Not the Chosen, but the Choice
“Violence is a form of communication.”
A Kenyan friend once said that, after a calamity - a terrible argument, or some kind of violence, people there will say, Well, it has happened. When I stop to think about all the places we might utter these words, the names are too numerous to bear. Hiroshima. Nazi Germany. Rwanda. Liberia. Mississippi. South Africa. Viet Nam. Chile. Iraq. Where do we not say this?
Now, in the Middle East, we can say, Well, it is happening. No one is talking about love. Few are talking about peace, even and especially world leaders. That's unacceptable. We need leaders who remind us that we can and must do better. Leaders who remind us that we are here to love and be loved, and that every decision matters, even and especially our thoughts.
A few weeks ago, I was driving home when someone cut in front of me where the road narrows from two lanes to one. I didn't honk or flash my lights, but in my mind, I muttered something colorful. As I waited for the light to change, the fellow ahead of me - the one who had sped up and cut in, got out of his car and started walking toward me. He was glowering. Our eyes met. I wondered what he would do; I was grateful he wasn't pointing a gun. The light changed. He got back in his car and drove off. It was a beautiful, if harrowing, lesson that our thoughts have an instant effect.
Hate is having a heyday. Despots are making a comeback. Petty grudge matches and nuclear brinkmanship are enjoying a resurgence. These are the unnerving death-throes of a moribund and death-obsessed culture, even as those who are tiring of western hegemony are wondering how to get their hands on some of that absolute power that has been lorded over them.
Images of annihilation that used to upset us - mushroom clouds and death camps, seem almost quaint. Charred villages and emaciated children have been supplanted by piles of plastic which, for all their overwhelming ubiquitousness, do not register as a threat. Belligerence, though dispersed, is nonetheless cumulative.
Victors of conflict conflate triumph with moral superiority. But to win is to lose. To dominate is to fail. To be the aggressor is to fall short. The prize thrown away by the victor is compassion. (Ursula K. LeGuin translation of the I Ching.) The certainty of being right turns our gaze away from the mirror. It silences the conscience and anesthetizes the soul. What has been lost, among other things, is the courage required for surrender, because surrender, if understood as a question of identity, demands that we deal with our rage and our shame. The expert in warfare says, Rather than dare make the attack, I’d take the attack: rather than dare advance an inch, I’d retreat a foot. This is the martial arts principle of doing everything possible to avoid violence, starting within ourselves.
For modern nation-states, and among most individuals, aggression is the weapon of first resort. Those who dare to question the necessity of violence and torture are brushed aside with disdain. But the moral stakes go beyond winning, beyond honor. To attack what yields is to squander might by misusing it. Gandhi's satyagraha comes to mind, and the unavoidable image of thousands of unarmed soldiers during India's War of Independence marching into British fire, line after line of vibrant young men crumpling to the ground until the British soldiers could not continue firing, forced by grief and shame to lay down their guns, marking the ignominy of unrestrained might.
The I Ching, written three thousand years ago, understands Life as change, with discernible patterns that are in active relationship with each other and with those who seek divinatory guidance. It speaks of natural cycles, of leadership, courage, and death, along with the very human desire to bend fortune in our favor. There is no absolute standard of obedience, no fixed and absolute Truth, only the magnetic center of transformation as the organizing principle of Life, and the invitation to cooperate with the ongoing process of change.
When the bible appeared one thousand years after the I Ching, a single male entity was endowed with absolute powers of life and death, swinging the focus from alignment to obedience, and from the consequences of interconnected patterns to punishment of sins against authority. Beware the ones who say that it’s right to kill in God’s name; that surveillance and weapons are essential for safety; that we were all born damaged or encumbered by sin; that mercy is selective and G-d's prejudices mirror our own. Beware the God of hatred and exclusivity, of salvation for some but not for others, or for some at the expense of others; and beware of those for whom some children matter more than others. Likewise, beware their lifestyle and their beliefs. Above all, beware the God who would sacrifice all of Creation for the false-hearted few whose heaven exists only for them, on their terms. There is no such place. That God is false.
Despite cataclysmic weather events, the beautiful days still outnumber the devastating ones, and the specter of ecological holocaust still seems diluted, contained, happening to someone else, somewhere else. Before the recent war in Ukraine, even the radioactive forests of Chernobyl had become a tourist attraction. Before this most recent war in the Middle East, the Holy Land was still holy in some places. Where is that holiness now? Hatred and suffering do not honor the Divine.
In the I Ching, danger and opportunity are twinned. To choose peace when we have been attacked requires us to see conflict as a spiritual challenge. To choose nonviolence, love, and compassion as our identity. It requires us to be armed without weapons; to remember the grief of others as we remember our own. The yielder, the griever, the mourner, keeps the prize. The game is loser takes all.
Humanity has arrived at the precipice, the edge of possibility. We who are alive now must become the leaders we lack; the ones who are willing to take the first steps on the arduous journey of transformation. This is the moment that called us here; the moment we have dreaded and longed for. We are only as strong as our bonds to each other, only as wise as our devotion to Life.
