Wisdom from Rebecca Solnit's Call Them by Their True Names

"Naming is the first step in the process of liberation." (1)
"Being careful and precise about language is one way to oppose the disintegration of meaning, to encourage the beloved community and the conversations that inculcate hope and vision." (4)
"Equality keeps us honest." [I would add that that is true in schools too!] (15)
"Women [have a] tendency to gather and ally rather than fight or flee." [This is what people often misunderstand about all girls schools when they say they must be filled with "catfighting."] (44)
From John Muir: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." (48)
"The reality of facts . . . are, after all, part of a network of systematic relationships among language, physical reality, and the record." (50)
"what we do begins with what we believe we can do. It begins with being open to the possibilities and interested in the complexities." [This can also be called moral imagination] (58)
"Often, it's an example of passionate idealism that converts others . . . Sometimes, rather than meeting people where they are, you can locate yourself someplace they will eventually want to be." (76)
"A city is a book we read by wandering its streets" (136)
"Not just a tolerance of difference, but a delight in it, love for it" (147)
About Standing Rock: "the people most involved seemed to get it tat this is a really nice chapter, not the end of the story, and you can celebrate that chapter." (149)
"the importance of knowing that we don't know what will happen next and have to live on principles, hunches, and lessons from history." (150)
"Stand[] up for what you believe in, even when victory seems remote to impossible." (150)
"Consequences are often indirect." (151)
"When activism wins, it's because, at least in part, the story has become the new narrative, the story the mainstream accepts." (158)
"Breaking a story is usually a prolonged, collaborative process. It usually begins with activists, witnesses, whistleblowers, and with victims, the people affected, the people on the front lines the people to whom the story happened. The next step is often carried out by people with storytelling powers who are willing to listen." (161)
Daniel Ellsberg: "You can't be objective, but you can be fair." [This is true in teaching too] (162)
"Every bad story is a prison; breaking the story breaks someone out of prison. It's liberation work. It matters. It changes the world." [Also what teachers do!] (163)
"Actions often ripple far beyond their immediate objective, and remembering this is a reason to live by principle and act in the hope that what you do matters, even when the results are unlikely to be immediate or obvious." (173)
"Hope for me has meant a sense that the future is unpredictable . . . but know we may be able to write it ourselves." (174)
Patrice Cullors on Black Lives Matter's mission: "rooted in grief and rage but pointed toward vision and dreams." (175)
"Ideas are contagious, emotions are contagious, hope is contagious, courage is contagious. When we embody those qualities, or their opposites, we convey them to others." (180)
"Consensus leaves no one out." (183)
"The only power adequate to stop tyranny and destruction is civil society, which is the great majority of us when we remember our power and come together . . . This work is always, first and last, storytelling work, or what some of my friends call 'the battle of the story.' Building, remembering, retelling, celebrating our own stories is part of our work." (184)
"This work will only matter if it's sustained. To sustain it, people have to believe that the myriad small, incremental actions matter. That they matter even when the consequences aren't immediate or obvious. They must remember that often when you fail at your immediate objective  . . . even then, you may have changed the whole framework in ways that make broader change more possible. You may change the story or the rules, give tools, templates, or encouragement to future activists, and make it possible for those around you to persist in their efforts." (184-185)

I love retreat!

I have always loved retreat. I love the opportunity to take a breath and reflect on my journey. Another gift of retreat is that it often reminds me to offer gratitude for the natural world.

Rent

A couple weekends ago I decided to watch Rent: Live mostly on a whim. The production, which was fine but not great, reminded me of how much of an impact Rent has had in my life. I remember singing songs from Rent at (cast?) parties in middle school. We sang "Seasons of Love" in my eighth grade graduation. I'm pretty sure Rent was the first musical I saw on Broadway, on the same trip with friends (just after college?) during which I realized that Times Square was real. I loved, and own, the movie version and cried all over again when I watched it the day after Rent: Live. I've been listening to the various soundtracks on repeat for the past two weeks.

Rent is a beautiful story of people creating family. It centers people on the margins. It encourages all of us to be ourselves, no matter the consequences. And it calls us to love. I'm grateful to have it back in my life and hope to not have so long a break from its magic again.

The Power of Stories

I’m currently reading the book The Lost Art of Reading by David Ulin, which I love because it reminds me of why I love to read. He has a line in which he describes how we bring books to life by how we engage with them and how the books we read become a part of us as well. I can’t help but think of books like Just Mercy and My Promised Land and how deep an impact they have had on my understanding of the world. I’m currently on a memoir kick, and learning about what shapes people I respect has been meaningful in expanding my understanding of the beautiful and painful complexities of our world. As Gabrielle Union writes in her memoir, We’re Going to Need More Wine, “In the end, we are our stories."

Trying New Things

It's not rare for me to try new things, but I haven't done new things recently that I've been evaluated on. That changed with the series of four 90-minute online classes on “Building the Beloved Community” classes that I just finished teaching.  I was solidly outside of my comfort zone throughout these four weeks. Not only is online teaching new to me, but I found it was a real challenge to “read the room” as I would if I were doing real teaching and to figure out how to make the activities interactive enough that people stayed engaged without making it feel scattered. 
The experience reminded me of running, which is an activity that I know I don't excel at, but I put in hard work and feel proud of what I’m able to do in the end. These endeavors where I feel excited about improving and where I have to stretch to be “good enough” are great empathy building experiences!

Widsom from Walter Wink's Jesus and Nonviolence

“When a church that has not lived out a costly identification with the oppressed offers to mediate between hostile parties, it merely adds to the total impression that it wants to stay above the conflict and not take sides. The church says to the lion and the lamb, ‘Here, let me negotiate a truce,’ to which the lion replies, ‘Fine, after I finish my lunch.’” (4)

Justice, rather than peace alone, must be Christian goal. (5)

“can people who are engaged in oppressive acts repent unless they are made uncomfortable with their actions?” (25-6)

“It is important to repeat such stories in order to extend our imaginations for creative nonviolence. Since it is not a natural response, we need to be schooled in it.” (33)

“Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies’ transformation, and to respond to ill-treatment with a love that not only is godly but also, I am convince,d can only be found in God.” (46)

“Never adopt a strategy that you would not want your opponents to use against you.” (46)

Jesus’ “teaching reads like a practical manual for empowering the powerless to seize the initiative even in situations impervious to change.” (48)

Jesus’ way is “a creative struggle to restore the humanity of all parties in a dispute.” (51)”

MLK quote: “One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”  (58)

“It cannot be stressed too much: love of enemies has, for our time, become the litmus test of authentic Christian faith.” (58-9)

“When we dominos our enemies, calling them names and identifying them with absolute evil, we deny that they have that of God within them that makes transformation possible.” (59)

“I submit that the ultimate religious question today is . . . How can I find God in my enemy?”

“And no one can show others the error that is within them, as Thomas Merton wisely remarked, unless the others are convinced that their critic first sees and loves the good that is within them.” (62)

“Love of enemies is, in the broadest sense, behaving out of one’s own deepest self-interest . . . they need to be reassured continually that there will be a place for them int he new society being born.” (62-3)

James Bevel: “We cannot win by hating our oppressors. We have to love them into changing.” (65)

Jesus’ teaching “does not presuppose a threshold of decency, but something of God in everyone.” (67)

“The moment we argue that the South African defenders of apartheid are morally inferior beings, we reduce ourselves to their moral level.” (67)

“Jesus’ Third Way uses means commensurate with the new order we desire.” (69)

“it s voluntary submission to the due penalty of the law that discourages frivolous violations.” (74) “We are lawful in our illegality. It is only because we submit to the principle of law that we demand that unjust laws be made just in the first place.” (77)

Abandon “one of the greatest and oldest lies: that the world is made up of good people and bad people.” (79)

“People who engage in nonviolent protest without at least some awareness of this cesspool of violence within them can actually jeopardize the lives of their compatriots.” (80)

Jesus' Way “establishes us in freedom, not necessity. It is something we are not required to do, but enabled to do.” (82)

“We should not strike a neutral pose, says John Swomley, but side with the oppressed, even if they follow the bad example of their oppressors in resorting to violence . . . Violence is  . . . the presenting symptom of an unjust society. And peace is not the highest good; it is rather the outcome of a just social order.” (83)

Desmond Tutu: “We have no right to hope to harvest what we have not sown.” (86)

“Nonviolent training needs to become a regular and repetitive component of every change-oriented group’s life.” (88)

“It is precisely because the outcome is in question . . . that we need to choose a way of living that already is a living of the outcome we desire.” (88-89)

“Fear is remarkably responsive to the Holy Spirit. Our anxiety need not remain in our path, blocking our obedience.” (92)

Wisdom from Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved

Since this book connected so deeply with my own sense of spirituality,  thought it was worth pulling out the lines that most struck me as I read.

• "Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our belovedness?" (30)
• "Whether I am inflated or deflated, I lose touch with my truth and distort my vision of reality." (33)
• The voice of insecurity in our head says, "Prove that you are worth something; do something relevant, spectacular, or powerful, and then you will earn the love you so desire." (34)
• The work of building the Beloved Community: "My parents, friends, teachers, students, and the many strangers who crossed my path have all sounded that voice [that calls me Beloved] in different tones. I have been cared for by many people with much tenderness and gentleness. I have been taught and instructed with much patience and perseverance. I have been encouraged to keep going when I was ready to give up and was stimulated to try again when I failed." (34-35)
• "I hear at my center words that say: 'I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours.' . . . We are one" (36-37)
• "Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you the Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply." (37) This reminds me of my goal for 2019!
• "I beg you, do not surrender the word 'chosen' to the world. Dar to claim it as your own, even when it is constantly misunderstood. You must hold on to the truth that you are the chosen one. That truth is the bedrock on which you can build a life as the Beloved." (56) I think of this as "Light."
• "When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant." (62)
• "Gratitude begets gratitude, just as love begets love." (62)
• "It is impossible to compete for God's love." (64)
• "We also need an ongoing blessing that allows us to hear in an ever-new way that we belong to a loving God who will never leave us alone, but will remind us always that we are guided by love on every step of our lives." (72) I felt this in 2018!
• "if you develop the discipline of spending one half-hour a day listening to the voice of love, you will gradually discover that something is happening of which you were not even conscious." (77)
• "One good way to listen is to listen with a sacred text." (78)
• "most of all the blessings that come to us through words of gratitude, encouragement, affection, and love. These many blessings do not have to be invented. They are there, surrounding us on all sides." (81)
• "Before concluding these thoughts about our being blessed, I must tell you that claiming your own blessedness always leads to a deep desire to bless others. The characteristic of the blessed ones is that, wherever they go, they always speak words of blessing. It is remarkable how easy it is to bless others, to speak good things to and about them, to call forth their beauty and truth, when you yourself are in touch with your own blessedness. The blessed one always blesses. And people want to be blessed!" (82) This one spoke to me so deeply that I almost shared it with my class. 
• "Here joy and sorrow are no longer each other's opposites, but have become two sides of the same desire to grow to the fullness of the Beloved." (99)
• "True joy, happiness, and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others." (109)
• "It is the gift of our own life that shines through all we do." (113)
• "Imagine that, in the center of your heart, you trust that your smiles and handshakes, your embraces and your kisses are only the early signs of a worldwide community of love and peace!" (123)
• "we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace." (129)
• "The Spirit of God, the Spirit that calls us the Beloved, is the Spirit that unites and makes whole. There is no clearer way to discern the presence of God's Spirit than to identify the moments of unification, healing, restoration, and reconciliation." (135) I annotated this passage with "This is what I believe."