The Secret Weapon

Sometimes this is all that healing asks: that we become present.

I’ve left off posting until now, largely because of the public murders of Rene Good and Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis. I felt Robert L. Arnold covered those events well in his unflinchingly beautiful, determined way, assisting us to begin/continue the necessary journey of grief, lamentation and resolve that we must all travel individually, and collectively. I had nothing further to offer as a contribution.

Also, it took some time and a few conversations to find the shape of my own consequent resolve. In my response to the pain in my country, how do I not stand by, helpless, seemingly confined by age, position, and circumstance? Citizens employed by my federal government are openly murdering fellow citizens in the street, and being encouraged to continue doing so. The rule of law that is the foundation of every civilized society is being ignored, flouted, or kept resentfully, when it is kept at all. What is mine to do?

image courtesy nano banana

I hang out with contemplatives these days. The questions are so interesting. Twice this past week, two of my friends invited me to discern with them a similar question, phrased more specifically: How should we respond to our vocation and to the injustice and anger being played out in some of our communities?

The point of such questions is to sit with them, breathe through them, to explore the emptiness they reveal, to know that open space’s shape and feel. In the end, any answer we might derive is a way station, a temporary place to be as we continue on the question’s journey.

Here are a few things I have discovered: Breathing is important along the way. Respiration is not only the rhythm (and often, the sign) of mammalian life. It mimics the vocation of the human species in our created sphere and calls us to rise from being mere fashioners and exchangers of goods and services to becoming what we are intended to become: transformers of substance. That call to rise up is a simultaneous call to go down, to accept my weakness and lack of what the Buddhists call upaya, skillful means.

Both intention and attention are crucial to this human vocation we have. As I have pointed out elsewhere, we have specific challenges we must address with each of these in our current technological environment.

Sometimes this is all that healing asks: that we become present. Never underestimate your power to heal when you step toward difficulty with courage and love, when you touch pain with healing rather than fear.”

-Jack Kornfield, “All in This Together”

But we must look beyond that to the human task of transformation, especially in a time of chaos and exceptional lawlessness. Allow me an example:

I was recently struck by an interview with Stella Carlson, a/k/a the “Woman With the Pink Coat,” who witnessed and recorded Alex Pretti’s struggle to protect a woman being physically harassed by federal officers, and ended up recording his execution and death in Minneapolis. You’ve likely seen the recording: its vantage point made it possible to swiftly refute the lies that the Regime’s leaders told about the incident. In her interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, she describes that three weeks earlier, her involvement with the resistance began: delivering meals to neighbors, as a way of helping them to avoid random apprehension.

Ms. Carlson is a children’s entertainer; on the day of Pretti’s death, she was on her way to a face-painting booking she had at a local church-- three hours of painting children’s faces for a community gathering. As she left for her engagement, she heard the warning whistles blown by the community watchers. Realizing that she was early for her booking, she diverted to the nearby protest. Her plan was to “drive by,” but she saw that her way was being blocked by federal vehicles heading her way, as well as a civilian vehicle whose driver was being told to get out of the way. (”I immediately thought of Renee Good.”)

Alex Pretti was directing traffic to get people out of the way of the federal vehicles. He saw her dilemma, and pointed to a parking space on the street. She pulled into it, exited her vehicle, and thought she might as well record what was happening: Pretti was assisting two community members, pedestrians who were trying to get out of the way of the federal officers, who then turned on Pretti.

You know the rest of the story. Ms. Carlson’s video is the one that clearly shows Pretti advancing with a phone in one hand and the other hand free. Asked if she was afraid at the time, she said that yes, she was, but she is grateful that she was able to capture the next few minutes-- the last ones of Alex Pretti’s life.

Before this encounter, Stella Carlson was already on her way to work within her specific means of transformation, enabling children to experience delight and play in the middle of so much anxiety and danger. Her interview shows us an accidental witness, someone who was simply carrying out the same care for community that she had been practicing, previous to the incident. She acted as witness to the truth without knowing or even thinking that the truth she saw would be denied by the federal government.

Stella Carlson did not need special counsel or prayer support. She did not need to practice breathing in rhythm or pause to discern what her role was supposed to be. She turned toward the trouble, before she knew what she could or could not do. She told her interviewer that she felt fear in the moment, but in that same moment also discovered what she could do, and did it.

We must do the same, without worrying about what activity looks like to a contemplative, or where it is appropriate for us to attend a protest, or whether the specific form of our resistance is sufficient, given the circumstances. We must simply ask the selves we are becoming, what is ours to do? It is enough to be present to ourselves, and to the world we are in.

Part of the Regime’s strategy is to encourage a fearful state, so that they can present themselves and their programs as the answer to the fear. I have repeatedly heard from various witnesses and from the agents themselves, that their goal is to cause fear in the witnesses of their acts, and fear in the friends and loved ones of those they seek to apprehend.

We know the response to that strategy: Love. That answer is so well-worn that we have forgotten how to deploy it. It is our understanding of being beloved that enables us to turn toward trouble; even the trouble we do not understand, the trouble that seems beyond us. It is our understanding that all humans are as loved as we are that keeps us paying attention. Alex Pretti never drew his holstered gun. He didn’t need it.

He had a secret counter weapon. It wasn’t self-sacrifice; it was Love.

And look at what it’s gone and done.