Last night I left work, my first day back after a week in South Dakota with the Zen Peacemakers, and headed to Trump Tower with my wife. I know many people see aggression and anger in groups of people with signs and chants. But I see people making compassionate boundaries about how people are meant to be treated. Trump is not an outlier but a product of, an exaggeration and caricature of, everything that is rewarded in American culture. I sometimes worry about making him the sole focus of our anger, because it lets so many other people and institutions, centuries in the making, off the hook. But, last night it was heartening having Trump and his tower as a focal point of art and energy, a space to gather in person and use our bodies to connect with the current of resistance that spreads like a rhizome from Charlottesville to Standing Rock to Ferguson to DC. Spending a week on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation with the Zen Peacemakers made it even more difficult than usual to square the white liberal “this is not America” sentiment with… reality. A country is not a solid thing but a complex sense of ideals and identity that we feed with our attention. And this particular country was founded on Native Genocide and slavery. There is no way around this, and as the Buddhist Peace Fellowship puts it, that karma is heavy. We have had no formal reconciliation process for this colonization and enslavement, and in many ways they have not even ended. So, this idea of America Innocence is a delusion. Some have always seen through this delusion because they were not privileged to benefit from it enough to invest their humanity in maintaining it. Now that there is increasing resistance to this delusion, the pushback is reaching a fever pitch, with even the most compassionate among us grasping for people to blame. I see people I care about saying that those standing up to Nazi rallies were essentially asking to get brutalized. Each of us who benefits from believing in American innocence sacrifices our humanity to it. Trump may have woken people up to this process, but he is not the cause. This is a callout to fellow white people, especially liberals, especially those of us who consider ourselves to be in some way in the wellness community: we HAVE to take ownership of what previous generations have inflicted and the repercussions this brutality has given rise to. We don’t need to cower in shame, because that helps no-one, but we NEED to confront this, sit with it, squirm with our desire to abdicate responsibility. Because if we don’t, the buck gets passed, and people die. There are tools for this work, and nobody needs you to do this alone. But the willingness to face what this country is built on and the ways we benefit every day from both subtle and extreme forms of racism is something each of us needs to figure out how to work with in material ways. So, is it hopeless? How does a situation that seems to frozen in time, so fractured and locked in opposition begin to melt? I learned a lot from the Zen Peacemakers this past week. They might be best known for their Bearing Witness retreats to Auschwitz. This time, they were endeavoring to build relationships in South Dakota with Native people, and I was able to join for a week of service. We did construction, helped with chores at the community center, and ran a summer camp for kids in the afternoon. The organization that hosted us, Simply Smiles, was a nonprofit unique in mission and form: the existed purely to meet the needs of the people in their community and create an environment where leaders could emerge and thrive. As someone who is often burned out on the so-called nonprofit industrial complex and the sometimes patronizing imposition of relief, it was incredibly refreshing to see that this organization truly worked to build friendships and take care of each other. Being a part of that operation, even for a week, was transformative. Add to that the core principles of the Zen Peacemakers (not knowing, bearing witness, and transforming suffering through compassionate action), and I was able to flash on a slow, purposeful, persistent vision of healing intergenerational trauma, of building communities strong enough to have generations-long plans. I saw possibility in the prairie. And it didn’t come from shame or guilt– it came from humble work. Identifying what needs to be done and then doing it. Seeing where people need a boost and then lifting them up. Just. doing. the. work. The fear that wells up when I read the news tends to stunt my attention down to an animal-like minute to minute existence. So, having this perspective: the long distances of the prairie, the Simply Smiles vision of generations-long work, the healing of intergenerational trauma stemming back over centuries– these things extended my awareness in space and time. And then my heart feels wide enough, wide like the sky, to hold all of the fear, and the pain, and the joy. What in your life gives you a broader perspective? Where can you sit down and take the long view? Where can you see the furthest distance? What helps you extend your vision generations into the future? If you don’t have any of this naturally built into your day, where can you find it? Lastly, I’ve been thinking about how the most fear-triggering bits of news seem the loudest. But there are always quieter notes being struck as well. So, sometimes I have to take it on faith that there are people out there in these situations I read about doing good work. I might not know about them or the specifics of their organization or life, but they’re out there. Then next step is to go out there and find them. Because my natural impulse may be to alienate myself out of fear, but things ALWAYS seem more bearable when I share the burden of my anxiety with others. Resources After writing this, the new Harpers arrived in my mailbox, with this piece called Now and Then by Rebecca Solnit, which touches on the same topics of deep time, history, and memory as they pertain to progress, equality, and care. Timely, heartening, and beautiful. I highly highly recommend volunteering with Simply Smiles if you are so inclined. Even reading about their model and their work might inspire you to find similar ways to help in your own community, which is a salve for the soul right now. I’d also recommend learning about the history of the Zen Peacemakers, studying their 3 Tenets, and maybe even doing a Bearing Witness retreat. Their process is transformative.Rather whatever it is that we are trying to reform, inquire into what is larger. What is larger than the malaise, what is larger than the heartbreak, what is larger than the anger, the confusion? And just observe where that inquiry of “What is larger than this?” lands you. Into what space it delivers you. Staying away from concepts of “Love of family”, “Love of Guru”, “World Peace”. Inside of you, in the experience of you, “What is larger than this thing I want to change?” (Make this initial inquiry with eyes closed.) From this space view fully the melancholy, the confusion, the pain, whatever it may be you wish to alter. It may even look different from here. Allow this space, this awareness to be the starting point for the meditation, the asana, the clean diet, instead of the desire to change or control. From a larger capacity, not from a perceived limitation, we act.
