Toward Transformation

 

From a day or two ago:

Up early. The light is just breaking over the trees, and the street is glistening with recent rain. In my email is the daily message from Fr. Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation, which seems worth sharing:

I think that the great disappointment with so much political activism, even many of the non-violent movements of the 60s and 70s, and why many people were not long-lasting in these movements, is because these movements did not proceed from transformed people. They were coming from righteous ideology of either Left or Right, from mere intellect and will, and not from people who had put head, heart, body, and soul together.

We need to find inside ourselves the positive place of communion, of holiness, where there’s nothing to react against. Pure action is when you are acting from a place which is good, true, and beautiful. The energy at that point is entirely positive.

Fr. Richard Rohr

 

If we think of the difference between leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hahn, the Dalai Lama or Martin Luther King, and most of the elected politicians we've known over the years, even if they were saying all the "correct" things, it's pretty obvious. Part of the difficulty is that people with genuine moral authority are seen as a threat to power and order; often they don't last long when they enter the public sphere. Some (wisely, perhaps) refuse to involve themselves in politics, though it is very difficult for truly spiritual people not to speak out about the moral issues of their time, as Thomas Merton discovered.

Personally, after many decades of political involvement and activism, I became very disenchanted and disappointed with the American "left". I worked hard for change, and became exhausted; my exhaustion told me something was wrong. After moving to Quebec, I stepped back and have been gradually finding a new place, which proceeds both from an understanding of my new home, and a deeper integration of my own "head, heart, body and soul," leading toward greater internal groundedness -- an ongoing process of growth, rather than arrival.

While I'll always vote and express how I feel -- a more effective process in Quebec than in the U.S., I'm afraid -- I'm no longer convinced that working within the existing political structures is the best way to encourage and effect lasting change; in fact I've always been an advocate of small-scale change that comes from the grass-roots, led by individuals who live not from their egos but from deeply internalized values. I agree with Rohr: first we need to be transformed people, living lives based on what is good, true, and beautiful, rather than constantly reacting "against" seemingly immovable forces and trends: whether those are big, obvious forces like violent militarized societies, conservative mass media, and political parties that repeatedly fail to address economic, social, and environmental issues -- or vaguer, de-humanizing or unsettling trends like the impersonality and ephemerality of social networks, the atomization of individual existence in our mobile societies, the difficulty of holding together our families and communities, or the erosion and loss of former affirmative structures such as arts grants, traditional publishing, physical communities, our once-claimed identities as "young", "mother", "employee", or our membership in beleaguered organizations of all kinds.

I've learned one thing, for sure: you have to start with yourself and your own attitude. No matter how terrible our challenges are, when we react from a place of anger, we haven't done all the work we need to do, and ultimately we will only add to the amount of anger, violence, and frustration that already exist in the world. Positive energy attracts other positive energy, and a great deal can be built from there. One place to begin is by looking for and truly understanding what we already do have, the precious things that can never be taken away from us.

Let me just end with this quote from Terry Tempest Williams, via Sigrun at sub rosa:

Once upon a time, when women were birds,
there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn
and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy.
The birds still remember what we have forgotten,
that the world is meant to be celebrated. 

-----This is part one of a two-part essay. It continues here.

 

 

Comments

[Vivian]

About 25 years ago I had the great fortune to receive Rolf massage from a body worker who had started out as a social activist. She said she had concluded that working on people was a more effective way to create real change.

[Robb]

Kia ora Beth,
Your words sum up so much of what I felt on my recent trip back to America. Not just from the right either. Just a sense of veryone talking and no one listening wrapped around a feeling of ungenerousity. I am more and more surrounding myself with those I feel live what is in their hearts and actions rather than words. It ain't always easy. Kia kaha e hoa.
Aroha,
Robb

[Dick]

Oh, Beth, this eloquent representation of how it is now demands a considered and thus carefully balanced response and I'm surrounded by kids who want me to share their tea party down behind the sofa! And this is what I must do because it's at those times and in those small spaces that whatever transformation I might still be undergoing will take place. But before I do I must simply declare how powerfully I share your conviction that it's in small-scale change that our active attention must be centred. 'Act locally. think globally', as Satish Kumar says. I'd add only that the fact that this perspective is shared by so many who were politically engaged in the '60s and '70s and that this continuing commitment to change into age against the conventional wisdom of weary disillusionment is in itself heartening.

[Kristin Berkey-Abbott]

What a relief to read your post. When I was younger (19-35, say), I'd argue about politics and the future--passionately, often verging into anger. Lately, I just can't find that energy--or maybe I'm devoting it to settings where my energy will be well-used. I had been worried about my lack of interest in the current campaign. Of course I will vote. The choice of Supreme Court Justices is too important. But your post made me feel infinitely better about my weariness with politics down here in the U.S. Thank you for that.

[Jean]

Yes, to all of this. And what Dick said. Yes

[andrea]

Thank you so much for this. It has really made me think, over the last few days.

And there was a funny phrase in the film Annie Hall, which I re-watched recently: "a left-wing bigot."

[john]

Thanks.Coincidently I had come across the late tormented writer David Foster Wallace's address to the students of Kenyon College from 2005.Wallace three years later committed suicide and to me the address gives hints of his struggles.The point is Wallace trys to lay out how we should live our lives in "the day to day trenches of adult life" in those trenches there are no atheists.There is no such thing as not worshipping.."everyboby worships.The only choice we get is what to worship" Some of your post to me resonates with Wallace.Good stuff