Still Learning to Tell a Story

(Still) Learning to Tell a Story

by David Ketchum August 27, 2023
Watch the video HERE

        Today is my last sermon as co-pastor at our little church. While I have never been particularly sentimental, a big part of my life has been taken up with reflective practice. So this week, I’ve been looking back as a way of looking forward, thinking about and learning from the years we’ve spent together. 

I first attended our church in August 2015. It was a particularly difficult time, not just in my life, but for many of us. My family was feeling increasingly alienated and out of place in southwest Missouri, and we were desperate enough to try going to church again. When we walked into the building, we heard the musicians warming up and saw that all the songs that day would be from Monty Python.  I’m not sure if Monty Python songs can truly be said to make us feel at home, but it did make us feel hopeful that this was somewhere we could belong. We kept coming back, and, not many weeks later, we were at home enough that Dr. Ray recruited us as liturgists.  

I have notes of what we said that Sunday in November, and it was interesting to reconnect with what I felt then. I expressed a conviction that remains with me: what is most important is how we, as individuals and as communities, care for one another and our world. My spiritual practices have value inasmuch as they integrate inner and outer transformation. I am interested in how religious beliefs and institutions help or hinder the development of social and ecological justice and lasting peace, and what we can learn from each other. I aspire to be open-hearted and willing to encounter truth and wisdom in each person and experience I meet, in resistance to the violent patriarchal, racist, capitalist fragmentation of our world and psyches, and to do this in community. 

That vision has stayed with me, but that is not by accident. It takes work to nourish these aspirations, especially when they are easily drowned out by other visions and voices. We cannot escape the narratives that surround us, stories told by those in power, in ways that preserve their power. And for those of us who had to, or still need to, recover from the old formulations of sin and shame have often worked to sap the life of our movements for social change through preoccupation with straining the gnats of personal guilt and trendy controversies while swallowing the camels of systemic injustice. It is an ongoing practice to fully embrace the stories and aspirations that stir our hearts. That is the challenge and the opportunity for any of us who take up the vision to come together, embody a beloved community, and ever more truly share peace with one another. 

So it wasn’t surprising to me that I took up this theme in the first sermon I preached here, in April 2016. It was a reflection on religious naturalism, storytelling as meaning-making, and the aspiration to be a community of justice and wholeness. I gave most of my time to the story of Saul-becoming-Paul from the book of Acts, which was part of the lectionary reading of the day. But looking back, what stands out most to me is that attention to what stories we remember and how we remember them. We mainly do this effortlessly, unconsciously, because this is how we make sense of the world and our place in it, “imbuing the ordinary acts of life with purpose, even in the face of [our] own extraordinary smallness, or the intractability of systemic injustice, or the vastness of time and space.” (Re)turning to bell hooks’ description of “collective black self-recovery,” she encouraged us to know and remember that -

 “Memory need not be a passive reflection, a nostalgic longing for things to be as they once were; it can function as a way of knowing and learning from the past, …. It can serve as a catalyst for self-recovery.  … We need to keep alive the memory of our struggles against racism so that we can concretely chart how far we have come and where we want to go, recalling those places, those times, those people that gave a sense of direction.” (Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, 40)

This type of re-membering is important for all of us working for justice and peace, and especially important when the dominant voices in our society are telling a different story. Take, for instance, the popularity of this summer’s controversial country music hits, such as Jason Aldean’s “Try that in a Small Town” and Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.” There are plenty of analyses out there that address these songs, so I won’t take that up here. Instead, let’s note how they carry lyrics and images that resonate with people, that help make sense of the world while tapping their toes. But while Anthony’s song title takes aim at wealthy politicians, he also repeats harmful stereotypes, singing: “Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat / And the obese milkin’ welfare.” He manages to shame both receiving food assistance and being fat, two easy narratives that are often used to shift blame and attention away from systems of economic injustice. 

How does such a song sound to the people actually affected by those injustices? In one response to Anthony’s song, Hannah Anderson shared her experiences in her recent article at Christianity Today. Her husband was a pastor and her family was, in her words, “the epitome of conservative values.” But they still struggled financially, working hard and still going hungry. She described the mixed relief that came when they accessed SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).   “At first, a weight lifted from our shoulders,” she wrote. But a new weight replaced it - shame: “I felt it creep in the first time I used my EBT card, and it grew each time I ran into a congregant or neighbor at the store. … Today, a decade later, I can see how shame dominated my experience of SNAP … .” The real shame was that a family couldn’t afford to eat, but our society has persistently avoided wrestling with that story in favor of blaming the poor, so that a mother like Anderson felt compelled to keep their situation and suffering a secret. Stories are powerful, even if they are false.

 

       While a lot of attention has been given to the country music hits carrying these kinds of messages, Aja Romano, writing for Vox, also pointed out that other musical groups “may not have the sound of country music, but they seem to have tapped the same well of reactionary extremist conservative ire.”  As an example, Romano described the music of  Tom MacDonald and Adam Calhoun, whose lyrics are filled with “virulent racist, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and particularly hateful anti-trans lyrics.” I looked at a few of their songs, and they came across to me as telling a particular story crafted especially for aggrieved white people. For example, in “American Flags,” they raise an alarm: “My people love this country and we’re under attack … If you man enough, come stand with us, take USA back.” And, as Romano noted, the lyrics specifically cast vulnerable communities as the Big Bad Guys. For example, in back-to-back lines they target transgender people first, including all of us nonbinary/gender-expansive folks: “Never hit a lady but it’s pretty hard to tell if you’re a girl / Or a they, them, theirs, these, that, those.” They then immediately pivot to people who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality: “I ain’t never gonna take a knee for the anthem, smack ‘em / I don’t give a damn, can’t stand ‘em.”

        And when I say target, this is both symbolic and literal, because the song is also an anthem to gun violence: “Ima shoot at somethin’ / Why you think we own these guns? So we can just go do some huntin’?” That song, by the way, hit number 1 this summer “on two Billboard music charts - Rap Digital Songs, R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Songs.” Its popularity is a reflection of the stories that people tell to explain their suffering and anger, with lyrics that resonate. In turn, the success of these songs reinforces those narratives. As Romano wrote, “none of this is about country artists … ultimately, none of it is about the music at all.” And at least part of what this is about is channeling outrage to re-establish cultural narratives that favor a specific type of people, to the exclusion of anyone they label as a threat - anyone who isn’t “My people.” 

We have witnessed a similar trend in teaching history. We’ve talked several times about this over the years, but Ron DeSantis has really gone the extra mile this summer. Last month, while speaking with reporters, he described the ongoing revision of the history of slavery, saying that the curriculum is “probably going to show” how “some of the folks … eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” To put it another way, DeSantis claimed that slavery benefited at least some people, acting like a job training program that helped them in a later career. This is a horrible retelling of the history of slavery, diminishing its horrors and inherent violence.

        Thankfully, many folks have been pushing back, including Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is also “the only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate”. While campaigning in Iowa, Scott said:

“As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom was slavery, … . There is no silver lining … . … What slavery was really about [was] separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating. So, I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that.”

       Unfortunately, DeSantis doubled down during his own stop in Iowa, replying that: “part of the reason our country has struggled is because D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left.”  He offered his version as a defense, saying: “The way you lead is to fight back against the lies, is to speak the truth. So I'm here defending my state of Florida against false accusations and against lies. And we’re going to continue to speak the truth.”

       I have not understood exactly what lies are being told, when the reports about Florida’s curriculum are largely just that – reports. Perhaps this is why Jamelle Bouie, writing in the New York Times, titled his July 28, 2023 article   “Ron DeSantis and the State Where History Goes to Die.” Bouie insightfully appealed to David Blight’s observation that: “A segregated society demanded a segregated historical memory. The many myths and legends fashioned out of the reconciliationist vision provided the superstructure of Civil War memory, but its base was white supremacy in both its moderate and virulent forms.” Bouie concluded: 

“The history we teach to students in the present is as much about the country we hope to be as it is a record of the country we once were. A curriculum that distorts the truth of past injustice is meant, ultimately, for a country that excludes in the present.”

So what are we to do? We return to hooks’ insight that “Memory …  can function as a way of knowing and learning from the past, …. It can serve as a catalyst for self-recovery.” In other words, we need to tell our stories, sing our songs, and re-member our communities. Anderson reflected on how vital this kind of re-telling can be: 

“Though I now realize my shame was unfounded, that did not make it any less real or any less harmful to my soul. And while none of us can singlehandedly dismantle the larger narratives that encouraged it, each of us can make small adjustments to ensure we’re not reinforcing those patterns. / We can take care of how we speak about programs that provide needed care for the poor, … . We can extend the freedom we enjoy in our own food choices to those who are dependent on social safety nets. … though we may differ in our political preferences, we can love our neighbors as we love ourselves.” 

“Loving our neighbors as ourselves” is one of these transformative narratives in a society drenched with images and encouragement to hate and kill, to take a gun and “shoot at somethin’.” But that means that this is another commitment that requires constant practice. In everyday life, it can be necessary to just shrug off the reality that millions of people are daydreaming of shooting you and the people you love. But the hatred does cast a shadow. We are left with a terrible choice: silence and oppress ourselves, keep our heads down so we draw as little attention as possible and hopefully avoid becoming a literal target, or speak up, perhaps loudly and persistently, risking being misunderstood on one hand and objects of violence on the other. I think, for most of us, we navigate a blurry spectrum between these poles, trying to judge how much we can say and be ourselves at any given time. It’s tiring. 

Which is why the community aspect is also so important, and why I found myself gratefully, and a little surprisingly, part of a church again when I entered those doors and heard Monty Python’s greatest hits. Please forgive me for quoting myself, but I think I got this right back in 2016, and it is good for me to hear it again:  

“We need communities, and we need to support communities, who care about justice, who understand systems of oppression and domination, to take up the pen, the brush, the stage, the drum, the microphone. We need all manner of art to help us think about these questions and stumble toward an answer. We need folk stories and historians. We need Role Playing Games. We need good friends and good conversations over cups of tea or on long walks. We need the singing of songs and the telling of tales. 

“We need to learn to listen, to interrogate our own complicity with the way things are, so that we can resist. We need to learn to tell our own stories, to find out how we got here and what we really think, so that we can understand and then resist the ways in which we’ve been conditioned into acting a part that often contributes to oppression and marginalization of others. We need to listen to the stories of others, so we learn we are not alone, and so we can understand how our stories and the systems of domination intersect, and so we can push the boundaries of our own understanding. We need to read outside what is familiar to us, especially to read and listen at the margins when we have become accustomed to seeing the world according to the Powers that Be. And we need to be reminded of what’s gone before us, to be proud and celebrate and to be sad and grieve. We need to learn what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and why. In other words, we need to hear stories where we are … on the right side of justice and grace, discerning what to do next. And we need to hear the stories where we are … in desperate need of a painful change. … In the hearing and telling of stories, wisdom can be born in us, in our communities and as a community. But we have to pay attention. We have to listen not just to the stories, but for what they mean and how they change us. We can choose the stories we hear and the stories we live with attention to what we care about, with attention to kindness, justice, and community.” 

         In this spirit, I want to close by offering a poem I wrote many years ago about leaving fundamentalist Christianity: 

 A Sower Went Out

 they always taught me

that Jesus' story about the seeds

and the soils was about thinking

the right things, agreeing with

the right people, falling into line,

measuring goodness with compliance.

but that's not how anything grows.

the old prairies here knew better,

knew that the soil needed the plants

as much as the other way 'round,

knew that the life in the soil was

a community of living and dying,

of bugs and bacteria as well as

beautiful blooms opened to the sun,

knew that the good soil had roots

reaching down fourteen feet

so that there was always

a place to hold the rain, to hold

the life when the dry times came.

you want to plant something

that will grow a hundredfold

in love and not in greed?

give up on tidy rows and telling

others what to do and think

and take a lesson from the

little earth that's left that we

haven't tried to squeeze for

profit or crush into submission.

for when the human heart finds

itself in a place like that,

no one has to tell it what to do,

and no one can stop it from

giving forth its own small

offering of love, or grace,

or justice, or truth.

        This is our ongoing work. We live with the aspiration to love one another in a society that profits from our alienation; hoping for community in a society that encourages the dislocation of our relationships; and nourishing a commitment to love and justice in a society where everything and every one is disposable. We look to each other for courage and grace to transcend the ever-present poisons of hatred and greed, to cultivate a boundless love, and to embody that love in our everyday expressions of kindness and the sharing of life together.

        I am grateful to have added a few pages to the story of this community, to help transform the stories that dominate our society and to “turn it around, offer kindness instead of hate, and justice instead of a tired resignation to the way things are.” Our banners boldly remind us that we will not stand idly by, that we can make a difference, and that “Our own, very earthly voices can call one another to a more beautiful and just and altogether wonderful way of life.” Thank you for helping make a space where anyone and everyone can do that. My heart has benefited from having the opportunity to be myself and give forth my own small offering of justice and love. Thank you. 

The Limits of Shame

The Limits of Shame

David Ketchum
August 20, 2023 

Watch the video HERE

       Last June, I was participating in a workshop dedicated to racial justice and wholeness, especially designed for white folks. During a discussion session, one participant recommended harnessing the power of shame to move us in the direction of justice. For proof of the effectiveness of this approach, he mentioned a study on anti-cigarette smoking campaigns, and that the only effective campaigns were those that utilized shame. It felt like quite the leap to me to move from an anti-smoking campaign to anti-racist work, but, even if that application could be justified, I felt immediately curious and suspicious of how he was framing the data. 

        My hesitation was twofold: both from my personal experience and my understanding of social science research. These spheres overlap,  influence, and inform one another, but, for me, the personal experience came first. For those of you who have listened before, you already know that I grew up in what could be called a “chronically-shaming environment.” This was centered around my fundamentalist Christian community, especially when it came issues related to gender and sexuality. But the shame began earlier, before any awareness I could have of those particular topics. As I’ve shared before, 

“… it felt like the concept of sin was weaponized against those who were outside of the dominant culture, because of who they were, what they believed, or how they behaved. You might have heard my story, for example, of how our pastor took us kids aside and had us pass around square cut nails and a crown of thorns (from locust tree branches), letting us poke our fingers and hands while he solemnly described how each of us murdered Jesus. ‘Even if everyone else had been perfect, Jesus still would have had to die this horrible death because of your sins. You put Jesus on the cross.’ It didn’t seem to make much of a difference to some of the kids, but it rather terrified me. I felt horrible for just being alive. As I grew up, anything I did that was outside of our religious community’s expectations could then be used to prove to me how sinful I was and how much I deserved to suffer for it.” 

        So shame was given to me as a lens through which to evaluate every thought, word, or action I took. I recognized my own first three decades of religious and cultural experiences in Dr. Alison Downie’s description of:  

 “the potential for Christian communities to create climates of chronic shame and cause religious trauma … . In this way, the religious teachings themselves, especially when communicated in chronically shaming environments, are traumatizing. In this approach, Christian religious trauma is not an added element to traumas of domestic, physical, or sexual abuse by a religious person or leader. Instead, the source of the trauma is formative experience of participating in Christianity.” (“Christian Shame and Religious Trauma”)

Because it is formative, the shame became part of my identity: “I felt horrible for just being alive.” And because my very existence represented a constant temptation, a flirtation with evil or a descent into damnation, I struggled with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. This created a psychological situation where everything was – somehow and always – all my fault. As Downie also points out, “The most insidious aspect of Christian shaming is that it is routinely and consistently presented and justified as love.” And in my experience, shaming was done sincerely. That is, people truly believed that using shame in this way was an expression of their care. I do not doubt that the people who trained me in shame also felt affection for me, and believed they were acting in my best interest. After all, they likely were raised in a similar way, passing on a cycle of shame that alienates us from our own bodies and minds. Downie described the impacts, particularly on children when they “are taught that their experience of harm is not harm but an expression of love”: 

"Those formed to believe that violent harm is an expression of love are thereby prevented from the possibility of considering their harm as abuse. They already ‘know’ it is a demonstration of love. Shame can also be understood through a lens of hermeneutical injustice. In chronic Christian shame, those experiencing the pain of shame are also taught not to know what their bodies tell them, the truth of their own experience. This harm must be understood not only as deprivation of knowledge but as formation in a hermeneutical habitus of shame as a way of knowing encompassing all relation to self, others, world, and God.”

“Shame as a way of knowing” is a good description of my experience in fundamentalist Christianity. The familial and religious authorities in my life had always let me know that they were afraid that, in the absence of shame, we would indulge in all sorts of terrible behavior. This was the justification for shame as a way of knowing – it was always worth the price. Jesus may have died on the cross to rescue us from Hell, but it was shame that really saved us. We could not trust ourselves; we needed shame in order to know what was wrong and feel bad enough to not do it. Failing that, we needed shame in order to return to the official version of Truth after we - inevitably - failed. Turning again to Downie’s description: 

“the only knowledge of self permitted in chronic Christian shame is that which conforms to the religious authority which establishes truth. All else is condemned as either sinful or false. In such contexts, truth is always and only external. Truth is received by submission to authority, by conformity.”

        This is my personal experience with shame. It dominated and could have destroyed my life. I wrestled with it. I resisted it. I eventually freed myself and found healing from it. But also, without a doubt, I was shaped by it. I had to devote years of intentional healing and growing to recognize the harm and abuse; to untangle shame from love and care; and to learn to extend that love and care to my body. I had to weed out every inclination and habit of shame “as a way of knowing,” so that the kindness, compassion, joy, and wisdom that also lived in my heart could be unburdened and become boundless.

        So you can imagine the alarm bells that started ringing internally when I heard the well-meaning workshop participant advocate that we should utilize shame in our social justice movements and strategies. Still, I work hard to keep an open heart and mind, to listen to others. I realized that perhaps my experience of shame was not the only one, and I should at least practice due diligence and chase down the research he referred to. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for me to find analysis of the study he had mentioned, and the title of the article was already more nuanced: “Shame-Based Appeals in a Tobacco Control Public Health Campaign: Potential Harms and Benefits,” by Dr. Cati Brown-Johnson and Dr. Judith Prochaska. As a note, let me emphasize here that I will necessarily be discussing smoking cigarettes for the next few minutes, but what I hope we will be focused on is the role and function of shame.

        The authors frame their analysis by acknowledging that the possibility of using shame as a technique to control human behavior was worth exploring because of the high costs of smoking. In the USA alone, almost 500,00 people die every year  in smoking related deaths, and associated medical costs are almost $170 billion. And as Brown-Johnson and Prochaska point out, globally: 

“Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death worldwide, responsible for 1 in 10 deaths globally (>5 million a year). Tobacco use adversely impacts not just smokers, but also those around them through secondhand smoke exposure. Given the significant personal and societal costs of tobacco use, any strategy to reduce smoking should be considered.”

The primary study given this consideration by the authors was a “tobacco control ad campaign” conducted by Amonini et al, which used focus groups and interviews with former smokers to identify and develop social isolation themes associated with smoking, such as “you feel like a ‘leper.’” They used those themes to create and test an ad prototype to discourage people from smoking, and finally launched a public campaign using a shame-based ad. The results showed some promise: “a majority of respondents self-reported in the first several weeks that they reduced cigarette consumption (36%), attempted cessation (16%), or quit (2%).” So this was the basis for the recommendation I heard in June: shame works! Or, at least, shame kind of works! Shame was at least correlated with a desire to change, and so, it would be easy to conclude, we can – and probably should! – use shame as a strategy in our social justice movements. 

        But this is not the whole story, and we thankfully do not even get through the introduction before the authors wisely recommend caution: 

 “While suggestive as a promising public health approach, the potential for harm associated with an emphasis on shame also bears consideration, particularly when in relation to a behavior sustained through addiction and increasingly concentrated among marginalized groups.” 

This is a crucial point. At least in industrialized countries, the people most likely to smoke “are largely characterized by lower income and education, ethnic minority status, and co-occurring mental and physical health disorders.” Anyone who belongs to a marginalized community will likely recognize this. As John Sharpe observed in “The Tie Between Oppression and Addiction,” “oppression is often a traumatic experience,” easily leading to “feelings of inferiority and loss of self”. And since oppressive systems are usually intractable, and chronic systems lead to chronic symptoms, they bring significantly increased risks of both mental health issues and substance use disorders. “Through repeated or severe instances of oppression,” Sharpe writes, “mental distress increases and the likelihood of using substances to cope also increases.” 

So what happens when a public health campaign, with the best intentions, weaponizes shame in order to influence people to stop smoking? The shame can act to reinforce prejudice against already vulnerable groups. In this case, campaigns shaming smoking will, in turn, largely impact marginalized communities, both in how they view themselves and how others view them. Internally, Doctors Brown-Johnson and Prochaska pointed out that shame-based public health campaigns can lead to adverse effects, such as isolation, hiding tobacco use from others, and increased stigma when relapsed. Although most smokers experienced social stigma (such as “glaring looks” and insults), in a small amount of cases, smokers even experienced blatant discrimination, such as being denied employment or housing. So we have a situation where marginalized groups are most likely to use tobacco, and, thanks to shame, tobacco use can then be used as further justification for their marginalization. As Brown-Johnson and Prochaska wrote, “interventions that risk stigmatizing could backfire by exacerbating health disparities rather than reducing them.” 

        One example of this kind of backfiring can be found in a 2019 study by Clarissa Cortland, Janessa Shapiro, Iris Guzman, and Lara Ray. Their double-blind, randomized trial exposed one group of smokers to a control message and another to a message that relied on negative stereotypes of smoking. Both groups were given a financial incentive, earning a small amount of money for each minute they refrained from smoking. But instead of being discouraged from smoking by negative stereotypes, those participants tended to light up earlier in the test and showed that:   “Messages that elicit negative stereotypes of smokers operated as ‘smoking-promoting messages’ in the context of our controlled laboratory investigation.” 

     Approaches to working for social change that rely on shame and humiliation, then, tend to sacrifice long-term well-being for getting short-term results. This was the case in the “formative shaming” that I experienced, which traded my long-term well-being for controlling my behavior in the short-term. But shame-based approaches also carry a significant risk of backfiring, actually encouraging the behavior they seek to control. They can even lead to making a conflict more intractable over time, sometimes reinforcing the view of another party’s ill-will, leading to resentment, and sometimes reinforcing the view that all the worst things we believe about ourselves are actually true. 

Understanding this can help us move forward. It is a reality that humans are capable of experiencing shame, so it is vital that we develop skills, resources, and cultures that help us respond to shame in a way that heals instead of harms. One aspect of this that is increasingly emphasized by social scientists is to recognize the differences between shame and guilt. For example, Annette Kämmerer, in her article “The Scientific Underpinnings and Impacts of Shame,” wrote that: 

“People often speak of shame and guilt as if they were the same, but they are not. Like shame, guilt occurs when we transgress moral, ethical or religious norms and criticize ourselves for it. The difference is that when we feel shame, we view ourselves in a negative light (‘I did something terrible!’), whereas when we feel guilt, we view a particular action negatively (‘I did something terrible!’). We feel guilty because our actions affected someone else, and we feel responsible.” 

There is a lot to unpack here. First, we need to go out of our way to identify our social norms, with awareness to how those norms impact our personal and collective wellbeing. Many of our social norms run on automatic; we’ve inherited certain beliefs and behaviors, without examining how those beliefs and behaviors impact us. This is where our ongoing work of critical social theory and similar tools comes into play, and that is essential for our long-term wellbeing. Our norms need to reflect our mutual commitment to human and ecological thriving, and they need to be based and adapted to our best scientific and creative knowledge of how we can all thrive. Continuously changing social norms to align with human potential for wisdom and compassion is an essential part of healing and preventing the harm that comes from shame. 

But along the way, we also need to transform how we respond to when social norms are broken. Using shame as a coercive tool to control others is a social norm that itself must be transformed. We need to learn how to work with shame with understanding instead of blame, with kindness instead of coercion, and with healing instead of humiliation. This is slower work that requires a lot of patience, but is worth it if we want healthy, transformative communities.  As Kämmerer pointed out,

“parents, teachers, judges and others who want to encourage constructive behavior in their charges would do well to avoid shaming rule-breakers, choosing instead to help them to understand the effects of their actions on others and to take steps to make up for their transgressions.”

Where there is hurt, we want to heal. By practicing awareness, we can become sensitive to when and how shame is an obstacle to that healing. When we feel shame, that can be an opportunity for reflection: 

• Why do I feel shame? What social norm have I broken?

• Is this social norm for my and our collective well-being? 

• If yes, then how can I shift to feeling empathy? How can I work with guilt in a way that heals, instead of getting caught in shame?

• If no, if this social norm is against my and our collective well-being, how can I recenter myself in a new norm? How can I connect with an aspiration that better aligns with mutual care and thriving? 

        For social norms that don’t support our personal and collective well-being, we can also ask: 

• What behaviors is this shame seeking to control? 

• Who benefits from my shame and humiliation? 

• What changes in attention and intention could help shift social norms toward wellbeing, justice, and peace? 

• What resources, support, skills, communities, and movements could I connect with in order to participate in that transformation? 

        While shame and humiliation are part of the human experience, we should not promote them or build our communities and movements around them. Instead, let’s focus on becoming places where we learn to care for ourselves and one another, with healing for when we hurt and celebration for when we thrive. Wisdom and compassion as a “way of knowing” will serve us better for creating social norms and communities where we can learn to take care of our personal and collective well-being; where we can be and feel safe; and where we can nourish our creativity and joy. 

End of Life Issues

End of Life Issues           August 13, 2023         Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

 

We certainly knew that it was likely to happen, still, when the news reached me one evening last week that the very ill son of a close friend had taken his own life, the news was shocking and several of us have had to try to wade through oceans of tears in a fog of grief for the past several days.

 

I will avoid using names here to put some distance between my comments and the 40-year-old man who committed suicide. What I think about the way Americans distribute or, more realistically, ration health care and what I think about assisted suicide laws in our nation are, I am certain, quite similar to the deceased and his immediate family, but I will not grant to myself the right to speak for him entirely.

 

Let’s call the deceased Gary, and his lovely wife, now four months pregnant with their son, we’ll call Nancy.  Gary pushed himself to write quite a bit before he ended his life to ease the grief of his loving wife, Nancy, and his mother, father, sister, and friends. A lot of what he wrote was by way of explanation for his suicide but there was also a lot of thought given to express what he felt about the laws around matters of end of life and because I have known a good deal about his fight with insurance companies in order to get the care that might have saved him, there is some prelude about how America has managed how health care is rationed that needs to be said.

 

I will apologize in advance for the obvious fact that how I present this may not be how Nancy might have said it, or Mark, or Judy, or even Gary, but I want to do my best to give voice to a matter of social ethics which was important for Gary to say and, I believe, it should be important to all of us.

In the past year, I watched Gary’s father, my close friend, pour his life’s blood into writing a huge document, with help from both Nancy and Gary, describing the research and treatments for Gary’s condition, building a case for why his health insurance company should pay for him to have the only surgery that might have given him back some part of his former health. It was like writing a master’s thesis, between one and two hundred pages in length, except that it was not a thesis to earn a graduate degree, it was a thesis intended to save his son’s life. The insurance company rejected the appeal and, though I hate to be too cynical about it, I’m not convinced that they even read the document. It was more profitable for them to just say “no” even though it has cost everyone in Gary’s life dearly. 

 

Over the past two decades I have managed to travel internationally a lot, in Central and South America, the Caribbean, in Africa and the Middle East, as well as in Europe and Asia. Everywhere you go, you see a lot of American television and movies on TV. You see a lot of American products in stores. You know that you are not in Kansas anymore when you sit back in your hotel to watch an old rerun of Ponderosa only to hear Hoss speaking in Hebrew. But what we see all of the time on our TVs that you don’t see in any developed nation, not even in the poor nations, are these TV appeals made by children who have cancer or serious birth defects, asking for donations to pay for their treatment, or their wheelchairs, or their artificial limbs.

 

You don’t see that sort of thing in other countries because the United States is the only developed nation in the world where people who need medical care have to beg for it. We may have the most advanced medical sciences in the world, but we have the most cruel and indifferent way of distributing it. The wealthy get what they need, the rest of us engage in an insurance crap-shoot in which the insurance company gets to decide what medications, treatments, or help that we are allowed to have. 

 

We have been trying to get universal healthcare in the United States since the days of Roosevelt. Lyndon Johnson thought that he would finally get the job done but he had to settle for Medicare and Medicaid. The real reason that the right has vilified Hillary Clinton has nothing to do with her private server and all of those emails about her daughter’s wedding and their yoga classes . . . it is because Bill Clinton assigned to Hillary the task of designing a universal healthcare system for America in the early days of his presidency and all of the for-profit healthcare businesses from insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and doctor’s unions jumped on her to ruin her reputation and convince the rest of us that we really don’t want affordable healthcare. It is amazing that grown ups fell for that propaganda but, on the whole, we did.

 

In 2009, when Obama was promoting what came to be known as “Obama-Care” a half-way step towards universal healthcare, his opponents started screaming about what they called government “death panels.”  Folks, the plan was for Gary and Nancy to go to Spain this fall where he could have received the surgery that was denied to him in the USA but sadly, the disease took too much of Gary’s strength to be able to make the trip. 

 

There were other issues, of course…. Not the least of which is that even our medical research and investment is based on a profit motive. 

 

Gary had a very rare disease and so there was no money to be made in researching it or developing medications or treatments. In the past two decades we have come up with four different prescription medications to treat erectile dysfunction and they now market a few different kinds of testosterone cream to make men want to take one of the pills . . . there is money to be made in that! But to save a person’s life… not so much.

 

Gary may have died prematurely because, in all likelihood, America’s “death panel” sentenced him to death . . . but it wasn’t a government that made the decision to withhold treatment… it was pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies that treated him like his illness was just all in his head while they are pumping ED pills into nursing homes at such a high rate that venereal diseases are a major complaint in retirement homes. . . I hope that the irony is not lost on you. 

 

Sarah Palin tried to scare the feeble minded with her rhetoric about imaginary death panels but there are real death panels in America, and they go by many names…. Humana, Blue Cross, Aetna, Anthem, and Cigna. Today is our time to grieve Gary’s death together but I beg you to save a portion of that emotional energy to also be angry, angry that we continue to make American healthcare the most expensive and unreliably administered healthcare in the world. It is wrong, it is unethical, and as a minister, I am unafraid to publicly call it evil. 

 

We could do what is done in Denmark, Brazil, Thailand, Cuba, or Spain and if we had done this years ago, as we certainly should have, Gary and millions of others would have enjoyed longer and healthier lives even though they were not born into families of millionaires. This is, of course, just my opinion and I know that I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem likely.

 

Again, our health insurance limitations and the blinders on pharmaceutical companies, especially in research funding, form the prelude to what needs to be said at this moment but the thing that Gary wrote the most about in the last week of his life is how he was forced to commit suicide in a manner that made him keep secrets from and tell lies to the people he loved the most. 

 

I am certain that most of us who had even the most elementary introduction to philosophy, know about Plato’s account of the death of Socrates. Socrates had been sentenced to death by the government of Athens. The means of his death was to be by drinking poison, hemlock, which was to be self-administered at the time of his choosing. Socrates had to commit suicide, but he was allowed to fill his Athenian jail cell with his friends and loved ones and Plato describes the event in loving and meaningful conversation until Socrates was ready to drink that cup of poison. 

 

That happened 2400 years ago and even though the death sentence was a sham, the laws around his suicide were a thousand times more sophisticated and compassionate than ours are, here in America, today. 

 

Gary would have liked to have had a scene straight out of Plato’s dialogues, where he could have been holding Nancy’s hand, and had his bed surrounded by his family and close friends. Gary had to lie to people to order the items he needed to end his life. He had to keep secrets because if anyone had known what he was going to do, they could have been held criminally liable for not stopping him. If he had held Nancy’s hand while he died, Nancy might be facing a prison sentence, if his dad had known what was in the package Gary had delivered to his home, telling him not to open it because it was to be a surprise gift, then his dad might have faced criminal charges. 

There are 11 states with “right to die” laws but most of them require some kind of state approval and approval is based on the person’s illness being imminently terminal. Gary’s condition was deemed to have been chronic but not necessarily lethal. So he was cheated, by law, out of the support of his loved ones. 

 

As Gary wrote just before he died, “I also wanted to feel heard and have my wishes respected. But what I NEEDED was to prepare you, and I couldn't.” He also talked about the fact that if the police or even mental health agencies had learned of his plans, he might have been taken into custody and institutionalized, probably in long term isolation, to prevent him taking his life. They would have treated him as if he were insane or at least profoundly depressed. . . which he most certainly was not. 

 

Gary wrote:  Fear of the law and being institutionalized made me withhold from even meeting with my beloved family in my last days. I so wanted to reconnect with many of you, I did. But it's really stressful to hold back something important to say, like "I'm going to die soon, but I still really love you." I couldn't even tell my own wife that I was planning to die, and that is the one that eats at me the most. It would have put us both at too great of a legal risk.

 

Gary didn’t say it explicitly, but I will say it for him. Even in this dark moment, when he was going to bring about his own death, all of his thoughts were on his loved ones and how he could soften the blow of his suicide. Using the last of his strength, he created a pretense to leave the house alone, called an Uber, checked into a hotel room, sent a text to the coroner’s office about where to find his body, and he used his knowledge of chemistry to slip away from the prison of his illness.

He didn’t want Nancy to find his body. He didn’t want his family to have to know when he was going. He protected everyone else to the greatest extent that he could, but he had to do it alone, in secret, in isolation, because our laws are so primitive and heartless that this was the only way. 

 

Over my 45 years of ministry, I have lost five church members to suicide. In each case, if I had known what they were going to do, I would have done everything physically possible to stop them. I have done thousands of hours of pastoral counseling with deeply depressed people who at least contemplated and some attempted suicide, and I always try to convince them that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. 

 

I encourage and sometimes I beg them to work towards a solution to their problems that will allow them to go on living. And, I will confess, on more than two occasions, I have had a person put in a mental hospital to prevent their suicide. 

 

In almost every case, suicide is not only not the only answer; it can almost always be argued that it is the worst answer. The problem here is with the word, “almost.” Because, when we legislate that there is only one allowable response to suicide then we are forcing a very complex and eminently personal choice into a very simplistic response of, “just don’t do it.”

 

What makes complicated decisions complicated is the simple fact that you can quite rationally argue for different conclusions. It is a part of the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement in our country now . . . many of these people, motivated by either religion or human compassion, or both, want to take away the choice entirely, under all circumstances, and yet so many of those advocates end up choosing abortion within their own families because of circumstances, either medical or economic, that makes it seem like they should be an exception. 

 

What I hope that I can get you to consider is that when it comes to ethics, there are virtually no absolutes. 

 

What Gary repeated in several letters, what he wanted everyone to understand, is that his suicide should not be viewed in the light we normally talk about suicide in. He was not depressed. He was not even as angry as most of the rest of us have been about a lot of things, the illness itself, the lack of research into it, the recalcitrance of insurance companies, or the rigidity of American end of life laws. 

He was at peace with a difficult decision which, arguably, was the best one for him, for Nancy, and for his family. That’s why he was willing to write about it and that is why, even at his funeral, we were very open about his suicide. There is nothing here to be ashamed of, nothing to apologize for, even though we have ample reason to grieve, we have no argument with the decision he made. 

 

I have assiduously avoided saying anything about how he accomplished his peaceful death. I know that you are curious. That’s just natural. But I don’t think that information should be too readily available generally and this certainly isn’t a “how to” talk. Suicide is a strange thing that sometimes seems to set off a string of suicides within a social group and that absolutely should not happen in this case. Gary was sinking into a physical prison from which there was no escape. 

 

He worked on other solutions right up to as recently as last month. When it became evident that nothing else was going to work, he did what none of us could legally help him with. He carried that burden on his own shoulders and in so doing, preserved the dignity and self-determination that was crucial to him. 

 

I respect his choices, I applaud his courage, and I deeply and profoundly honor his thoughtfulness towards Nancy, and his family. 

 

I have heard President Biden reflect several times on his own loss in the tragic deaths within his own family, saying that the day will come that when you remember your loved one, a smile will come to your face before a tear comes to your eye. The journey of grief doesn’t follow a certain path and it doesn’t go in a straight line, but it gets better. In the end, the most important things about Gary had nothing to do with his illness, his early death, or the way that he died. 

He was an amazing man, intelligent, creative, capable, athletic, passionate. He was a great husband, a wonderful son and brother, a generous and thoughtful uncle, and a great friend. And, at the end of the year, just five months after his death, he will become a father. 

 

I say all of this to make this point: suicide, no matter how wrong it is in most instances, is sometimes the best choice. Our problem in America is, who gets to make the choice? Gary knew how to end his life painlessly and quickly, but everyone doesn’t. He had to do it under a layer of lies and deception, but he was able to get it done. That isn’t true for everyone. 

 

When a person gets to the point where the future has only pain and isolation to offer, who should a person be required to consult for permission? You might choose to consult your family, a trusted physician, a spiritual leader, but should you have to? Should you have to have a court rule on your decision? Should that state legislature be allowed to define the allowed exceptions?

 

It is a subject too serious to ever be taken lightly, and we still want to prevent every suicide that is a matter of short term depression or irrational thinking, but surely we can find a way to get the government out of such an absolutely personal decision.

 

I will never forget the night that my eldest brother and I stood on either side of our mother’s hospital bed in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. It was March 19, 2003. I know that because it was the day that the United States started bombing Bagdad. My brother, a very traditional United Methodist pastor and staunch Republican, watched the TV in the corner with glee, cheering on the inflated reports of how much damage was being done with each sortie, while I was seething at this illegal war. But between us our mother lied, unconscious, on a respirator, visibly suffering with no hope of recovery. I looked at my brother and said, “If we were putting our family dog through this we would be put in prison for cruelty to an animal, but if we don’t put our mother through this senseless pain, then we would be callous and maybe even murderers.” On that point, we agreed . . . possibly the only thing we have agreed on in the past 20 years, but the hypocrisy of our end of life laws remain a blight on our nation which too often insists one size fits all ethics when we all know that is just a lot more complicated than that.  

 

While I hold strong views on topics like the right to die, abortion, and same sex marriage as many others hold passionate views that are the opposite of mine, my humble suggestion about how we should proceed in each of these matters is to allow for individual decision making. A person who is considering getting abortion, or ending their own life, may certainly want to consult with family, or a physician, or a spiritual advisor but they shouldn’t be mandated to speak to anyone else and there is, in my opinion, no role for the police, the sheriff, or the state legislature in any of these decisions. Legislators are rarely physicians or scientists and more often they are, basically, clueless and so they should be the last ones empowered to make personal decisions for you, or me, or anyone else. 

 

I’m making the suggestion that we keep our government out of our bedroom and away from our death beds. Protect our borders. Facilitate transportation, and regulate banking and finance. The personal stuff is, well, personal, isn’t it?

 

“Facing the Facts of Moral Corruption in Government”

“Facing the Facts of Moral Corruption in Government”  August 6, 2023  Dr. R Ray

Click here to see the video

https://www.commondreams.org/news/william-barber-moral-declaration

"It is time for people with a moral conscience to wield every ounce of influence and power they have towards justice and to force this nation to be true to what it said on paper."  William Barber

 

In a recent interview, former President, Barack Obama, was asked by Hasan Minhaj how he keeps from becoming hopelessly depressed by the current direction of our country regarding civil rights, abortion rights, affirmative action, and voters’ rights. In his famous calm manner, he replied that the current generation has lived through a remarkable period of time, lasting more than a century, in which we saw a slow but steady march of progress. We abolished slavery, and eventually abolished Jim Crow laws, we awarded the right to vote to women, we integrated schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. We established a 40-hour work week, abolished child labor, and provided social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and Obama-care in a steady march towards granting healthcare to everyone. We legalized abortion and gay marriage, and made some noble efforts in the direction of environmental projects to heal an ailing planet. 

 

Obama wanted to encourage this young reporter and through him, the rest of us, not to give up hope. Over the past six years we have seen a resurgence of racism, an attack on women’s rights, minority access to education and employment, and some very backwards efforts to keep coal and oil in the center of our economy. But while this is certainly a setback, it is not a defeat of the modern era. 

 

For almost all of Obama’s time in the White House, I thought he was too moderate. I felt that he didn’t fight hard enough or loudly enough. I thought he gave in way too easily. 

I thought that when Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court that this was a direct assault on the constitution and the democratic government it establishes. I thought that this called for an all-out public protest, calling for the removal of McConnell from the Senate, but Obama seemed to take it all in stride.

 

And, if I may be so bold as to say it now, some 7 years after the show down over Merrick Garland, I was right, and Obama was wrong. Failing to get Garland on the court ended up allowing Trump to appoint 3 right wing justices who have created a super majority on the Supreme Court which has been bust dismantling American democracy. 

 

I was comforted by Obama’s perspective that this past decade is not necessarily the end of progress in forming the kind of democracy that could boast of liberty and justice for all, but it is clear that there are forces at work that really do intend to turn America into a fascist state that serves the interests of the wealthy and powerful, and, for the most part, the white and male members of our society. 

 

Still, as ironic as it may seem, it was Clarence Thomas who added to the decision to overturn Roe v Wade his opinion that the court must also reconsider decisions that made gay marriage and contraception legal. I suspect that he did not mention overturning the Loving decision that legalized inter-racial marriage only because that would have cost him his own marriage, although, if I were married to Ginny Thomas, I would be looking for any exit available to me…. but I digress. 

 

The larger issue here is that somehow the American public has come to accept a government that is rife with personal corruption, and which is systematically robbing them of their rights and their freedoms. Somehow, in the prophetic tradition of Jeremiah and Isaiah, of Gandhi and of Martin Luther King, somebody is going to have to wake up this country to recognize that they deserve better than this kind of criminality and government control. To use the language of Jeremiah, somehow, in spite of the crimes and greed of Donald Trump and the amazing corruption of bribes being paid to Supreme Court justices, the American people have forgotten how to blush. 

Thankfully, religious leaders like Bishop William Barber, political and academic leaders like Robert Reich and Cornel West, and many others have been mounting a cry for a better government than what we have now. 

If you will allow me to take you to school for five minutes, we all recognize those glorious words in the Declaration of Independence that say:

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

Sadly, however, we far too often stop right there. Today I believe that it is crucial for us to remember the paragraph that follows that lofty introduction:

 

--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. 

 

In spite of the fact that January 6^th insurrectionists were shouting about it being a “1776” time for revolution, the truth may be that it is time for a revolution that will reject corrupt government and either by ballot or by more direct means, restore our progress towards a more perfect union. The majority of Americans believe that women should have legal access to abortion. The majority of Americans believe that gay people have a right to marry the person they love. And the majority of Americans want some kind of universal access to health care and gun laws that restrict the sale of assault rifles and most handguns but our government is so influenced by bribes that the government is failing to represent the people and are, instead, representing a wealthy class of oligarchs and, frankly, we deserve better. 

 

It is exceedingly difficult for me to believe that even two years after he has been out of office and after more than criminal indictments against him than ever boasted by Al Capone, we stand a reasonable threat of Donald Trump returning to office just 18 short months from now, but whether he can win the next presidential election from a jail cell or not, his three appointments to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, are working in concert with three previously appointed right wingers, to dismember our representative government and our modern expectations of constitutional rights. And may I remind you that these justices were chosen, not just for their right-wing beliefs but also for their relatively young age so that they can extend Trump’s influence over our government for decades!

 

To an absurd extent, we are being ruled by a class of people who believe that they are somehow above the law, above ethics, above the national interest, and that they are somehow entitled to wealth and power denied to the rest of the nation. When Donald Trump repeats in his cult like political rallies that he has done nothing wrong, I believe that he believes it. He repeatedly called for his political rivals, both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, to be “locked up” for things that they demonstrably did not do but which Donald Trump has done repeatedly. He just doesn’t believe that it is wrong when he does it but it is wrong when anyone else does it.

 

We have heard a lot about how our Supreme Court has refused any accountability for the millions of dollars in bribes they have greedily taken while judges in every other layer of our justice system are held to published ethical standards, the violation of which can have them immediately removed from the bench. Let me give you a quick overview of what we are talking about:

Harlan Crow befriended Justice Clarence Thomas thirty years ago, treating him to vacations on his yacht, flights on his private jet, and lavish vacations at his private resort. He also bought the home where Thomas’ mother lives and he has improved it an provides it to her rent free. He is also paying the private school tuition for Thomas’ nephew whom he is raising as a son. He has also made donations to create a high salary job for Thomas’ wife, Ginny Thomas, all while he regularly has interests in cases before the Supreme Court. A Supreme Court justice receives a salary of about a quarter of a million dollars a year, which sounds great to most of us but that would not afford anyone a lavish lifestyle in Washington, D.C. Thomas lives like royalty because of these bribes which far exceed his legal salary by many times. 

Billionaire Paul Singer has provided similarly expensive trips to Justice Samuel Alito who has had the temerity to reference Singer’s private jet as being “accomodations” and insisting that there is nothing wrong with accepting trips that would cost more than $100,000 without even reporting them, even when Singer has cases before the court.

Chief Justice John Roberts has refused to be questioned by congress or to reprimand either Thomas or Alito for their obvious acceptance of millions of dollars in bribes. But here is a possible reason for Roberts’ reticence: His wife, Jane, is also a lawyer but when Roberts was appointed to the court, she gave up her practice, she said, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interests. However, she works as a recruiter, finding new talent for law firms that do have cases before the court. In a recent 8-year stretch, she was paid more than $10 million for her consulting services, increasing the Justice’s household income by four times. The firms that pay her these amazingly high fees have an equally amazing record of success in the cases they have before the Supreme Court. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch had a 40 acre piece of land that he had been trying to sell for years, repeatedly reducing the price to try to get it sold. However, just a few days after being appointed to the court, a law firm with business before the court bought it for almost $2 million dollars. Gorsuch has been meticulous about reporting gifts like a fishing rod and a pair of cowboy boots but this $2 million land deal slipped his mind when he was filling out his disclosure forms. 

 

I understand that Justices will sometimes either earn or be given handsome royalties and honorariums for books, speeches, and appearances. Who can expect anyone to keep up appearances on a quarter of a million dollar salary without some side hustle? But when do we begin to draw the line between the benefits of holding such a high office, and public corruption? Especially when these people who believe that they are above accountability believe that they can impose their own religious views or the conservative denial of rights held by their benefactors on the rest of us? 

 

If you remove our American acceptance of such corruption for persons in high office and just look at the millions of dollars unethically accepted by Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito, isn’t it obvious that all four of them should be in jail right now? And if you consider the lies told by Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett in their senate hearings, isn’t it obvious that they should be removed from the court? 

 

These justices are attempting through rulings on the bench to reshape America into a country that would be unrecognizable except to those authors of the Declaration of Independence who decided that King George no longer had the moral authority to rule over the colonies and they had an answer to those abuses and their answer was revolution. 

 

If we allow the court to be seated again this fall without serious reform in light of this corruption then, I’m afraid that we deserve whatever happens to us. I just hope that we know that we deserve a better government.