“Faith Defined by Radical Compassion”

“Faith Defined by Radical Compassion”    Sept 23, 2018   Dr. Roger Ray     

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Paul Gilbert and Choden writing in Mindful Compassion: “However, it has been understood within the Mahayana Buddhist tradition for a long time that what really changes the mind is the practice of compassion, which is the second main skill. Furthermore, in order for deep change to take root, we need to apply both mindfulness and compassion together, as these skills work together like the two wings of a bird. This is also the understanding that is emerging from both neuroscience and psychology – that compassion transforms the mind, but mindfulness provides the basis and stability for such change.”

I keep an autographed picture of Jon Stewart by my desk. I have said many times over the past few years that I aspire to one day be as good at preaching as this Jewish comedian was on TV for very many years. Stewart was able to say things with such naked honesty and with the persuasion of cutting humor that I believe he should be regarded as having been one of the great preachers of our age.

One of my favorite quotes from Stewart is this: If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies. That’s witty but it is also painfully true. So many people in our culture say that they are “spiritual but not religious.” And I resonate with a lot of what is behind that sentiment, but I also feel compelled to ask, “how you do practice your spirituality?”  Because, if what you mean when you say that you are “spiritual” is that you have a smug and superior attitude and that’s about it, then maybe what you really mean is that you are neither religious nor spiritual. 

I have known lots of people who like to identify themselves as being Buddhist but mostly what that means is that they watched a PBS special on the Dalai Lama. 

I can be as critical of organized religion as anyone but then I have spent years in the trenches and I have the scars to prove it. To simply be dismissive of things you don’t really understand is more about being a bigot than it is about being spiritual.

We are just finishing a discussion of this book which I highly recommend to our viewers, Paul Gilbert’s “Mindful Compassion,” in which he looks at certain Buddhists beliefs and practices from the vantage point of a psychologist. A vital argument in the book that I believe is applicable to people of all progressive faith practices, is that a genuine spiritual path involves both mindfulness and a practice of radical compassion. The authors get a bit deep into the weeds in definitions at times but for short-hand’s sake, please allow me to say that mindfulness, a careful and attentive awareness of one’s surroundings and the life and experiences of those around you, is an aspect of what it means to be spiritual but for it to take root it must be married to a practice of compassion, as if the two were two wings of a bird. While each has inherent value, and may help to enhance your life, it takes both to be a spiritual person.

But I want to read that through the lens of Jon Stewart’s proverb: that if you only practice compassion when your life is not really under any substantive stress, then you are not really talking about compassion as a spiritual value, it is more of a hobby. That may mean that you are the person who will put your shopping cart back into the corral in the parking lot, but you are not running into a burning building to rescue a child. If your practice of compassion doesn’t risk your own comfort, or safety, or assets, then what you are really talking about is being polite or being civil.

This is Molly Tibbetts. You may remember having heard about her in the news last month. She was an Iowa college student who went missing after having gone out for an evening run. Her bloodied body was found in a corn field where her remains had been hidden under a pile of leaves for nearly a month. 

Forensic evidence led quickly to the arrest of an undocumented farm worker who had lived in the area for

several years. Cristhian Bahena Rivera confessed when he was arrested. He had seen Tibbetts running, he stopped his car and ran along beside her. When she took out her cell phone and warned him that she would call the police, he became enraged and he abducted and murdered her.

Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, called the family and expressed her condolences, adding that our immigration system is broken because it had allowed this “predator” to live in their state. Iowa Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley also sent condolences and called for action on illegal immigration. Vice President Mike Pence and President Trump spoke about the Tibbetts’ murder as being the product of a disgraceful and broken immigration system. 

Even the disgraced Fox News talk show host, Bill O’Reilly, took to Twitter, to say that this horrible fate would not have befallen Tibbetts if only we had more strict immigration enforcement. Of course, there are about 17,000 murders committed in America every year and very few of them are committed by undocumented immigrants but conservatives only seem to get interested when they can make political capital out of a tragedy. 

One of O’Reilly’s twitter followers, Delilah O’Malley, of Brentwood, TN, replied to the man who had paid out more than $30 million in sexual harassment settlements that Tibbetts would be alive if only men understood that “no means no.” Let the people say, “Amen.”

I know that at a certain level that it is just as wrong to personalize a tragedy like this as it is for politicians to use it to further their political hysteria. But as the father of a beautiful young daughter who goes hiking, mountain climbing, skiing, and snowboarding in the Colorado Rockies, who believes, and I agree, that she has the right to go hiking or camping all alone just as much as any man does . . . still, if something were to happen to her, I cannot imagine how I could keep from going to the dark side in demands for retribution. 

I guess that’s where we all learn whether we have values or just hobbies. If we are spiritual or just well mannered. If compassion is something we choose to live by or if it is just a condescending claim to civility.

This is Rob Tibbetts, Molly’s dad. When Trump and others were using Molly’s death as a talking point in their stump speeches calling for Americans to “Build that Wall” and blaming undocumented immigrants for unspeakable crimes, Rob Tibbetts wrote a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register. It is too long to read in its entirety, but I want to read a significant portion of it to you. The father of the tragically murdered college student said:

The person who is accused of taking Mollie’s life is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people. To suggest otherwise is a lie. Justice in my America is blind. This person will receive a fair trial, as it should be. If convicted, he will face the consequences society has set. Beyond that, he deserves no more attention.   …

To the Hispanic community, my family stands with you and offers its heartfelt apology. That you’ve been beset by the circumstances of Mollie’s death is wrong. We treasure the contribution you bring to the American tapestry in all its color and melody. And yes, we love your food. …

My stepdaughter, whom Mollie loved so dearly, is Latina. Her sons — Mollie’s cherished nephews and my grandchildren — are Latino. That means I am Hispanic. I am African. I am Asian. I am European. My blood runs from every corner of the Earth because I am American. As an American, I have one tenet: to respect every citizen of the world and actively engage in the ongoing pursuit to form a more perfect union. …

Instead, let’s turn against racism in all its ugly manifestations both subtle and overt. Let’s turn toward each other with all the compassion we gave Mollie. Let’s listen, not shout. Let’s build bridges, not walls. Let’s celebrate our diversity rather than argue over our differences. I can tell you, when you’ve lost your best friend, differences are petty and meaningless.

I don’t know what has happened in Mr. Tibbetts life that could have prepared him to be able to make such a saintly statement just 10 days after the body of his slain daughter was found. In fact, honestly, I am not sure that I could muster the moral strength to even want to be as charitable as he is being about this tragedy. But we have seen it in others. 

A few years ago, Dylann Roof, went into a Bible Study at the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina to start a race war by murdering nine innocent black people, including the church’s pastor, in that historic church. But when he appeared in court for his first bond hearing, the survivors of the shooting were there, not to confront him with hate but to offer him both their grief and their forgiveness along with their sincere prayers. I’m not sure I could find that kind of stuff inside of me at a time like that, but I know that is the real thing, that is the stuff the world is needing.

Charleston could have erupted into a bloody, neighborhood to neighborhood, race war. I rushed down there with a gift from our church and rather than a war I found the streets lined with floral arrangements and tokens of both sympathy and peace. They were not allowing people into the church when I arrived because they didn’t want any spectators coming to gawk at the blood stains and bullet holes from the massacre, but a church member met me on the sidewalk and we embraced and shared a moment, surrounded by the good will of a city that had the sanity and the spirituality to absorb the grief without retribution. 

Scott Peck talks about how, when there is a hurricane, that the children of the rich work side by side with the children of the poor, filling sand bags, and forming barriers to save their town from flooding but as soon as the crisis is past, the old lines of segregation snap back into place. 

What we keep coming back here looking for, week after week, is the kind of character, the mindfulness and the compassion, to be able to break down those familiar lines of separation, of prejudice, that great wall of ethnic insanity, that divides us, without a Dylan Roof, without a hurricane, or without the loss of a charming young woman like Molly Tibbetts. Could members of a liberal mostly white church fully embrace the members of a mostly black evangelical church without some well of grief to call them together?

Could we muster outrage at the lead tainted water given to children in Flint, even if we live a thousand miles away with clean water on tap? Can we find compassion for native Americans now cleaning up hundreds of thousands of gallons of spilled oil on their reservation lands from a pipeline they tried to stop in the first place? 

 Can we spread our wings of compassion and mindfulness and say with Rob Tibbetts that I am Hispanic. I am African. I am Asian. I am European. My blood runs from every corner of the Earth

Because we have put away the ignorant prejudice of race, and we refuse to blame an entire nation for the criminal offenses of the few. 

We are being invited to be united through hatred and fear of Mexicans, of Muslims, of Native Americans, of minorities, and even to loath the timidly outspoken victims of decades old sex crimes. 

We will not live chained in the darkness of prejudice. We have wings and we are ready to fly.