Paul Hawken's Commencement Address in Portland

Posted by Nipun Mehta on May 17, 2009
http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2077
Paul Hawken is a friend of CharityFocus, renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, founder of Wiser Earth and author of many books -- most recently Blessed Unrest.

Last week, he was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University of Portland, when he delivered this superb commencement address.

Commencement Address to the Class of 2009

University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not onepeer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.
Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.

Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

we were made for these times

Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
Mis estimados,
Do not lose heart. We were made for these times....One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. A soul on deck shines like gold. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of your soul in difficult times....to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both are acts of immense bravery and great necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.....remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here.

In that spirit....When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

The Power of Forgiveness Movie

http://www.thepowerofforgiveness.com/about/index.html

This film does an extremely good job of building the motivation to explore forgiveness, first for oneself, then for others through empathy and compassion. This topic is the very root of peace-building. Peace does not come from justice (which is an issue we cannot ignore), peace comes from letting go of the anger. It includes many real-life stories of tragedy and healing, not the least of which is the final one, Azim Khamisa's. My wife and I were teary-eyed because of the hope for fulfillment of our deepest longings, not only for ourselves but also for all the children.

A detailed description of the film is here, and you can buy it at Amazon.com through The Peace Alliance link for less than $17, well worth it. I plan to use it as part of a series of movie nights to raise money for the campaign.

Gratefully,
David
David Hazen
Oregon State Coordinator
The Peace Alliance Campaign
for a U.S. Department of Peace
Oregon Campaign on Facebook
Encouragement for a Culture of Peace
innercom@peak.org
541.343.2109
Eugene, Oregon

"Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self." -Tom Robbins

Visions and Ideals by James Allen

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. THIS IS THE LINE I LOVE: The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

Your circumstances may be unpleasant, but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an Ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without.

You, too, will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.

The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the lazy, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance. See a man grow rich, they say, “How lucky he is!” Observing another become intellectual, they exclaim, “How highly favored he is!” And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, the remark, “How chance aids him at every turn!”

They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; they have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it “luck”; do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it “good fortune”; do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it “chance.”

In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. “Gifts,” material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.

The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart—this you will build your life by, this you will become.
____________
James Allen was born in Leicester, England on November 28, 1864. When he was fifteen, the family business failed and his father left for America to find work. His father was murdered before he could send for the family and subsequently, James left school and worked for several British manufacturers until 1902. His literary career lasted only nine years until his death in 1912. As A Man Thinketh was his second book.

complex love of country

Patriotism's Secret History
by PETER DREIER & DICK FLACKS

[from the June 3, 2002 issue]

Many Americans believe that the left is "antipatriotic" (and even anti-American), while the political right truly expresses the American spirit and reveres its symbols. Particularly since the late 1960s--when the movement against US intervention in Vietnam gained momentum--the terms "progressive" and "patriotism" have rarely been used in the same sentence, at least in the mainstream media. It has become conventional wisdom that conservatives wave the American flag while leftists burn it. Patriotic Americans display the flag on their homes; progressives turn it upside down to show contempt.

Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in the number of Americans proudly displaying the Stars and Stripes on their cars, homes, businesses, T-shirts, caps, lapel pins and even tattoos. This outpouring of flag-waving signifies a variety of sentiments--from identification with the victims of the September 11 attacks to support for the military's invasion of Afghanistan. But in our popular culture, displays of the American flag are--along with the very idea of "patriotism"--typically viewed as expressions of "conservative" politics. The patriotic fervor since September 11 has revitalized that belief and, as in other times, has given conservative politicos and pundits a handy means to undermine dissent and progressive initiatives.

A case in point: In Santa Barbara, California, progressive County Supervisor Gail Marshall is facing the possibility of a recall election fueled by right-wing forces opposed to her support for environmental regulation, affordable housing and labor unions. Because Marshall occupies the key swing seat on the five-member county board, Santa Barbara's conservative activists--funded by oil interests, agribusiness and land developers--have been trying to unseat her for years. They launched a recall campaign after Marshall refused to rubber-stamp a proposal to require the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings of one of her community advisory boards. Marshall said she wanted the board to discuss the idea, but her opponents--who made sure that TV camera crews were present at the meeting where the issue first surfaced--have turned her civil libertarian instincts into proof that she's hostile to public expressions of patriotism.

In TV ads and newsletters, Marshall's opponents--who are gathering signatures for a recall petition that, if successful, will go before the voters this fall--claim that her alleged reluctance to have the pledge recited was clear confirmation of their suspicion that she is a "socialist."

Ironically, the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by a leading Christian socialist, Francis Bellamy, who was fired from his Boston ministry for his sermons depicting Jesus as a socialist. Bellamy penned the Pledge of Allegiance for Youth's Companion, a magazine for young people published in Boston with a circulation of about 500,000.

A few years earlier, the magazine had sponsored a largely successful campaign to sell American flags to public schools. In 1891 the magazine hired Bellamy--whose first cousin Edward Bellamy was the famous socialist author of the utopian novel Looking Backward--to organize a public relations campaign to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America by promoting use of the flag in public schools. Bellamy gained the support of the National Education Association, along with President Benjamin Harrison and Congress, for a national ritual observance in the schools, and he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance as part of the program's flag salute ceremony.

Bellamy thought such an event would be a powerful expression on behalf of free public education. Moreover, he wanted all the schoolchildren of America to recite the pledge at the same moment. He hoped the pledge would promote a moral vision to counter the individualism embodied in capitalism and expressed in the climate of the Gilded Age, with its robber barons and exploitation of workers. Bellamy intended the line "One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all" to express a more collective and egalitarian vision of America.

Bellamy's view that unbridled capitalism, materialism and individualism betrayed America's promise was widely shared in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many American radicals and progressive reformers proudly asserted their patriotism. To them, America stood for basic democratic values--economic and social equality, mass participation in politics, free speech and civil liberties, elimination of the second-class citizenship of women and racial minorities, a welcome mat for the world's oppressed people. The reality of corporate power, right-wing xenophobia and social injustice only fueled progressives' allegiance to these principles and the struggle to achieve them.

Most Americans are unaware that much of our patriotic culture--including many of the leading icons and symbols of American identity--was created by artists and writers of decidedly left-wing and even socialist sympathies. A look at the songs sung at post-9/11 patriotic tribute events and that appear on the various patriotic compilation albums, or the clips incorporated into film shorts celebrating the "American spirit," reveals that the preponderance of these originated in the forgotten tradition of left-wing patriotism.

Begin with the lines inscribed on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Emma Lazarus was a poet of considerable reputation in her day, a well-known figure in literary circles. She was a strong supporter of Henry George and his "socialistic" single-tax program, and a friend of William Morris, a leading British socialist. Her welcome to the "wretched refuse" of the earth, written in 1883, was an effort to project an inclusive and egalitarian definition of the American dream.

The words to "America the Beautiful" were written in 1893 by Katharine Lee Bates, a professor of English at Wellesley College. Bates was an accomplished and published poet, whose book America the Beautiful and Other Poems includes a sequence of poems expressing outrage at US imperialism in the Philippines. Indeed, Bates identified with the anti-imperialist movement of her day and was part of progressive reform circles in the Boston area concerned about labor rights, urban slums and women's suffrage. She was also an ardent feminist, and for decades lived with and loved her Wellesley colleague Katharine Coman, an economist and social activist. "America the Beautiful" not only speaks to the beauty of the American continent but also reflects her view that US imperialism undermines the nation's core values of freedom and liberty. The poem's final words--"and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea"--are an appeal for social justice rather than the pursuit of wealth.

Many Americans consider Woody Guthrie's song "This Land Is Your Land," penned in 1940, to be our unofficial national anthem. Guthrie was a radical with strong ties to the Communist Party. He was inspired to write the song as an answer to Irving Berlin's popular "God Bless America," which he thought failed to recognize that it was the "people" to whom America belonged. The words to "This Land Is Your Land" reflect Guthrie's fusion of patriotism, support for the underdog and class struggle. In this song Guthrie celebrates America's natural beauty and bounty but criticizes the country for its failure to share its riches, reflected in the song's last and least-known verse:


One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office I saw my people.
As they stood hungry I stood there wondering
If this land was made for you and me.

Guthrie was not alone in combining patriotism and radicalism during the Depression and World War II. In this period, many American composers, novelists, artists and playwrights engaged in similar projects. In the early 1930s, for example, a group of young composers and musicians--including Marc Blitzstein (author of the musical "The Cradle Will Rock"), Charles Seeger (a well-known composer and musicologist, and father of folk singer Pete Seeger) and Aaron Copland--formed the "composers' collective" to write music that would serve the cause of the working class. They turned to American roots and folk music for inspiration. Many of their compositions--including Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "Lincoln Portrait"--are now patriotic musical standards, regularly performed at major civic events.

Earl Robinson was a member of the composers' collective who pioneered the effort to combine patriotism and progressivism. In 1939 he teamed with lyricist John La Touche to write "Ballad for Americans," which was performed on the CBS radio network by Paul Robeson, accompanied by chorus and orchestra. This eleven-minute cantata provided a musical review of American history, depicted as a struggle between the "nobodies who are everybody" and an elite that fails to understand the real, democratic essence of America.

Robeson, at the time one of the best-known performers on the world stage, became, through this work, a voice of America. Broadcasts and recordings of "Ballad for Americans" (by Bing Crosby as well as Robeson) were immensely popular. In the summer of 1940, it was performed at the national conventions of both the Republican and Communist parties. The work soon became a staple in school choral performances, but it was literally ripped out of many public school songbooks after Robinson and Robeson were identified with the radical left and blacklisted during the McCarthy period. Since then, however, "Ballad for Americans" has been periodically revived, notably during the bicentennial celebration in 1976, when a number of pop and country singers performed it in concerts and on TV.

During World War II, with lyricist Lewis Allen, Robinson co-wrote another patriotic hit, "The House I Live In." Its lyrics asked, and then answered, the question posed in the first line of the song, "What is America to me?" The song evokes America as a place where all races can live freely, where one can speak one's mind, where the cities as well as the natural landscapes are beautiful. The song was made a hit by Frank Sinatra in 1945. Sinatra also starred in an Oscar-winning movie short--written by Albert Maltz, later one of the Hollywood Ten--in which he sang "The House I Live In" to challenge bigotry, represented in the movie by a gang of kids who rough up a Jewish boy.

"The House I Live In," like "Ballad for Americans," was exceedingly popular for several years but became controversial during the McCarthy period and has largely disappeared from public consciousness. Its co-author, Lewis Allen, was actually Abel Meeropol, a high school teacher who also penned "Strange Fruit," the anti-lynching song made famous by Billie Holiday. In the 1950s Meeropol and his wife adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after their parents were executed as atom spies. Despite this, Sinatra kept the song in his repertoire. Perhaps the most astonishing performance of "The House I Live In" was at the nationally televised commemoration of the centenary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, when Sinatra sang it as the finale to the program, with President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, sitting directly in front of him.

Only a handful of Americans could have grasped the political irony of that moment: Sinatra performing a patriotic anthem written by blacklisted writers to a President who, as head of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1950s, helped create Hollywood's purge of radicals. Sinatra's own left-wing (and nearly blacklisted) past, and the history of the song itself, have been obliterated from public memory.

Even during the 1960s, American progressives continued to seek ways to fuse their love of country with their opposition to the national government's policies. The March on Washington in 1963 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. famously quoted the words to "My Country 'Tis of Thee." Phil Ochs, then part of a new generation of politically conscious singer-songwriters who emerged during the 1960s, wrote an anthem in the Guthrie vein, "Power and Glory," which coupled love of country with a strong plea for justice and equality. Interestingly, this song later became part of the repertoire of the US Army band. And in 1968, in a famous antiwar speech on the steps of the Capitol, Norman Thomas, the aging leader of the Socialist Party, proclaimed, "I come to cleanse the American flag, not burn it."

In recent decades, Bruce Springsteen has most closely followed in the Guthrie tradition. From "Born in the USA," to his songs about Tom Joad (the militant protagonist in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath), to his recent anthem for the victims of the September 11 tragedy ("My City of Ruins"), whom he urges to "come on rise up!" Springsteen has championed the downtrodden while challenging America to live up to its ideals. Indeed, by performing both "Born in the USA" and "Land of Hope and Dreams" at benefits for the families of World Trade Center casualties, Springsteen has coupled his anger at injustice with his belief in the nation's promise.

In each major period of twentieth-century history--the Progressive era, the Depression, World War II and the postwar era--American radicals and progressives expressed a patriotism rooted in democratic values and consciously aimed at challenging jingoism and "my country, right or wrong" thinking. Every day, millions of Americans pledge allegiance to the flag, sing "America the Beautiful" and "This Land Is Your Land," and memorize the words on the Statue of Liberty without knowing the names of their authors, their political inspiration or the historical context in which they were written.

The progressive authors of much of America's patriotic iconography rejected blind nationalism, militaristic drumbeating and sheeplike conformism. So it would be a dire mistake to allow, by default, jingoism to become synonymous with patriotism and the American spirit. Throughout our nation's history, radicals and reformers have viewed their movements as profoundly patriotic. They have believed that America's core claims--fairness, equality, freedom, justice--were their own. In the midst of current patriotic exuberance both authentic and manipulated, then, it is useful to recall the forgotten cultural legacy of the left. We need to ask, once again, "What is America to us?"

Rabbi Lerner responding to Cindy Sheehan's Resignation from a Leadership Role in Anti-War Work

A note from Rabbi Michael Lerner:

I've contacted Cindy Sheehan to ask her to reconsider her decision, but I certainly understand much of what she is talking about in the note below describing her decision to leave activism.

When I invited Cindy Sheehan to speak at my synagogue, I was deluged by people telling me that she was an anti-Semite. When I invited her to speak at our Network of Spiritual Progressives conference in D.C., again I was deluged by communications from people telling me that her motives were impure, that she was just wanting to get publicity, that she was an opportunist, and that I was hurting our own credibility by having her speak.

I didn't give credence to any of that because the same and worse has been said about me, so I always suspect that anyone receiving that amount of personal negativity is either really bad, or, as I found out in personal contact with Sheehan, someone who has so much goodness and decency and idealism pouring out of her, mixed with righteous indignation, that s/he elicits fear, anger, competitiveness and a desire to eliminate her from public life even by people who agree with her.

Peter Gabel and I have analyzed in Tikkun the way that a hopeful movement or leader often unleashes a complex of feelings, partly of hope, but partly of fear. People remember, either consciously or unconsciously, moments earlier in their lives in which they opened themselves to love, kindness, generosity or hope, and then were deeply disappointed when it was not reciprocated in kind, or when they actually felt humiliated for making themselves vulnerable.

Fear that that humiliation or deep disappointment may happen again leads many to defend themselves against such an outcome by doing everything they can to negate the feelings of hope that are being elicited by a hopeful movement or a leader who is hopeful. Sometimes this will manifest in "acting-out" at a meeting,insisting that "the plan" (whatever it is) cannot possibly work, or that there is no evidence that it will, or that everyone who is involved in the project at hand is really missing the point, or that there is the wrong leadership (the people providing it are deficient in their sensitivity to racism, sexism, homophobia, egotism, process, psychological sensitivity, people who are physically challenged and otherly-abled, or some other similar fault in them). Or they will attack the leadership personally ("she is just out for power") or they will attack the underlying ideology even though they knew what it was before joining this particular group. Or they will complain that a fabulous and brilliant teacher or speaker is speaking too long, or that the email are too long to read--even though they often read books with less substance that are longer or listen to dumb television programs or movies for much longer. People are endlessly inventive in ways to protect themselves from feeling the humiliation that they fear might come back if they were to allow themselves to hope or to believe and work for a world of love, and then act lovingly toward fellow members of their movement or the leadership of the movement.

People tell me that they believe most of my generation "sold out" after the 60s because they wanted the material advantages of the society. But in my experience the most talented, caring, sensitive and creative people I met in movement activities, particularly those who were willing to take the extra personal risks involved in becoming leadership and spokespeople for peace and justice, left the Left not because of a desire for material success, but because they felt abused by others on the Left and in the liberal world who, while agreeing with their ideas, nevertheless found ways to be inhumane, insensititve, and put-downish to others in their movement.

Rumors were spread that claimed that the most idealistic of these people were "really" just out for power, fame or ego-gratification of some sort, and that undercut the effectiveness of these leaders because others responded to them not by listening to their ideas, but by treating them as suspect because of "what they had heard."

Few of those who spread these negative stories really bothered to get to know the people about whom they gossiped, and few ever bothered to acknowledge how destructive this behavior was. But for those who were the objects of this kind of abuse, the feeling of being undercut by people who should have been allies caused personal pain and eventual despair that anything really could ever change. A few of us hung in and remain involved, in my case at least sustained by a personal spiritual practice, but for each 60s activist still involved, there are thousands who are not, who could not stand this way of being treated, and who, when they stick their nose into the dynamics of the present movements of the first decade of the 21st century, quickly discover the same kind of dynamics operating in the Left and in the liberal world.

I've written about this in my book Surplus Powerlessness and in The Left Hand of God, so I'll only say that here in the case of Cindy Sheehan, once again, this movement has pushed away a very decent and ethically-motivated fighter for peace and justice. I only wish I could promise her that she would not experience again the pain that I and others personally experience every day in being involved in social change movements that do not show adequate caring for their activists and leaders.

I'm happy to report that this is not the dynamic in the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and that I'll do everything I can to make sure that it never becomes the dominant reality here. Our spiritual framework, our willingness to talk openly about love, and about the need for compassion for all the ways that each of us fails to be an embodiment of our highest values (including, of course, me and other leaders of our movement) helps a lot. Our message pulls for a more gentle way to be with each other.

But, that's no guarantee: I've watched people verbally beat each other up over who is not compassionate enough? i.e. When people have an unconscious fear and need to protect themselves from opening up to a world of love, they can turn the very idea of love or compassion into a weapon to hurt each other. Nothing protects us but our constant awareness and rededication to embody our values as much as we possibly can, and to be gentle with ourselves and others when we fail in this.

There is another element in Cindy's story that isn't really under our control. The Democratic Party has within it some very idealistic people. But it also has many "realists" who have decided that the only way they can accomplish their idealistic goals is to work within the parameters of "realism" set by the eltes of wealth and power who control funding for campaigns and own the media. Such people, often because they want to accomplish something very good and decent like ending the war, feel that they must distance themselves from the most idealistic people who have put their bodies, reputations, future chances for employment or money on the line and taken to the streets to challenge the system. Those who do so are often quoted by the media only when it sounds as if they are saying something unreasonable or extreme. and then the "realists" working inside the Democratic Party or the Congress or the liberal media feel that their own chances of influencing events will be weakened if they are identified with the more seemingly "extreme" statements of those who have been most courageous in challenging irrational and destructive policies.

So the "realists" try to distance themselves from the idealistic activists, often by putting down the very people who were the first to respond to the ethical crises--the shall we call them "prematurely ethical people." So, the "realists" make it harder for the ethically sensitive activists who first recognized the ethical crisis (and were willing to take personal risks to talk about it) to function politically or be taken seriously by anyone who hasn't personally encountered them.

Democrats who actually do agree with ethically motivated activists end up distancing or even attacking us, or making off-handed remarks to the media whose import is "stay away from her or him--they are too irresponsible or extreme or flakey."

The irony is that the people whom the realists dismiss this way are often the very people whose writings and formulations were what broke through the ethical deadness of the "realists" and made them aware of the need to change policies.

But instead of honoring those who are first out there, the realists instead resent these "prematurely ethical" people and diss them whenever possible, insisting that it is only they, the realists, who can make any real changes in the society. Imagine how disappointing it was to millions of activists when MoveOn began to talk the language of the realists and defend the Democrats for trying to work out compromises with Bush and then eventually capitulating to fund the war. We know how disappointed we were when we couldn't get Move On to send out our message about the Global Marshall Plan and our alternative strategy to end the war. "Spiritual" ideas are also "unrealistic" to the realists, and so they ignore or put us down. And yet, the very ideas that we advance today will be those that in a few years these same people will be telling you that "they always agreed and supported these same goals." Meanwhile, people like Cindy Sheehan get batted around till its hard to remain in that kind of vulnerable public position.

Blessings to all who continue to struggle, each in their own ways, as Cindy Sheehan certainly will, for peace, justice, generosity and love to prevail on our planet.

Rabbi Michael Lerner
RabbiLerner@tikkun.org

Read Cindy's diary here

Congressional Food Stamp Challenge

http://foodstampchallenge.typepad.com/

U.S. Members of Congress to Live on a Food Stamp Budget from May 15-21 Staff and Advocate Groups to Join Challenge

Take the Food Stamp Challenge ~ Live on a Food Stamp Budget for One Week

U.S. Representatives James McGovern (D-MA), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Tim Ryan (D-OH) have pledged to live on an average food stamp budget -- just $3 a day -- from May 15-21, 2007 and have invited other Members of Congress to join them in the Food Stamp Challenge. The spouses of Reps. McGovern and Emerson will also be taking the challenge. A number of advocate groups and Congressional staff are also expected to take part.

Members of Congress are living on a food stamp budget for one week in order to raise visibility and understanding around the challenges that millions of low-income American's face in obtaining a healthy diet under current food stamp benefit levels.

The Farm Bill, which includes the Food Stamp Program, is due to be reauthorized in Congress this year.

Throughout the week, Reps. McGovern, Emerson, Schakowsky, and Ryan as well as others taking part in the challenge, will post their experiences on the Congressional Food Stamp Challenge blog.

Read the Dear Colleague sent by Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)

Read the Food Stamp Challenge Registration and Guidelines

To learn more about the Food Stamp Program, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service site.