"Radical Hospitality II"
by the Rev. Krista Taves
February 25, 2007
Mariane Pearl was five months pregnant when her husband, the American journalist Daniel Pearl, was murdered by a militant Islamic fundamentalist group in February 2002. Determined not to be broken, she has written a book called A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of my Husband Daniel Pearl. She lives in New York with her 18-month-old son, Adam. This reading was developed for The Forgiveness Project, a new organisation working with grassroots projects in the fields of conflict resolution, reconciliation and victim support:
When I heard that Omar Sheikh had been found guilty of Danny's murder, I wrote to President Musharraf of Pakistan to ask for the death penalty. The death penalty is not a solution, and asking for it isn't about revenge, but I believe that in this particular case the death penalty is justice; it is society punishing someone for murder. For Pakistan it is also a strong political statement against terrorism. However, Omar Sheikh won't pay for Danny's life with his life, and the death penalty doesn't make me feel any better. I have no reason to forgive Omar Sheikh. I was told he wanted to apologise to me, but I refused to meet him. The man is a psychopath and I don't believe his apology would be genuine. Maybe he felt a flicker of remorse because he too has a wife and a little boy, but there would be no value in our meeting. Personally I could easily kill Omar Sheikh, but I prefer to leave it up to Pakistan's justice system. There is a huge difference between taking revenge into your own hands and leaving it up to the law. I was totally against the Iraq war. People think they'll feel better if a bit more of the enemy is destroyed. But in fact, so often it is only innocent people who die, and eventually you forget why you started fighting in the first place. Revenge is a basic human instinct, the animal part of man, and it gets us nowhere. Not to retaliate doesn't mean you're weak. In fact, being able to rise above your instincts is a sign of strength – far more heroic than bombing another country or planning a suicide mission. Dialogue is the ultimate act of courage, far more courageous than killing someone. But forgiveness is too lame as an answer to extreme situations. It's not a value strong enough to stand on. You have to win some sort of victory over the people who have hurt you, and you can only do that by denying the terrorists their goal. They try to kill everything in you – initiative, hope, confidence, dialogue. The only way to oppose them is by demonstrating the strength they think they have taken from you. That strength is to keep on living, to keep on valuing life. So now it's up to me to create something of my life.
Sermon
One afternoon, the quiet halls of St. Benedict Monastery in Oxford Michigan were to suddenly become much less quiet. Father Mike was working on the monastery's computers when a young man stormed into the room. He told Father Mike that the monastery had rented his scaffolding and he had never been paid. He was fed up and had come to take the scaffolding home. He spoke loudly and aggressively, and his hands clenched into fists. It looked like he was itching for a fight. "No one screws me!" the man yelled, and took a step closer to Father Mike. Father Mike tried to guide the man into the hallway so that if he let loose no one would get hurt, but the man kept yelling. "I am going to take the scaffolding and you can't stop me!" Clearly the situation was escalating, and quickly.
Finally, Father Mike replied, "I'm not going to try and stop you, but neither am I giving you permission to take it. All I've heard is your side of the story, and there is bound to be more to it than what you have told me. If you have decided you are taking the scaffolding, then just go do it, but remember, I am not allowing you to take it. You are removing it from our property without my permission." The man said again, "You can't stop me." Father Mike responded, "I'm not trying to stop you." The man turned and left.
Father Dan and Lonni Pratt, who write about this incident in the book "Radical Hospitality" see this as a demonstration of extreme courage. Father Mike didn't back down. He didn't compromise. And while he held his ground, he remained respectful, and thus successfully diffused a potentially explosive situation.
How many of us have been in this kind of situation. Something crashes into your world and you are confronted with someone else's anger. All of us have likely experienced this. It could come from a stranger, a parent, a partner or spouse, a coworker, a child, a sibling, a friend. How do you respond to anger? Do you buy into it, and become angry yourself? Father Mike could have easily responded in kind, raising his voice and rolling up his sleeves. Do you respond with fear, doing everything you can to diffuse the other person's anger and thus protect yourself from it? Father Mike could have easily tried to placate that man, saying he was sorry and bending over backwards to please him. Instead, Father Mike chose a different way. He chose Radical Hospitality. He remained respectful and maintained his boundaries at the same time.
The truth of the matter is, we live in a society that offers us primarily the first two choices, anger and fear. When faced with a violation of our boundaries, which is what happened when that young man stormed in, he violated Father Mike's boundaries, more often than not we will respond with a mixture of fear and anger. Which means that our response is not a response at all. It is a reaction. And we are taught that this is a proper reaction in all kinds of places - in our families, at school, at work, and in the media.
Imagine, for a moment, that there were CNN cameras in the corner of that computer room! Can you imagine the headlines! "Anger Erupts at Monastery!" "Businessman calls it Quits! Demands holy justice!" "Local Man Cheated by the Church!" or maybe even "Business with God Turns Bad" Think of all the experts they could call on to help "shed light" on the situation! Economists exploring the perils of the rental industry. Ex girlfriends dregged up from the pasts of both men. Celibacy specialists discussing the connection between sexual frustration and paying your bills on time! Relationship experts raising the possibility that there might have been a pre-existing sexual relationship between the angry man and Father Mike because you never know about those priests! And through it all, the same pictures flash across the screen over and over - the high stone walls of the monastery rising into a grey overcast sky, the clanking of the heavy front gate as it slowly closes, haunting robed figures walked single file singing Gregorian chant, and through it all, the menacing shadow of the scaffolding!
And you know what happens! Once again we have learned that the acceptable response to threatening behavior lies in fear and anger. And one more wall goes up between us and our neighbor, and the world becomes a more frightening place that demands the reaction of protecting ourselves from the world and millions of horrible things in it, rather than the response of opening ourselves to the world and its full complexity.
The fictitious scenario of what the media could do with a relatively simple incident is not really a fiction at all, because that approach has characterized the coverage of all those really big issues that are touching every life, and it has deeply influenced our response to the very real dangers we face, like the threat of terrorism, which looms front and center in virtually all discussion about what is happening in this nation and what is happening in the world. And the reactions that it encourages from us? Fear and Anger.
As we approach the fourth anniversary of the War on Iraq, I find myself reflecting on how terrorism has affected us, and I find myself reflecting on how terrorism has affected me personally. Although I have not lost a family member to terrorism, and although I do not personally know anyone who is serving in Iraq, my need to know what is going on in the world means that like many people in North America I am exposed almost daily to news that I know is spun for the purposes of giving it a particular meaning. I choose to watch primarily media that I think presents its stories in a less biased way, media like PBS, NPR, and to a lesser extent, CNN. But even then, I know there is a spin, and maybe it just doesn't feel like spin because it matches my own politics.
What I do know, is that I have become more and more resistant to approaches that are meant to make me afraid or angry. When I hear that heartstopping music and see the headline emblazoned across the screen, I feel my heart hardening. As the mass media creates an iron clad relationship between Islam and terrorism, I fear for the quality of life and civil rights of Muslims on American soil. When Representative Keith Ellison's loyalty to the United States is questioned because he asks to be sworn in on the Koran, I get angry. But I don't want to be angry. And I don't want to fear. I am tired of having my heart and my mind manipulated.
But I also don't want to be stupid and turn my back on the real danger of terrorism just because I am fed up with the hypersensationalizing of American mass media. I also find my heart hardening when I hear peace activists say, "Love is the answer." I think of Marianne Pearl losing her husband with a baby on the way, and all the other journalists who have been kidnapped and executed. I think of the thousands who died in 9/11. I think of Sunni and Shiite militants who are killing each other and their families at an alarming rate. I think of the families of American soldiers desperately waiting for the next email or phone call to know their son or daughter or husband or wife is still alive. There is so much rawness here, so much loss and grief and anger. How can we say to those people, "All you need is love." It just doesn't honor where they are at.
From a more personal place, I think of how much I fly. In the last five years, I have spent hundreds of hours in airports and airplanes, many of those going through customs as I travel back and forth between Canada and the United States. Every time security officials raised the alert level, while part of me believed it was done to artificially maintain support for the War, another part of me always felt that tinge of fear. I still sit on the plane before takeoff and wonder, what if something happens? I keep my cellphone close at hand so that if the worse case scenario happens, I can call those I love and say good bye. In the eyes of terrorists, our lives mean nothing and you or I or our children could be killed without a second thought and there would be people half way around the world dancing in the streets.
The threat of terrorism is definitely real, and the threat is also sensationalized and has been used to manipulate us and to hurt innocent people. What this means is that in the spectre that has become the War on Terror, each of us has the daily opportunity to find the ethical response to this real danger in a way that both protects us and holds us open.
As Unitarian Universalists, we hold to these principles. We have covenanted to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We have covenanted to affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations. We have covenanted to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. And we have covenanted to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. We are not covenanted to affirm and promote these things just when it's easy, or when we are surrounded by like minded people. We are covenanted to affirm and promote these things when it's hard, especially when it's hard, because that's when it really means something. We are covenanted to affirm and promote these deepest values when most everyone around us is choosing the route of fear and anger. Furthermore, we are covenanted to affirm and promote these values even as others seek to harm us and devalue us.
What this means, is that we are called to the spiritual practice of Radical Hospitality. We are called to rise above the fear and anger that tempts us with its simplistic answers and momentary emotional highs. We are called to another way.
Radical Hospitality is not some pie in the sky declaration of peace. It is not some clichéd call that we are one and all we have to do is love one another. Radical Hospitality doesn't call for unquestioning forgiveness or automatic acceptance of what we see around us in the interests of getting along. It is not about being being pushovers and putting up with injustice. And there is no promise that if we practice radical hospitality that we'll never get hurt again. Those kind of guarantees just don't exist … anywhere. Not in our most intimate relationships nor in the relationships we build with other countries. In order to fully practice radical hospitality, we have to accept that there is no such thing as complete security, and the longer it takes to learn this, the longer we will be in the grips of fear and anger and paradoxically the more dangerous this world becomes.
Radical Hospitality, is a hospitality that is both open and boundaried. We need boundaries to protect us from being used and manipulated. We need boundaries so that we can take care of ourselves. Those boundaries keep us safe so that we can have the room to be open to others, open in a way that may seem impossible when we're poisoned with fear and anger. Our call to openness asks us to cradle in the very deepest part of our being the truth that every single person is a person of deep value, and truth and beauty. Everyone has a story worth hearing and a life worth valuing.
Sharon Salzberg, a Buddhist teacher, has a wonderful exercise that helps us to cradle this deeper truth.** It's called a Compassion Meditation.and it's meant to help us learn how to have compassion for those we find difficult to engage. I'd like to try that meditation with you this morning, just so we have a sense of how it might feel. So if you're comfortable trying this with me this morning, I'd welcome you to sit comfortably, plant both feet on the ground, sit up straight, you can lightly rest your back against the chair if you need to, and place your hands on your lap. If you like, close your eyes. Breathe in and out deeply, with each breath in settling deeper into your chair. I want to think of someone who is causing harm in the world. Focus your thoughts on that person. Get a clear image of them. If you feel a sense of discomfort, or anxiety, or anger, or any negative emotion, simply make a note of it. And then direct this thought towards them. "May you be free of your pain and sorrow." "May you be free of your pain and sorrow." Let's do this about a minute.
Thank you.
This compassion meditation is more about changing ourselves than healing our enemies. We really can't really make our enemies heal. That's their responsibility. We can only be responsible for our own actions and our own attitudes. But we ourselves change when we want healing for them. It frees us from our anger and fear. Changing in this way doesn't mean saying to those who harm us, "What you're doing is o.k. because you are so full of pain and sorrow." It does not excuse violence and harm. It doesn't mean dropping all those ways we have developed to protect ourselves from their violence. It doesn't mean forgetting the past and it doesn't mean forgiving all wrongs that have been done to us. But it does mean that we have opened ourselves up to the fact that there is a real human being with a whole universe of experience in there. And if we can hold onto that, we free ourselves from the prison of fear and anger, the same prison that fuels the violence of our enemies, and the same prison that fuels the violence of this country as it seeks to avenge its enemies and protect its national interests. When we free ourselves from that prison, then we become agents for change, and that means that we are part of reversing the dangerous cycle of fear and anger that puts up more and more walls and escalates the violence that threatens both our personal security and the security of this country.
Is it easy? No. Does it guarantee success? No. Does radical hospitality with its loving compassion and clear boundaries make a difference? Absolutely. This is how true healing takes place. I welcome you into that healing.
Amen and blessed be.
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Send Questions or Comments to Rev. Taves: Minister@EmersonUUChapel.org
Updated: 03/10/07