Behind the Scenes

In this age of mass rallies and social media shouts, most peacemaking and bridge building still happens behind the scenes.  Dianne Feinstein understands this nearly lost art.  She has represented California in the U.S. Senate since 1992.  She speaks passionately about what she has built, and what she believes in.  Recently she has gone so far as to join rallies.  But she does not shout.

Betty Guthrie and I met with a Feinstein staffer in her D.C. office who specializes in immigration.   Betty supports asylum seekers who are detained in Orange County jails (the moment they step off the airplane.)  "What can we do to help immigrants who are treated so unjustly?" we asked.  Legislative remedies are, currently, nonstarters.

The staffer invited us to bring cases of immigrant detention in California to the attention of Feinstein's office. She reminded us that lack of documentation itself is not a crime, but a civil offense.  (For this reason, asylum seekers have no right to legal representation. Without representation, they nearly always fail to argue their cases successfully.)  What would the office do?  Does the Senator have some special relationship with ICE in California?  "Just let us take care of it."  The staffer spoke tersely, cagily.  Only much later did I realize that she was trying to give us information and encouragement without delivering any quotable quotes.

"What can we do to support the Senator's efforts for just and humane immigration policies?" we asked.  "Can we help the senator at any rallies?  Press conferences? By calling or letter writing?" No, no, and no.  "So the Senator just wants to work behind the scenes?"  Yes.

When the Senate voted to save the Affordable Care Act on July 28, 2017, John McCain broke rank to make the deciding vote. Before doing so, he walked across the Senate floor and gave Dianne Feinstein a big hug. Clearly she had been working to save healthcare, behind the scenes.

Are you inspired to take action but need encouragement and support to do it regularly?  Start an "Inspiring for Action" group  with a few friends or like-minded people.    Consult the "How To" page for more info.

There is One Side

There are not many sides.... 

There is one side. 

The side of the Love that 

Takes what is broken into 

Her arms
And does not let go.
There is one side.
The side of the Presence
That knows ashes and the
Way to rise from them.
There is one side.
The side of the blessing
And the belovedness.
The side of the One who
Never forgets his way in the world,
And tells us to remember
It together.

#Charlottesville

Laura Martin, volunteer chaplain at Charlottesville after the violence 8/12/17.

We Have Power

Polar explorer and adventurer Ann Bancroft's latest project is "Access Water," a world-spanning journey that looks to document the world's fresh water shortage. She recently returned from a trip down India's Ganges River. This is an excerpt from an interview on The Splendid Table.

“…we were having a discussion, and there were some politicians and some business leaders brought before us to show us what they were doing in their community. They were in a big city, but they were sort of a very economically poor suburb. They were trying to pick up trash, and have these small initiatives. When we departed, they said, “If you came so far to travel our river, and to care about our river, and to try to understand the issues, both good and bad, around our river, we too should care.”

When we hopped in our boats and said goodbye… the entire village is along the shoreline. They’re waving goodbye to us after we’ve had this emotional, wonderful day, these warm people who have fed us and embraced us, and knew nothing of us. This wasn’t planned. Then they yelled out, the ones who could speak English, “Post this on Facebook!” I just thought, “You know, this is really what it’s about.” It doesn’t always have to be these really complex initiatives. We have tremendous power as individual citizens.”

Nevertheless They Persisted, c. 1837

Here is your inspiration for the week: (From And the Spirit Moved Them, Helen LaKelly Hunt pp97ff) (a note from Wikipedia:The first significant exercise and defense of the right to petition within the U.S. was to advocate the end of slavery by petitioning Congress in the mid-1830s, including 130,000 such requests in 1837 and 1838.) In the months following the [first-ever Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Philadelphia, 1837], petitioners adopted the zeal of tent revivalists in spreading the message to every person possible. The women petitioned, they went door-to-door to solicit signatures from neighbors. They contact old schoolmates and drank tea with new friends, knowing that these relationships would foster change. It was, in every way, an educational effort… Ohio Presbyterian Maria Sturges eloquently wrote, “Let every petition… be baptized with prayer, and commended with weeping and supplication to Him in whose hands are the hearts of all men, that He would turn the channel of their sympathies from the oppressor to the oppressed.” …As the Grimké sisters noted, “The right of petition is the only political right that women have.” ... Petitioning gave women voice. [And they faced abuse and ignorance.] The women persevered, however, and before long Congress was flooded with petitions. There were so many that they were piled on the tables, under tables, and in storage bins. Some were allegedly used as fuel for fire….Senator Robert James Walker of Tennessee said that he was “pained to see the names of so many American females” on petitions, as reported in the Congressional record: … Mr. W. said, he believes if the ladies… would let us alone, there would be but few abolition petitions. In 1839 petitions to Congress were stacked to the ceiling in a room twenty feet by thirty feet by fourteen feet. The petitions kept coming, even after Congress refused to accept them… (In 1836, the House of Representatives adopted a gag rule that would table all such anti-slavery petitions. John Quincy Adams and other Representatives eventually achieved the repeal of this rule in 1844 on the basis that it was contrary to the [first amendment] right to petition the government.) Are you inspired to take action but need encouragement and support to do it regularly?  Start an "Inspiring for Action" group  with a few friends or like-minded people.    Consult the "How To" page for more info.

Lifting Me Up

From Douglas Hallward-Dreimeier, an attorney whose arguments helped sway the Supreme Court to rule in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015:  

“On the day of the argument, there was a moment in the courtroom when all of a sudden I felt, in a way that I never have in any other argument, the weight of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of couples, and their families and friends, and I sort of seized up… And I had to go through a process.  The process that I went through was thinking: no, it’s not those individuals and their wants and lives weighing on me.  It’s all those peoples’ hopes and prayers and wishes lifting me up.  And I actually thought of two former ministers from Westmoreland… who I knew were out on the steps of the Supreme Court praying for me.  Knowing that they and so many others were lifting me up and holding me up in their prayers was critical to my ability to get up and to make the argument that morning.

Many times during the course of my involvement in the fight for marriage equality, I came back to a poem that I had once heard, by Edwin Markham. It’s entitled, “Outwitted.”  

He drew a circle and shut me out.  Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.  

But love and I had the wit to win.  We drew a circle that took him in.

For too long, our society has drawn lines and circles that shut out LGBTQ people, treating them as heretics, rebels, as things to flout.  In my re-imagining of Markham’s poem, God is love, and God and we, though faith, had the wit to win.  And we did so, as God would have it, by drawing the circle wide, to embrace all God’s children.” 

– Excerpts of a sermon given at Rock Spring Congregational UCC on 7/16/17. Hallward-Dreimeier, worships at Westmoreland United Church of Christ and is managing partner of Ropes & Gray’s DC office and leads the firm’s appellate and Supreme Court practice.

Are you inspired to take action but need encouragement and support to do it regularly?  Start an "Inspiring for Action" group  with a few friends or like-minded people.    Consult the "How To" page for more info.

Informed by Empathy

From And the Spirit Moved Them by Helen LaKelly Hunt, Feminist Press (New York, 2017)

(This excerpt from p. 6 refers to integrated meetings of women abolitionists in the 1830’s)

Focusing on the issues of slavery, the abolitionist feminists practiced empathy at their weekly sewing circles, learning “sympathy for the slave,” which became a key tenet of their movement.  While the women were sewing, each took a turn standing up to read a passage from a slave narrative.  They struggled to put themselves in a position to feel what it was like to be auctioned off and owned, to be separated from one’s children or parents or spouse.  “Let every slaveholder apply these queries to his own heart,” Angelina Grimke challenged them. “Am I willing to be a slave?  Am I willing to see my mother a slave, or my father, my sister or my brother?” This is one of the many ways the women strove to make their organization personal, relational, and informed by empathy.

Are you inspired to take action but need encouragement and support to do it regularly?  Start an "Inspiring for Action" group  with a few friends or like-minded people.    Consult the "How To" page for more info.

Optimism is a Political Act

(Excerpts from Alex Steffen, "The Politics of Optimism", Medium.com, Nov. 2016) Entrenched interests use despair, confusion and apathy to prevent change. They encourage modes of thinking which lead us to believe that problems are insolvable, that nothing we do can matter, that the issue is too complex to present even the opportunity for change. It is a long-standing political art to sow the seeds of mistrust between those you would rule over: as Machiavelli said, tyrants do not care if they are hated, so long as those under them do not love one another. Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in Western popular culture, but, in reality, cynicism in average people is the attitude exactly most likely to conform to the desires of the powerful — cynicism is obedience. Optimism, by contrast, especially optimism which is neither foolish nor silent, can be revolutionary. Where no one believes in a better future, despair is a logical choice, and people in despair almost never change anything. Where no one believes a better solution is possible, those benefiting from the continuation of a problem are safe. Where no one believes in the possibility of action, apathy becomes an insurmountable obstacle to reform. But introduce intelligent reasons for believing that action is possible, that better solutions are available, and that a better future can be built, and you unleash the power of people to act out of their highest principles. Shared belief in a better future is the strongest glue there is: it creates the opportunity for us to love one another, and love is an explosive force in politics. Great movements for social change always begin with statements of great optimism.