From Distinction to Discernment
Originally published in Loaves & Fishes, Clairvaux Farm, Elkton, MD.
In a time of sickness, a little more than two years and a half ago, I was brought so near the gates of death that I forgot my name. Being then desirous to know who I was, I saw a mass of matter of a dull gloomy color between the south and the east, and was informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be and live, and that I was mixed with them, and that henceforth I might not consider myself as a distinct or separate being. In this state I remained several hours. I then heard a soft melodious voice, more pure and harmonious than any I had heard with my ears before; I believed it was the voice of an angel who spake to the other angels; the words were, “John Woolman is dead.” I soon remembered that I was once John Woolman… 1The Journal of John Woolman (NY: Collier & Son, 1937) p. 306.
For years I have tried to serve people. I knew service to be the highest of callings. I hoped that I was good enough to serve and often feared that I was not. But I knew that it is a law of life that we must do unto others as we would be done by.
I must answer for the kind of help which I have given. I pray that, on balance, I have done more good than ill. Yet I know now very clearly what for a long time I only dimly understood: Despite my very best efforts, my service has often been more in the interests of the elite, my aid of more help to those who rule, my labors captive to power and privilege. All my knowledge, all my good will, all my love, could not prevent me from being detoured at times from my intention of attending to the situation of the struggling ones I professed to love. I could not think well enough about them. I could not think clearly enough about what we had in common. I did not know what action could be taken. I did not think enough of myself or them to dare to believe that there was another context in which we could meet.
Offering the Better Portion
Service is not a pure act. Serving others does not take place separate from the rest of our lives and our common struggles to be human. The greatest of these struggles is against those structures that divide us and distinguish us and compare us.
In the course of helping, I prepare food for a meal. There is more than enough. Yet I still dole out the portions. It may because I do not want to waste food. It may be because I think some may take too much. It may be because I think that it is a good thing for me to put the food directly on the plates of the needy.
I go to the clothing closet to sort and distribute clothes. Some of the people who are to receive these clothes are already there, sitting, waiting. I cannot distribute the clothing until all the clothes are sorted. They know this. They have been here before. Yet they do not help me. I ask for help, and only one person rises to join me. He sorts clothing in a careless way for a few minutes and then goes outside. There is something about this situation which makes me angry and frustrated.
Those hungry people did not choose to be fed in that manner. They chose only to satisfy their hunger. Someone else decided to dole out their portions to them. Those people without clothes did not prefer the clothing closet as a place to shop; they did not organize it. They have come because they need articles of clothing and cannot obtain them elsewhere.
My serving has led to controlling. It was based, from the start, on the assumption of a radical distinction between those serving and those served. We imported this distinction – I who serve and they who are served – from our life-times spent steeped in the values of the dominant society. We carry this distinction into the “helping” encounter, and help alone will never efface the distinction which exists.
Among the core values of this society are “greater than” and “less than.” Everyone is compared. Such core values are so universally received that they remain unexamined, unquestioned, unchallenged. Because they have gone unchallenged, they cling to us. We wear them like clothes. They are ingrained in the lines of our facial expressions. They are a physical and a spiritual posture.
The posture of the recipient and the posture of the benefactor complement one another. The recipient is passive, deferential, perhaps grateful; but defiant and resentful beneath the surface. The posture of the benefactor carries generosity, vigilance, and a certain kind of superiority. We know that this kind of serving is an occasion marked by a polarization between us. Yet our training leads us to collude in perpetuating it.
There is no room for the better portion to be offered. Better the little portion shared at a common table than the greater portion given in aid.
Meeting
We live in an atmosphere of distinction, of discrimination, of comparison, of judgment, of respect of some persons and disrespect of others. It is no wonder if the recipient can only approach me with deference and if I can not avoid dominating him.
It is the stock and trade of our society to set people up in ranks where some are less and others are greater, where some groups and individuals are patronized, belittled, dehumanized, destroyed. The poor in this country are treated as powerless objects of charity and control. The poor of the Third World are completely disposable.
An early program to discourage the spread of illegal drugs in this country, Operation Greenback, was brought to a halt shortly after its initiation. It aimed at the prosecution of wholesale laundering of drug receipts. Huge surpluses of millions of dollars were discovered in banks in places like Miami and Los Angeles, but their practices were not scrutinized by our government. However, a celebrated part of this war on drugs has been eviction of low-income, largely minority residents of public housing in Washington and elsewhere, who have been connected to drug use. One reason given for the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama was the war on drugs. Panama was, and still is, considered a center of trafficking and money-laundering. Yet President Endara and other members of the regime that came to power after the invasion were directors and officers of banks known to have laundered the profits of drugs. During that invasion the very poor Chorillo neighborhood of Panama City was subjected to especially fierce bombardment, and 15,000 of its people made refugees. Developers had wanted for years to transform the neighborhood into a more upscale locale and to remove the families living there. After the bombardment and evacuation of Chorillo, U.S. troops quickly moved in with bulldozers to raze the neighborhood. Now the development may proceed, the former residents having been removed for good. 2Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (NY: Hill & Wang, 1992), pp. 116, 154-155, 165, 169.
In a society of tiers, in a society of overlords and underdogs, programs and policies which perpetuate distinction and degradation are to be expected but they are not to be welcomed. We do not want to serve in this way. We do not want to aid such distinctions.
We want to love one another and meet each other across a table which we have set together. We want to break down dividing walls and end class distinctions. But, if we are to love, if we are to meet one another, we must chose liberation from the structures that divide and degrade and marginalize. We cannot love the person across the table, we cannot meet as fully human beings, as long as we settle for serving and being served. We must become discerning, engaged contemplatives.
Community
What is the object of our contemplation?
It might be the Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising which tells us that all causality is mutual. Therefore, I have helped to create the passive, resentful person who stands before me waiting for a gift and that person has helped to create me the superior giver. We can only escape from this bondage by struggling to become human beings together and ratify new relationships which allow us to disclose our mutual humanity.
There are many excellent objects of contemplation. It might be Gandhi’s measure of worthy action: What benefit will my next action have for the poorest among us? It might be Paul’s words: Christ is everything and in everything. It might be the ancient koan: What did my face look like before my conception?
Or it might be the simple meditation of John Woolman, a human being of a discernment so constant and so profound that it came again to him in the delirium of illness as an image: a mass of humanity in as great a misery as it was possible to be and still live and from which he could henceforth no longer consider himself separate and distinct.
Whatever the object we choose, we focus on it to break our old habits of thought and action, to break our hearts open so that they can grow and contain even more, to arrive at a compassion capable of transforming action and of collective action.
Once we have become broken together, we may begin to form true partnership, spaces of respite, spaces of resistance to the structures of separation and distinction and domination.
At such a table our life together flourishes and takes unexpected turns. At such a table we dream and plan. At this common table we welcome the reality and uncertainty of poverty, misery, frailty, disease, and death. We practice new forms of solidarity, invent new forms of social property, create non-toxic communities of support and recovery for those of us mentally impaired and those of us who are addicted, are led to new varieties of expression of faith, discover new means of mutual aid and deeper forms of economic sharing.
Gathered at this table, within the warmth and integrity of such a common bond, we strike at the roots of distinction instead of pruning the limbs.
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Footnotes
- 1The Journal of John Woolman (NY: Collier & Son, 1937) p. 306.
- 2Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (NY: Hill & Wang, 1992), pp. 116, 154-155, 165, 169.