Suffering by Choice?

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church -- Unitarian Universalist

June 25, 2006

Alexandra McGee

During the time that I was a Worship Associate here at TJMC, I got back in touch with my childhood dream of going to seminary. Leslie and David, our ministers, who are at the Unitarian Universality General Assembly this week, have been great mentors for me. My first year of seminary in Berkeley has widened my world more than I thought possible. Starr King School for the Ministry is deeply committed to social justice. I have been humbled to realize how much I have to learn.

One example comes from making friends with the Spanish-speaking workers in the dining hall from Mexico and Guatemala. I heard about plans for “A Day without an Immigrant.” This was before the march was widely publicized and discussed and before the campus had gotten involved. I thought to myself that I would like Marco, Lara, Jesus and Theodoro to be able to participate. I wanted to be an ally. I thought that maybe I could help out by arranging for a team of students to cover the cooking and dishwashing shifts that day.

When I asked them, they were reluctant. They weren’t clear on what group was organizing the event. Some of them felt more strongly than others about immigrant rights. Some were nervous about what the dining hall supervisor would do. They told me they would think about my idea, but I didn’t feel like they were very enthusiastic.

After I walked away from talking with them, I realize how little I know and how much is at stake for them. I have never crossed a border, never kept a job I hated, never left my family to earn money. All my kindness and cross-cultural understanding can not allow me to see the intricacies of their reality. If they were arrested or lost their jobs, what would happen to their families?

Because of our individual human will, we have choices. Today I want to talk about how we use this power to choose. We know that we want to help the people around us that are in need. We know that if we don’t stand up for the rights of others, there may be no one left to stand up for our rights. We know that our religious values tell us to look out for folks on the margins.

Sometimes we have the privilege to choose to help a person or group who is suffering. Sometimes we are the one suffering. More often, our lives are multi-layered prisms in which we simultaneously experience suffering and helping others in their suffering.

Being an ally and offering help is neither simple nor one-sided. What I’m talking about when I say “ally” is a situation where an injustice is occurring and someone who is not obviously affected decides to stand up against it, to advocate for justice, or help relieve the injustice. But how much are these allies willing to risk? And why? And when? There are pitfalls and complications when we try to stand up for justice.

One pitfall happens if one is willing to risk only a little for one’s neighbor, one may lose the trust of that neighbor. For example, I was willing to help the dining hall workers by filling in for them at work, but would I have been willing to risk arrest? A much more grave example happened in 1968 when Martin Luther King attended a march for the rights of sanitation workers in Memphis. During the march, violence broke out. In an attempt to protect him, the people around Dr. King pushed him into a car and drove him to safety. When others heard that he had left the march, some people lost trust. So, when we choose how much to risk and how much to stay safe, we are making a complex choice.

Another pitfall in being an ally is when one loses sight of the forest by focusing on oneself as a tree. In this case, one may get more absorbed with oneself than with the people and issue at hand, and then actually end up isolated. Maybe you have a great idea for a fundraising project and know exactly how to implement it through sponsors and advertising. But what if you get attached to your idea so that can’t see when it might not be effective?

Another pitfall in being an ally is when our helpfulness becomes a type of “group think.” The pep rally feeling gets more important than the issues. I know that there are times I have piled on a bus for a march in Washington without quite knowing who the stakeholders are. This can make the problem worse by making the people who are suffering feel misled. This is not simple. Consider the careful strategy needed by rock stars who organize concerts to raise awareness about an illness or a war-torn country. They may be helping, but maybe do the beneficiaries end up feeling like objects? Do the people who attend the concert think that simply attending is enough, and therefore miss the opportunity to examine the issues more deeply? The rock star is risking loss of income and perhaps risking loss of popularity. Every time we choose to stand up, we have to choose how much to risk.

The final pitfall, that I’ll point out, in happens when we use our religion to miss the point about really helping. If our religion dictates us to help, we may do it out of blind policy, instead of the wisdom unique to that situation. We help in order to feel good instead of really giving what is needed. In these cases, we make our religion look bad. For example, a church may say it doesn’t tolerate racism, but this can be a form of denial. A church may be better off acknowledging that it is part of the racist fabric of this society and to self-scrutinize with constant humility.

Now I want to be careful not to say that there are right reasons or wrong reasons to work for a cause. I don’t want to discourage working for a cause just because of pitfalls, but I’ve been trying to shed light on the complexities. Certainly, working for a cause gets things done. Furthermore, in the course of the work, one may increase ones’ understanding. For example, when I was 14 years old and had just moved to a new city, I was invited to go on a social service trip to Tijuana, Mexico with the church youth group. My mother encouraged me to go so that I could make new friends. It is true that I made good friends that lasted me through high school, but moreover, I got a perspective on poverty and wealth that changed my life.

I also want to acknowledge that each of us has different things to risk and different things to learn. So, the way that you can be an ally is different than the way I can be an ally. The pitfalls that trap one person may not be there for another.

In the movie about the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, there is a scene I can not forget. Gandhi has been imprisoned yet again, and much attention is coming to him from the common people and from international media. In front of the jail are hundreds of people who are inspired by his leadership and want his release. None of them are allowed in to see him. The only person allowed in is a white priest, who is a close friend and ally. Gandhi quietly and compassionately tells him that at that point in the struggle, the Indian people needed to see Indian leaders, not a white priest, in leadership. This was a strategic move on Gandhi’s part, chosen for that moment.

He tells his friend to go away and work for another cause. In the movie, I remember the look on the priest’s face. He is hurt and sad, but then his face changes as he rises to the occasion. If he had let ego or theory get in the way, he might have created more problems. Instead, he found the humility, despite his pain of separation, to step aside when his skin color didn’t help the cause.

Suffering and solidarity are not the same.

Suffering is not chosen. Solidarity is chosen.

Suffering is a life circumstance you have to figure out how to deal with.

Solidarity is when you risk something in the hopes that it can help alleviate someone else’s suffering.

Suffering is what rural Indian people experienced when they had so little food because the wealth of their country was being shipped to their British colonizers.

Solidarity is when Gandhi, a middle class Indian, fasted to draw attention to the problem.

Suffering is what an immigrant father feels when he is homesick for his family and village back home but his wife want to stay here for the kids schooling in the U.S.

Solidarity is when his employer rearranges the budget to pay him enough to raise his family and visit his home country.

Suffering is when Christian people feel called to ministry, but the church won’t ordain them because of their gender. Solidarity is when others risk their own ordination in order to call for all people to share their gifts of ministry.

Suffering is when a woman is in the doctor’s office yet again for cancer.

Solidarity is when her friend takes a day off from work to help her sift through the overwhelming maze of treatment options.

Suffering and solidarity are not the same. Suffering is not chosen. Solidarity is chosen.

So, when we face choices about how to stand in solidarity with people, what can help us avoid pitfalls? I have three ideas to suggest.

First, I suggest that a daily spiritual discipline can help. What I mean by daily spiritual discipline … is a regular time to get below the layers of daily worries and busy thoughts. It could be meditation, yoga, prayerful movement, Bible study, or any way …that you are raw before your Creator. A spiritual discipline helps us feel how God is present for both chosen and involuntary suffering. A spiritual discipline can help us to remember how much of life is not about us. It helps balance the time we spend thinking about our needs with the time we spend thinking about other’s needs. This kind of spiritual discipline can help us let go of what doesn’t support our life, such as addictions to alcohol, addictions to consuming things, addictions to having things the way we want when we want them. A spiritual discipline can help us be present for someone else’s suffering. By facing our own suffering in our daily spiritual practice, we develop the strength and skills to be present to others. A spiritual discipline can help us develop humility about how much we don’t know. Then we are less likely to assume we know what is a problem and more like to make space for voices that aren’t there.

In addition to the suggestion of a spiritual discipline, I suggest reinforcing community. Then we get in the habit of looking out for the good of the whole and seeing how we are truly a web of life. Since I left last July, the pastoral care program here at TJMC has been developed, and has met many needs. As this continues to grow, community will continue to grow. The PACEM program which offers overnight hospitality would not be possible if not for the strong web of people and facilities here. By focusing on others and not just ourselves, we avoid the pitfall of working on an issue or idea. We retain focus on the issues of people.

In addition to the suggestions of spiritual care and community, I offer a third suggestion of the church as a place for truth speaking about social justice. Which means that as church members, we can listen to others speak their truths. And keep listening, and keep listening, even when they are saying things that are painful to hear, make us feel defensive, or that we think are downright wrong. In the example at the beginning of the service, I think that the president of the seminary was saying what he thought was right, instead of listening to the complicated pain of the African-American and Latino students and faculty. But in the case of the immigrants rights march, he listened enough to realize that the dining hall workers needed the day off and should not be singled out as special, so he gave the day off for all staff. Sometimes trust can only be built by listening. Sometimes we may not be able to stand up for someone, but we can listen to them and they to us and they may understand why we can’t stand up. In this way we retain trust.

Church isn’t always where our truth is heard the way we want. But, I think it is worth striving to be a place where we try to make space for truth about suffering. We can use the church as a place to listen to the truths of suffering and pain that do occur; we can use the church as a place to say that the suffering and pain should not have to occur; we can use the church as a place to gather strength from each other to say that we are willing to sacrifice and suffer voluntarily from our place of privilege to help others. Then we are less likely to climb on a bandwagon blindly, and more likely to know the truths we are working for.

In conclusion, I think we do have tools that can help us navigate the complexities of being allies for social justice. Combining spirituality, community, and social justice work is very powerful.

Spirituality just for spirituality’s sake may be satisfying for a while, but can become empty dreaming. Community just for community’s sake may be satisfying for a while, but can lead to narcissistic group quarreling. Social justice work on its own may be satisfying for a while, but can be exhausting and burn you out. But when spirituality, community, and social justice work are combined, the church family can support individuals during their real suffering and can stand in solidarity.

Even when the darkness looms large, the spirit gives light for people together to choose the way.