What Are We Teaching?

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

“Teach only love, for that is what you are.”
—A Course In Miracles

So, a guy walks out on the President of the United States as he makes his yearly report on the condition of our struggling union. No, there’s no punch line, no rabbi, hooker or traveling salesman to lighten this up. Unlike Rep. Joe Wilson who yelled, “You lie!” during Obama’s healthcare speech, or Justice Sam Alito who repeatedly mouthed the words, “Not true!” at the 2010 State of the Union address, Rep. Steve Stockman just got up and left the hall. He defended this rudeness by saying he objected to Obama declaring that he would break Constitutional law by using his executive power [sic.]

Stockman, a Texas Bagger, also enthusiastically voted in this week’s Farm Bill to cut 8.7 billion dollars worth of food stamp assistance to 16 states, 15 of which skew decidedly blue. I suspect he’s proud of his actions, proving his disdain for all things Dem (and free-loading) while schooling his constituents in how to tell it like it is, or at least how it is in his particular — and particularly narrow — philosophy. Ayn Rand would be proud. The historical Jesus of Nazareth, less so.

The distinction appears to be lost on Stockman and his ilk, which invariably puzzles me. These people — the ones my son refers to as “thumpers”  — talk a really good Jesus game, although they apparently didn’t read any of the rules on the inside cover of the box. And it isn’t that they miss the point of Christianity so completely that baffles me. Nothing about the ruthlessness of posturing politicians surprises me. It’s that their followers refuse to see them — or themselves — as others see them, even on the most glaringly mean-spirited of their days.

Still, this punitive and traditional tribalism among the ranks of conservatives is the last bastion of non-cooperation. In the biggest surprise of recent times, the Catholic church is embracing an unaccustomed message of inclusion and tolerance, with the Vatican bank under independent scrutiny and a dramatic turnover within internal leadership. Can you feel hell freezing over right this minute? Because — Holy Cow, or something similar — I’m going to quote the new Pope now, from his own 2013 version of the State of the Union, the apostolic exhortation:

“When a society — whether local, national or global — is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programs or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility.”

Well. Tranquility. Not a word we use much these days, although it shows up in the preamble to the Constitution as part of our national assurance that our form of government seeks to provide us “domestic tranquility.” But there’s very little tranquility in these interesting times, with the glaringly high numbers of those on the fringes NOT receiving justice, NOT able to count on benefiting from the general welfare or receiving the blessings of liberty.

Yes, interesting times. Can you feel Pluto’s hot breathe on your cheek? The crackle of Uranian energy lifting the hair on your neck? Intuit the feverish healing crisis that comes along with Chiron’s tender touch?

The Judeo-Christian ethic of separation from, and obedience to, godhead and patriarchy (aka traditional authority) are deeply engrained in our consciousness, and it shows up, hard-wired in cartoonish examples of fear-mongering and projections of dire punishment to evil-doers (Wall Street, politicians, members of the military-industrial complex and moneyed citizens excluded, of course). We’ve lately felt its cold breath in calls for the death sentence for the remaining Boston Bomber, though it appears that the teen was following his brother’s lead in most, if not all, of his actions. We close our eyes to collateral damage, even as drones carry out death sentences remotely. We sanitize the death penalty with tubing and lethal cocktails. We kill without a backward glance.

It’s hard to know where to start unraveling this Gordian knot of failed statehood, or continuing loyalty to vengeance and paranoia as legal justification for state-sponsored murder. Justice seems an appropriate spot to land in, even though that topic is way too broad for this limited conversation, so let’s begin by taking a look at something that has really hurt my feelings these last weeks, and for me, feeling — heart — is the True North of anything of importance.

My attention was caught by a recent story about the family of a 14-year old black youngster — the youngest person executed in the last 100 years — sent to the electric chair back in 1944. Having found new witnesses to the crime, the family wants to reopen the case, inadvertently illuminating the kind of justice found in South Carolina — and in most of the nation — years ago. Accused of killing two young white girls, George Stinney received a three hour trial, was sentenced within 15 minutes and executed within a few months.

Sounds like an old movie, doesn’t it? Sounds like some adolescent Old Testament morality play, black and white thinking, up close and personal. And although there is every indication that Stinney’s confession was coerced, that new information makes him an unlikely murderer, and that modern forensic methods make a new trial more than reasonable, it will probably not happen. Relatives of the dead girls are satisfied they got their man; or boy, rather, so physically slight that the electrodes and straps meant to keep him in the chair as lightning distorted his body did not fit. There is no information about how George met his death. Back then, nobody cared about “cruel and unusual.” They just wanted him dead.

The United States is the fifth largest state-sponsored killer of prisoners, right behind China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Great neighborhood, huh? We execute more people than either Yemen or Sudan, likely candidates for George W.’s Axis of Evil. Of course you have to take into account the fact that, according to Amnesty International, we “lead the world in mass incarceration of prisoners and hold records for solitary confinement and sentences to life in prison.” Which factoid to mourn first? Decisions, decisions.

Historically, we have not always been natural born-killers when it comes to the criminal class, even factoring in our wild, wild west mentality. The penal system was invested in reforming criminals, rehabilitating them by offering them a way to experience dignity with education and work in the last century. Interestingly, that changed during the 1960s, when Nixon, Goldwater and ultimately, St. Ronnie the Reagan, declared this kind of redemptive plan “coddling.” It became political poison to be soft on crime, and it still is. Just look at our gun laws and their genuinely disturbed proponents like George Zimmerman. In fact, when I read George Stinney’s sad tale, I thought of Trayvon Martin, hunched in his hoodie with his packet of Skittles.

The distillation of that “tough guy” punishment propaganda has given us a wide arc of neurosis that assumes that one must kick ass and take names or be a “wuss.” All liberals are naturally defined as the latter; all conservatives, the former. But — let me say this again — strength is not found behind the barrel of a gun. Wisdom does not strike back, perpetuating a loop of violence and dysfunction. That is the immature voice of humanity, crying in the darkness.

Mid-week, Missouri put a man to death — the third in as many months — using suspect chemicals, obtained from a secret source. Our Blue Dog Governor, a former hard-nosed prosecutor, finds nothing wrong with this scenario, nor does the Attorney General who has argued that the supplier of the chemical mix used to kill these prisoners is a “state secret.” The AG insists that the identity of the supplier is included in the Missouri statute that prohibits naming members of the execution team, and that the only thing that matters is the assurance that “the court knows the end-product (chemical cocktail) was potent, pure, sterile and worked effectively.” Despite those protestations, canny reporters have tracked the chemicals to a supplier in Oklahoma called The Apothecary Shoppe, not licensed in this state and therefore, committing a felony. It’s worth mentioning that this supplier is the same one that tested and approved the use of tainted steroids that caused a number of deaths in 2010.

I suppose the Missouri inmate who died this week would attest that the chemicals were effective, but none of us can speak to the level of pain inflicted, and that was at the heart of the Supreme Court’s temporary stay, quickly handed back to the court of appeals. The lower court required Herbert Smulls’ legal defense “not only to show that the state’s method of execution has a high risk of severe pain — but that it’s a high risk when compared to available alternatives.”

Since the defense could not, the case was then dismissed by the court due to the Catch-22 that made examination of the chemicals themselves, or the entity that supplied them, unavailable. In something like a hint of contrition, the court apologized for the weight of such an impossible burden, which left the prisoner’s legal team powerless.

Earlier in the month, the state of Ohio put a man to death using only a sedative and a painkiller. They, like Missouri, were unable to get the propofol that was used previously because manufacturers refuse to make it available for executions. Dennis McGuire’s death took over fifteen minutes, the description of his ordeal reminiscent of a fish out of water, gasping for breath in what is known as “air hunger,” as his horrified family looked on.

Some death penalty states — mine among them — have entertained the idea of returning to the electric chair or the gas chamber to deal with Death Row inhabitants. Some have even suggested replacing euthanizing with simpler, more direct methods like hanging and firing squad. Some see it as a necessity, since the nation is no longer being given access to the chemicals it uses to end lives. Others find it fiscally sound. Some think a painful end is not only deserved punishment but preferable to a more humane one. All those entertaining this option, I have no doubt, vote differently than do I and surely believe something other than loving your neighbor as your self.

As a nation, we’ve sanctioned and sanitized murder — by lethal injection, by drones flown from safe locations in otherwise quiet communities, even by the way we think about “justice.” We’ve consigned those who have done heinous crime to a form of vengeance (supposedly) equal to that which they have committed. By doing so, we become killers ourselves.

I am not comfortable with the state I live in not just killing people as a crude form of “justice,” but making little attempt to assure that the means used was not cruel or unusual. In fact, as circumstance created this latest situation, it was COMPLETELY unusual, and therefore shouldn’t have happened at all. But when we are SURE we’re right, we don’t let anything stop us. A cautionary tale all by itself.

A Course in Miracles tells us that we are constantly teaching something, something we think is true about us. This preoccupation with getting “an eye for an eye” is teaching us something primitive and punitive, perpetuating the “punishment model” that — in my opinion — is the ancient stick/carrot concept of learning by coercion. If we’re very very good, we get the carrot. If we aren’t, or if we can’t be because of a thousand unknown influences, we get the stick. Yet we all know that life is NOT — repeat NOT — so very clear, so very black and white. And when we kill someone, there is no “taking it back” if we’re wrong.

Telling us that we cannot teach what we dissociate, ACIM makes a point about focus similar to many other systems, like Esther and Jerry Hick’s Abraham information, for instance. Our lives are lived as teachers of what we believe about ourselves and the world. Course tells us that as we teach our highest truth, we become that truth. The only way to have peace, it tells us, is to teach peace. In doing so, we become the teaching.

This need to reward/punish with life or death is just another of those ways in which we separate from one another. Rehabilitation models like those in Scandinavia have proven that money is consistently better spent — and society better served — by changing an inmate’s idea of himself, giving him/her a future with which to enter society, than on beefing up security, harshly punishing and demeaning those who have broken the law.

I’d like to tell you that there is a growing number of people interested in making the death penalty a thing of the past, but I can’t. The numbers are still slim, although there is more interest in remediating the penal system now than there has been in some time. But that’s an even more important reason to be talking about this, thinking about it. This nation has more prisons and more prisoners than any other in the world. We are creating career criminals by the minute, destroying the infinite possibilities for healing that make life worth living for millions of our fellows and denying ourselves the talent and spirit of all those marginalized by this process.

Today — even now, in the 21st century — this nation is still in the murder business, putting some kind of Calvinist spin on the righteousness with which the state can take one’s life. We’re considering using gas and ropes and guns to get rid of those we’ve judged against. We’re teaching ourselves and our society the least civilized, least progressive and least healing solutions to violence, over and over again. And every time we murder someone with the sanction of the state, we create more darkness in a world desperate for light.

If we take this information in through our heart-chakra, we will find deep sorrow. We travel with it, in this nation. We have not yet solved it in our national interest. It’s time we began that journey, it’s time to teach the power of forgiveness and healing and nurture.

Course tells us that, “Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.” If that was our global mantra, fear, hatred and state-inspired death could not exist, here or anywhere. Teach only love, my dears. The world is ready to learn it.