The Slow Way Newsletter: On Refusing to Be Enemies
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On Refusing to Be Enemies
This past Thursday I was a wreck. Maybe some of you felt that way as well. Russia had invaded Ukraine and the seriousness of a war like this in Europe and what it means for all of us was heavy on me. I ache for my kids and the world they’re inheriting. This is silly, but I wrote a song in fifth grade (1989) that amazingly contained world events and my love for the sport of gymnastics. (I was always writing songs back then in my attempts to miraculously become Amy Grant when I reached adulthood). I sang it to my boys at dinner Thursday night while we were talking about the history of the Cold War because 1) I’ve never been very good about that rule against singing at the dinner table, and 2) it literally talks about the Berlin Wall falling down in 1989, and Chris was asking them if they knew what year the Soviet Union broke apart.
That same day I woke to news of Governor Greg Abbott’s order that Texans be forced to report parents as child abusers if they assist their transgender children by providing gender-affirming care. The depth of ignorance and ugliness in such an order is astounding to me. And the reality that we live in a country where such a vulnerable population can be treated as so worthless that their care is considered abuse? It’s unfathomable.
Both of these realities will shed innocent blood. Greg Abbott doesn’t seem to know or believe in the existence of 1.8 million trans kids who have considered suicide, or the studies that have shown that parental support and gender-affirming care for transgender young people is the very thing that leads to a significant decrease in those suicidal thoughts. Sometimes it feels like men grasping for power is still the very thing that just might kill us all. Or as my friend D.L. Mayfield wrote on Twitter this week, “I am so sick of violent men and the wars they start I could scream.”
Me too. Why do the violent men get to shed innocent blood? Why are they given power to abuse our children? To sweep into a land that’s not their own and topple it? How is humanity so beautiful and so capable of destroying itself at the same time?
And in my disgust with the violence in this world, I sat with the words of Howard Thurman in my morning reading: “It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed—this, despite the gospel.”
He goes on to explain how his generation -– in the late 1940s — perceived Christianity to be “essentially an other-worldly religion,” betraying “the Negro into the hands of his enemies by focusing his attention upon heaven, forgiveness, love and the like.” But, Thurman says, Christianity “has to be put into a context that will show its strength and vitality rather than its weakness and failure.” How do we live out that kind of Christianity?
The lectionary Gospel reading this past Sunday was from Luke 6, Jesus’ teaching that seems as wild and ridiculous as it did two thousand years ago: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.” How fitting.
I’ve thought a lot over the past several years, how no one feels as worthy of being my enemy as the Christians who ask for the blood of transgender kids in order to squeeze human beings into their version of a moral universe, or the Christians who cheer on aggressive political dominance in the world (whether or not innocent people are destroyed by war), or the Christians who fight against the teaching of our country’s history and brokenness when it comes to the treatment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, now and in the past. It’s a lot easier for me to show grace to people who don’t claim Jesus and who push for hateful and harmful policies and violence. But when people who claim Jesus appear to cheer on aggression toward the vulnerable? When people who claim Jesus support political stunts that will harm young people who are already deeply vulnerable? I want to shout from the hills that I don’t belong to these people. This is not my faith tradition. This is not Jesus.
My pastor, Michael Rudzena, preached on that passage on Sunday, and quoted a Palestinian friend of his who, despite constant threats, has continued to work toward peace among his neighbors in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: “We refuse to be enemies,” his friend says. My pastor talked about how among world religions this teaching of Jesus is unique. The idea that we should love an enemy? Is it really even possible? Does it actually work or is it somehow succumbing to weakness, letting the oppressor win? The concept of “turning the other cheek” has been used to dominate, and to ask those without power to take their abuse with a smile. But what if the idea of turning the other cheek is a muscular, wholehearted response to violence? As Michael said, “I will not respond from the place of pain [the cheek that was struck], I will [turn my healthy cheek and] respond from my wholeness.”
I told you all at the beginning of February my goal for myself was that as I studied and prepared for this each week, I would fill my mind with the thoughts of Black writers only. I’ve spent the month with Stephanie Spellers, Verna Dozier, Willie James Jennings, and Howard Thurman, all of whom have challenged me with their hopeful vision of the Really Real. And I’m taking with me an ultimate dream of what nonviolent resistance, formed by Jesus, could look like: muscular, wholehearted, filled with grace and truth.
I had the feeling on Thursday that I had so often over the years of the Trump White House. A feeling that I needed to go online, say something that might provoke a friend or follower from my earlier days of evangelical Christianity to engage with my words, to ask questions about why I changed my mind of the past fifteen years on issues of LGBTQ affirmation or issues of race, hoping I might force someone to question their own beliefs. The amount of anxiety around these encounters on Facebook left me so shaken over the years of speaking up, that my heart beats wildly whenever I open Facebook on my computer now. I avoid it as much as I can. The anxiety of needing to push back, even just with my words, on Christian movements that are anti-Christ, is exhausting. And I am coming at it as a non-oppressed, straight, cis White lady, who gets to voluntarily involve myself (as opposed to my LGBTQ friends and friends of color, whose lives and freedoms are at stake). Muscular resistance, even when it just involves our words, can be physically damaging, soul-sucking, and heart-breaking.
Thurman says that “armed resistance has an appeal because it provides a form of expression, of activity, that releases tension and frees the oppressed from a disintegrating sense of complete impotency and helplessness.” But Thurman invites his readers to something bigger than the temporary release that comes with violence.
I keep thinking about that when I feel guttural anger rise at the Putins and Abbotts of the world: violent men and the wars they start. But the temporary release of fighting back with physical or verbal violence is not the bigger story we’re invited into. What does robust and imaginative peacemaking look like?
I don’t have an answer yet. But I keep thinking on a story Thurman tells in Jesus and the Disinherited. When he was a boy and Haley’s Comet was appearing in the sky, his mother woke him up and took him outside to see. In a moment of fear, he asked her: “What will happen to us if that comet falls out of the sky?”
She answered him with a phrase that can easily be written off as over-simplistic, making assumptions of false-peace in a dangerous world: “Nothing will happen to us, Howard; God will take care of us.”
Thurman doesn’t take that phrase as a false hope that he and his mother might be uniquely safe from the disasters of the world, but that he and his mother could know a “profound faith in life that nothing can destroy.”
“God cares for the grass of the field . . . holds the stars in their appointed places, leaves his mark on every living thing. And he cares for me!” writes Thurman. “To be assured of this becomes an answer to the threat of violence — yea to violence itself. To the degree to which a man knows this, he is unconquerable from within and without.”
This is where the courage to turn the cheek — to present our whole, healthy self in muscular resistance — is born. To believe that our value is already determined, that we are unconquerable in our minds and hearts, that even if everything happens to us, our solid sense of self-value is found internally, in the place of our God-given worth. The power found in that is something I’m far from grasping, and have rarely been asked to hold. Maybe you’re still unlearning false hope? Maybe Thurman’s mother’s assurance that “nothing will happen to us,” feels false or ignorant, given the reality of life and the pain that has met you in your life or faith.
But what if hope is muscular? What if it’s a living out of faith that is stronger than any outside force that batters us? What if that’s where the courage to face the violent men who start wars comes from? When we know our worth, there is nothing that the violent ones can do to take that worth away.
May we learn to lean into that kind of courage.
a slow practice
Our practice today is simple. We’re invited to breathe our prayers as we consider our enemy and what it might mean to live in the service of peace.
Some of us are naturally non-fighters. We find it easier to react to aggression or injustice by hiding or remaining silent, afraid to rock the boat. This is my instinct that I am always pushing against. For someone like me remaining silent is an act of fear, of self-preservation. Speaking up is the act of faith I’m invited into, even when it feels terrifying.
Some of us are naturally aggressive. We find it natural to react with anger to aggression or injustice. We respond with our words or our bodies. For those who lean this way, the practice of turning the other cheek is the definition of muscular. It takes true meekness (power under control) to choose non-violence, whether its through our words or actions.
Who are you? What comes up for you when you’re faced with injustice? I know as a white woman, who was born into a world that gave me the option of being disengaged in the injustice around me, I am still learning to see injustice and engage with it. So many in the world don’t have that privilege. For those of us who do, part of our spiritual practice is to admit that.
Let’s take a breath together.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Let’s continue to pray together as we breathe in and out.
Think of the person or group of people who come to mind when you consider your enemies.
As you breathe in pray: Spirit, who brings wholehearted worth, fill me with knowledge of my God-given value.
Breathe out: Show me how to stand against evil in this world.
Breathe in: Spirit, who is actively building a new world of peace, build in me active, muscular strength to live in service of peace.
Breathe out: Show me how to be a peacemaker.
Breathe in: Spirit, who stands on the side of the oppressed, give me eyes to see the truth of your work in this dangerous world.
Breathe out: Invite me to join you in the work of justice.
Sit for a while with these breath prayers, and listen to the Spirit as it guides you to your “next right thing” in the service of peace.