Looking Ahead

I like the quip I just read on the internet from Caitlin Johnstone: “Start over in the New Year. Also start over whenever you want, as often as you want. Time is an illusion anyway.”

I’m 70 years old now. And still I hope for some re-birth. At a New Years Eve party last night, two guys my age laughed that by now they knew themselves pretty well and that it would be bad if they didn’t. I didn’t respond, but thought about that idea. I realized that I'm not really willing to say that I know myself. I’m inclined to agree with the late great Baba Ram Dass (and with Buddhist teaching), that there is in fact no “self” to know. Not that I’ve accomplished that level of enlightenment. I just have this sneaking suspicion that we can't really know our "selfs."

And so, I am approaching the future with some wonderings. What will I experience up ahead? How will it shape my sense of identity and well-being? What can come through me that I can offer to others, in the name of love? Why do I still have this nagging anxiety that I may not be in the right place at the right time – especially when my (over-rated) brain tells me that here and now are the only place and time that is real? What’s missing?

Melody and I are planning to travel out to the US borderland in Douglas, AZ in a couple of weeks. We’ll spend three weeks there living and working with friends Jack and Linda and others who are part of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), being part of the effort to accompany those thrust into being refugees. We feel it is something heartful that we need to do. Call it a calling.

But as I look into myself about why I am doing this, I do find mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am stricken by the ever-present misgiving that whatever I do in the name of solidarity is ultimately futile in the big scheme of things. I hear this inner voice casting doubts: “Why bother? You won’t change anything. What makes you think that you – Mr. White-Guy-of-Privilege – can serve a useful purpose for the victims of the very system from which you have benefited? Is this just to absolve your bourgeois guilt?"

But on the other hand, what if I do little or nothing about what clearly is a racist, fascist, unjust world? What if I just live my comfy life and love others and feel compassion and maybe do some sign-holding on street corners? Could I be okay with that?

I suppose I can’t exactly keep myself within these bounds of what seems to be normal American Christian goodness. I have this conscience that won't quit. Though I don’t call myself Christian or even religious, I do think a lot about Jesus. That bumper sticker – “What would Jesus do?” – comes to my mind with a fair amount of unpredictable regularity. Not that I think of myself, or even aspire to be, a hero or martyr. I’m just trying to be true to my heart.

Whenever I’m asked why I do activism as much as I do, my answer is not framed by the idea that I might have some great impact. It’s more about identity. Who am I in the midst of this troubled world? Where do I stand? I also realize that I do not want to take the position that I am helping others in a kind of one-way gift, doing what might be called charitable works. I am very mindful of Australian indigenous activist Lila Watson’s comment: “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

So, in a real way, I am simply working on myself. Or with my "self," alongside of others. Or, as Baba Ram Dass once said, we are all just walking each other home. This is why I like CPT’s accompaniment approach. No sense of noblesse oblige. No power dynamic that we are coming to save the day. Just a humble way of coming to stand beside people who are struggling, doing whatever can be done to love each other as fellow children of god.

Melody and I don’t know what our experience will be during our 3 weeks at the border. We understand that we will be coming to a place that holds suffering and danger. But not just that – we also believe there will by joy and hope. And much more that we can't anticipate. In any case, we are not allowing uncertainty or fear rule us. We’re going for it, trusting that our presence will be a time of shared liberation. As maybe every time and place could and should be. After all, time is an illusion. And so is place, right?

Ken