.  We picked out the stones and agreed on the price.  Then I told him why I wanted the ring and asked for a favor.  I said I would pay his price, but I wanted two invoices – one for the full amount, the other made out in the amount my father hoped to pay.

The jeweler was happy to comply, and Dad was delighted with ring.  He was even more pleased when he saw Mom’s reaction to her anniversary ring and her appreciation of the thought and great love that had gone into its purchase.

My father passed away five months later.  My mother followed him in eighteen months.  Neither one of them ever knew what I had done.  While I have done many more things with my life than I would have thought possible, nothing gives me more satisfaction than this.  When you do something good, write it on an ice cube.

In 1630, eleven ships left England for the new world.  The ships carried 700 passengers, livestock, and a charter for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  They were Puritans seeking religious freedom and a new life. 

Before they landed, John Winthrop, their leader, articulated his vision of the society they would create.  “All true Christians are of one body in Christ,” he said, “the ligaments of this body which knit together are love.  All parts of the body being thus united…in a special relation as they partake of each others’ strength and infirmity, joy, and sorrow.”

“We must be knit together in this work as one man,” Winthrop said. “We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities…For we must consider that we shall be as a City on a Hill.  The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Winthrop’s vision of America has held fast through the years.  Its fulfillment is in large part what makes the United States unique in the history of the world. America is the only nation composed of people drawn from another place. It is the only nation whose people are not connected by blood, race, culture, or original language.

One of the first acts of the Continental Congress was to pass a resolution authorizing a committee to research and devise a National Motto that would capture this concept.  The task was given to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams.

Two months later, on September 9, 1776, Congress gave the new nation a name – the United States of America.  The honor of naming our country belongs to Thomas Paine, who has since been called America’s Godfather.  At the same time, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams reported the recommendations of their committee.

They recommended “E Pluribus Unum” for a national motto – latin for “From the Many One.”  The motto was designed to remind us that out of many states – and many different people – one nation was born.

Fortunately, the assembly that was asked structure that unity contained some of the finest minds and arguably the noblest characters to have ever appeared in the New World.  Fortunately, the assembly had George Washington as its President.

The documents they developed – the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – defined the structure of our government, our citizens’ relationship to their government, and our relationship to each other.  As Americans, we are asked to balance our individual interests with the common good, our ambition with compassion, enterprise with responsibility, liberty with spirituality.

Despite the obvious success of their initial efforts, the founders of our nation continued to express concern for our unity.  “The unity of government, which constitutes you one people,” George Washington said in his farewell address, “is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence…and that very liberty, which you so highly prize.”

At his inauguration after a bitter and partisan election, Jefferson said, “Let us, then, fellow citizens unite with one heart and mind.”  Playing the peacemaker, he reminded the contending forces “every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”

Concerns for national unity remained well into the 20th Century.  At times, Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all resurrected Winthrop’s vision and recalled his words; but no one took them more to heart than Ronald Reagan. 

Reagan built his political career around Winthrop’s observation.  Starting in the 1970s, Reagan began framing the story of America from John Winthrop forward. From there, he built a powerful articulation of what has come to be called American exceptionalism. 

Reagan felt “there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.”  In 2012, American exceptionalism—as summarized by the phrase “a city on a hill”—became an official plank in the platform of the Republican Party.

In his Farewell Address, President Ronald Reagan recalled John Winthrop’s words one more time.  He said, “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.  But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”

That’s how I see it as well.  America is a rag-tag nation, built from the flotsam and jetsam, the scraps and misfits of the world.  At times the pieces don’t seem to fit and our individual interests, our determined pursuit of success and happiness, seems to overwhelm our sense of community.  But when we are tested, we have always come together; the spirit of America rises and there can be no doubt we are one people.

It is when we are challenged that we remember our true interest is a mutual interest. The doctrines that would divide us, the people that put race against race, religion against religion, class against class, and worker against employer are false and doomed to fail.

We know intuitively that everyone is needed.  Everyone can contribute.  Individually, we may only have a small piece of the puzzle but each of us has at least one piece and every piece is essential.

This is where community begins.  Community comes when people see hope where there is fear and decide to join hands, linking themselves with others in a common cause.  Community comes when people decide not to ignore a problem or run away, but to reinforce each other and take on apathy and despair.  Community comes when we realize nothing of real value can be accomplished alone.

Serving others is our common duty and birthright.  Selfishness is at the root of all moral evils.  Selflessness is the goal of human existence.

An individual has not started living until he or she can rise above the narrow confines of their personal interests to the broader concerns of humanity.  A nation cannot survive separate and apart.

I am afraid.

Not for my personal security.  I am too old and have been too close to the edge too many times to worry about that. 

I fear for my country; the country I have served my entire life, every way I can – at the U. S. Senate for twenty years, in the military during Vietnam, and in the community through various charities I helped create.

I worry about the world our children will inherit.

My concern comes from watching what’s happening around us, the daily drumbeat of disasters on the news, and thinking about them in the context of lessons I learned from two survivors of the holocaust – Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, and Henri Landwirth, founder of Give Kids the World. 

Both Viktor and Henri warned privately and publicly another holocaust was always possible.  They spent much of the last half of their lives telling us to be vigilant least it happen again. 

At the time, I didn’t see how that could happen. It is now increasingly clear we ignore that possibility at our peril. 

Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, has identified the stages that can cause otherwise decent people to commit murder.  He says it starts when a one group defines another as “the other.”  “They” are said to threaten “our” interests.  Discrimination and dehumanization follow, eroding the in-group’s empathy for the other group.

This leads to increased polarization and the belief that – “You are either with us or against us.”  Then true believers are asked to demonstrate their commitment.  “Enemies” are identified.  Leaders of the opposition are targeted.  Death lists are made.  Weapons are stockpiled.  Physical segregation is enforced.  “We” don’t want to live anywhere near “them,” the in-group says.  The out-group is forced into ghettos or concentration camps.  There they are easily targeted and the massacres and mass murders can begin.

History shows many of the perpetrators of these atrocities have no remorse, not because they are incapable of feeling it, but because they find ways to rationalize it.  Bob Macauley, founder of AmeriCares, helped me understand this point years ago when we talked about the genocide in Rwanda.  He described some of the horrible atrocities AmeriCares had witnessed, including Hutu men chopping up the children in their villages with machetes. 

When I asked how they could possibly do such a thing to children they undoubtedly knew, he said they rationalized it by saying they had no choice.  “It was necessary to keep my people safe,” one man said.  “Those children would have grown up to come back and kill us.”

We are not there at the moment; but we are not far from there.  You can see it bubbling up on the streets, seeping up through the sidewalk, and in the great undercurrents and tides of hate flowing back and forth just below the surface.

Let me be clear.  This is not about one side or the other.  For those who may think I am talking to the left or the right, get over it.  A reaction of that nature is just one more manifestation of how divided we have become.  It’s not about “us” or “them.”  It’s about us.

No one is exempt.  We all have to recognize our responsibility for the world we are living in.  No one has said it more clearly than the cartoon philosopher, Pogo.  “We have met the enemy and he is us,” he said.

Take a moment and consider that.  Have you ever seen our society so polarized?  Have you lost friends for political reasons?  Are there people you used to talk to that you now avoid?  When your family and friends gather are there places you just don’t go?  Do you get your information from a single source or can you switch channels back and forth without getting aggravated by what you hear?

It’s hard to tell whether the acrimony we see in our political system is a cause or an effect.  What is clear is that each side of the political divide believes the other side is evil.  Both sides see the coming election as existential.  Neither side believes it can live with other side’s success.  If the election is close, neither side will accept the outcome without question. 

Inevitably, in that case, the divide will become larger and deeper.  This is a recipe for disaster.  It will take us to a dark place the likes of which we have never seen in our country’s history.  

But there is a light out of this darkness.  It begins with the recognition that we have a choice, that America is more “bottom up” than “top down”, and that this country will be whatever we are. 

The responsibility is ours, not theirs.  The solution to all the problems on the national level starts locally on the personal level with our love for each other, the acceptance of those with differing views, and our denial of the forces that would separate and divide us from one another.  

As a child, I often wondered where hell was.  Later, I learned the word “hell” comes from the old English.  Literally, it means “to separate” or “to build a wall around.”  To be “helled” was to be shut off.  

Interestingly enough, “diabolic” comes from a word meaning “to divide.”  Diabolic forces separate us from each other and God.  In our lives they find expression in ego, anger, pride, radical religions, nationalism, racism, envy, ignorance, and greed.  These are the forces of darkness.  They divide and conquer.

By contrast, “heaven” means “harmony.”  If demonic forces divide, love unites.

Peace will not come; we will not see the best of America, until we are able to get beyond the superficial elements that divide us.  Our society will not heal until we realize the only thing that separates us from each other is the belief that we are separate.

The answer lies in the distance between saying “I am my brother’s keeper” and saying “I am my brother.”

Of all the hundreds of hours of television I have watched this week and of all the comments made by the seemingly endless number of pundits, one comment stays on my mind. 

It came from Martin Luther King III as he was being interviewed on CNN last weekend.  He was asked to talk about the protests that have followed the killing of George Floyd in the context of his father’s work. 

“I thought we were passed this,” he said. 

My response was visceral. His comment resurrected a flood of memories.

One of the earliest memories was a classmate who brought a sock to show-and-tell in the sixth grade saying it had belonged to a black man who had been lynched near our small western town a few years before.  

I remembered Selma and Montgomery.

I remembered George Wallace.

I remembered Bob Moses, a man of towering integrity who was known in the civil rights movement as the first to walk into danger and the last to walk away.

I remembereded being on the Mall listening to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I remembered being on the Capitol steps watching the City burn the day after he was killed.

I remembered being on an elevator in the Capitol with the senior Senator from South Carolina who – after hearing conversations reflecting shock and sadness at Dr. King’s death – waited for the elevator to clear and said, “It’s about time someone killed that son-of-a-bitch.” 

I remembered being on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign staff and his fight for social justice.

I remembered being in the Senate gallery, watching as the Senate passed the Civil Rights Act of l964 after a dramatic 75-day filibuster dramatically broken when Senator Clair Engle, a Republican from California, too sick to speak, signaled his affirmative vote by pointing to his eye.

I remembered my surprise in light of this history when an African-American was elected to the highest office in the land.

Collectively, my memories told me we had come a long way.  So, forgive me if I too thought we were passed all this.

But as I ruminated on the words from Dr. King’s oldest son, I found a deeper meaning and a greater challenge.

Start with the obvious. It’s hard to watch the death of George Floyd. It was a crime against humanity so clear and vicious you can’t help wanting to protest.

But is what we are now seeing the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

“Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us,” President Lincoln said.  “Our defense is in the spirit which primed liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere.  Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your door.”

Lincoln’s words are a reminder that liberty is not just an idea, and abstract principle.  Liberty is power – specifically the power to act.

Consider again the words of Martin Luther King III in this context.  Is it enough to protest?  Shouldn’t we be passed that place?

When will we accept our responsibility for the world we see?  When will we accept ownership?  Most important, now and always, what are we going to do about it?

Apathy is the enemy.  The sad truth is that the actions of this Administration so objectionable to so many would not have happened if many of the people – particularly the young – who are now marching had taken the time to vote in 2016. 

Until the energy we see on the streets is dedicated to mobilizing, registering, and getting out the vote, nothing will change.  If we truly want justice, if we want America to live up to her promise, we must make it happen. 

We must be the change we seek.  Ultimately, America is and will always be whatever we are.