Day 67 There's Always Been Activism; and, Now, How Can I Help?

If someone walked up to me and straight-out asked me if I am an activist, I wouldn’t hesitate to answer. “No.”

I know activists, some quite well, and the ways I contribute to the social good look nothing like the passionate protesters of wrong that they are. I mean, c’mon, really, I know some of the original members of ACT UP. I know people who lived through the AIDS crisis in San Francisco in the 80s. Those people, they’re real activists.

And if that’s the strict definition, then I’m definitely out. I’m not likely ever going to march in the streets, shrieking “Fairies, Faggots, and Dykes! Oh, my!” I was, however, Patience on the float for the opera premiere of Patience & Sarah in a long-ago New York City Pride Parade.

But ... then I started to think a little more, dig a little deeper, go a little further into my own history, and you know what? I think I might be an activist, after all.

From the time I was able to string together a sentence, I have been writing about perceived wrongs in our world. Not only that, but I also often make suggestions about how to right those wrongs. When The Huffington Post invited me to write a weekly spiritual column, I wrote about a spiritual perspective on social and political issues.

I’ve done the same in the business consulting work I’ve done over the years, helping businesses shift from a profit basis to a caring basis. Care enough and profits follow. Essentially, I’ve been a stand-in for Chief Spiritual Officer.

And you know what else? I’ve done a lot of volunteer work in the Queer Community. Invariably, whenever I sit on a fundraising committee, I am nearly always the one who gets to “do the ask.” I’m comfortable asking for money—especially for anyone other than myself.

So, I want to revise my initial response. “Yes, sure, I’m an activist.” It just doesn’t always look like I thought activism was supposed to look. Protesting isn’t me. But writing as a protest? Absolutely! Bring it. I’m in. Or raising money for LGBTQ kids whose parents have refused to care for them? Of course. Or standing with my other queer religious in this world even as mainstream clergy call us abominations? Oh, yeah. I’m there.

Anu Garg, the founder of Word-A-Day, published a quote by journalist and author Sarah Kendzior this week. “When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.”

The travesty that she describes is exactly the stand that much of our political circus is taking. Persons of privilege—amongst whom I must count myself—assume their privilege is because of their inherent worth. This is how they justify their policies which punish the sick and the poor.

If we were actually to stigmatize “those who let people die,” we would be pointing every finger we have at many of those in charge of our beautiful country. Times opinion columnist Roger Cohen puts it clearly. “The responsible crowd, with face half-hidden, confronting the unmasked live-free-or-die crowd across the vastness and fracture of an unled country.”

I have written in these essays that perhaps those pseudo-leaders are to be excused because of the macro-perspective they must take. The House passed a $3 trillion aid package this week. I can’t even conceive of that much money. So maybe, giving a huge helping of the benefit of the doubt, they’re doing what they have to do.

But I don’t have to do it that way, and neither do you. And, in fact, I think it is our spiritual responsibility NOT to look at the macro perspective at all. Let those who can allocate $3 trillion do that.

I think we are all called to be micro-activists.

Bret Stephens wrote this week, “In February 2016 Peggy Noonan wrote a prescient column in The Wall Street Journal, in which she made the distinction between two classes of people: the ‘protected’—that is, the well-off, the connected, the comfortably insulated—and the ‘unprotected’—everyone else. ‘The protected make public policy,’ she wrote. ‘The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.’”

Relative to the pandemic, Mr. Stephens redubbed the categories as The Remote and The Exposed. He goes on, “But Trump’s political stock-in-trade is resentment, above all toward those who mistake their good luck for superior merit, or confuse virtue signaling with wise policy, or who impose policies on others without fully feeling the effects themselves.”

To be sure, Ms. Noonan’s ‘powerful push back’ is beginning to happen.

Let us consider from where. Prisons, big cities, jails, housing projects, tiny townships, public hospitals, farmers, food pantries, barbershops, states, towns, hairdressing salons, counties, nail spas, domestic violence shelters, police forces, neighborhoods, schools, apartments, hotels, homeless shelters, nursing homes, to name but a few. These areas each represent a constituency of people—individuals, who are struggling to keep body and soul together.

This week both Oprah Winfrey and former President Barack Obama participated in virtual high school and college graduation ceremonies.

Among other things, Mr. Obama said, “More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Mr. Obama said in the first address streamed online. “A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

The Wizard of Oz told Dorothy to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain’ in an effort to distract her. The distraction isn’t working on many of us these days. Mr. Obama is right.

The article went on: “In speeches that spoke to social inequities, Mr. Obama said the pandemic was a wake-up call for young adults, showing them the importance of good leadership and that ‘the old ways of doing things just don’t work.’

“‘Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy—that’s how little kids think,’ he said during a prime time special for high school seniors. ‘Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way—which is why things are so screwed up. I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last, like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others.’”

This is a partial list of the values I heard espoused by my mother, my grandfather, and all sorts of other authority figures in my life from the time I was very young.

Mr. Obama might have taken this page right out of my grandfather’s playbook. “‘If the world’s going to get better, it’s going to be up to you,’ he said. ‘If we’re going to create a world where everybody has the opportunity to find a job, and afford college; if we’re going to save the environment and defeat future pandemics, then we’re going to have to do it together,’ he said. ‘So be alive to one another’s struggles.’”

There is a controversial translation of a Bible verse in Exodus which reads, “And God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” George Lamsa, the Aramaic scholar, explains that this doesn’t mean that Deity itself made Pharaoh refuse to let the Jews go. It means that Pharaoh’s pride and greed, of which God who knows everything already knew, wouldn’t let them go. The point is that God can use anything and everything to bring us closer to our own Divinity.

Like Mr. Obama, I am not going to names names this morning. I don’t have to. You know who I mean.

Mr. Obama capped his speech. “‘It doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick,’ he said, later adding that ‘our society and democracy only works when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.’”

The Pharaohs in our midst, however they got that way, are legion, and they’re not willing to let go their own greed or hard hearts to think about anyone other than themselves and those they deem worthy.

But We the People needn’t be that way. Enter micro-activism.

The key to micro-activism is caring. Not all activism comes from caring, Beloved. Some of it arises from pure outrage. Larry Kramer, anyone? [God bless his angry, outraged heart.] For me, that’s not sustainable, but caring, or what I truly care about is.

I’ve said before that I know we need to address and work to heal climate change. It’s a huge issue, no question. I can’t take it all on all by myself. But I care, deeply, about trees. I take trees personally. I’m a novelist. I use too much paper. So trees are my environmental thing. Every day I do something to preserve the ones we have or plant new ones somewhere. That’s my micro-activism for the environment, for climate change. I’ve cared about and worked for the health of trees for decades.

Now, Beloved, look at your own life. Where has your care shown up over and over again? Look a long way back. Don’t rush. Don’t hurry. Just look.

Here’s Oprah from the Facebook Graduation. “I wish I could tell you I know the path forward. I don’t. There is so much uncertainty. In truth, there always has been. What I do know is that the same guts and imagination that got you to this moment—all those things are the very things that are going to sustain you through whatever is coming. It’s vital that you learn, and we all learn, to be at peace with the discomfort of stepping into the unknown. It’s really OK to not have all the answers. The answers will come for sure, if you can accept not knowing long enough to get still and stay still long enough for new thoughts to take root in your more quiet, deeper, truer self. The noise of the world drowns out the sound of you. You have to get still to listen.”

Just get still. Just look, Beloved. Just listen, Beloved. Dig down deep into your heart. What struggle do you care about more than any other?

One of the values my grandfather championed again and again was, “Be considerate.” This morning I looked up the etymology of the word considerate. The first definition is: 1.1. To view or contemplate attentively, to survey, examine, inspect, scrutinize. The central etymological word is sidus from which we get our word sidereal. It means constellation.

That surprised me, except once I followed my own advice and thought about it, it didn’t surprise me any more at all. That’s the kind of care I’ve been talking about—care around which you have a constellation of personal stories. The issue sits in the middle, and your experiences make up the constellation.

Let’s ask just one question, and follow Oprah’s advice. Get still. So, now, how can I help? Wait, look, listen. All, all, all shall be revealed.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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