At a recent party, a friend was way down.
George W. Bush had ruined his Christmas. He was so upset about the
state of the world that he could hardly function. There is so much
wrong — how can people celebrate? The war in Iraq is wrong.
The trade deficit is wrong. The government can’t even take
care of people after
a hurricane.
I suggested to my friend that he need not take
responsibility for the behavior of the entire United States
government, then circulated to another conversation group. But I
found that it, too, was focused on politics, wrongness, and the
benefits of outrage. “I’m outraged,” the speaker
said. “Why aren’t more people outraged?” I soon
said a weak “Merry Christmas,” not loud enough to make
anybody angrier than they already were, and headed off into the
silent night.
As one who has spent a fair amount of effort trying to shake people out of their complacency,
I worry sometimes that I no longer get angry enough, because the world
— even Springfield — is full of outrages. Yet more often I
think those who are always angry are naïvely thinking that
government is a friend gone slightly astray, rather than the cunning,
powerful adversary that it is. A first step away from despair is to get
real. At the highest levels, government is corrupt; at the lowest
levels, it is incompetent. At all levels it is driven more by politics
than by morality. This is why we say “If you want peace, work for
justice.” It takes more than anger; it takes work. Both the left and the right are obsessed with
wrongness. What is wrong with America? What is wrong with our
schools? A different approach is to focus on ripeness. Where is
change about to happen? What’s about to pop? What are the
possibilities about to be born? Who’s doing what new thing
that just might catch on? There’s a risk in shifting from
wrongness to ripeness. First of all, there are more things wrong
than ripe — and what looks ripe could turn out to be rotten.
But we all look for prophets who can read the signs of the times
and tell us when the peace movement is about to break out, or how
neighborhoods are struggling back to life, or why
dedicated teachers are beginning to make a difference in poverty
schools. The best place to find ripening is in the
nongovernment sector, in the nonprofit organizations that seem to
spring up around every overwhelming problem and lost cause there
is. These last few days of the year are a good time to send in some
contributions; it will help them along and give you a 2005 tax
deduction. Most people say that they get so many requests for
handouts in the mail that they can’t possibly answer them
all, but it might be worth a try. Every other area of my budget is
blown — why not overdo charitable contributions, too?
“Give more than you planned to” is a motto that
won’t steer us wrong. Let’s see. Friends of the Sangamon
Valley (www.fosv.org), for years an advocate of wise land
stewardship, is acquiring and protecting natural lands.
There’s ripeness there. Inner City Mission (innercitymission.net), the homeless
shelter in my neighborhood, quietly goes about its work of housing
women and children and changing lives. Communities in Schools
(www.cis-sangamon.org) gives life to the idea that getting more adults
to volunteer in schools will help both the schoolchildren and the
adults. Lincoln Memorial Garden (www.lmgnc.org) preserves a beautiful
place and hosts 50,000 visitors a year, strictly on private funds.
There are tons of places that need your end-of-year dollars and the
encouragement they bring. How will giving a few dollars to good causes
address the wrongness of George W. Bush? It puts our energy on the
positive side, the side of hope, and joins forces with others who
are passionate but not despairing. “We must cultivate a
tender heart,” said Martin Luther King Jr. “In
nonviolent resistance we have a way that combines tough-mindedness
with soft-heartedness. It avoids the complacency and do-nothingness
of the soft-minded, and the bitterness and violence of the
hard-hearted.”
This article appears in Dec 29, 2005 – Jan 4, 2006.
