{"id":78113,"date":"2014-07-19T04:25:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T08:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=78113"},"modified":"2014-07-23T12:51:56","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T16:51:56","slug":"for-tenderness-sake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/for-tenderness-sake\/","title":{"rendered":"For Tenderness Sake"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

If we have no peace, it’s because we have forgotten that we belong to one another. <\/em>~ Mother Theresa<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure you’ll understand if I tell you that I’m hard pressed to make sense of the week, even from a political point of view. I suspect you’re having the same problem. Sometimes — a mere handful of times in our personal lives, hopefully — everything seems to stop, the routine shaken and the events of the day suddenly unimportant. It happens with the shock of tragedy: death, divorce, dire illness, unexpected job loss or displacement. And when it happens, there are few words that can comfort. If we are fortunate, there are friends and family members who will step up to simply stand with us, offering support until we can find our sea legs, and even after as we learn to make peace with unwanted change.<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalThis has been a period of history in which that kind of shock has turned mundane — even expected — thanks to growing income inequality and predatory fiscal opportunism, thanks to the loss of oversight and civil liberties and public policy designed to benefit the average citizen. Hopes to remedy these inequities have produced only a loud, sucking sound from the halls of Congress, where any attempt to work for the public good has swirled down the drain for years. The current Congress has never before done so little while spending so much on unsupportable junk legislation like the 50-odd attempts to repeal Affordable Care, Darrell Issa’s glut of\u00a0subpoenaed witch hunts<\/a>, and now House Speaker John Boehner’s bogus lawsuit against Obama, all added to the taxpayers’ tab. Back in Dubya’s day, when congressional approval numbers hit the teens, there was a collective gasp. There is only a sullen silence now that current approval stands at 7 percent.<\/p>\n

We’ve spent several decades unraveling the spiritual and ethical center of this nation, with the public slowly becoming inured to news of unprovoked wars, the unimagined loss of pensions and retirement funds, chronic un- and under-employment and foreclosures. We’ve learned to shrug at stories of reduced safety nets, increases in police brutality, consumer fraud and enforced austerity. Only slightly different than personal loss, these public losses are shocks that spin us into limbo, frozen in pain and helplessness, and they’ve increased in frequency until they’ve become a\u00a0bona fide zeitgeist<\/em>, an overwhelming volume of white noise that stalks our daily lives like a specter of unwelcome possibilities. With gun rights seemingly more important than victims’ rights and corporate personhood more protected and entitled than our own, life seems less safe here at home, and even worse out there in the larger world. It is much to bear.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The commercial plane shot down over Ukraine this week is a shocking development, a rip in the Force taking with it the lives of innocents, a hundred of them specialists in combating and researching AIDS around the world. There is much finger-pointing and denial going on, the details of who did what still in the hopper. Such agony cannot remain a cerebral process for most of us. I can only look at these headlines and wonder what I’d do if someone I loved was on that flight. I can only begin to imagine the number of people who are going to be affected by either the personal loss,\u00a0or the exquisitely\u00a0tragic professional loss<\/a>, of those whose last flight crossed into the airspace above Ukraine. And for what? Can anybody tell us?<\/p>\n

Still, there remains the possibility that something good might come from such tragedy. Said James F. Collins, a former US ambassador to Russia who now works at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of the plane’s downing, “It\u2019s one of those events .\u2009.\u2009. that can have unpredicted negative or positive consequences.\u201d The Washington Post article<\/a>\u00a0continues:<\/p>\n

On the negative side, it marks a clear escalation of both firepower and the willingness to use it that could draw the patrons of both sides into more overt participation on the ground and more direct confrontation with each other. […]<\/p>\n

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview with Charlie Rose that \u201cif there is clear evidence linking Russia .\u2009.\u2009. that should inspire the Europeans to do much more\u201d to punish Russia and assist the Ukrainian government.<\/p>\n

But Collins and others suggested that the shocking nature of the incident could also be a wake-up call to all involved. \u201cIt may bring certain people to decide that some different approach is needed because this is really getting out of hand,\u201d Collins said. \u201cAll of a sudden, it could mean a lot more people talking about [the Ukraine situation] and saying enough is enough.\u201d”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On another front, after a week’s escalation Israel has not only entered Gaza with 30,000 troops, but plans to “significantly widen” its ground offensive. Thus far, the death toll stands at 268 Palestinians, while Israel lost a soldier in its initial push into the territory. The Pope has spoken to both Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the West Bank\u00a0expressing his\u00a0“grave concerns” about the bloodshed, to little avail. Said Peres, deftly passing the buck, “A small group of fanatics are the cause of suffering in Gaza. Israel is doing everything to lower the flames and minimize civilian casualties.”<\/p>\n

While I have a hard time imagining that this might be read by some wandering Tea Party acolyte, I offer a mea culpa<\/em>\u00a0in advance if this next comment offends, but isn’t this attack on all of Palestine in search of insurgents\u00a0ethically similar to something like the United States government taking out most of the Red states in an effort to kill off rhetoric-bomb throwing radicals? For instance, painfully aware that I’m outnumbered here in the Pea Patch, I would be subject to becoming collateral damage. How do you separate the terrorists from the terrorized? Or perhaps, given the deeply engrained racism (think nits, lice, as explained last week) involved, collateral damage is something of a perk to the hardened Israelis.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to be cavalier about the threat to Israel, with Hamas an unyielding enemy. But their defense system is first-class and the rockets launched at them\u00a0more annoyance than danger. More\u00a0threat is posed by suicide bombers than rocket attack. Meanwhile, those in the know report that this renewed offensive in the territories has been referred to as “cutting the lawn,” a routine action to reduce the build-up of ordnance Hamas has at its disposal. If civilians reap the sorrow, that’s nothing new, of course, not even to Hamas, which remains defiant. There IS no fix for the game of attack\/defend played by these two old enemies, none but a renewal of consciousness.<\/p>\n

And that’s the potential we’re cultivating, here at the beginning of a new Era. This potent astrology of ours is the shorthand revealing a push from the universe that not only reveals truth but shakes up complacency and defeatism. Those of us looking for larger purpose — like creating a nation devoutly true to the preamble of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, like lifting consciousness above the anachronistic tribalism and narcissism that have taken the whole of the world on an unexpected adventure down the rabbit hole — can find it by taking advantage of any circumstance we’ve drawn to ourselves. It is not easy to tame the heart on this front, but it can be done. Even the agony of loss has a flip side: release.<\/p>\n

We are sorting out the dark places in our cultures, our politics, our religious understanding, so we can learn to recognize what no longer serves humankind’s growth and progress. We are getting a clearer picture of the “so within, so without,”\u00a0which is why the stars do not compel us from outside of our own will, but impel and encourage us to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from our experience and take responsibility for ourselves and our actions, both the errors of the past and the intent of the future.<\/p>\n

We must stop demonizing one another, or live with demons. We must stop thinking we can kill ideas, or find our loved ones killed. We must stop and think! Like it or not, if we are to heal what divides us, we must begin a dialogue with one another. We must remember we are all part of the same human family.<\/p>\n

Examples of our disrespect for opinions other than our own can be found everywhere. Read any political blog and you will find vicious response, personal attacks on the intelligence of bloggers, some of it disturbing and almost all of it anonymous. I don’t know if actually having such a conversation face to face would change that; once it would have. Today? That remains at question. And you only need to read news to get a sense of the vitriolic going on between the political parties,\u00a0an energy of impasse that’s\u00a0been growing for years.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t always this mean-spirited, but you can’t prove that to kids or teens that were raised on news from the likes of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, or even to young adults who remember Clinton being impeached for his blow job\u00a0or Newt Gingrich closing down the entire nation in a snit over\u00a0a perceived slight<\/a>. And believe it or not, this change toward incivility accompanied the rise of religious radicalization, its politicized jihad against secularism issued by Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority.<\/p>\n

This carefully crafted divide between us discounts our commonalities in favor of our differences, attempts a win-at-any-cost mentality and stands in the way of our dreams for a healed planet and peaceful, prosperous and ethical 21st century. And escalated, our current energy of revolution cuts with a two-edged sword; it can help, it can hinder, but it will not leave us in the place where it found us.<\/p>\n

Some of us may consider it easier to burn down the house than remodel it, although those of us who have spent a good many years observing the flow of life here on planet Terra might argue that that is easier said than done. And truly, if we don’t get ANY of this right, we might find ourselves a Road Warrior or inhabitant of Waterworld long into the future, but right this minute it’s in our hands to make that projection, not just improbable but unnecessary to our evolution. As\u00a0Lawrence of Arabia<\/a>\u00a0put it, “Nothing is written.” We are the writers of our own destiny, our own future, perhaps even the authors of the remarkable potential into which we incarnate.<\/p>\n

But in order to build together, we must first stop shouting at one another, and that begins, for each of us, in our personal lives. Personal relationships aside — where, hopefully, we’re nurturing and respecting one another as a matter of course — we might assume a bit of tenderness, which is a function of compassion, when we deal with those who annoy us the most, those that confound us or seem to threaten. Lost in antiquity is the originator of the phrase, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,” but whoever said it knew a little something about human experience. We make those people who rub us the wrong way one-dimensional cartoon characters of ‘the enemy’ at our own peril. They remain enigmatic to us when we take that lazy way out,\u00a0unaware that they\u00a0are often holding their own tragedy close to the chest, defensive in the name of self-protection. And, metaphysically speaking,\u00a0they are almost always mirroring something within ourselves,\u00a0something we’ve judged harshly against, that we are rejecting. When we deny them tenderness, we deny it to ourselves.<\/p>\n

I am much in the mood for tenderness lately. I’ve been to two funerals in the last month. My household started the morning with news that a close friend’s ex-wife — a woman of only 35 or so, mother of his two children — had hung herself. In tears, our friend said he didn’t know how to tell his 14-year-old daughter, and even worse, her 16-year-old brother\u00a0found her. There are no words to\u00a0offer at such news.<\/p>\n

Last week, my dear Fishin’ Jim had to put down his beloved companion and long-time sidekick, Oscar the dog, suffering from a kind of dysplasia, after having nursed him along for more than a year. Memorable as something of a canine diplomat, Oscar was patient with children and respectful of adults and other animals. As many people knew Oscar as know Jim, and he was often asked after when he could no longer tag along. Now they must be told not to ask anymore, and my heart aches.<\/p>\n

I’m reminded daily that life is hard, and I suspect you are as well. But closing our hearts against it is even harder. We must, as a species, stop denying one another respect, safety, peace. We must begin to understand that most of the bad behavior we witness begins with pain and ends with it, unrecognized.<\/p>\n

I mentioned in blog comments a few weeks past about my friend and fellow Democratic PAC member, Father Paul, a monk who was pen pal with a man on Death Row, here in Missouri. The man, John Middleton, was put to death this week, after a series of stays and appeals that ended when the Supreme Court refused the case. Paul was witness to his death, having walked through these last days with him, as best he could considering what is allowed in the penal system. I know he offered John his friendship, his support and his tenderness. I know it cost him emotionally and\u00a0I know it only strengthened his determination to fight against the death penalty. Paul walked the talk.\u00a0He’s a hero.<\/p>\n

All of us have the capacity to be a hero, walking our talk, extending our compassion and tenderness in those situations — and they are legion — where we intuit need. There are no answers to the questions sought in our political wrangles unless there is a love of the common good and the\u00a0well-being of our brothers and sisters written in the solution. Our collective pain is on the table, our frightening disconnect with heart is evident but our future is not chiseled in stone unless we throw up our hands in defeat. There is forgiveness and collaboration and respect available to us whenever we choose it. There is cooperation to change things for the better available to replace the dark punishing aspects of our psyche when that becomes the actual desire of our heart, and we have already reached that tipping point, the public making its desire known despite the tone-deaf beat of the political drums.<\/p>\n

It falls to us to no longer be complicit in unkindness, nor support or approve such behavior or find justification for violence against the human spirit. All of the ongoing sorrows we’ve reviewed this week can either sink us deeper into the mire or lift us into a new understanding of what is to be done to rescue one another. The answer to all the pain that surrounds us is tenderness, an open heart and acceptance of what is, in order to accurately assess what can be. We have it within our power to change it all. Remember, nothing is written until we write it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves If we have no peace, it’s because we have forgotten that we belong to one another. ~ Mother Theresa I’m sure you’ll understand if I tell you that I’m hard pressed to make sense of the week, even from a political point of view. I suspect you’re having the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}