We the people
FOR the people
Listen to this article:
"If the world is night
Shine my life like a light"
-- "Let it Be Me," The Indigo Girls
When I first started watching "The Handmaid's Tale" a few years ago, there was constant nagging question in the back of my mind: "How would the spiritual principles I believe in help me in a society like this?"
It was around this time that I was becoming a serious student of A Course in Miracles, which turns on the principle that we're all thoughts in the mind of God. Our eternal spirits have manifested in these bodies because we have forgotten that we are all one – all joined in that eternal Divine thought of Love. Our ticket to awakening is to dedicate ourselves to seeing that spark of the Divine in everyone we see, no matter what their behavior may be in our world.
Tell that to June as she battles the powers and principalities stacked against her to reunite her family and live in a free world where women are once again in charge of their own bodily autonomy. No one could blame her for the actions that she took. "Don't let the bastards grind you down," indeed.
None of us knows how we might react if we lived in that kind of repressive society. There is, however, a good chance we may find ourselves in some version of Margaret Atwood's dystopia come 2025. So now may be a good time to try to answer that question: How would our spiritual principles help us in a repressive, dictatorial society?
First, it won't overthrow the dictator, not immediately, anyway. But it will allow us to live freely in the one world we can control – the one inside. It's the only one we can truly change and if enough of us pursue a spiritual path of inward revolution, the outward one will follow.
The ego, of course, is the bastard that is most eager to grind us down. That's why it will tell us, in no uncertain terms, that going within during a time of societal upheaval is nothing more than navel gazing and withdrawal.
It is not. It is the most revolutionary thing you can do. Why? Because it's hard work.
Hating is easy. Complaining is easy. Vilifying someone you don't like is easy. Making war against "those" people is easy. Destroying someone else is easy.
Loving them is hard, because it requires you to go within and expel all the hatred, fear, judgement, grievances, and anger from within your own heart. That arduous and exhausting work.
I imagine June's story might not have been as compelling if she had found a way to root out her hatred of Fred Waterford and all the other leaders of Gilead. It does not mean that she would have meekly submitted to their society – but I do believe she would have found a far more constructive and peaceful way to overthrow it. I don't know what that would have looked like in her fictitious reality, but it could look a lot like Germany's Peaceful Revolution that led to the fall of The Berlin Wall in 1989, or The Singing Revolution between 1987 and 1991 that led to the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. There are many examples of the success of nonviolent revolutions.
Right now, we stand at a crossroads: Will we take the road of hatred and fear, taking up violence as our revolutionary weapon? Or will we take the mostly untrodden path of Love that leads us to become what we want to see the world become? There's a reason that there's a highway to hell and stairway to heaven. It says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.
Heaven's rickety stairway
If there is a stairway to heaven, it's not like those elegant ones in grand old mansions with gilded barristers. It's kind of like the rickety bridge Indiana Jones had to cross to retrieve Jesus' Last Supper cup. This inner stairway to heaven is steep, fitted with rotting boards and a loose banister. If it were a beautiful spiral staircase, we'd be more tempted by it, but it truly looks like the steps up to the creepy attic where your ego has convinced you a crazed madman will meet you with a chainsaw.
Ascending that stairway is arduous and painful. As you climb, you will do battle with the demons of hatred, fear, anger, greed, revenge, and all the other emotions that make the highway to hell look mighty tempting.
Sounds enticing, right? Like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, we may find it much easier to fight the battles outside of ourselves than those within. Going within requires us to realize that the ego – far from being a hated part of ourselves – is part of our inner family. As such, we are loathe to go to battle with it, preferring an uneasy peace.
As Krishna tells Arjuna, though, "If indulging your ego, you should determine, 'I will not fight,' you would have to fight anyway, obliged to do so by Nature (your own as well as cosmic)." (18:59)
In other words, we all have to come to terms with our inner world at some point, either in this lifetime or another. If we have the chance now to make our only aim to awaken to the light that unifies us all, why should we wait?
But, wait …
Ah, but wait we will, because the outer fight seems easier than the inner one. Asha Nayashwami, a disciple of Swami Kriyananda, who was a disciple of Yogananda, talks about leading the meditation classes at Ananda Village, saying the last class is entitled: "Why you will quit meditating."
She found that many people, after learning how to meditate, give it up because either they believe it doesn't work or that it does work. She talks about the students who tell her that when they begin to meditate, their world falls apart. Tragedy strikes, things go downhill. So, they stop meditating because they expected meditation to bring them peace.
Instead, in Asha's view, the Universe has given them a tool to help them cope with terrible times. Instead of using the tool, though, they blame it for causing the bad events and drop it like a hot potato.
In these past few weeks, I admit that I have abandoned my own spiritual practices, thinking that their talk of peace, love, and joy and everyone being the light of the world is hokum at best and complete bullshit at worst. I have felt the old feelings of anger, hatred, and grievance arise within me.
And I can't do it. I cannot go there. I have been there, done that and got all the fucking t-shirts. It's not worth it. I will not give in to my inner June.
I encourage you to do the same.
Using our tools
There are some really dark clouds on the horizon. I'm not looking forward to the next few months, but I will not spend them in anger, fear, and hatred. I will spend them using the tools that I have been given to get through them.
I will use the tool of meditation to go within and root out the hatred, fear, anger, and grievance that gather to block my way on the stairway to heaven. I will use tools of kindness and compassion to see those around me as divine spirits confused by the ego's delusion that having power over others or defeating some "enemy" out in the world will ultimately make them happy. I will use the tool of community to seek out like-minded individuals where we can help one another cope with whatever happens and be a source of support and love for one another. I will use the tool of understanding to reach out to those with whom I disagree and genuinely try to see the world through their eyes and search for common ground on which we can both stand and move forward.
I will use the tool of Love to lift my heart above this battlefield and seek ways to heal the pain of this world that drives us to tear each other apart and create divides where there should only be bridges.
What does this look like in practical terms? Heather Cox Richardson offered some advice in a Facebook video just after the US Supreme Court ruled that presidents have a certain level of immunity.
"Now is the time for you to do what you do best," she said. Whether you're a writer with a platform, or someone who can write op-eds or letters to the editor, or a marketer who knows how to reach people with a message, or an artist, poet, or singer who can revive the art of protest through their medium. Whatever you do, put your skill toward saving democracy.
Rachel Maddow, in a recent podcast, also had some wise words, encouraging us to not give in to fear or hatred of those who may support a different candidate in the election or a totally different view of the world.
"When you see someone as a human being," she says, "it is harder to want to kill them. I believe that it is important that you don't live in your phone, that you know your neighbors, that you have relationships with people because you see them at the dump or the gas station regularly, or because your kid plays little league with their kid, or because you go to the same church. Knowing different types of people and communicating with people at a different level is very powerful and creates resistance to mass violence."
This is similar to what Martin Luther King Jr. called a "double victory." King met the threat of violence with love, saying "we will meet your physical force with soul force. And do to us what you will, and we will still love you."
That love, that capacity to suffer, will be what ultimately grinds down those who inflict violence. "And one day," King predicted in a 1966 speech at Illinois Wesleyan University, "we will win our freedom, but we will not only win freedom for ourselves. We will so appeal to your heart and conscience, that we will win you in the process. And our victory will be a double victory."
We the people, for the people
Richardson, Maddow, and King remind us of the most potent power structure available to us in this time. It is not domination stories of power over, or power by imposing purity laws on others, or separating ourselves from those we consider "other" or "evil," or even overthrowing them in a violent revolution. True power is in the story that does not include a "them." True power is in the story of "some of us for all of us" – which is truly "we the people, for the people."1
Those of us who choose LOVE over fear cannot help but see all of us as ONE: One spirit, one mind, one life, one love.
The choice is before us. We can chuck this peace and love stuff and set out on the highway to hell that is fueled by the violence and hatred of our inner June in Gilead. Or we can ascend that rickety stairway to heaven – the arduous climb to a world ruled by Love instead of Fear. If you join me, know that you are taking on the most challenging and difficult role in this play of life. It's easy for the seemingly evil people to strut about the stage, chewing the scenery and taking command of the production, striking fear in the hearts of all who see them.
Love, for far too long, has been shoved into the background, playing a bit part in these scenes. This is the time for those of us working for the good of all of us to take back center stage. To do that, we must study our lines. We must use our tools, and double down on the absolute truth that Love will always overcome Fear.
For me, I will go into the future not fighting against "them," but loving all of us until that double victory is won.
If the world is night, shine my life like a light.
Music for the journey:
“Let it Be Me” - The Indigo Girls
Let it be me
(this is not a fighting song)
Let it be me
(not a wrong for a wrong)
Let it be me
If the world is night
Shine my life like a light
“Three Feet or So” — Carrie Newcomer
And the things that have saved us
Are still here to save us
It's not out there somewhere
It's right here it's right here
I can't change the whole world
But I can change the world I know
What's within three feet or so
We are body skin and bones
We're all the love we've ever known
When I don't know what is right
I hold it up into the Light
Upcoming Speaking Gigs:
August 4, 2024: Clayton Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church - Newberry, SC (in-person only)
Past Guest Speaking Gigs:
This is the sermon I delivered at the Jubilee! Community in Asheville, NC, on May 12, 2024. The sermon was “Renewing through Lullabies” (Stick around at the end to hear my original song, “Native Word,” performed with The World Beat Band.)
Looking for a guest speaker at your spiritual community? Contact me!
About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution, or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well as Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass and the founder and senior editor emeritus of Whosoever: An Online Magazine for LGBTQ People of Faith. She is also a musician and avid animal lover.
Listen to Brian McLaren's Seven Stories to understand the power structures.
Thank you so much for this Candace. The current state of our nation has been a challenge to my own Course practice for a while now…a challenge that will likely continue to increase in months to come. This article…every aspect of it…has been a huge help in encouraging me to remember, there is always a different way of seeing this. I will no doubt return to this when I need a boost…which is likely to be often.