A Coronavirus Gathering | 5. The Better Angels of Our Nature
During the time of Coronavirus, I unfriended my first two Facebook friends. It’s such a strange and wonderful concept — pulldown a menu and get rid of a friend who annoys you.
The first time I thought:
What if it was that easy in real life?
My second thought was that I would only have two friends — my recently deceased dog and an avatar of Ghandi, my screensaver.
One of my unfriended friends is a Republican, the other a Democrat. Both advocated shooting people.
After someone posted that bullets would soon fly, the Republican, disturbed by the Ohio governor’s order to wear a mask, replied:
Hopefully they'll be fired toward Mike Dewine.
The Democrat, responding to a post about killing the Reverend Joel Osteen, commented:
He does have a shootable face.
Some people will never change their minds because their hearts are cold. Don’t waste your time when Facebook so easily dispenses. You will need the energy and patience to love those open to change, seeing truth in gray and not black-and-white. Our political system is designed for compromise, the maddening and imperfect process of finding what’s true somewhere near the middle.
Hate gone viral terrifies me more than the Coronavirus. Fueled by depravity, pride, and well-funded campaigns of disinformation, a polarizing divide breeds.
History teaches us that great adversity often shapes greatness. One recent example — out of World War II, The Eagle landed on the moon. The opportunities for redemption are endless, but only if we come together to fight the real war — against the virus, not each other.
We all agree: Don’t be pawns to the powers that be.
Faced with the horrors of the Civil War, the anguished words of Abraham Lincoln called the nation to a moral center.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
In the age of disinformation, living in a post-truth culture, the challenge to end our not-so civil wars will require a shared sacrifice, an understanding of citizenship that cares for the other.
Breaking quarantine for a manicure seems belittling the point.
Charging the Michigan statehouse with AR-15s, swastikas, confederate flags demonstrates an overkill, as well as a profound ignorance of geography.
When a family kills a security guard because they did not want to wear protective masks, you begin to imagine where this might be headed, virulence and vigilantes rising. It’s one thing to plead for the nation to reopen because your food is running out and rent is due. It’s another thing to invoke the Constitution because you like to get drunk and bowl. There’s a world of difference between desperation and spoil.
As Lincoln called a deeply divided nation to unity, he appealed to the better angels of our nature.
President during our nation’s civil war, he called us to a shared sacrifice for liberty.
Freedom doesn’t guarantee a beautician’s do-over during a pandemic.
As citizens of a nation we all came to love, there is no way out but together.
Sacrifice, not profit, empowers redemption.
Patriotism requires more than making love to a flag.
Do we really need more of this?
Or this?
Or this:
Certainly not this:
Songwriter Tim Allmond and Filmmaker Aidan Weaver combined to create this original video titled, Remote Control, a call to end the hatred dividing us.
A few weeks after Coronavirus postponed our second meeting as a gathering, Tracy Leigh Cotton posted on our facebook group —
Tracy’s challenge encouraged us to move forward the art already in creation around the theme of lament. Through a series of blogs — the collaboration of more than 10 artists — we focused on lament working out through reconciliation and redemption.
2 Corinthians 5: 17-20 calls followers of Christ to reconciliation.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.
I greatly fear the horrid face of God religious people paint.
As I type these words, I lament my own heart. During a time of overwhelming need to come together, I confess retreat into fear, surrender to depression, and a tendency to binge on The Tiger King and Evolution of Evil in hopes of convincing myself of far worse people.
For a neurotic introvert like me, it’s so tempting to lose yourself by —
Retreating to the echo chamber of your own thoughts
Reading a book on a blue pool, basking in warm spring sun, soaking in some extra Vitamin D in case it’s needed
We must fight the urge to retreat in such take-your-pick — challenging, unprecedented, historical, unsettling, stressful, or uncertain — times. (Clue the melancholy but hopeful piano).
In retreat, the gravity of fear sucks us under. At the same time, it’s the easiest thing to do.
Especially after watching something like this —
And this guy.
And this guy.
Forgive me, Lord, I am a little iffy on this guy.
We are all works in process.
By seeing each person in the image of God, we begin to replace disdain with respect. We no longer see a person as an argument to win, a correction to be made, or an enemy of America and (mostly likely) God.
Extending the same grace given each of us, we learn to listen instead of judge.
I believe the more we listen to people who differ with us, we allow for a discovery of common hopes. Facing the crisis of our shared lifetime, I believe most of us desire to:
Come together to fight the real war.
Resist spreading fake news.
Refuse to be manipulated by greed or tyranny.
Pay our bills.
Share the sacrifice of suffering as citizens of a nation we together came to love.
As we learn to listen, we begin to frame conversations on what lies beneath all of our hardlines. We start to frame conversations with greater empathy.
For example, let us clearly understand the cry for liberty from government lockdowns rises in the voices of —
Desperate newly unemployed fathers and mothers needing an income to feed their children
Small business owners, invested into a dream to serve their communities, facing certain or imminent bankruptcy
The graduating seniors withheld the honor of a proper ceremony
Let’s not mute those voices because of loud billion dollar campaigns of disinformation, like the one calling into question the legitimacy of a nurse dressed in PPE confronting gun-toting patriots. We dare not dishonor our real heroes.
An endless hallucogenic parade marches by when a few people with unheard of money spread camouflaged disinformation through social media, particularly Facebook, with almost no accountability.
Right or left, one thing you are convinced about — it’s a recipe for a shitstorm.
(I was going to show a clip from Jackass 3, but uncharacteristically chose restraint).
Be assured: A storm of shit, great for reality TV, distracts us from our shared war with this invisible and terrifying beast.
As we come together to balance the desperate need to pay our bills with best strategies to stay healthy, we must do so from a shared framework of humility, grace, and a common desire, as fellow citizens, to share the necessary suffering of having to choose between historically bad options.
In the aftermath of 9-11, Bruce Springsteen interviewed hundreds of family members of those frontline workers killed in the crash of terrorist airplanes. As he listened to the despair, The Boss also discerned a powerful hope shared. Poet of a generation, I believe The Rising to be the pinnacle of his artistry. Redemption follows.