Ever since I (gently?) mocked others for being “La la la la la, I don’t listen to the news,” I’ve developed a sudden aversion to the news. It makes sense, of course. I can’t remember a worse stretch of news in my lifetime. My self-inquiry led me back to the importance of spiritual tools in changing the world we see and experience.
It went like this:
As a person consciously walking a spiritual path, my aversion to the news made me ask: What am I not seeing? Every discomfort is an arrow pointing toward healing. This time, the inquiry led me to remember that every “miraculous” nonviolent social change in the 20th century was grounded in spiritual principle and practices (we’re talking Ghandi’s revolution in India, the dissolution of segregation and discrimination in the U.S., and the largely peaceful end of apartheid in South Africa).
Years before she was a presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson addressed Harvard Divinity School for two hours “On Consciousness, Spirituality, and Politics in America” — in it, she observed that while spirituality and politics were integral to the civil rights movement, in the decades that followed, white liberals on the east coast became political and anti-spiritual while white liberals on the west coast became spiritual and anti-political.
This theory tracks for me, especially since for most of the years when I made my living as a full-time public policy advocate, I lived on the East Coast, and there was nothing spiritual (or nonviolent) about my work. We were in a “fight, a battle, or a war.” We had “enemies.” We wanted to win and for them to lose.
Then I moved to the West Coast, and while I continued to be an advocate for the public good, I was drawn, out of emotional and physical necessity, to spirituality. The contrast between the two worlds was wide and wild. In my time as a lobbyist for the most powerful union in California, while in ministerial school, I’ll never forget literally moving from the union’s “war room” to a peace vigil I had organized on the same day.
But, as Marianne Williamson observed, while liberal white folks picked one or the other, most Black folks continued to see the harmony between politics and spirituality, as do evangelical Christians and the right-wing Christian Nationalist movement, of course.
It’s an old saw that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Despite the powerful engine of Black voters, Democrats keep divorcing policy from spirituality and keep losing. When I was a public policy advocate, I lost virtually every battle. If you’re not currently enjoying National Health Insurance in the U.S., it’s not for lack of my trying.
And so I circle back to this thought: nothing in my life really changed or improved until I started meditating, praying, affirming, and envisioning my best life. Why would I think it would be any different with politics or public policy?
Even without a spiritual element, there’s a tendency among American voters to wait for a charismatic leader to rise up and save us from ourselves. And yes, the movements referred to above certainly did have charismatic spiritual leaders. But what if today’s time requires something different? Could we all murmurate to meditate together for social change and make it happen? And is meditation even the best tool? Maybe it will take all of them…
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