A Brazilian friend told me, as the Diocese of California was moving towards its new Companion Diocese relationship with Curitiba, in the southern Brazilian state of Parana, that many Brazilian Christians wear a dark-colored wooden ring on the ring finger of their right hands. The practice, he told me, was initiated by a Roman Catholic bishop, who took off his golden episcopal ring and put on the wooden ring instead, the same kind of ring worn by the poor of Brazil as wedding rings, because they cannot afford rings made of silver or gold. While Sheila and I were in Curitiba two weeks ago we were deeply impressed by the great commitment of our Companion Diocese’s bishop, Naudal Gomes, to the poor, and the equal commitment of the clergy and lay people of the diocese. Bishop Naudal wears one of the wooden rings, a small sign of this central commitment of his Christian ministry. I was privileged to be invited to attend the Brazilian House of Bishops, meeting in Curitiba, while we were there. I saw that most of the Brazilian bishops also wore these wooden rings. And I came to see, over the several days of the meeting, that this was no mere affect – the engagement of justice for the poor was central to their conversations. There is another Brazilian friend of ours here in San Francisco who has the dark ring tattooed on his finger. When I talked with him about it, and mentioned the context in which it had been introduced to me – solidarity with the poor – he replied simply, “Solidarity with all sentient beings.” Today is Earth Day. It is helpful for me to remember the lessons that have become more and more deeply seated in environmental work – justice for the poor means justice for the earth, and indeed justice for all. We are truly held in a nearly infinite web of interconnected lives and relationships. It is our vocation to consciously and compassionately inhabit this nexus of relationships, living in solidarity with all God has made.
The best manners, the most respectful posture towards another in the range of our relationships is one that sheds light – love – both outward and inward.
Voices that say that San Franciscans, Parisians, all those living where the Olympic torch is being carried on its way to Beijing should respectfully let it pass should be heard as promoting a lesser form of human kindness. A recommendation for silence over injustice means complicity, and finally more shadows and less light.
It matters, though, and greatly, how we protest. It is heartening to see the unafraid, creative, non-violent way in which protesters have been emblazoning the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Golden Gate Bridge. As my friends and co-workers who have been following these protests tell me about them, they do so with a happy light in their eyes, and with a spark of energy to join in.
The late Rabbi Friedman advised meeting anger with humor – not the easiest prescription to follow, as we human animals tend to either fight or run when confronted with threatening anger. It is a genuinely human response to respond creatively, as these protestors are doing. I would say it is how the fully human Jesus responded to his attackers, and how I hope to follow him.
I said that we must take a posture that shines the light of love outward and inward when we protest. This comes from what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from the Birmingham Jail, when he was responding to clergymen who said, “Wait, be polite,” with respect to the urgency of the Civil Rights Movement. When planning a non-violent action, King wrote, one of the deliberate steps he and others in the Movement took was to purify their motives.
It is important that I know the sources of my anger, which seem so righteous to me. How much floats in our individual consciousnesses, in the darkness of pre-creation chaos, and how much more in the willful shadow of our own culture, the places we would rather pretend do not exist. The light of love must shine into these shadowy, frightening places too as we plan non-violent actions.
Several years ago, while I was serving as Bishop Suffragan of Alabama, working each day a few blocks from the place from which Dr. King wrote his letter, addressed to one of the prior bishops of Alabama, I implored Desmond Tutu to come preach in our cathedral in order to help counter the hatred that the then Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, was stirring up towards lesbian and gay people.
After the electrifying sermon, given to a packed cathedral, the pews filled equally by blacks and whites, I took Desmond across the street for lunch with a group of interfaith leaders. I asked the group to share their own visions of reconciliation, one by one.
Traveling with Archbishop Tutu was the Honorable Sheila Sisulu, then South African Ambassador to the United States. She answered the question last. She said, “When I travel around the world, representing South Africa, people say to me, ‘We need Nelson Mandela to come and lead our country to justice as he did for South Africa.’”
“I tell them, ‘No,’” she said. “I tell them, ‘If you want to find your leaders in justice and reconciliation, go look in your own jails and prisons, for that’s where we put Mandela.’”
Her words jolted me, and they have stayed with me. What Mandela, what King is hidden away in my own country’s jails, unseen by me? How does my shadowy knowledge of my own country’s participation in injustice, in torture and terror, express itself in my outward actions? Does my rage at China have roots in my suppressed sorrow and rage at injustice at home?
I would like my own non-violent actions to be as clear and bright with joy and inner knowledge as seems to be animating the protesters in Paris and San Francisco. Let us use our voices, and let the light shine both outwardly and inwardly.
We need to stand against the ongoing injustice of China against the people of Tibet. And we need to stand for the promotion of justice in our own country as we do so.
