Is It OK to Turn Away from What's Happening in the World?
Audacity is the willingness to take bold steps in life. Sacred or Spiritual Audacity is the courage to take bold steps in your imagination and create a vision of your life where everything is just right. This takes effort because our brains have a negativity bias, making it easier to focus on problems rather than solutions. The intensity of society’s challenges, which can be overwhelming, often makes it feel irresponsible to imagine a bright future.
Recently, I took a bold and audacious vacation to New York City. It had been over 30 years since I had been there. The last time I visited, I went up one of the Twin Towers to the observation deck, which was spectacular. Visiting the 9/11 memorial site was chilling and emotional. This was not the sort of experience I typically plan for a vacation, yet I felt it was my duty to go, look, and let all the pain in. Seeing the names of the nearly 3,000 lost souls engraved in the granite was a powerful experience. I noted that people from all around the world were clearly of different beliefs and cultures, all present in a quiet, respectful acknowledgment of something immense.
In contrast to the solemn experience at the memorial site, I also did some activities that inspired me differently. I saw "Cabaret" on Broadway with Eddie Redmayne as the Master of Ceremonies. Perhaps you already know that the story takes place in pre-Nazi Germany toward the end of the Jazz Cabaret era. The Kit Kat Club is a place of bold, decadent, audacious entertainment, affirming gender fluidity, body fluidity, and sexual positivity.
One character, Fraulein Schneider, who owns a boarding house in the area, falls in love with Mr. Schultz, and they plan to get married until it is discovered that Mr. Schultz is Jewish. She is warned by a Nazi that it won't go well for her. She calls off the engagement out of self-preservation and sings a chilling song in which she asks, what would you do if someone you loved and planned to marry was threatened by a rising fascist regime? She asks, would you pay the price and stick with them, or would you turn away and ignore the rising wave of fascism if it meant your personal safety?
The story is based on the real-life experience of pre-war Germany, as in Christopher Isherwood’s autobiography. In it, he recounts that many of his Jewish or gay cabaret acquaintances fled abroad to safety. Still, many more perished in concentration camps in what became a staggering genocide so shocking that the communities of the world have since vowed never to let it happen again.
The Genocide Convention became the first human rights treaty in the history of the United Nations 75 years ago. It calls all people of all nations to pay attention and prevent genocide because, as stated on the UN website, “in reality, genocide is typically not unleashed without warning but rather the result of progressive human rights violations, identifiable patterns of systemic discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, or some other characteristic, which society sometimes ignores.”
"Leave your troubles outside! Life is disappointing. Forget it!"
Master of Ceremonies, Cabaret
Fraulein Schneider sings to the audience something like, “I’ll be fine, I’ll get by, I’ll manage if I just don’t pay attention to what is happening and mind my own business instead.” As I watched the musical, I couldn’t help but think of our teaching, the Science of Mind, which calls us to be audacious and bold. I wondered why so many of us prefer not to think about or talk about the atrocities that are taking place in our society today.
I can see one potential reason, and it is in our teaching itself, inspired by something Jesus taught. He said, “Resist not evil.” We are taught something similar: when a disturbing condition presents itself, we are to “turn entirely away from the condition.” The full quote is, “We turn entirely away from the condition because as long as we look at it, we cannot overcome it. By thinking upon a condition, we tend to animate it with the life of our thought, and thereby it is perpetuated and magnified” (p. 164.3).
Can you see the potential problem? If I walk past a person being beaten up or harassed because of their gender, race, or religion, and I turn entirely away from the condition and say, “I’ll be okay,” if I fall on the sidewalk and break my leg, and I turn entirely away from the condition and don’t deal with it, if someone I love is being exploited or suffering from an addiction, and I turn entirely away from the condition and don’t deal with it, I can see the potential problem with turning away.
"...turn entirely away from the condition..."
Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind. p. 164
A few things must be considered when studying this phrase. First, something is missing from the quote. The complete quote starts with this: “In treatment.” This means that when we pray, we turn our attention away from the problem and focus instead on wholeness, unity, and life. In our inner work, we turn away from focusing on the negative, but in life, we must take the necessary steps inspired by our prayer that lead to action to do the right thing and get the right help. So if fascism, for example, were on the rise, our teaching would not encourage us to look the other way but to audaciously declare our allyship with those who are afflicted by injustice. To me, the Science of Mind answer to Fraulein Schneider's question, “What would you do, would you pay the price?” is this: Whatever you do, do something—don’t turn away. Whatever you do, while you do it, also do your inner work. Turn your attention in your prayer work to the eternal source of compassion and creativity at the center of your being and ask, “What am I to do?”
The second thing we must consider is that turning entirely away from something cannot mean pretending it isn’t happening. Perhaps it means this: I will give the condition no power to control my thoughts, emotions, and actions. Instead, I would say to myself, “I will not let it cause me to be less human, less decent, less creative, less powerful. Rather, I will use this situation to cause me to be more human, more spiritual, more caring, more awake, and more creative. I will not let the world drain me of compassion or courage. No, I can meet the world because I am fueled from within.”
Turn Toward Life and Keep on Keeping on
This month, we celebrate Father’s Day, Juneteenth, our 70th anniversary as a Center, and Pride Month. Boldness and audacity play a role in each of these important events. The fathers of the U.S. have a woman, Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, to thank for Father’s Day. In 1910, Sonora worked hard to establish a holiday equal to Mother’s Day for dads. She went to churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers, and government officials to drum up support for her idea and succeeded. Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910. Note that date—June 19—for a moment. Then it took 70 years before it became a national holiday in 1972. The world sometimes takes a while to catch up… don’t give up. Thank you, Sonora Dodd, for having a vision and sticking with it so we can celebrate fatherhood later this month.
June is the month we celebrate Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the freedom of the last enslaved people in Texas. It’s celebrated on June 19th—there is that date again. Although this holiday has roots back to the 1860s, was only recently recognized nationally, as recently as 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. We will celebrate Juneteenth at our Wednesday evening service on June 19 at 7 pm. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation. Still, it was not until Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, that the state’s residents finally learned that slavery had been abolished. Again, the world sometimes takes a while to catch up… don’t give up.
It's noteworthy that a proclamation had to be made to declare what ought to be an obvious spiritual truth. Still, it would take another 157 years to make a federal holiday formally acknowledging the freedom celebration. The world sometimes takes a while to catch up—don’t give up.
Though the World May Take a While to Catch Up
It reminds me of our teaching. We are taught to declare the truth, and the world might take a moment to catch up. We are taught to keep our eye on the spiritual truth and don’t waver from it, though the world may take a moment to catch up. Though Black, Indigenous, and People of Color continue to suffer discrimination, harmful cultural stereotyping, and systemic racism, don’t give up. Don’t turn away. Don’t mind your own business. Declare the self-evident spiritual truth and keep moving. Declare the spiritual truth in your mind and keep going. Affirm in your heart, recognize and align with the spiritual truth, and keep on keeping on. The world will have to catch up with you.
Like Bayard Rustin, an openly gay African American civil rights leader, who in 1941 marched on Washington to press for an end to racial discrimination in employment. He organized Freedom Rides to raise awareness that racial discrimination had not yet ended, even though it was proclaimed to be over and done in 1863. It had not ended some 78 years later. So Bayard Rustin helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to support Dr. Martin Luther King. It was he, Bayard Rustin, who introduced Dr. King to Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance and the tactics of civil disobedience.
He didn’t give up when the world hadn’t yet caught up to his vision of what I call Spiritual Self-Evident Truth. He carried on, and later in life, he stood up for equality for LGBTQ+ people, declaring something that is spiritually self-evident, though the world still hasn’t caught up. He was targeted and criticized over his sexuality. Politicians threatened to tell the press he and Dr. King were gay lovers, so he usually acted behind the scenes. Because he didn’t and couldn’t give up. Thank you, Bayard Rustin, for having the spiritual audacity to have a vision and sticking with it until more of it became a reality. May we stand for that vision until all of it is real.
Bold and Audacious
I'm celebrating the audacity of our AIDS LifeCycle team, who left for their 365-mile ride to Los Angeles this morning at 6 am to raise millions of dollars, even in the wake of the Pope disappointingly using a vulgar and derogatory term to describe gay men. Yes, it takes a while for the world to catch up. Walking around NYC, arguably the most cosmopolitan and diverse city I’ve ever been to, holding hands with my partner, we saw people not yet used to seeing two men in love and working through their process to catch up.
Thank you, Sonoma Pride celebration and everyone who visited our Center booth for showing up for the LGBTQ community. This month, I am remembering to stay focused even though the world may not have caught up yet. I remember to affirm, recognize, and align with the self-evident spiritual truth of oneness and not waver from it, though the world may take a moment, a decade, or a century to catch up with the reality that all people are equal and that love is love, and that equality is not a special right.
“The real radical is that person who has a vision of equality and is willing to do those things that will bring reality closer to that vision.”
Bayard Rustin
Also, this month, we celebrate our 70th anniversary as a spiritual center in Sonoma County. Imagine the audacity of a small group of people who gathered weekly in a living room on Clark Street to listen to audio recordings of Sunday messages until they could invite a minister to come up and speak to them. We thank goodness they did. I wonder if they imagined this would result from that audacity. I wonder if we could travel back in time to ask them what message they would give us, the imagined community in the future that they were paving the way for. One of the features of our 70th anniversary is to create a time capsule with messages for the future community some 70 years from now. On your way out today, please take a moment to pick up a card and send your thoughts to our future community.
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