You say you want a revolution?

Do I have to???

I’m human.

I needed to get that out of the way at the start to acknowledge I make mistakes and I struggle. In life, there is struggle. Darwin said it. The Buddha said it.

I know it to be true.

Case in point:

I try to live my life according to certain, specific, and clear moral and ethical standards. They’ve become my core values. Among them, I include: kindness, honesty, integrity, compassion, respect, dignity, gratefulness, joy, equanimity, patience, generosity, service, forgiveness, and love. I’m not perfect at any of them. I’m only human.

And yet, I try. It’s a practice, this being human thing.

More to the point:

I struggle as well with some of the things I’m being taught by my teachers of Soul and Spirit, juxtaposed with the current political climate in our country—especially concerning our current president, his administration, and the party he’s hijacked (to say nothing of the country he’s hijacked).

I like to also think I have courage, and that this courage involves putting my actions where my mouth and writing is. This is called authenticity—another of my cherished values. My struggle is to rectify teachings on peace, equanimity, wu wei (the Taoist teaching of “action of non-action”), and zen’s “letting go, drop it all,” with my passionate opinions and beliefs that what is happening right now in our country is simply not okay. These have prompted deep and sometimes existential questions for me: “How am I to act, then, to show my passionate opposition, while holding true to my values?” “What does it mean, now, to be a citizen of this country?” And “Who am I as a citizen of the ‘United’ States?” “Heck, who am I…period?” One of the things I hope I never am is a hypocrite.

Some of my heroes are people who have stood up for their beliefs in the face of severe and dire circumstances—people like Nelson Mandela, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, MLK, Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Cesar Chavez, John Lewis, Chief Joseph, and the like. THEY each put actions behind their words; they lived congruent with their beliefs. Congruence: another of my values.

Last week, groups around the world held “HANDS OFF” demonstrations. Millions of like-minded kin joined together to act in accordance with their shared beliefs that “things really shouldn’t be like this.” I’m a believer. And I’m also not someone who puts a whole lot of effort into active protests such that I put my body into the arena of public display. Why, I’m not really sure. It’s likely that nothing really has prompted me so passionately to do so. Until now.

I want to believe that, had I lived as a young adult in the 1960’s, I would have been on the right side of history and actively joined civil rights marches; danced in the mud at Woodstock; got pissed off (hippie politically-correct language for morally outraged) at the Kent State massacres; burned my draft card; and morned deeply the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. In other words, I want to believe I would have been an active social justice activist—this white kid from religious conservative parents, who lived on a farm in rural eastern Washington, the reddest part of the state … a quasi-hippie.

I’ve led a privileged, if sometimes ignorant or apathetic (to the plight of others), life. Fortunately, for me, I am also someone who is becoming better at tuning into the energies of synchronicity. So as I was contemplating whether to join a local “Hands Off” demonstration, I was also reading the autobiography of one of my teachers: Ram Dass. And, literally, just a few days prior to last Saturday, the day of the world-wide protests, I read the following in Being Ram Dass:

From: Being Ram Dass. (Sounds True Publishing, Boulder CO. 2021. p. 285-6)

“… I saw how necessary it is to bring social action and spiritual work together to truly deal with our own and others’ suffering. [There] must be a way to embrace political action that would come from a deeper place in myself than ‘I should get involved.’”

Yep, Synchronicity.

I remember as I finished reading the paragraphs above, I knew I was going to be on that usually quiet corner in a small town just south of my home, and I knew exactly how I was going to participate “to bring social action and [my] spiritual work together,” not because I should, but because I needed to—in order to live and stay congruent with my core values. To “walk my talk.” Like Ram Dass, “I want(ed) my action(s) to emerge from an intuitive sense of rightness” too.

I knew “how” because I also have, as one of my imperfect heroes, Saint Mother Theresa, and SHE gave me THE answer to my aspiration of congruency:

Some protesters approached Mother Theresa to ask her to march with them in opposition to the war in Vietnam. She turned them down, much to their dismay.

Instead, she responded: “I will not march against war. But if you have a march for peace, I will be there at the front of the line.”

Saint Mother Theresa taught me an aligned, congruent vision for how to protest that allowed me to both walk my talk, but also stay true to my core values—my “intuitive sense of rightness.” See, I also struggle with my impure hatred of this president, measured against my spiritual path to see him as an imperfect human, just as I am, who is also a Soul—just as I am. I struggle with giving him this “benefit of doubt,” with giving him any benefit whatsoever—because despite my spiritual teachings, I cannot help but think true evil does exist. And right now, it’s leading our country.

So, instead of standing in opposition to him, last Saturday, at the Hands Off protest, with about 400 other kindred spirits on a usually quiet corner of a very small town, I stood in affirmation of something greater.

This was the sign I held for three hours last Saturday, on that not-quiet corner, with 400 others. It was the second time I held this sign in affirmation: the first time being January 21, 2017–the day after this president’s first inauguration on the occasion of the world-wide “March for Women.”

Holocaust survivor and psychologist/philosopher Viktor Frankl, writing in his seminal “Man’s Search for Meaning” wrote: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

This situation we‘ve ignorantly and cruelly been forced into demands our response. And until last week, I wasn’t exactly sure how to respond authentically in congruence with who I aspire to be.

I refuse to give up my “right to choose” to this man, this administration, and this party. I refuse to believe this is who we are right now—even though this is exactly who we are right now. I refuse to believe this is okay.

I firmly believe things aren’t suppose to be like this. I firmly believe we are better than this; that deeper down in each of us we can find “the better angels of our nature.” I firmly believe Love is more powerful, always, than fear and hatred.

I know I am empowered, always, to choose my response.

So I chose.

“Kindness trumps Hatred“

Always.

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Always and Ubuntu,

~ k