Last week a rainbow arced over San Francisco as we saw happiness arise in our hearts and minds when the Supreme Court made legal affirmation of equal rights to marriage throughout the country. For some it was the formalizing of what had always felt to be a normal and natural right, and for so many others there was the huge cathartic experience that at last equality under the law pertained to them. I felt tears rise to the surface as I imagined people's relief and joy at attaining this "inalienable" right, and I felt proud of the country for just a little while, this place so weighed down by the cruel legacy of racism, prejudice, and excessive reliance on firearms. I was so relieved to feel this happiness for my fellow human beings.
Lately it has been hard for me to feel any pride in being an American, though my brain tries to assure me that we live in a land of great opportunity. I do my practice, I sit in meditation, and send lovingkindness to all beings, and yet there are times when I feel I'm caught in a web of unkindness and ignorance, and I can't see the way out of it. When our fellow humans are shot down in churches, when black churches are burned to the ground in the South, when black males are targeted by law enforcement, when gays and lesbians are subjected to hate crimes and humiliation, I see a landscape, indeed a whole world that is hostile and hateful, with little courage manifested in the face of this darkness.
The Supreme Court ruling stated last week that those who are of any sexual orientation have the right to be married because they belong to our American society that was born out of principles of equality. And yet many more fights for gender equality will be necessary before gays and lesbians can count themselves on equal footing with the white establishment. As a result of Martin Luther King's tireless work in the late sixties, various laws were passed assuring basic civil rights to the African American population long shunned and denigrated. But we have come to see that despite the good intentions of such legislation, we live in a racist culture where various members of the population whose skin is dark are considered inferior and expendable. And lately we have see an inordinate amount of hatred unleashed on African American men, not to mention the continuing campaign of the conservative Republicans in Washington to defeat and humiliate our black President. A veil of deception has fallen over much of this agenda. There is no ownership of the hatred, and because there is no ownership it can metastasize and continue to spread ill will. And all this in a country that was founded on the individual person's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
How do we hold all this with equanimity? How do we hold the pain of the world, whether it be elephants being slaughtered in massive numbers in Africa, women kidnapped and raped in Nigeria, the homeless dying on our city streets, and the be-heading of regular people by terrorists. Is it enough to meditate and try to spread lovingkindness, to write your own dark truths as best you can, to practice gratitude and generosity in all ways, to feed wild birds, practice speaking a foreign language, or be a model of righteousness for our grandchildren? I would like to think so. The Dalai Lama said that all change starts with the individual, and that the creation of peace starts with finding it in yourself. I believe him. And yet … I feel so small sometimes, so separated from the community of civil, kind, hardworking human beings. The disconnection is scary, sort of like the darkness I wrote about last time. In the darkness we can't see or feel our relatedness and we float fee, and sometimes we're scared. A good friend shared this insight with me last evening over dinner: this primal fear of the dark is in fact our fear of death. This is normal, she reminded me. Most of us want to hold on to our precious lives for some time to come, to not "go gently into that dark night," even though it looks way better when you say you are prepared to die. There's something so tenacious about this human life, and I think we all share a deep wish to be in communion with this imperfect process of being human, knowing as we do that the journey into death is a solitary one.
When I'm going with this, I don't exactly know. I do know these things: everything shifts and changes and we are called upon to be with that, that we are social creatures who want to be in community with one another, to be supported and attended to, that as mortals we are beset with occasional fears that our journey will soon end, that we possess hearts capable of great love and even joy for our fellow humans, and that this joy is infinitely precious… I see these truths and know that our way isn't easy. But, here we are, after all, and it does make sense to show up for our lives.
And for the burning and the mayhem … and for rainbows of justice that occasionally spread across the sky...
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