The Storm Before the Calm

From Jesus to John Lennon wisdom teachers have asked us to give peace a chance. In times of widespread unrest and social disruption, it’s understandable that well-meaning people call for peace and love. But a note of caution is in order. In our calls for peace, is it universal love we’re after, or silence and compliance?

Is the light of truth meant to comfort us, or jar us awake?

When Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference went to Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 they went there to cause “good trouble,” to borrow a phrase from John Lewis. Even though school segregation had been struck down nearly a decade earlier by the US Supreme Court, many southern states continued to enforce Jim Crow laws. King went to Birmingham to protest these ongoing segregation statutes, and his method was to purposefully violate a court order banning parades, protests, pickets, boycotts, and marches. They went there to cause good trouble. And they did.

King and his movement filled the streets of Birmingham, braved Bull Connor’s fire hoses and dogs, and through television, brought the nonviolent struggle for human rights into America’s living rooms. Many were arrested, including Dr. King. In the Birmingham newspaper there was an op-ed penned by eight white clergy criticizing King’s methods. King grabbed a pencil and began writing a response in the margins of the newspaper, then on scraps of paper a fellow prisoner gave him. In his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” King makes the case that nonviolent “good trouble” is a necessary last resort because it’s the only thing that brings the dominant culture to the negotiation table. “Nonviolent direct action,” he wrote, “seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”

King grounded his argument in the philosophy of Augustine, Aquinas, Niebuhr, and Thoreau – the idea that it is right to break human laws that violate moral or natural law, as long as we do it in an open, self-sacrificing, and compassionate way. In fact, it is our sacred duty to do so. As King famously wrote, “Everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”

“History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily,” King wrote. “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given up by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Now it is our work to re-perceive social unrest not as lawlessness and disorder, but as the messiness required in any birthing process. Think of it as “creative tension.”

The source of Dr. King’s greatest frustration was not the explicit racist, but the well-intentioned white moderate who agreed with the goals, but counseled patience while mouthing platitudes of law and order. “The Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the Ku Klux Klanner,” King wrote, “but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers…the absence of tension to…the presence of justice.”

Peace and harmony is the ultimate goal – on that we all agree. And when all human beings are afforded their God-given rights of dignity, access, and abundance, then peace and harmony will break out all on their own. But until there is justice, the façade of peace is reserved only for a privileged few, bought with the wages of systematic oppression. And that is no peace at all.

[This piece was first published in my A to Zen column in the November/December 2020 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reprinted here with permission.]

Unraveling Racism - How Real Conversation Creates Change

David Campt cried.

In the final moments of his all day White allies workshop at The Unity Center in San Diego, David’s throat caught. Unable to speak, he turned to look up at the slide on the screen – an old black and white image of James Reeb. It was all just too much – the grief, the loss, the hope, the courage, and the promise. Reeb was a White Unitarian minister so committed to the Civil Rights movement that he drove down to Selma, Alabama in 1965 to help register African Americans to vote. He was beaten to death by segregationists. White ally work is hard. Sometimes it’s very hard. But if Reverend Reeb can give his life, we can learn to navigate an awkward conversation.

As students of New Thought we are keenly aware that we do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we are, and that any real or meaningful spiritual transformation begins with a courageous act of introspection and house cleaning. Most of us have spent decades plumbing the depths of our own minds, rooting out error, and recalibrating the very mental processes by which we construct our realities. And yet the work is unfinished.

Focusing on the Racism Skeptic

There’s a shift happening in the American zeitgeist, and it has been a long time coming. Throughout our cultural discourse brave people are daring to peel back the layers of shame and denial that hide from us the last frontier of our awakening. It’s time. It’s time to finally put the issue of racism and implicit bias front and center in our New Thought work.

The good news is that there is a growing body of resources to help us accomplish this sacred work. At the forefront of this movement is Dr. David Campt.

I met David for lunch at a waterfront restaurant in San Diego. On the road half of every month, David travels the country offering lectures and workshops centered around his White Allies Toolkit, a training program designed to help progressive White people learn how to have transformative conversations with their White racism skeptic friends, colleagues, and relatives.

So what’s a racism skeptic?

55% of White Americans can be described as racism skeptics. They believe that racism is no longer a significant problem. They believe that White people are just as likely to suffer from discrimination as people of color. They’re tired of talking about race. They say things like, “I don’t see color.” They think the only racists left are those guys carrying Tiki torches at Klan rallies. But White racism skeptics are everywhere – they’re teachers, principals, police officers, mayors, ministers, and parents – and the narrative they share holds center stage in our political and media environment.

So how do we begin? That’s the question that haunted Rev. Wendy Craig-Purcell of The Unity Center in San Diego. After deep, open, and heartfelt conversations with the African American and White members of her congregation, Wendy began to carve a path out of the wilderness. Built around Dr. Campt’s White Ally Toolkit, Wendy created a curriculum that began the great unlearning. In our White allies groups we read Debby Irving’s Waking Up White, we watched Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13^th, we shared numerous other articles, videos, and resources. And we sat in a circle and began to open up about what it means to be White.

It was a dizzying ride, filling in all the gaps of our incomplete education – the truth about slavery, black codes, Jim Crow, work gangs, lynchings, sundown towns, voter suppression, inequities in the GI Bill, redlining, the criminalization of color, disparities in crack and powdered cocaine sentencing, mass incarceration, and the insidious presence of implicit bias in all of us – and all of it missing from the official history we teach our children and tell ourselves. It isn’t easy learning that so many of our American institutions were intentionally engineered by White supremacists generations ago to shore up their own power and deny it to others. And that as White people, we have unwittingly benefitted from this unearned privilege our whole lives. But this is where the work begins – with honest truth-telling. But now what? How can we entice racism skeptics into this broadening understanding?

The R.A.C.E. Method

Dr. David Campt

Dr. David Campt’s White Ally Toolkit training program evolved out of his many years of expert work as a dialogue coach and corporate trainer. In the late nineties, Ph.D. fresh in hand, David worked for the Clinton White House. From there he began to design and implement dialogue training that led to numerous consulting jobs across the public and private sector. But after the 2016 Presidential election he was led to devote his now seasoned professional expertise to the project of healing the racial and ideological divides that threaten the unity of our nation.

David calls his work the R.A.C.E. method.

As we initiate conversations with our racism skeptic friends, relatives, and co-workers, the first step is to reflect. What do I need to do to remain in an open and empathetic listening mode? How can I avoid falling into the old habits of argument, judgement, and condemnation?

The second step is to ask. What are some key questions I can ask to draw them out? How can I gently guide them to talk not about their beliefs and opinions, but about the personal experiences that led to those opinions? If they tell you that “Racism isn’t a serious problem anymore. We even had a black President” ask them, “Oh that’s interesting – tell me about an experience in your own life that makes you to think that?” They might tell you a story about how integrated and diverse their workplace is.

The third step is to connect. Here we tell a story that aligns with and supports the story they just shared. Tell them that you notice it too, that there’s a lot more diversity in the workplace than there used to be. There has been a lot of progress. That’s a point upon which you can both agree.

Finally it’s time for the fourth step, to expand. Now that you’ve connected and found common ground, gently nudge them just a little bit further. Help them see, preferably with a personal story instead of a sermon, that racial discrimination against people of color is still very real. You might offer an anecdote where your own implicit bias reared its ugly head. With any luck your confession will nudge them toward the recognition and acknowledgement of their own implicit bias. I know it seems small, but it’s actually huge. When a racism skeptic comes to see implicit bias within themselves, their whole edifice begins to crumble.

As Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

We’ve argued, we’ve preached, we’ve scolded, we’ve marched – and yet the problem of racism persists. In fact it seems to be getting worse. Maybe it’s time for a new approach. Maybe it’s time for empathy-based dialogue with our ideological opponents. No one’s saying this is going to be easy. But the stakes are high. If we are serious about awakening ourselves, and contributing to an awakening world, it is essential that we break our silence about the wounds that still scar the American heart.

Becoming a White Ally

As we finished our lunch I asked David, “So what happened at the end of the workshop the other day? When you showed us that picture of James Reeb and the other White martyrs of the Civil Rights movement, and you choked up. After all these years, and after all this work, what about that moment stopped you in your tracks?”

He looked up from his plate and spoke very slowly. “I think I’m moved most by the tragedy of all the lost opportunities for love and connection.”

So many of us have seen our families, friends, neighborhoods, and faith communities ripped apart along partisan and ideological lines. So many of us have given up.

“It’s really hard to empathize and connect with someone who says a bunch of racist stuff, or who believes that racism isn’t even a problem,” I said. “Every fiber of my being just wants to walk away.”

 “You think having a conversation is hard?” David asked. “I’ll tell you what’s hard. Sitting down at a White’s only lunch counter and being arrested, that’s hard. Getting your bones broken by state troopers, that’s hard. Getting killed by Klansmen, that’s hard. If James Reeb can die, you can have a conversation with your cousin Brad.”

Being a White ally means becoming willing to wield our privilege as a force for good. It means coming out of our denial and apathy and taking action. White people have the power, and the moral obligation, to undo the structural racism built into our consciousness and our institutions. My black friend Robyn put it best. Pointing to herself she said, “We can’t do this. You have to do it.” She was right. White people have to do it. It’s the only way to finally unravel the stranglehold racism still has on the unrealized promise of America.

[This feature was originally published in the February 2020 issue of Science of Mind Magazine and is reproduced here with permission.]

The Bridge Generation

The low sun of December casts a long shadow. There’s more darkness than light. But the darkness holds a promise. Something is waiting to be born.

I’ve been thinking about the twentieth and twenty first centuries, how we are the bridge generation between the two – born in one, living and dying in the next, one foot in the old world, one foot in the new.

It was only ten years ago that the great twentieth century – the most violent century, the most inspiring century – came to a close. A time of unprecedented brutality and catastrophic environmental degradation, the twentieth century stands forever as a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when we put a narrow sense of tribe and short-term profits before the needs of the earth and the human family. Yet the twentieth century was also a time of hard-won gains in basic human rights, a time when entire categories of people began to emerge from centuries of oppression, a time when the sciences and the humanities joined forces to envision and manifest a world that works for everyone – in short, a time of awakening.

What will the twenty first century bring? We’re ten years in, and it’s still too soon to tell. If we’ve learned anything, it’s the complete unpredictability of the future.

Yet here, in the early morning of the twenty first century, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re awakening from a long dream, and in the gradual dawning of our new awareness, we are re-imagining our core values and the social structures and institutions that emerge from those values. We are redefining success. We are redefining peace. We are redefining prosperity. We are learning how to let our vision lead and our practicality follow. We know that a small group of people can change the course of history – we’ve seen it happen too many times to ignore. And we know that no matter how dire the situation, no matter how dark the night, there is within every human heart enough light to illuminate the whole world.

We don’t trust government as much as we used to. We know that we cannot wait for others to solve our problems. We know that within each of our homes, our families, our neighborhoods and our spiritual communities, it is we who lead, it is we who set priorities, it is we who articulate values, it is we who vote with our dollars to support businesses that uphold our vision of the good.

It is our growing conviction that each of us has wisdom within us, wisdom that emerges as insight, intuition and compassionate action each time we are faced with injustice and needless suffering. It is drawn out by our increasing awareness of the tremendous need around the world. We no longer think of ourselves as just Americans or just Mexicans or just Canadians, but as citizens of the world proud of our local affiliations, but not bound by them. Old institutions are crumbling and new institutions are taking their place. New technologies are shattering barriers that used to keep us apart. We are no longer beholden to powerful information distribution systems however well-meaning they may have been. Just as in the twentieth century the train, then the automobile and then the airplane closed great distances, today the internet (and whatever’s next) has destroyed the very concept of distance itself. With each cataclysmic change much was lost, and much was gained. We have had to learn to let go, over and over again. And we have struggled to adapt new technologies to the service of our humanity, not the other way around. With each change, the underlying constant remained – us. It is the indomitable human spirit that springs forth forever new from the dissolving forms of the past.

And here we are ten years into the new century, on the verge of the teenage years. I believe we have a choice. I believe that each of us has the power within the privacy of our own conscience, our own decisions, our own actions, to co-create with those around us the world we hold in our visions. We know that our intentions have creative power. We know that evolution isn’t over. We know that something is emerging, and we get to decide what that is.

Evolution has been going on for a long time. It’s absurd to think it has stagnated or that we have reached the end. If anything, we are in a period of accelerated change. This is not the final stage. As we continue to fall forward into the ever-new world, we carry with us the values and convictions that serve our deepest sense of the good. We let the old ways fall by the wayside. We take what we need and leave the rest. We buy less and give more. We move into smaller houses. We drive smaller cars. We consume fewer resources. We finally believe that there’s nothing more we really need, and that our wants are often born from the wound of spiritual dissatisfaction, and so we learn to feed ourselves not at the mall, but at the well that springs from the sacred source deep within us and all things.

Maybe you’re discouraged. Maybe you’re moved to despair by the endless bad news streaming into our awareness. Make sure you’re looking in a balanced way at the information you use to reach your assessments. Yes, there is abundant evidence of brutality and misery. But there is also ample evidence that we live in a time of great transformation where change-agents famous and obscure are working tirelessly around the world and making real progress. Find a place to lean in and help us push away the debris of the old forms that no longer serve us. Make a decision: stay caught in the disease or be a part of the healing.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” wrote Margaret Mead. “Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

We won’t always agree about how to change the world. But we share the conviction that it is our sacred duty to do so. If not us, who? If not now, when?

We are the people born in a time of great pain and promise. We are the people born in an age of unprecedented change. We are the people who remember where we came from, and hold a vision of where we are going. We are the people who know in our bones that it is possible to give birth to a world that is environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just. We have been given all the tools we need. We have each other. We have trust, faith, hope, love and wisdom. We can span the distance between the world we imagine and the world we behold. We are the connection between what was and what will be. We are the bridge generation.