Day 84 The Forgiveness Mistake; and, Afflicting the Comfortable

It takes some chutzpah, granted, to disagree with a sitting pope, but I disagree strongly with Pope Francis. He’s wrong.

“Pope Francis said on Wednesday that he was watching the ‘disturbing social unrest’ in the United States with ‘great concern.’”

Okay, it is disturbing. Not the social unrest per se, not the actions of the protesters either. What’s disturbing is what’s under those things. Brutal, discriminatory police violence. Blatant disregard for systemic racism. Bellicose government reactivity.

FWIW, the protests are meant to be disturbing because unless the complacent are ‘disturbed,’ it’s patently clear, and has been over a long, long time, that nothing will be done to root out and dissolve the racial discrimination woven into the very fabric of our democracy. Duh. A five-year-old could tell you this.

Here’s Himself again, “‘We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life,’ he said during his weekly general audience.”

Really? Because that’s exactly what a lot of the white world has done. For centuries. Um, apartheid?

I also find it ironic that His Holiness dares to chastise ‘a blind eye to ... exclusion’ when religions the world over, his included, practice exclusion in their own doctrine every day. Women priests, anyone? Mormon heaven, anyone? My guru is better than yours, anyone? Seems a little, uh, contradictory to me.

“He said he was praying for ‘the repose of the soul of George Floyd and of all those others who have lost their lives as a result of the sin of racism.’”

Oh now there’s a gentle way to call out racism—as a sin. Could that be more incendiary? And yet, in the face of the Idiocy-in-Chief’s military [uh, military?] response to peaceful protests in the capital, why not? Let’s add the gasoline of the idea of sin onto what’s already burning. What the hell.

Here is where it gets interesting to me.

“[The Pope] called for ‘national reconciliation and peace’ ...”

Okay, good. Great concepts, but, Beloved, too soon. Yes of course, national reconciliation is a lovely goal. Peace, too. But too soon, way too soon. This is what I’ve learned to call The Forgiveness Mistake, a mistake religious practice and, yes, sometimes spiritual practice, make again and again.

Yes, of course, we must find it in our hearts, somehow, to forgive. Eventually.

The how and the when of forgiveness are a true mystery best provided, in each case, for each individual heart, by grace. I’ve never seen true forgiveness fit a formula or a timetable, or a group for that matter.

But premature forgiveness forms scabs and then scars over putrid infection. The infection must be acknowledged, faced, cleansed, cleared, and only then is it safe or advisable to suggest forgiveness. Clearing out infection is painful.

The Pope concluded, “... and said the recent violence on U.S. streets [was] ‘self-destructive and self-defeating.’”

And, there, Frankie, is where you are the most wrong. Actually, in my opinion, dead wrong. It is not ‘self-destructive;’ it’s self-preservative. If we look at the facts, it’s property-destructive.

I’ve given some serious thought to the looting that has been reported in the news media. It makes me sad, but I think I understand it. Or, I think I can explain the why of it. How about this?

Protests in this country are nothing new, Beloved. We actually have the right, as citizens, to peacefully protest. But peaceful protests are often—dare I venture, usually—ignored or, worse, we pat them on the head, and agree. Oh yes, boo hoo. Now go back to earning money so you can spend it on things.

Looting, no matter who is doing it, gets right at the heart of the dysfunctional version of capitalism that drives the Evil Economic Empire in which we live, the Shop-to-Save-the-Economy consumer world. When potential consumers [code: money-spenders] turn to looting which consumes that which we are meant to consume financially, then the short-sighted, WIIFM legislators sit up and take notice.

Consumers rejecting their consumer model and instead damaging the inventory causes real attention to be paid to the real message. That, Francis, is not ‘self-defeating;’ it’s self-affirming.

“The pope’s comments came a day after Christian leaders criticized President Trump for using two religious sites in Washington for what they said were acts of political theater.”

Worse. Not political theatre, although there is such a thing known in some circles as agit-prop theatre. Agitation-Propaganda. No, come to think of it, that’s exactly what it was. Political theatre, but it was also religious hypocrisy and spiritual manipulation at their worst.

The George Floyd news aggregator summed it up, “As the sustained protests have made clear, the fuse has been burning for a long time, and despair has mounted with each case of a black person dying at the hands of the police.”

In Los Angeles, at the U.C.L.A. campus, “U.C.L.A. students were arrested for engaging in the constitutionally protected right to peacefully protest against racial injustice, which is pervasive in American policing. They were detained and processed at a stadium on their own campus named after Jackie Robinson, an icon of the long and unfinished struggle for black freedom.”

And, there, Beloved, is the whole point: The struggle for black freedom is unfinished. To quote millions of voices of people of color, “No justice. No peace.”

There was, as one headline had it, “minimal mayhem” last night. “For an eighth day and night, tens of thousands of people staged peaceful protests and impassioned marches across the United States, while the widespread destruction and looting that had followed demonstrations in recent days was largely absent.”

Is the struggle on its way to resolution? Not yet. But, in some arenas, cooler heads are prevailing.

And then there’s this horror show. “President Trump called on states to bring in the military to restore order and combat “lowlifes and losers,” as an infantry battalion from Fort Bragg was dispatched to the nation’s capital as part of a broader show of force.” Is he in the 7th grade?

“In Washington, Mr. Barr was in charge of the federal response and an alphabet soup of agencies had contributed officers, agents and troops to defend the White House and other federal installations, including the Secret Service, the United States Park Police, National Guard, Capitol Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Marshal’s Service, the Bureau of Prisons, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.” What?!?!?

Last night, “While the evening ended with only flashes of confrontations, the city’s downtown is being flooded with agents from the F.B.I., the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals, Customs and Border Protection, and several other agencies, along with the military. Transportation Security Administration officers have also been called out of airports to help protect federal property.”

See? Property.

Retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in The Atlantic, “The militarization of the response to the protest has stirred deep concerns and drawn widespread criticism, including from the Admiral who said that “our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so. I am deeply worried that as they execute their orders, the members of our military will be co-opted for political purposes.”

Well, Admiral Mike, they already have been. As Bret & Gail opined in their weekly Conversation: “It’s what you get when you elect someone who specializes in division, denigration, diminishment and debasement.”

Brandon del Pozo was a New York City police officer for 19 years and the Chief of Police in Burlington, VT for four. He wrote this week, “Justice Is About More Than the Killing of George Floyd. Police must take collective responsibility for the failings within their ranks.”

About our Fearful Leader, he writes, “... has supported our police openly and uncritically, but by accepting this support, police have aligned themselves with the president’s flagrant racism and callous disregard for the nation’s people of color. This alliance has made them a surrogate for the fury so many Americans feel toward the White House and portrays them as the president’s accomplices.”

He addresses the elusive issue of culture change. “Then there is the inertia. When it comes to reform, America’s police leaders have long been content to kick the can down the road because making real change is so hard. In most cities, chiefs of police are hired for their ability to communicate with the public, to reassure people and to know what to say to skeptics. These are important skills, but they do not equal an ability to reach deep into an organization that has an entrenched culture and a reactionary union, and bend it toward modernity.”

That’s why there are Chief Culture Officers in large organizations. I know, I’ve been one. It requires a unique ability, one that is desperately needed in this unfinished struggle. Not so we can finish it. No, not at all. Actually, so we can begin it.

The ability to belong to a culture, from inside that culture, and witness to it, from outside that culture, at the same time is what’s needed for culture change. It’s traversing a knife-edge, and hoping with all you’ve got that you don’t fall off it onto either side. It’s holding the middle between the tensions of opposites.

Exactly what the top leadership in this country cannot do. Because it will not.

Joe Biden tore into the president, accusing him of “fanning the flame of hate.” It’s an accurate statement. “‘Donald Trump has turned this country into a battlefield riven by old resentments and fresh fears,’ Mr. Biden said, speaking against a backdrop of American flags at Philadelphia’s City Hall. ‘Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be? Is this what we want to pass on to our children and our grandchildren? Fear, anger, finger pointing, rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self-absorption, selfishness?’”

“The country, Mr. Biden said, was ‘crying out for leadership.’”

This is what a Chief Culture Officer does. Lead. “One of the most famous quotes about the press comes from a fictional 19th century Irish bartender named Mr. Dooley,” and it applies here to the work of a Chief Culture Officer, or, this is how I did the job.

“On October 7, 1893, Chicago Evening Post journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne introduced his readers to the character of Mr. Dooley in a newspaper column. He wrote, ‘The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’”

The afflicted need comfort, Beloved, and God willing, the comfortable will finally be afflicted enough to look for ways to make change. A Chief Culture Officer uses one word over and over again, for both sides of every issue brought to her. That word is, of course, and. It applies from the inside and it applies from the outside.

There are demonstrations all over our country. CCO: And? Implied is ... what do you want? To do about them? To address them? To have be your legacy in the face of them? What are you willing to take on? And sustain?

“A week after Mr. Floyd’s death, Minnesota said it had started a human rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, citing evidence of systematic discrimination against people of color, particularly African-Americans.”

A human rights investigation.

Perfect. Not police investigation. Not internal affairs. Not a lawsuit.

Human rights.

That’s really what’s a stake here, Beloved. If you’re a human, they’re your rights, too. Until we are all able to acknowledge our shared humanity—which is one thing, we will be unable to address our false, and promulgated, divisions.

A small ray of sunshine: “For months on end, health care workers across the United States have cared for hundreds of thousands of people sickened by the coronavirus and even lost their own lives to the pandemic. They have also seen the virus infect and kill black people in the country at disproportionately high rates. And just as New Yorkers have offered their applause in appreciation of those workers each evening, on Tuesday night the tables were turned and it was medical professionals offering their applause in support of the protests that have swept the country.” There’s an and, in action.

Mr. Biden again, “‘The president held up the Bible at St. John’s Church yesterday,’ Mr. Biden, a practicing Catholic, said, referencing the photographs for which Mr. Trump posed. ‘I just wish he opened it once in a while instead of brandishing it. If he opened it, he could have learned something. That we’re all called to love one another as we love ourselves.’”

You know, very few people know this, but when the Nazarene Rabbi suggested that we love one another in John 13:34—the proper quote ends, as I have loved you—he was talking to 13 people. Thirteen. That’s all. Do the math, Beloved. You, your parents, any siblings, friends, spouse, your own children. You’ll get to 13 pretty fast.

Sweeping statements and political speeches are one thing, but if we want the deep culture change that is needed to begin the real path of the struggle for black freedom—and remember, that all of us and all of our freedoms are at stake—then we’ll start right where we are, with our thirteen people, and begin to ask the hard questions.

Here’s a word to get you going. And?

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  

© Dr. Susan Corso 2020 All rights reserved

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