Why enlightenment remains elusive
Any why it may always be so ...
I am not yet an enlightened master.
I realized this fact the other week as I walked to my massage therapist's office about half a mile from my house. Despite years of spiritual work, and a fresh sermon sitting at home on my computer about just such a situation I was about to encounter, my heart slammed shut the moment I saw them.
Anti-abortion protestors.
I am not trying to start a political post or a fight – even as this week revealed that the US Supreme Court appears ready to strike down Roe v. Wade and return the fate of the legality of abortion back to the states. I can understand the position of both sides, even as I maintain my own pro-choice stance, because I believe every person should have autonomy over their own bodies and not have them subject to the whim of government control. Still, I'm not sure what decision I would have made back in my fertile days should an unplanned pregnancy had happened to me. The thing is, though, I would have had a choice in the matter, and perhaps that's what fueled my heart-closing reaction to the protestors.
These protestors are there all throughout the week, because the Planned Parenthood clinic is located in the building across the street from my massage therapist's office. This time, though, they had their bus – their free ultrasound screening lab on wheels – to entice women inside so they could lecture them on their pending choice at the clinic. I have no idea how many women succumb to their trap, but what enrages me, and clamped my heart shut, was not their views on abortion – but their methods for trying to stop them.
Nobody likes to be harassed by strangers, especially strangers standing in a parking lot yelling at you on what is probably one of the worst days of your life. Let's get in the woman's shoes, shall we? Perhaps she has been raped, been a victim of incest, or just can't afford to support a child right now. Perhaps the doctors have told her that carrying to term could end her own life, or that the baby would be stillborn and carrying it to term would be pointless. None of those situations are pleasant, but you've made the decision to terminate – a very private, agonizing decision. And some yahoo with a sign depicting an aborted fetus yells at you in the parking lot.
Your heart would close, too. And no one in their right mind would blame you.
There are better methods to accomplish your goal than yelling at people in parking lots. Apparently, the anti-abortion crowd has found it with the new conservative majority on the US Supreme Court. Parking lot yelling will go the way of the dodo if Planned Parenthood is forced to close or no longer can offer abortions. Who yells at women going in for a pap smear?
None of this had transpired the day I walked by, though. At least five protestors were out – one at the corner of the road, one by the ultrasound bus, one across the street setting up the huge aborted fetus placard, and two in the parking lot entrance. One was yelling at woman walking into the building.
They each smiled at me and said, "Good morning." The lady by the bus was holding bags, apparently information to give to women, but seemed sure I didn't need one. Perhaps my menopause belly isn't round enough to look like a pregnancy. Small blessings.
I offered my own, "Good morning," through gritted teeth, feeling my now-closed-tight heart race with a sudden rush of anger. I wanted to yell at them. I wanted to tell them their harassment of women going into the clinic was the height of insensitivity and rudeness and that nobody ever changed their minds by being yelled at by strangers. But I kept walking.
A miscommunication meant my appointment had to be rescheduled, so I trudged back down the hill to run the gauntlet of protestors once more. They watched me, nodded and smiled, and I grew more curious about them. If I met these people out of this context, I probably would have reacted much differently. The guy at the corner, for instance, was middle-aged with a grey beard and a messy head of greying hair who could have easily passed as a crunchy-granola liberal had I seen him in a bar, restaurant, or open mic night. The lady by the bus was your average 40-something soccer mom who probably would have let you in front of her at the grocery store if you had a couple of items and she had a cart full of stuff.
Then it hit me – they're just people like me. They have social causes that jazz them – just like me. They have a moral code they follow and they think they're right – just like me.
This is one of the exercises Buddhist nun Pema Chodron recommends when we get stuck in those heart closing moments. "Just like me … just like me." They want to see babies born, just like me. They want everyone to get a shot at life, just like me. They want people to be happy, just like me.
Where I think they go wrong, of course, is that it appears they project their own privilege onto the lives of those women who need the services of the clinic, namely women who are often financially, emotionally, or physically unprepared to bring a baby into the world. Many of those who oppose abortion also oppose the social supports that could help those children thrive such as Medicaid, SNAP, free kindergarten, quality low-cost, or free, childcare, and a fully-funded and thriving public education system. It's one thing to love a fetus. It's another to support an actual living, breathing child.
My closed reaction to those people, who are just like me on so many levels, stayed with me for days afterward. Sunday, at Jubilee! Circle, I gave a sermon about kindness, and how we can keep an open heart toward others – especially those who tempt us to close our hearts. I had written the sermon before my encounter with the protestors and completely forgot to use the tools from Chodron I told my community about on Sunday, which involve using the breath to remain open-hearted.
The tool Chodron suggests for this situation would be tonglen, where you intentionally breathe in the suffering of others around you, and breathe out compassion for them. I tried the exercise in retrospect, but found it much easier to breathe in the suffering of the woman walking into the clinic than the guy who was yelling at her. Enlightenment still remains elusive.
Universe, however, is not so keen to give up on us, even when we see how far we are from enlightenment. Sunday night, a guest at one of our Airbnb rentals called to tell me the air conditioner had died. It was late on a weekend and nobody was coming to the rescue. We reached out to a guy who had done some HVAC side work for us before but he was unavailable. Eventually, he hooked us up with Rick, a retired HVAC repairman who said he'd come on Monday morning.
Rick was at the house by 9 a.m. By 9:10, the unit was fixed. A couple of wires had touched and shorted out. An easy, inexpensive fix that had me praising my good fortune. I told Rick to come by my house and I'd pay him.
As he pulled up, I noticed the bumper sticker on the back of his pickup truck: TRUMP 2020.
I laughed out loud and breathed in deeply – determined to keep my heart open.
Rick was an older white man in a ball cap – clad in jeans and a rugged button-down shirt with rough hands that had seen years of work making broken things run again. When he got out and shook my hand, I realized he was about my height – 5 foot 2 and some change. Not an imposing man, and again, someone I might have judged as an old hippie in a different context.
He told me about the repair as I handed him a check. We chatted about the HVAC unit and when it might need replacing. He counseled me to keep putting new parts in it until the coolant began to leak. Only then should I replace it. He said some of the big HVAC companies might try to tell me otherwise, but not to fall for it. He even shared stories of how one company he worked for hoodwinked customers with the "ya gotta replace the unit" lie. He said he quit rather than continuing to work for an unethical company.
I immediately liked Rick, despite his bumper sticker. When I went back inside, I realized I was wearing my ball cap that reads, "Will trade racists for refugees." I don't know if Rick saw it. He didn't say anything if he did, and I didn't say anything about his bumper sticker. Instead, we bonded over HVAC repair and the importance of ethics in business.
We saw our commonality and not our differences. He wants honesty and integrity in the world.
Just like me.
Your turn: Who are you closing your heart to in this moment? With all the political turmoil going on this week, especially, perhaps now is the time to learn the practice of tonglen – breathing in the world's suffering and breathing out compassion. I believe, also, we should also work to ensure that women have complete agency over their bodies and find more creative and loving ways to address the issue of abortion. If we're keeping our heart open to even those who may disagree with us, I believe we can find those creative and compassionate solutions … together.
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Take 20 with Candace
This week’s Take 20 is from Jubilee! Circle's Easter celebration from May 1, 2022: “The Barrier of Kindness.”
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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 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.