Ferguson, Baltimore and me

     Watching recent events in Baltimore I felt many of the same emotions I experienced last summer watching news clips from Ferguson; anger, sadness, fear and the desire to act because “somebody needs to do something!” While armchair quarterbacking can temporarily alleviate that urgency in me, it changes nothing.

    While I can support and assist others in their evolution, the only person or thing I can change is me. That brings me to questioning where I am unwittingly complicit in what happened in Baltimore.

    I lived in Bloomington Indiana for fourteen years. Sometime in the mid-nineties the city proposed adding sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination clause. Although I’d stepped back from direct political action, my girlfriend and I attended the open city council meeting about the proposed resolution.

    A group of us from the LGBT community attended the meeting. So did few local ministers and pastors along with their congregations. When my girlfriend and I stepped into the lobby of the city/county building, a sea of fundamentalists closed in around us. They sang hymns, hurled Bible verses and told us were going to Hell.

     I wasn’t afraid until I saw their eyes. Their mouths recited scripture but their eyes spoke in anger and hatred. I didn’t know these people. My sexual orientation was so offensive these people wanted to hurt me. The rest of who I was didn’t matter.

    Then I was just an angry at the fundamentalists as they were at me. In that moment I hated a few of them.

     In that moment their anger and hatred was terrifying. Days and weeks later I was more disturbed by the anger and hatred I felt toward them.

     It took me years to understand what was actually going on. When I stood in that lobby feeling waves of anger and hatred directed toward me and I responded in kind, we stopped being human to each other.

     I didn’t see those people as human beings with families, jobs, heartaches and fears. They became a conglomerate of ignorant, close-minded bigots. To them I was no longer a human being with a partner, a life, fears and heartaches. I was a symbol of the moral decay that threatened their lifestyle.

     After that, there was no human involvement. What unfolded came from our projections taking pot shots at each other.

    Because of the experience twenty odd years ago, I can no longer look at events like Baltimore and say I don’t understand that level of anger and hatred. I do. I’ve felt it. Yes, I feel angry and sad over what has and is happening. I am choosing not to rage for peace, equality and respect because the shift needed to stop this cycle cannot be fueled by rage.

    Who am I really angry at? The police? Some other organization that “should” have stepped in to prevent this from happening?

     Groups and organizations are made of individuals. The wounding, fears and beliefs of each person form the larger consciousness of that group. How can I expect a group to see people as human beings even when they’re in conflict when I struggle with that? How can I blame the police or anyone else for getting caught in their projections of “other” when I’m still learning how not to do that?

     In these explosions of our collective shadow, I see my own darkness. I can’t change what happened in Baltimore. I can change how complicit I am in the beliefs and wounding that created these events. Yeah, part of me wishes I could make some grand gesture that would “fix” this….but does it need to be fixed? Or is this more about being different in relation to beliefs I don’t agree with?

    While changing me may not seem like enough, my gut tells me it’s the only that is enough. If I change my relationship to my wounding and beliefs then what I bring into any group I’m part of is different. If a bunch of us were different…well you get the idea.

    In the news clips from Baltimore I see racism, power and abuse of power. When I look deeper I see the consequences of dividing the world into “us” and “them”, me and “other”…same old duality.

     Over the past week I’ve more mindful of where I struggle to see people as human beings, want to categorize a person or group as “other” and where that impulse comes from in me. When I label something or someone as “other” I distance myself. My creation of “other” comes from fear, no surprise there. What surprised me is the face that fear wears.

     When I’m truly present with another person or a group I’m open, empathetic and I listen differently. Showing up like that means making myself vulnerable. Sometimes I’m not willing to be vulnerable. Creating an “other” is sneaky way to say “no” to the vulnerability without owning the choice I’m making.

     This impulse also arises in me when I’m concerned another person or group may reject or judge me. My ego thinks I can avoid being hurt if I engage in a little preemptive abandonment.  I caught myself a couple times wanting to create an “other” when I felt intimidated or less than.

    Looking at what happened in those moments brought me to a bigger awareness. When I react to feeling less than or intimidated by creating an “other” I’m pushing away the situation, person or group because I don’t like what it’s showing me in myself. Looking back over my impulses to create an “other” this past week I find the same dynamics every time. On the surface it looks like I’m distancing myself from something external but what I’m really pushing away are the uncomfortable feelings the situation brings up in me.