Rest
and Resistance
Then
Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the Twelve to him,
he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure
spirits. These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a
staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra
shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if
any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the
dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” They went out and preached
that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick
people with oil and healed them.
Mark
6:3-13
Today is Human Rights Day –
the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. The Declaration proclaims the inalienable rights which
everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being, regardless of race, color,
religion, sex, language, political opinion, national origin, or status. It
establishes the equal dignity and worth of every person. We could all use a
reminder of Eleanor Roosevelt’s words, as she helped draft the Declaration in
1948. Asking where human rights began, she said, “In small places, close to
home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world
…Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in
vain for progress in the larger world.”
Well, for those of us who call
the Washington D.C. area home, there has been a lot of concerned citizen action
lately. If active political resistance is your thing, then this was a busy week
for you. You could have attended a large public action at the Supreme Court,
Congress, or the White House every day this past week. I’m especially grateful
to the members of our church who attended the DACA rally on Wednesday.
At this moment in our national
life when the political landscape appears to crumble into authoritarianism, citizens
are called to action more than ever. When hard-fought civil rights are on the
line – rights we hoped were set in cement – we get angry. We resist. We march,
we protest, we demonstrate, we call our representatives, and we raise our
voices in solidarity with those whose power is diminished. This is what
democracy looks like!
I am all for acts of public action
against those who seek to solidify their authority by obstructing the human rights
of others. We must speak truth to power. I must confess something, though. I’m
tired out. It all feels like too much … too much violence, too much fear; too
much of wars and slums and dying; too much of greed and the sounds of people
devouring each other and the earth; too much of cruelty and selfishness and
indifference. It’s just too much; too, bruising, battered much.
What do we do when we can’t
find the energy to go to another public meeting, or when we begin to feel like
contacting representatives is useless? What do we do when we fear our activism
will have negative consequences, when our safety is at risk, or when we are
invited to civil disobedience and don’t want to be arrested? What do we do when
there are so many rallies, demonstrations, and actions to choose from, we just
want to take a nap or go shopping instead?
When we see the full magnitude
of the problems of the world, that’s when our decisions have critical
significance. Not everybody has the luxury of giving up. An ethicist and Black feminist named Sharon
Welch says that caving in to cynicism and despair in the face of unsolvable
problems is a temptation specific to the middle class. She says, “The despair
of the affluent, the middle class, has a particular tone: it is a despair
cushioned by privilege and grounded in privilege. It is easier to give up on
long-term social change when one is comfortable in the present – when it is
possible to have challenging work, excellent health care and housing, and
access to the fine arts. When the good life is present or within reach, it is
tempting to despair of its ever being in reach for others and resort to merely
enjoying it for oneself and one's family... Becoming so easily discouraged is
the privilege of those accustomed to too much power, accustomed to having needs
met without negotiation and work, accustomed to having a political and economic
system that responds to their needs"
When I feel discouraged, I’m
tempted to watch from the sidelines and let someone else do the work. Feeling
discouraged in the face of despair is a privilege. Discouragement is a
privilege for those who, like me, have a political system that responds to our
needs. We in the mainstream, White, middle class were taught that if we work
hard enough, if we can persevere through the tough times and stand up for
ourselves, life will get better.
Others have life experiences
that tell a different story. Many of us know the name Zora Neal Hurston, author
of Their Eyes Were Watching God. At a
young age, Zora was passed from relative to relative and had to make her own
way in the world, in a lifelong battle against what has been called the triple
oppression of black women: economic, racial, and gender. She became one of the
most prominent black women writers of the Harlem Literary Renaissance between
the World Wars. Throughout her career, Zora’s male literary colleagues devalued
her work. White publishers unjustly accused her of molesting a young boy. Her
life and career went into free fall. She moved back to Florida where she eked
out a living as a maid, library clerk, substitute teacher, and freelance
writer. Poor, discouraged, and weary of rejection letters, she wrote to her
agent, “Just inching along like a stepped-on worm from day to day. Borrowing a
little here and there … The humiliation is getting too much for my
self-respect, speaking from inside my soul. I have tried to keep it to myself
and just wait. To look and look at the magnificent sweep of the Everglade,
birds included, and keep a smile on my face …” The story of Zora Neale Hurston
is not a “see you at the top!” story of how persistence brings success. In
1959, Hurston suffered a severe stroke and entered a County Welfare Home, where
she died three months later, on January 28, 1960.
African-American thinkers and
writers offer a sharp critique of those of us who think hard work and
perseverance lead to positive social change. The mainstream, middle class
mindset does not work for them. Over centuries, African Americans have resisted
multiple oppressions that stifle human life. Sharon Welch calls us to a
different mindset. She calls it an “ethic of risk.” Learning from the African
American experience in this country, we must all keep caring and keep resisting,
even though there are no guarantees of success. To stop resisting, even when it
seems like nothing is getting better; even when it may, in fact, be getting
worse; even success seems unimaginable; to stop resisting is to die.
Novelist Alice Walker, author
of The Color Purple, remembered how her
mother used to say, “Make a way out of no way.” Teaching Zora Neale Hurston's
novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in
a literature course in the early 1970s, she learned that Zora was buried in an
unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, a segregated cemetery in Fort
Pierce, Florida. Outraged at this insult, Alice Walker headed south, determined
to find Zora's grave. Making her way through waist-high weeds, she located the
grave and placed a marker inscribed with the words: “Zora Neale Hurston, A
Genius of the South, Novelist, Folklorist, Anthropologist, 1901-1960.” Thanks
to the grace and grit of Alice Walker and others, Zora Neale Hurston is now the
most widely taught Black woman writer in the canon of American literature. She
met the triple oppression of Black women with a threesome of resisting
qualities shared by Black women throughout their history of suppression:
invisible dignity, quiet grace, and un-shouted courage.
If only we could all sustain
those qualities. If only we all had the strength to remain take the heat enough
to continually love, and continually resist.
A resistor is a device
designed to limit the flow of electricity in a circuit. When electricity meets
a resistor, the resistor takes the heat and disperses it through the
surrounding air. Resistors are designed to operate under specific voltages. Under
a normal voltage load, the resistor feels cool to warm by touch. However,
resistors can get worn out. When overloaded with voltage exceeding its power
rating, the resistor will become hot to touch. At this point, the resistor is
unable to resist the flow of current and it breaks down.
Could the same be true in our
spiritual activism. What happens when the voltage around us becomes to much,
when we can no longer take the heat, when we lose our cool, when further
resistance means risk burning up and breaking down?
Or, to use another metaphor, If
I want to get stronger and transform my body, I can go to the gym and lift
heavy weights like a crazy man. But heavy weight under tension for a long time puts
too much strain on my body. Too much resistance risks the opposite of my goal. In
my quest for transformation, I can hurt myself. Sometimes, I need to step back
and lift some lighter weights for a brief time. Growth comes in rest.
Here is where we need to be
careful. Rest can lead to inertia. I know that in my own life, if I rest to
long, I don’t want to get back into the resistance. We no longer have that
privilege. Our world needs us to be like those first followers of Jesus who
went two-by-two into towns and villages, proclaiming Good News, healing the
sick, loving the outcasts, and confronting the evil. When forcing peace felt
like a waste of time and energy, they learned when to shake the dust from our
feet and move on.
We resist, we rest, we prepare
to face the heat again, and we get back to work. We will get tired. We will
grow weary. We will face our pains and fears. Before we burn out, we retreat, we
pray and listen for the Spirit’s summons. We evaluate our strategies. We take
time to sing, laugh, and heal. Then we act again. This is the rhythm of
spiritual activism. Resistance and rest, resistance and rest, resistance and
rest, following the tempo of God’s heartbeat.
All is not hopeless. Do not
give into despair. Do not give up. Do not give in. New life begins today. O
God, give us power to lift the people. O God, give us power because we need it.
Justice will be done, evil will be beaten, and God will set all things right
through our prayers and through our actions. When people are discouraged we
pray, God, give us power to the lift the people.
When those who have been
victimized can’t fathom the horror of life, God, give us power to the lift the
people.
When those who have been treated
like garbage can only respond with apathy and resignation, God, give us power
to the lift the people.
When victims of oppression
take the blame for oppression and lose their trust in humanity, God, give us
power to the lift the people.
For those yearning some peace
in a fallen world, God, give us power to the lift the people.
For those who think that
justice means injuring those who injure us, that error can be corrected by
error, that evil can be vanquished by evil, God, give us power to the lift the
people.
For those who believe God still
has something wonderful to do in our lives and in our world, God, give us power
to the lift the people.
God give us more power to tear
down the walls that keep us from one another, God, move humanity with humanity
for the protection of good. Thrust back the evil of violence and set virtue on
her seat again (Bhagavad Gita). God give us power to lift the people.
Sources:
·
No
Justice, No Peace--a sermon given by Tara Stephenson at the UUCLV on September
29, 2013
·
http://www.un.org/en/events/humanrightsday/
·
Robert
Neal Henenway, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, 116. Quoted at http://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/hand-plow-alyce-mckenzie-06-24-2013#CAE34ikEthGhlxPW.99
·
(Sharon
Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, 15).
·
http://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/hand-plow-alyce-mckenzie-06-24-2013#CAE34ikEthGhlxPW.99
·
https://sciencing.com/happens-resistor-burns-up-8556222.html
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