I didn’t have enough time to really start something before I went to PT, so I grabbed Bishop Curry’s book Love Is the Way and read: “You can be intentional about the stories you tell as well in the stories you consume. Examine which stories are taking your time and attention. If you’re only getting information and testimony from people who look like you, you’re ultimately getting a less-than-truthful picture of the world. It takes effort to read and hear stories of those who are invisible from our daily life. So much of our lives are still segregated in one way or another, even or especially our faith communities; as Dr. King famously said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.”
I experienced a real “ouch” reading that, as our little congregation is very white. Occasionally one black attends, but that is the extent of any diversity. We also have only one ultra-right attendee. The one black family that had attended for a few years stopped coming and has since moved out of town. While I have been trying to be friends with several Trump supporters, I also try to avoid any conversations that raise prickly issues. My general response is, “Let’s just agree to disagree and not have this conversation.” My intent is to affirm what I can in the other, but perhaps I need to do more listening even when it raises my hackles.
This business of being a good neighbor is not necessarily easy. Sometimes it places us in situations that are uncomfortable. One of my favorite parts of any worship service is sharing our peace stories. At first, we thought we had to have a dramatic story to share, but in time we have come to recognize that it’s the little things that really make a difference…like my daughter taking off the earring she was wearing and giving them to a person who had admired them. True, that wasn’t breaking any kind of racial barrier, but it was still a random act of kindness.
I’m still processing Marcus Borg’s observation that in Hebrew and Aramaic, compassion is a good synonym for the word love. If love is feeling compassion for someone who jerks my chain, then I have some work to do. This brings us back to Steps 6 and 7. I know from experience that anytime I have prayed to become truly willing for God to remove cumbersome defects of character, he has provided the individuals and experiences that open me to new ways of seeing and being.
Bishop Curry begins Chapter 11 of his books with a quote by Vaclav Havel. “Let us teach ourselves and others that politics can be not only the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculation, calculation, intrigue, secret deals, and pragmatic maneuvering, but that it can even be the art of the impossible, namely the art of improving ourselves and the world.”