February 2018 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.
An article in the Atlantic recently stated that the closest physiological state to that of anxiety is excitement. Because of this, it is easier to transform anxiety into excitement than to actually calm down; therapists are now training people to re-frame their distressing situations as opportunity, as something to be excited about. It is so much healthier to be focused on all of the ways that something can go right.
So…
Aren’t you EXCITED to be an alive, breathing American right now? Isn’t this the best possible time to be dancing on the planet? What an opportunity to utilize all of those hard-won peacemaking skills, to practice Being Love, Compassion, Nonjudgment, Equanimity! What better time to marshal the spiritual resources accumulated over our lifetimes?
The assaultive, often-distractive onslaught of dire and getting-worse news is creating a national depressive and highly-reactive mood. The whole country is suffering from viral snarkiness, irritability, frustration, and even grief.
And meanwhile, for the Anawim, those of us without political and economic power, the horror intensifies. Journalists in Syria report that the besieged city of Ghouta is “hell on earth.” A similar metaphor grabbed my own heart recently when doing outreach to our addicted siblings living under the bridges in Kensington. I’ve seen a lot of poverty and suffering, but this is an entirely different circle of hell. I am certain that undocumented parents being literally torn from the arms of their Beloveds creates a hellish and lingering anguish that cannot be assuaged. These are just a few of the accelerating sufferings around us as our attention is diverted to the latest Trump Tweet.
And yet, and yet. In case you missed Nicholas Kristof’s first column of the year, (New York Times, Jan 6 2018), here is an excerpt:
“Why 2017 was the Best Year in Human History.” “I know that’s not what the headlines say, but consider that a smaller share of people starved last year, were poor or illiterate, were disfigured or blinded by disease, or simply lived in extreme poverty than at any point since our species emerged. Today, another 300,000 people will gain access to electricity. We may think we are living in the worst of times, but consider that when I was a kid, a majority of humans had always been illiterate and living in subsistence poverty- and both extreme poverty and illiteracy will be pretty much wiped out in the next 15 years. So, sure, President Trump gives us plenty of reason to sweat ( such as the risk of nuclear war!), but it is also important to step back and acknowledge that we are privileged to live in an extraordinary epoch of stunning human progress.” All of the gains Kristof mentions here are happening NOW, being manifested by people all over the world who are keeping their eyes on the prize and holding on.
It’s Lent now, 40 days for refocusing our eyes on the prize. Forty days in which we can long for and work on our ongoing inner transformation, so that by Easter we will have done a bit more dying than heretofore. And then we Paschal People can rise more radiant, transformed and maybe even a bit transfigured…living, breathing embodiments of Divine Love and Compassion, clearer about the Prize and what our role is in Holding On. I am
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grateful for this seasonal rhythm of turning inward so that we may move out into the world more powerfully Present: aware, intentional, just.
I have found myself preoccupied with one central concept lately as I struggle to process these amazing times and my own place in them: the nature of empathy. It strikes me that we humans are infants in our understanding of empathy and its power to transform our world. Consider:
We are hard-wired for empathy and possess impressive empathy-generating and monitoring components: ‘mirror neurons’ sometimes called ‘Gandhi neurons’: the right supramarginal gyrus in the brain: the vagus nerve, and more. Why then, is there so much cruelty, oppression, discrimination, exploitation?
Here is the hard, important fact: our empathy circuitry only fires if we perceive the ‘other’ as one of Us. Our persistent inability to recognize our absolute interbeing-ness and to see ourselves as One prevents us from having empathy for each other.
For people of faith, this is a spiritual issue. We profess the unity of all, that we are One, yet our lives do not reflect that belief. So in this most-reactive and unempathetic of times, a good Lenten practice is to take rigorous inventory of whom we see as ‘other’, who is outside our notion of ‘we’. Who are those for whom we have no empathy? Sympathy, maybe, perhaps pity, but not empathy.(For this important distinction, see Brené
Brown’s Yo utube graphics on the difference).
Anyone we think needs fixing or saving, is not inside our ‘we’. Anyone we judge or have contempt for, is not inside our ‘we’. Anyone we ignore or dismiss, step over literally or figuratively, or to whom we feel superior, is not inside our ‘we’. Doing this scrutiny requires soul-searing honesty, because all of us put some people or groups into the blind spot of ‘them’.
It has been said that the survival of our species now depends on a great expansion of “we’ to include the planet and all life on it. Meanwhile, we are preoccupied with demonizing members of political parties, religious groups. socio-economic classes, and races and ethnicities different from our own. We have no time to waste on this pettiness and lack of vision. We desperately need to let go of these limiting and destructive habits, die to our old ways of being, rise to our Oneness with All, and then respond from that unitive place of love, compassion, and justice to the events of our lives, every day, all day long. Eyes on the Prize, Oh People.
We have great guidance for knowing when our actions and beliefs are in conformity with a Unified We, with a movement ever deeper into the Heart of God. The list of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 is a great metric for our behaviors and attitudes: is it loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, disciplined? These are hallmarks of God with and within us, great guidance for our journeys. As Merton put it, those of us who do not engage in this kind of self-reflection, , “…will communicate…nothing but the contagion of their own obsessions, their aggressiveness, their ego-centered ambition, their delusions about ends and means, their doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.” Sounds like America 2018 to me.
So Happy Lent, Everyone. Happy reflecting and nurturing of every empathetic quark in your body. Eyes on the Prize. Hold On.
Sharon Browning Just Listening
Resource: five, very short, free videos, How To Listen now on Sharon’s website to be used for however you wish … www.justlistening.net
Total running time is 20 minutes for all five….so they are just quick tips on how to be Present and Listen in these contentious times.
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