Christelle Responds

I must admit that the same writers that Brad quotes are often the writers who have influenced my own thinking. So once again, though our viewpoints differ a great deal, our foundational assumptions about being open-hearted as well as a thoughtful and kind human being (which for me is a daily practice) is what seems to motivate both of us. This stance in the world is, of course, a challenge. Brad’s honest appraisal of a typical response to children living in poverty “not my children or THOSE poor children” is really the core of our common moral commitment and our mutual respect and treasured friendship.

Brad writes, reflecting on his experience as a school board member: “We saw our children: poor, poorly-educated, often ethnic minorities. While we saw them, we did not see them as ours. Only when I saw them as my children was I willing to take personal responsibility to try to change outcomes.”

What a powerful and beautifully self-reflective truth-telling: so refreshing in our “post-truth era” where the accepted tendency is to just make things up and justify poorly reasoned actions, policies, or ideologies without considering consequences and practical implications. Extremist viewpoints, whether on the left or the right, along with specious self-justifications leave me baffled. Why? There is a carelessness about life and a carefully orchestrated protection of the IDEA of a “self” defined by both our own habitual reactions to and personal perceptions of the world as WE see it: a worldview limited by the language we use to explain it to others.

IS there another alternative? IF we woke up every morning and saw ourselves as learners instead of knowers, curious rather than authoritative, then perhaps we could see the “self” as always becoming; not being stuck in our own ideas about everything. Ancient Pali texts indicate that this is indeed the definition of suffering: “being stuck like a broken axle on a wheel,” unable to move. So in every interaction, in each situation we are called upon to skillfully “read the world,” a method used by Freire in villages in Brazil in the 1960s and described in his 1970 classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed so that as a community of learners we are generative. We see that which we could not see before and we get unstuck. This is the kind of social capital that enables us to respond to each situation with a deeper consciousness about what is at stake, especially for those in our communities who are the most disenfranchised and marginalized for whatever reason. We are in dialogue. Freire’s Marxist analysis of education as a system of “banking” as distinct from a dialogue WITH others is described in this brief passage:

“[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.”

So how is it that we can become more self aware and begin to see the “other” as another precious “I”? According to Jewish scholars like Martin Buber and Abraham Herschel as well as contemporary social psychologists like Princeton’s Susan Fiske, our default is our habitual “comparing-mind” and consequently, we either “envy-up” (We are never good enough.) or “scorn-down” (We are always better than.); so we can easily justify HOW we treat others. For Buber we fall prey to the I-It relationship that objectifies others. Thus Brad’s comments about our systematic demonization of others who are not like us whether the reason is political, religious, or cultural. Is there a possible remedy or intentional practice that can shock the comparing-mind into a different framework? In the Stanford Cultivating Compassion course one practice is to look at others WITHOUT judgment, or fear, or cynicism and say to ourselves as a reminder or a prayer: “Just like me, you want to be happy and free from suffering.” Try it! I often use this method in airports with strangers. Of course it works in so many other situations as well.

More than 30 years ago my mother told me of a dream so clear and lucid that she took it as a command: “Take care of children and old people.” For me I internalized this other worldly message as an indication of what a good society should be: Taking care of our children and our elders as a common commitment above the “liberty of the individual.” When I taught in middle and high school the two essential and interdependent inquiry questions that always shaped my curricular decisions were displayed in bold, black letters on my wall: How does the individual change society? How do we make economic decisions? One impacts the other; both are challenging. Recently one of my students from that very government/economics class, where those questions were posted in1997, disagreed with my Facebook post when I questioned the loosening of Dodd-Frank and rolling back Wall Street regulations. It was a wonderful exchange from two very different viewpoints. What a gift and a proud moment for me as a learner with him, knowing that so many years ago the classroom environment was shaped by asking real questions that would still matter nearly 20 years later.

That Brad ended his post with a verse from Psalm 139 (though in the translation I have used, it is numbered 138) and, believe it or not, every Thursday for 10 years as a benedictine nun I recited this psalm at Vespers (evening prayer), first in Latin and also sung in Gregorian chant on special days and then recited in English. And yes, it was one of my favorites as well. The verse I loved the most, however, was:

…darkness is not dark to you and night shines as the day; darkness is as light to you; for you have created me…You have formed me in darkness…in the depths of the earth, my substance.

Rabbi Nachman suggests that when you apply the words to yourself, you find yourself in every Psalm. So this leads me to quote another favorite Psalm that resonates with my experience of being a Latina, growing up in East Los Angeles with parents and grandparents who loved books, poetry, the natural world, music from opera to jazz, worked hard and yet, knew they were outsiders. And so those who seek a home, who wander, who are outsiders, refugees, immigrants, those who ask questions, those who stand with the poor; they ultimately are my teachers in an era of “post-truth” as the Oxford dictionary has named as its word of 2016.

“By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat and wept; when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps.”Psalm 137

So what must we do in the face of social, economic, and environmental injustice? What must we do when children in Utah and all over the world go to bed hungry every night? Why is it that 8 men have as much wealth as 50% of the entire world’s population? How do we keep awake and conscious of our own privilege and remain committed to working tirelessly on behalf of others?  For me there are two basic principles that have been used as the foundation of Civil Rights movements across the world, beginning in 1906 with Gandhi in South Africa, shaped by his incessant reading of Thoreau: “Ahimsa” which means literally ‘do no harm’ and “Satyagraha’” meaning ‘persistence in the pursuit of truth.’ Both terms originate from ancient Sanskrit texts, 3000 years ago, that Gandhi knew well and are used to describe the purpose of life as compassionate action.