Hope

Dear friends,

I took the above picture about 7 years ago- sunrise in Hebron, a city in the southern part of the West Bank, where over the years I've spent many months as a human rights defender. I turn to the beauty of this photo now and remember my friends there, who have also brought such beauty into my life and our world. I know they are hurting right now. So many people are hurting. 

Recently I was in a conversation about activism and different ways of practicing it and expressing ourselves as we advocate (a conversation, as someone noted, that is a result of the privilege we have since we are generally safe). In the conversation, someone said "Rage is the voice of the oppressed." I've been thinking a lot about that statement and keep coming back to this: 

Rage is a voice of the oppressed. 

So is hope.

So is grief.

So is joy.

I find myself wanting to recognize the and of it all. I find myself wanting to let all people, including "the oppressed," to be fully human in all its waves and ways. As I watch what is happening in Gaza, I, and probably you, have seen rage, grief, despair. I've also seen determination, joy, beauty, love, and even sometimes hope. I've also felt all those things myself. In my life I've been in places of devastating poverty and with people who've been subject to horrific violence and I’ve experienced in them a bent toward life, joy, and hope that seems elusive among some of us who've suffered much less.

We have a choice. 

If I ask myself, "What energy do I want to turn toward?" my answer is hope. I don't mean this in a Pollyanna or head-in-the-sand sort of way. Rage, grief, despair are healthy responses to what is happening in the world and they certainly arise in me. When they come, I try to give them attention and care and ask for help when I'm stuck in them. When I am able to let them move through me, I am not devoured by them. When they get stuck, I am consumed, immobilized, and exhausted.

When I am able to turn toward hope, my body relaxes. I am energized in a way that is sustainable and sustaining. When I turn toward hope, I can see the world I want to create instead of playing on repeat the painful parts of the world that is. When I turn toward hope, I turn toward other people, the potential of our collective power, and action. When I turn toward hope, I am more able to receive and support others who are in a different place than I am.

A few years ago I wrote this Advent piece invoking hope for JustFaith Ministries. If you are Christian (and maybe if you're not), it may speak to you. I don't claim to know the path toward the fullness of peace I wish to see in the world. But I do know how to turn toward you and toward others so we can practice together. I know that every time I've been in circles of open-hearted people, even when we've started in rage, despair, and grief, I have felt myself expand and my hope expand. 

We need each other. 

And so I turn toward you, toward us, believing that, like the sun, our hope and our action will light the world. 

With love, 
Cory

Peace. Salaam. Shalom.

a two panel icon- on the left, an israeli mother holds a palestinian child; on the right, a palestinian mother holds an israeli child. In fron of the icon in a blue ceramic bowl sage burns

Peace. Salaam. Shalom.

Today I pray for the peoples of Israel and Palestine.

I pray for my friends and their families.

Today I look to this icon gifted to me by the artist and I hold its hope:

Israeli mother holding Palestinian child

Palestinian mother holding Israeli child

Sacred vision so far from current reality

I pause.

I burn sage, wishing to burn away, to purify, the desecration of peoples and lands. I imagine:

Israeli mother holding Palestinian child

Palestinian mother holding Israeli child

no punctuation

Israeli holding Palestinian

Palestinian holding Israeli

Israeli holding Palestinian holding Israeli holding Palestinian and on and on

Both

And

All

I will not choose who “deserves” to suffer or to suffer more.

I will not pick a winner except everyone.

I will not wish harm on anyone.

And still I will say clearly that any hope of true peace for Palestinians and Israelis depends on an end to the more than 5 decades of Israeli military occupation of Palestine and the 16-year blockade of Gaza.

I cannot pretend to know the steps to get there, especially now.

And so I offer my fragmented prayer, words I wish to see pieced together into a mosaic of wholeness:

Sage

Peace

Both

And

All

Visions

Holding

Safety

Love

Care

Peace

Salaam

Shalom

How?

Inspired by Masters of Nonviolence

My heart is filled with gratitude as I begin to write. My mind is filled with hope. My body is energized, buzzing with the positive reverberations of music created together, harmonies that only happen when multiples voices unite in song.

I spent the last several hours at a celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I spent the last several hours with people who are deeply concerned about our country, about the well-being of every single person who lives in it. I spent the last several hours with people who are not only concerned, but are working for social, environmental, economic, and racial justice, and doing so through nonviolence.

I spent the last several hours listening to the words of my fellow Louisvillians, as they echoed Dr. King’s words and brought them into the realities of today.

It has been almost two months since I’ve written here. Two months in which I’ve left a full-time position, gone to Standing Rock in the midst of voices both affirming and disparaging the decision, spent a month with one sort of illness or another, sometimes one on top of other, retreated to a cabin in the woods, started teaching two classes on nonviolence, had a 29-year-old relative die of cancer and a new baby born into the family. I’ve refinanced my house and started to live into the new life I seek to create.

In my cabin in the woods, where I finally slowed down enough to listen to the quiet and insistent voice of Being, one of the clear messages I received, not for the first time, was that I must write. I must create.

Despite that, beyond what I’ve written above, I don’t much want to write my own words today. They’re still working their way through me, through channels that feel as jumbled as the tilling, loosening, and overturning going on in our country and world right now.

“We have arrived at the Revolution,” our MC said today. I believe her.

I want to be a part of the tilling that uproots those things that seek to choke out Life, pulls what needs to be cleared to make space for Love and Truth, prunes what’s growing out of control, and plants with tender care what will flourish and nourish us all.

I know that during the digging, uprooting, pruning, and planting processes, my words will come out eventually...when it’s time. So today, instead of trying to force my words, I will share some of the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King that I hope and believe will not only guide my writing, but also all that Life garden work.

From Gandhi’s “The Doctrine of the Sword”:

I do believe that, where there is a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence…

But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from indomitable will.

Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evildoer, but it means putting of one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant.

I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful noncooperation a trial. It will not fail through its inherent weakness. It may fail because of poverty of response.

From Dr. King’s “Loving Your Enemies,” 1957:

Returning hate for hate only multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you…But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.”

From Dr. King’s “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam,” 1967:

When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

From Dr. King’s “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”:

…the inseparable twin of racial injustice [is] economic injustice.

…any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of [people] and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. It well has been said: “A religion that ends with the individual, ends.”

Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months…I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

…nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist.

…it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding.

…the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing evil.

…[it includes] a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back.

…it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.

…it is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice.

Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistent on community even when one seeks to break it. Agape is a willingness to sacrifice in the interest of mutuality… I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.

May you be as inspired and challenged by these words as I am. Blessings.