Suze Rotolo (November 1943 - February 2011) / Unconditional Love and Unarmed Truth Meditation

“Time heals, after all -- although the clock that marks that kind of time has no hands.” 

(Suze Rotolo)

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Love Minus Zero / No Limit

"I am not afraid ..." (from lyrics by the Peace Poets)

A friend of mine who is 31 years old sent me the link to the above video on Martin Luther King Day.  As I understand, the Poor People's Campaign has been organized to continue the work that started during the years of the American Civil Rights Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., with updated language to include those who weren't specifically mentioned, except perhaps as Gentiles, in the "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., in 1963.  In 1963, when I was 13 years old, I understood that when Martin Luther King, Jr., said "black men and white men," he was not excluding women or young girls like me:

"... Let freedom ring ...

And when this happens, when we allow 

freedom to ring, when we let it ring

from every village and every hamlet, 

from every state and every city, 

we will be able to speed up that day

when all of God's children, 

black men and white men, 

Jews and Gentiles, 

Protestants and Catholics, 

will be able to join hands and sing

in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 

"Free at last! free at last! 

Thank God Almighty, 

we are free at last!"

If I were a person who joined organizations, I would join the Poor People's Campaign.  Those of us who do not participate in organized religion or even praiseworthy organizations like this one can still do our part to carry on the work begun by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American Civil Rights Movement.  Even the smallest anonymous personal action can make a difference.

We are not alone.  We never were.  Some of us are organized, others unorganized.  Together, we do what we can.

Mandala #38: We were Talking about the Power of Awareness, Acceptance, Action

In looking for quotes to accompany a meditation on awareness, acceptance and action, I found that Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke most clearly to me:

Awareness:  “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” 

Acceptance:  “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Action:  He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

From Voices for Creative Nonviolence:

"And in Bellingham, WA, our friend Mary Mele is planning to honor the 14 million Yemenis in danger of death by famine with a “Women Fasting for the Children of Yemen” event – for fourteen hours on Nov 14, she will set up 14 chairs in front of her city’s Federal Building – women will be invited to sit in them for an hour, then fast for fourteen hours."

Trieste, by Daša Drndić / Confronting the masters of racism, poverty and war

This performance was in 1994 in the UK.

Jun 17, 1994:   Former president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn have responded to an invitation to visit North Korea. Press reports today, following Carter's meeting with Kim Il-sung, describe astonishment by the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency at Kim's agreement to stop his nuclear research program.

Nov 8, 1994:   In the US, elections give Republicans control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. Republicans gained, and the Democrats lost, 54 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate. It is to be called the Republican Revolution. Analysts describe the Republican success as the result of perceptions that House leadership has been corrupt, dislike for President Clinton's support for health care reform and gun control measures and homosexuals in the military. Some Republicans consider Rush Limbaugh, popular radio talk show host, as instrumental in the Republican landslide.

Finishing reading Daša Drndić's book, Trieste, in the last few days when separation of children from their parents is being confronted has heightened my visceral awareness of the three evils of racism, poverty and war that were spoken of by Martin Luther King, Jr.  It was at this time last year that I read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and experienced human brutality and human resilience viscerally.

This is the summer to be reading Trieste, which is a novel in the form of a collage of brutal visceral experiences that surround and are inside the story of a woman who waited for sixty-two years to be reunited with her son who, as a small child, was stolen from her by the Nazis as part of Himmler's lebensborn project.  

I am still absorbing all I have learned by reading this novel that was brought to my attention by a blog friend in Scotland.  Something that stood out for me toward the end of the novel were these words by Werner Dubois while on trial for war crimes in World War II:

"The camp was only a chain of command and if one link had failed, the whole system would have collapsed ... We did not have the courage to disobey."

As I read this, 

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2018/0618/Family-separation-Evangelicals-add-their-voices-to-opposition

I wondered if this could be where the collapse of the Republican Party system begins?

In  Trieste, Croatian writer Daša Drndić goes to great lengths to give testimonies of those once anonymous and largely uneducated pawns like Werner Dubois who made their meager living working for Hitler and his followers.  Who are the anonymous people now who are being paid to do the work that assures that children are kept apart from their parents and that families are detained indefinitely?

Here is another review of Trieste.  

The questions are never-ending.  There are no easy answers.  No action too small.

Here's one more blogging voice you may not have heard before in response to the children separated from their parents.

Hearing the voice of a Christian on Easter Morning 2018 / The Second Day of Passover 5778

With immense gratitude for having witnessed the power of the human spirit in Maya Angelou this Easter morning and for the local non-Christian friend who shared this powerful Christian voice with me, another non-Christian.

"I'm grateful to be a practicing Christian.  I'm always amazed when people say, 'I'm a Christian.'  I think, 'Already?' It's an ongoing process. You know, you keep trying.  And blowing it and trying and blowing it." -- Maya Angelou

A local friend of mine who will be 90 years old soon said that all she knows for sure is that "something" happened on Easter morning all those centuries ago.  She doesn't claim to know what happened.  I've never heard her talk about virgin birth or resurrection.  She doesn't insist that anyone else believe that something happened.  She belongs to one of several local First Congregational Churches (United Church of Christ) which have lesbians as pastors.  My friend has been a Christian all her life, a life of turmoil and grace.

My friend stands with a diverse group of Christians throughout the centuries, including Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez as well as numerous dear friends of mine who identify as Christian and who have walked through their lives or continue to walk through their lives in what they hope is the true spirit of Jesus.

This morning I'm reminded of what John Lennon said in 1966, when I was 16 years old.  His words stayed with me:

"Christianity will go, he had said.  It will vanish and shrink.  I needn't argue about that; I know I'm right and I will be proved right.  We're more popular than Jesus now.  I don't know which will go first -- rock & roll or Christianity.  Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.  It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

At that time, I was attending the Episcopal Church every Sunday with my family.  My family went to church together until the fall of 1967 when I stopped going to church during my freshman year of college because so many of my friends by that time were Jewish and/or atheist, and I could no longer listen to sermons that denied the validity of the beliefs of Jewish people as well as anyone who was not a Christian.  Not long after I stopped going to church, my mother stopped going to church. This was not long after one of the priests at our church was found to have been molesting one of the choir boys who was the same age I was. Within a year of the time I left the church, my younger sisters also stopped going to church.  My father continued to go to church alone for a while, but then he stopped going to church as well, never to join a church again until he became a member of the Crystal Cathedral.  He never visited the Crystal Cathedral but faithfully watched its services on television from 1994 until his death in 2003, donating 10% of his income to that church and continuing to wonder if Jesus truly was the "son of God."

It has been my good fortune to learn over and over again that all followers of Jesus are not thick and ordinary. Maya Angelou was not thick and ordinary.  My father was not thick and ordinary.  My Christian friends are not thick and ordinary.  Something still keeps me from identifying as a Christian, but it does not keep me from listening with all my heart to those Christians who do not twist Jesus' message and who inspire me to experience the loving power that Martin Luther King, Jr., talked about again and again in his sermons:

"Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.  The transformed nonconformist, moreover, never uses the passive sort of patience as an exercise to do nothing.  And this very transformation saves him from speaking irresponsible words that estrange without reconciling ... He recognizes that social change will not come overnight, yet he works as though it is an imminent possibility." (p. 18, Strength To Love, a book of sermons published in 1963 and published again with an introduction by Coretta Scott King, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968)

From the book, The Glorious Impossible, by Madeleine L'Engle:

"... After his resurrection he was never recognized by sight, but by his voice, or in the breaking of bread, the eating of fish ..."

May this day, Easter 2018 as well as the second day of Passover 5778, be an opportunity to listen for voices, Christian or otherwise, who speak out against the ever-present forces of injustice.