A Prayer for a Muslim Gandhi or Mandela

As I have read about the growing conflict in Iraq between ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and the Iraqi government, I find myself wondering if there is someone or some group within the Islamic world that can help these two Muslim factions avoid massive casualties and untold suffering on either side. ISIS is primarily led by Sunni Muslims, whereas the president Nouri al-Maliki and the ruling faction in Iraq are primarily made up of Shia Muslims. Meanwhile various governments in the Mideast have lined up on one side or the other: Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS are Sunni while the government of Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah (Lebanon) are Shia. While I don’t fully understand the difference between the two groups or the reason for the conflict, there has obviously been a long standing animosity between extreme elements in both groups which has led to the current conflict. As much as we in the West worry about Islamic extremism, the ones who have suffered and died the most are Muslims themselves.

While there are political conservatives like John McCain and Dick Cheney calling for Pres. Obama to insert U.S. troops into the conflict, others like myself have wondered, couldn’t we serve in some mediating role. However, when one looks at the whole situation, it is clear that the United States and most of Europe have lost credibility and therefore the ability and to serve any constructive role in the region. Recently, John Stewart beautifully and succinctly outlined the West’s problem in the region in a segment he called “Middle Eastern Politics: a Love Story.” While some U.S. officials have warmed to the idea of Iran coming to the aid of the Iraqi government, our dependence on oil form Saudi Arabia keeps us from getting too close to Iranians. Meanwhile we are also dependent on Iraqi oil, so how do we respond without alienating our allies/potential allies or are oil-rich business partners?(As an aside this does help make the case for alternative energy sources and lessening our dependence on oil).

Recently in church I found myself praying that someone with credibility with or within the Muslim world might arise and address the problem of this divide. The NY Times reported that a Shiite cleric has called for his fellow Shiites to join the military battle against the Sunni based ISIS. That wasn’t the kind of action I was hoping for. From what I can see from here there is no clear good side or bad side; both have suffered oppression, alienation, violence and endless suffering. To turn on each other as they often do, only heightens all of those things.

Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, returned to India in 1914 to find his country suffering under British rule while also deeply divided between Hindus and Muslims. Through the force of his vision and message, he was able to lead these disparate factions in an effort that eventually led to Indian independence. Even so, he was killed by a Hindu extremists, and the former British colony eventually divided into three countries (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) divided in part by religious belief. However, in his time Gandhi was able to help them see beyond their differences to a common cause.

Likewise, while still in prison Nelson Mandela began brokering a deal with the apartheid government that not only led to his release, but also enabled him to call for the Truth and Reconciliation commission, whose role was to invite perpetrators of violence and atrocities to acknowledge their actions in exchange for pardon. The TRC and Mandela went a long way from preventing South African from spiraling into racial violence. While there are still great disparity between whites and blacks in South Africa, Mandela did leave a framework for bringing justice peacefully.

From my interaction with Muslims in this country I have found them to be peace-loving people who long for the same kinds of things, that I as a Christian long for my community and world. We all want equity, freedom from oppression and the liberty to pursue of life of meaning and purpose. I refuse to be deceived by the media stereotype of Muslims as extremists. I will no more judge the Islamic faith by those who use it as a lever for power, than I would want my Christian faith to be evaluated on the basis of rabid, gun-toting Christian white supremacists.  At the heart of the Christian faith is a commitment to justice, reconciliation and peace, and I have found the same sentiments among my Muslim brothers and sisters. While our belief systems differ, our concern for human need  and the just ends we seek does not.

The continuing conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Yemen, Iran and elsewhere are deeply troubling and frankly quite scary. Violent conflict never has and never will bring a modicum of peace to the region. So I find myself praying for a Muslim Gandhi, or a Mandela or some group with the will and credibility within the Islamic world, to arise to help bring sanity to an insane conflict and deeply divided part of the world.

Seeking Deeper Power

Just over five years ago on a very cold January afternoon I was arrested along with six others for blocking the entrance to Colisimo's gun shop on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia. We were there to call attention to the store’s complicity in the straw purchasing process that leads to illegal guns getting into communities that are overwhelmingly used in street crimes. In the trial that ensued one of the things that I was always uneasy about is that in our defense, our lawyer stressed that we were praying in front of the store as part of our protest. While I understand that public prayer has been an effective from of political protest going back at least to the Civil Rights Movement, that it makes for good political theater, and that was an effective legal defense strategy, in my case it just was not true. Frankly I was too #%&@ cold to pray!

There were some deeply spiritual people among the twelve people who were arrested over the two days of civil disobedience protest: a young woman who later that year walked the El Camino in northern Spain; a Jewish Rabbi who is  a spiritual guide to many young Jews; a Quaker activist who on the street and in the jail regularly called us to pray. But not me. Now I did have a sense going in that I was living out the apostle Paul’s call to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice”(Roman 12.1). However, while I probably should have been praying, I wasn’t. In that moment of protest I was not calling on a deeper source of power to transform Mr. Colisimo’s heart; I was just trying to stay warm while sitting in front of his store. Moreover,  when I was arrested and spent a day and night in jail I did not call on and sense God’s presence in the jail cell; I wish I had because when I was left alone by myself in the cell I felt  totally cut off from people and God , so much so that I  nearly went crazy. Instead of meeting God that day, I experienced trauma and a spiritual emptiness that took months for me to process. (To see my reflections on the experience go to this link). So when my lawyer said I was praying in front of the store, I wish it were true, but I was not.

Five years later in a different way I find myself facing a similar challenge and question. I find myself in a spiritual state of unease while being involved in the faith-based network POWER (Philadelphians Organized for Witness, Empowerment and Rebuilding). Through POWER I am engaged  with many others in a campaign to convince the governor and legislature of Pennsylvania to develop a full and fair funding formula for resourcing the state’s public schools, particularly the Philadelphia School system. In our meetings we talk about developing and exercising power, by which we mean getting people out to vote and to rallies in sufficient numbers to convince politicians that we are force to be reckoned with. Most, if not all, of the people involved would consider themselves “people of faith” by which they mean that their values and worldviews are shaped by their faith tradition be it Jewish, Christian or Muslim. Our gatherings often begin with prayer and a faith reflection, and yet somehow I feel like we are missing something extremely important, a deeper power, the power of the Spirit that shapes and informs our various faith traditions.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and the co-founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation writes about the Perennial Tradition, a belief coming out of the Roman Catholic tradition that affirms that there is “a Divine Reality underneath and inherent in the world” that connects all the world’s faith traditions and from which each of  those traditions emerge. He compares this Divine Reality to an underground stream from which all faith traditions draw their strength and inspiration. Through the years there have been numerous efforts by Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist teachers to articulate and describe this deeper source of power that links all faith traditions, while at the same time honoring the uniqueness of each. Now for some this idea of a deeper power linking all spiritual traditions wades into troubling theological waters. For instance, in my Christian tradition we emphasize that Jesus is “the Way, the Truth and Life and no one comes to [God] except through [him]” (John 14.6).  I have come to see this statement as just another one of the paradoxes of my faith, such as the first shall be last, that in dying we find new life, that in suffering there is victory, and that blessing comes through suffering. In the same way Jesus is the Way while at the same time he points me to a deeper power linking to people of various faith traditions much different than my own.

How else do we account for some of the great leaders and spiritual teachers who come from different traditions. How do I as a Christian account for the power of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hahn, Aung San Suu Kyi, Malcom X, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Elie Wiesel? Yes I am inspired by Christian leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., John Woolman and Thomas Merton, but I can not dismiss the power of these other voices from outside my tradition as well.

I am not what one would call a spiritual person. Yes, I worship and pray, but I don’t go through life with an ever-present awareness of God in my life. I have never heard God’s voice, or had a profound mystical experience. Even so I work at it, regularly reading the Bible and other spiritual readings. I even try to meditate. The great teachers say to do it right you should meditate at least for 20 minutes two times a day. I can barely manage 10 minutes once a day, if that; I feel better for it, but I am not expecting any great breakthroughs anytime soon.

On the other hand, some of my most profound spiritual experiences have occurred in very non-religious, non-spiritual settings, such as when I attended the 2010 U. S. Social Forum where 15,000 social activists (most of whom were decidedly secular) met to share ideas and strategize on ways to bring about social change or when I gathered with about 50 others for a vigil in Philadelphia’s Love Park to call attention to gun violence in our community, or when I am walking the streets of West Philadelphia watching and sensing the dynamic of the neighborhood. Somehow when I am out there in the community working for the change that is needed in concert with many others, that’s when I feel most aware of God’s presence.

I try to practice what I and others have called an engaged spirituality, an approach that seeks to meet Christ in the midst of the people in action. It is through engaged spirituality that I wish that groups like POWER and Heeding God’s Call (a faith based group working on gun violence prevention) would realize that our strength and power comes not just from being able to exercise our political muscle but also comes from that deeper source from which all our spiritual traditions issue. Gandhi and King talked about soul-force, which I take to mean a source of power that is more than simply the collective numbers of faith-oriented persons working on a particular issue. Heschel said that prayer by its very nature is subversive  and that it works to overthrow the powers of oppression and falsehood. How do we tap into the power that can topple the power structures of our day? That’s the question I grapple with.

As I sometimes have shared in this blog space, I have grown skeptical of the political process in our day largely because the politicians are beholden to the wealthy 1%, lobbyists and corporations who line their pockets in exchange for deference and favors. For example, when 80% of Americans polled after the Sandy Hook massacre think there ought to be stricter gun laws and the Congress can’t even pass a weak background check bill, it is pretty obvious the politicians are not listening to the people; they are following the money. So I am skeptical of using the tactics of people power, unless those people come with pockets full of cash. To defeat the powers that be we must draw not just on our political power, but also on that deeper power that unites us as people of faith. We need to find ways to pray corporately even as we act to bring down the rulers of our day, both political and financial, so that justice can roll down like waters, and righteousness like an overflowing stream of the Spirit (Amos 5.24.)

Tigger With A Cause

For the past several months the media has been highlighting “The Last Lecture, ” an actual lecture delivered by Dr. Randy Pausch on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Pausch was a computer science professor at CMU who was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. At the time he delivered the lecture he was only expected to live for another 2-3 months, which is normal for pancreatic cancer. However, he beat the odds, and just recently passed away on July 25, 2008.

If you have 75 minutes to spare, “The Last Lecture” is worth listening to. Dr. Pausch shares a number stories about how he had been able to fulfill his personal dreams, how as a professor he encouraged the dreams of others, and then the life lessons he learned along the way. What makes the lecture so compelling is the context of his impending death and the sincere gratitude he has for the people in his life: mentors, colleagues, students, friends and family. The lessons and insights themselves are not particularly profound; what makes them so compelling is that the man sharing them lived them and did not just speak them. So now there are Last Lecture CD’s, podcasts, and books, and as American consumer culture is prone to do, we have made "The Last Lecture" into a commodity to be purchased on the self-help shelf at you local bookstore. Even so, cynicism aside, "The Last Lecture" is worth your time.

I finally took the time a few nights ago to view/listen to "The Last Lecture", and was particularly struck by one of his life lessons. He said all of us can choose in life to either be a Tigger or an Eeyore. For those not familiar with the Winnie the Pooh stories, Tigger is a bouncy, fun-loving tiger who never stops moving and finds joy in everything. Eeyore, on the other hand, is a morose, self-pitying donkey for whom life is a constant struggle and disappointment. Pausch’s point was this: we have a choice as to how we will engage the world, either as an exciting fun-filled adventurer or as a self-pitying pessimist. Randy Pausch chose to be a Tigger, and demonstrated that by causing an auditorium of people to laugh to the point of tears while talking about his impending death.

Depression is a terrible disability, and I realize that often there are chemical imbalances involved, but nonetheless I think Pausch has an excellent point. While not all of us have the “luxury” of knowing when and how our lives will end, all of us have the choice as to how we will live until our lives do end. When I was a pastor ministering to dying people, I came to realize that the so-called “deathbed conversion” was a false myth. People died in the same way they lived. If they were cynical or morose or self-centered in life, they were the same way in death; likewise if they were compassionate, positive and other-centered in life, they died that way too.

While I can have my “pity party” moments, I choose to embrace life with a Tigger mentality. However, Tigger is probably not the image I would have chosen because the issues confronting us today are too severe to just “bounce” through life. Nearly every day I interact with people who face issues of poverty, illness, family breakdown, racism and the like. On a national and global scale we are at dangerous place in history in large part due to the misplaced policies of our own government. So the Tigger image alone does not do it for me; Tigger often did not really interact with people and the world in a meaningful way. Yet, I like Tigger’s attitude, his spunk, his endless energy and his desire to see an adventure in every event.

Recently, I came across a line written by Reinhold Niebuhr in The Irony of American History:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope.”

I couple that with the saying attributed to Gandhi:

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

These words capture what drives me these days. They capture who at my best I hope to be. I want to work for positive changes in the world that will outlive me. So I couple Niebuhr's and Gandhi's words with Pausch’s image of Tigger, and say I want to be a Tigger with a cause. I want to be engaged in lifting up the lives of others as I am compelled and inspired by hope.

I don’t think Randy Pausch was a particularly religious man; he makes no mention of faith in his last lecture. Nonetheless, there is clear spiritual import in what he says: we have a choice as to how we will live life. Moses (Deuteronomy 30.15, 19b) put it this way: “I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction … Now choose life so that you and your children may live.” Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” (which he reveals at the end is really a message for his three young children) is a call to choose life, to be a Tigger with a Cause for as many days as we have left in this life... and beyond.