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COVID-19 as spiritual moment, Part 2: the community

This is the second in my three-part series about a spiritual and political response to COVID-19. The first centered on our personal needs and self-care. The third will attend to public/political policy and ramifications. Today, my focus is on community.

The community

Every spiritual movement of which I’m aware focuses on connectedness and community. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could nurture a spiritual consciousness without also being aware of and concerned about all of humanity.

“Community” can refer to the people who share your home, your neighbors, or people who live on the other side of the globe. All of us inhabit the same planet; all of us have equal value as human beings.

Some gatherings of like-minded people are faith groups, or those who hold certain ideals in common. Such affinity groups can be important to our spiritual development and even to our humanity. However, it is also essential that we look beyond those with whom we feel a particular bond. In difficult times like these, we recognize – if our eyes and hearts are open – that we are all connected, interdependent, and that we must focus on what is good and right for everyone.

Here are a few guiding principles for difficult times in community.

  • Don’t be an a-hole. It isn’t all about you. The things you do affect everyone. So…
    • Stop hoarding. Just. Stop. It. You have enough TP. When you realize that you have more than you need of something, call local food banks. They accept food, and also toiletries and personal products. Many unemployed and underemployed people are in desperate need of everything right now.
    • Don’t call it the Chinese virus or the Wuhan virus. Doing so is a lame attempt at saying this pandemic is someone else’s fault. A virus is no one’s fault; it’s just biology. Bad things happen, and laying blame on a specific country or race simply divides us at a time when we should be more united than ever to end this disease.
  • Do the right things. Remember that social distancing isn’t just a healthy practice for you; it’s good for everyone and even saves lives. The more we care for each other now, the sooner we’ll be back to normal.
  • Stop meeting in public gatherings, including for worship. When you gather for religious (or any other) purposes, you’re defying your spiritual tradition’s admonitions to care for others, especially the most vulnerable. All of us have heard of COVID-19 outbreaks, including some deaths, resulting from religious meetings.
  • Find out who is in particular need and what you can do about it. You don’t have to leave home or put yourself at risk to donate to a non-profit that is working to alleviate suffering.
  • Don’t assume your experience is universal.
    • Are you struggling to get your kids to participate in Zoom classes? Remember how many households don’t have internet access.
    • Frustrated about working from home? Consider those who’ve lost their jobs, or those whose jobs have greatly increased.
    • Are you feeling cooped up? Remember people who are confined to their homes or institutions all the time, or those who are quarantined with their abuser.
    • Tired of cooking? Recognize that many have lost income and aren’t sure how they’re going to feed themselves and their families.
    • Missing your friends? Keep in mind those who are ill or elderly and suffer far more deeply from social isolation.  
  • Celebrate those who keep us going:
    • Those who work in every sort of medical assistance, including those who work service and low-wage jobs at medical facilities;
    • People who grow and harvest our food and those who transport it, stock grocery shelves, cook and deliver meals;
    • Trash collectors, postal workers, delivery drivers, and others who perform public services;
    • Factory workers who manufacture and package essential items;
    • Politicians and bureaucrats who try to effect policies to keep us safe and flatten the curve;
    • Teachers who create new ways of learning remotely, and who are concerned about all the needs a student may have;
    • Persons who risk their own health to provide for our needs.
  • Find ways to honor the connectedness of humanity. Whether your family, your neighbors, or people you will never meet, be grateful for the relationships inherent in being human.

Pray or meditate, if that is your thing, and lift up individuals and groups who are in tremendous need. Then turn your imagination to ways in which you can serve them now, and ways in which you can serve them later when social distancing restrictions are lifted.

In our generation we may never experience another event like COVID-19. Horrible as it is, it’s also an opportunity to learn, or to relearn, how connected we are.

That is the only way we will get through this together.

© Melissa Bane Sevier, 2020

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White supremacy, immigration, Stephen Miller, and more

This week, a report by the Southern Law Poverty Center (SPLC) authored by Michael Edison Hayden revealed 900+ emails sent in 2015 and 2016 from current White House senior adviser Stephen Miller to editors at Breitbart, a very conservative news source. The emails reveal the white supremacy that undergirds many of Miller’s recommendations to President Trump which have become policy, including separating families at the US-Mexico border and a Muslim travel ban. According to the SPLC: Miller’s perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States. Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.

There’s much more.

Several news outlets have followed up with this reporting, including the Washington Post, in an article by Kim Bellware. The Post reached out to Miller and the White House for comment. Miller declined to comment Wednesday. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said via email Tuesday that she had not seen the report but called the SPLC “an utterly-discredited, long-debunked far-left smear organization.”

Um, no it is not. The SPLC has a long and respected history of reporting on hate groups, especially in the United States.

The source of the emails was a former editor at Breitbart, Katie McHugh. Fired in 2017 for sending anti-Semitic messages, McHugh has gone through a searching of her own soul, and has renounced white supremacy and white nationalism.

Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed News has written an enlightening and deeply disturbing article about McHugh’s rise and fall in a world where nonwhite people are viewed as enemies and criminals and where Jews are seen as completely responsible for anti-Semitism, stretching the bounds of anyone’s imagination. This world is peopled with holocaust deniers and those who spew anti-Muslim rhetoric.

One group named in the article is VDare, named for Virginia Dare, the first English child born in what would become an English colony, then later the state of North Carolina. Obviously, members of VDare delight in the literal birth of whiteness in the future United States of America. Ironically, and by definition, Virginia Dare was the first immigrant born in an English possession.

The BuzzFeed article is an important read, but you’ll want to take a shower when you’re through with it.

I feel sorry for Katie McHugh; I truly do. I wish her a good life, and am sobered – even encouraged – by her willingness to leave all that hatred behind.

But I feel far more sorry for the people she and those who espouse such horrible ideas have harmed. The murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville at the Unite the Right rally was the first turning point for Katie McHugh. That rally and its aftermath was also an eye-opener for many Americans who mistakenly thought that white nationalism and white supremacy were non-factors in modern public life.

McHugh decried not the idea of the rally, but its tactics. Eventually she recognized the deep sexism, the wrongness of all its ideals, and the control and power. Eventually, she left. Eventually. But not until much harm was done by her and to her.

From the article: People like me should be given a chance to recognize how bad this is and that the alt-right is not a replacement for any kind of liberal democracy whatsoever, any kind of system; they have no chance, and they’re just harmful, McHugh said. There is forgiveness, there is redemption. You have to own up to what you did and then forcefully reject this and explain to people and tell your story and say, ‘Get out while you can.’

For those of us who watch with horror from the sidelines – what can we do?

We can educate ourselves. We can reach into our own souls, and call on the souls of other good Americans.

We can support the ideals of inclusion, welcome, peace, and diversity. We can remind each other that all people are equally important and valuable.

We can stand up. We can speak out. We can act. We can hold powerful people accountable. We can call for the ouster of white nationalists from the White House. We can say no more.

© Melissa Bane Sevier, 2019

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A spiritual response to the impeachment inquiry

When I set out to start a website, blog, and podcast about politics and spirituality, never could I have guessed I would launch the website and blog during an impeachment inquiry. If we are to discuss politics here, it would be ridiculous and wrong to avoid a conversation about the most politically volatile events in the last 30+ years.

I hope you’ll join in the discussion, and reflect on it in your faith communities. Here are a few things I believe we should keep in mind as the process unfolds. It’s not an exhaustive list, and I’m certain I’ll add more ideas in the future. Maybe some of those ideas will come from you.

  1. Look for the truth. Everyone is claiming to speak the truth, and often the truth of one speaker is the exact opposite of the truth given by a different speaker. This isn’t new, of course, but in a social media age where the label “fake news” is thrown about many times a day, and where bald-faced lies are sometimes recounted as if they were truth, discernment takes a little more work. How do we look for the truth? As a starter we turn to trusted news sources. Even there, it’s our responsibility to read, watch, and to listen with a critical eye. Any source that is perfectly aligned with a party or particular politician should be highly suspect. That doesn’t mean that even those sources can’t speak truth; we just have to stop being lazy about receiving everything as truth, and about being uncritical. And we must call out leaders who attempt to shut down the truth, or who repeat lies. In the midst of untruth, we recommit ourselves to speaking truth, in love.
  2. Skip the glee. This one is particularly difficult for me. I have to admit that I find some degree of satisfaction when a policy or person with whom I profoundly disagree and who is, in my opinion, deeply flawed is finally expected to answer for misdeeds, lies, and harm done to others or to our political system. I am striving to limit my public responses to ones that are measured, as kind as possible, reasonable, and spiritual. I’m working on making my private conversations equally even, but that is a work in progress, and a determination I have to renew daily. We must all remember that every actor in this crazy current national narrative is a real person even if that person has done really bad things. That humanity is an essential part of our reaction. When we lessen the humanity of another person, we also lessen our own.
  3. Use our power. Together we have far more power than any one of us has alone. Not only should we be exercising our religious and spiritual power with meditation and prayer, we also must exercise our political power. Without the power of the people and the ballot box, those who represent us lose influence. Now is exactly the time to call and write our elected representatives. Again, this is something I find hard to do because my senators and my district’s representative are all wildly interested in retaining and improving their positions of power by supporting the current administration and all its policies. However, that should not keep me from making sure they know what I believe about current events. As a matter of fact, this is precisely the time when I should be speaking out the most – remembering, though, all that I wrote above in my first two points.
  4. Never forget those who are suffering most. When a horrendous decision withdraws our troops and support from the border between Syria and Turkey, we remember the Kurds who are caught in the middle. When policies separate families, or when the President requests cost estimates regarding moats filled with alligators and snakes, we remember the immigrant and the refugee. When officials enact guidelines that favor one race, we remember the non-white citizens and residents. When economic strategy values only the wealthy, we remember the poor. And when we remember, we act.

What happens next in the current administration is very much a question mark. So we listen and pay attention with open hearts, minds, and spirits. Let us not abandon who we are in the face of a crisis of leadership.

Let us hold on to the people and things that give us life even as we watch and wait and hope for a good outcome and a better future.

© Melissa Bane Sevier, 2019