Incident at the Lincoln Memorial

On Friday, January 19, 2019, there were many people involved in various protest or commemorative marches in the area of the Capital Mall of Washington, D.C., but an apparent confrontation developed between white students from a catholic school in Kentucky, black Hebrew Israelites who had participated in the March for Life and Native American activists, who had participated in the Indigenous Peoples March. Video of this intersection of groups has gone viral, and so many people have commented on it already. I nevertheless also feel compelled to respond.

I, as thousands have, viewed at the original clip (taken by one of the Native American marchers), and the longer video (apparently taken by one of the Hebrew Israelites). This is what I heard and saw, as succinctly as I can put it: One group with a religious affiliation was hurling negative value judgments and pejoratives at a crowd that included mostly white students and Native Americans. The students, for some reason that is not clear, stormed up to the group of Native Americans, invading their personal space and engaged in a staring match. I perceived a clear sense of menace and threat in the actions on either side; the Native Americans were between the Hebrew Israelites and the students. Unrighteous judgment was all around in the video footage. I certainly did not see the best example of nonviolent resistance in this charged atmosphere. Disrespectful behavior was evident.

Then, one of the Native Americans, Nathan Phillips, started to beat his drum and chant. I perceived this to be an attempt to diffuse and de-escalate a challenging situation.

How did I come to make that call? I am a minister in that way; I chant and I sing.  The beauty of the human voice offered in song is one of the greatest healing tools we have readily available to us. The gift that music keeps on giving the world is the creation of innumerable opportunities for unity to occur among people. 

Few are aware of an aspect called “entrainment” or that there is a study called “bio-musicology” that studies this aspect, which is simply defined as a synchronization of organisms by means of rhythmic music. When folks go into a theatre to hear a concert, and they all come out feeling moved or happy in the same way, humming tunes that they heard or singing, that is a simple example of entrainment.

When he started the drumming and chanting, Nathan Phillips was attempting to clear the space and call on the Great Spirit to enter into the discussion. I didn't know what he was chanting, but I knew this was his intent. It is the same thing people do in temples, synagogues and churches, around campfires, in sacred places everywhere - chants, hymns, whatever you want to call them, it is all the same--unifying people around the vibrational energy we all share. My sense of this was affirmed by a woman who commented on the thread of a Facebook friend about this incident. She lives in a community of Native Americans, and she indicated that she knew this was a prayers song.

Perhaps I should add that music first shifts people from where they are to another place or attitude, one where they are potentially prepared for entrainment. Singing/chanting activates both hemispheres of the brain of the singer; the opportunity for a different type of participation and awareness possible from all who are in the vicinity, whether they are singing or not. I've read on this in the past, but I'm not sure I could lay my hands on a definitive article. I do know that music therapy makes use of entrainment to assist in healing of all kinds, and I am sure the Buddhists discuss this from the aspect of meditation, as well as chanting. The ringing of any bell, for example, is the signal to awaken from one way of thinking to another. Do we heed the bell? Do we heed the song? Do we heed the call to change? That is always the question.

The human voice is the body's primary built-in coping tool. We cry out in the darkness so as not to feel alone. Our voices reach out to find others. Rarely do you find children that do not make up songs or hum to themselves when they are alone, quietly playing. This vibration that we generate is a precious tool for our whole lives. Unfortunately, great swathes of our society have been told they can't sing, music programs in schools have been limited or eliminated, and there is so much generated music, the majority of people passively listen and don't participate as much in singing as they used to. If people are listening to music, it is more often through earphones, rather than a shared public occasion. 

Instead of singing, people talk, gabble, gabble, gabble all the time. Much of this gabbling talk is generated by the judgmental portion of the brain; there is a lot of bad vibe being pushed out there, damaging to self and others. This is unfettered left-brain activity. 

Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation.

- Jill Bolte Taylor, “My Stroke of Insight” (2008)

Dr. Taylor’s statement rather aptly describes the situation in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and it’s media fallout.

I write about this today because right now the earth is calling us to change. The earth cannot ring a bell. It can only sing a song of sorrow from the depths of the sea and the wind whipped mountaintops. The whole earth is a sacred place and we are supposed to be stewards of it; but instead we are mostly engaged in trying to conquer one another. One woman wrote, in the same Facebook thread on this incident I earlier mentioned, that the need for people to be right at all costs is both exhausting and crippling us. People yell at each other and fling blame. With all the yelling going on, it is no surprise that we can’t hear anything else. Further, seeking to be right is the chasing of a false idol. Righteousness is not something that can be claimed or owned by anyone; it is a honorific bestowed on someone who does good. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about radical love; this type of love is discussed in many holy books, in many traditions around the world. That is what today should be about. In the incident on Friday, Nathan Philips tried to open a door away from a difficult situation by chanting a prayer for healing and unity. (I am trying to find out more about his chant, and if I do, I’ll update this article with that information.) Love is what must overcome the negativity in our world and be the unifying element of our lives. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a sermon:

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says ‘Love your enemies,’ he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else? The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.,“Strength to Love” (1963)

I’ll end with a somewhat more cryptic way of looking at it for you all to ponder on as you do service today. This is about unison in music.

Equality is never found in the consonances or intervals, and unison is to the musician what the point is the geometer. A point is the beginning of a line, although it is not itself a line. A line is not composed of points, since a point has no length, width or depth that can be extended or joined to another point. So a unison is only the beginning of a consonance or interval; it is neither consonance nor interval, for like the point, it is incapable of extension.

- Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590), singer, composer and music theorist

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: What will you do?

Here we are again. Really, here we are, where we’ve always been. That weekend has arrived. What will you do? Will you celebrate?

Last year, we arrived at the 50^thAnniversary of one of the worst years in my personal memory, what should be remembered as one of the worst years in the history of this country. The civil war had been over for nearly a hundred years, but the war was not over, and civility had not been fully achieved. 

So, here we are, a year later and, my friends, I’m sorry to have to impart this to you (if you are not already aware), but the civil war is still not over. I’m loath to believe it, myself. I grieve to have to confess it. We are now more divided as a nation than we have ever been. A seething underbelly of irrational hatred has bubbled to the surface in hideous ways. We see it, we hear it, everywhere. The violence of irrational hatred is killing us and our children. The fear that breeds this irrational hatred seems all the rage, these days.

I have found, in my meanderings through this experience we call life, that once a good person has died, that person’s memory is held up for veneration. While that can be a very good thing and healthy way to deal with the pain of loss, it is a better thing if our veneration of that memory is an impetus to live up the example of the good that person embodied. 

Sadly, all too often our veneration is complicated, clouded or obscured by a tendency toward inactionon our part. This inaction takes two primary forms, both passive: adoration or “let’s have a party” (which must be the most empty form of acknowledgement). A day of service seems a better option, but what if this is merely an obligation ticked off a list, then set aside until next year? Commitment to change isn’t an event that can be handled in a few hours on a single day; this is daily work, a life’s work.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday (which commemorates the birthday of Dr. King, but is so terribly overshadowed by his violent death), what will you do?

During the past several years, I have shared with my readers memories and nuggets of wisdom I garnered from my late friend Arthur, a sociologist, really a political historian. When he passed away, he left behind various notes and references to books that he did not have in his own extensive library (a fact that will astonish anyone who’d ever been in Arthur’s library), but no outline, no paragraphs that could be expanded into a thesis, no solid leads for anyone to pursue toward a proposed writing project he had preliminarily titled, “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Unfinished Journey.” Although we had frequently discussed King and his legacy, Arthur’s desire to write on the topic was not something we ever talked about in depth. This essay may contain a thread, weft to the warp, if you will, distilled from my interactions with Arthur.

In the years since Arthur passed away, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and wondering about what Arthur might have brought forward. What would it have revealed, if anything? I have a few thoughts (what a surprise!) that I’ll share.

In a 1957 article for Christian Century, “Nonviolence and Racial Justice”, Dr. King wrote:

… The basic question which confronts the world’s oppressed is: How is the struggle against the forces of injustice to be waged? There are two possible answers. One is resort to the all too prevalent method of physical violence and corroding hatred. The danger of this method is its futility. Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Through the vistas of time a voice still cries to every potential Peter, “Put up your sword!" The shores of history are white with the bleached bones of nations and communities that failed to follow this command. If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for justice, unborn generations will live in a desolate night of bitterness, and their chief legacy will be an endless reign of chaos.

Later, outlining aspects of Non-Violent Resistance, Dr. King states:

A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come to see that the basic tension is not between races… The tension… is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is at bottom between justice and injustice… [Emphasis mine.]

And he follows that with:

A fourth point that must be brought out concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the worldmust not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. [Emphasis mine.]

I propose that we pause, take stock and acknowledge that American culture and discourse in 2019 is the very embodiment of that thing Dr. King identified as danger, trap, and ultimate defeat. The struggle in this country is real, it is hateful, it is bitter and bloody—and it is inhuman. We’ve moved way beyond this being about race and class; identity politics has created new races and new classes, new reasons to have a chip on the shoulder, new ways to self-identify as a victim. With all these new divisions, we can all be offended victims, if we so choose. 

I will now entertain a notion that will instantly become unpopular because of it’s undeniable truth: Every step in time from the signing of the Civil Rights Act has been a step away from the obvious intent of equality and justice under the law for all people of the nation. 

Dr. King knew what was at stake in taking up the cause of justice for people of color: He knew that the mantle of equity had to cover the entire nation, all people. This is why he worked to create broad coalitions that included white people, religious people, workers, business leaders, politicians and others. That is what he did, to his dying day. 

What will you do, here, now, from this time forward?

For myself, I am taking time to reflect, reconcile, redress (where I can in the situations I encounter) and rehabilitate. Here are a few examples of what I mean, which I will expand upon through my personal, daily practice:

Reflection: Do I contribute to discourse and narratives that are unproductive? Do I assume I am right? Am truly I open to hear someone else’s wisdom, experience or pain. Is persistence or resistance appropriate to the present situation?

Reconcile: Do my actions and choices match the ethical views I claim? How can I be a factor in restoring unity or equilibrium in situations that occur in daily life? Am I either combative or non-confrontational in the way I handle challenges? How can I better work in cooperation with others toward a positive and joint outcome?

Redress: Can an appropriate remedy be found and implemented for a situation that is unfair or where a wrong has been done? Sometimes we make attempts that are patronizing or otherwise miss the mark; how can we be more sensitive to an appropriate response?

Rehabilitate: We have a lot of individual and collective work to do to vindicate, rebuild and restore people, communities, states of being, collective consciousness, the environment, integrity in our political narratives, truth to power. Where does it all begin? At home, at work, in your town, in our State, everywhere we are. There is much to done; we have to be willing to engage in the work, to strengthen our collective critical thought, and willing to welcome everyone to the party.

At the end of Dr. King’s article for Christian Century, within the context of non-violent resistance, he offers a prayer for us and for this work for human unity:

God grant that we wage the struggle with dignity and discipline. May all who suffer oppression in this world reject the self-defeating method of retaliatory violence and choose the method that seeks to redeem. Through using this method wisely and courageously we will emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright daybreak of freedom and justice.

Don’t let this be just another holiday weekend. I think the very best way to honor the memory of Dr. King is to continue the journey his untimely death thwarted, to build a world with no double standards, where each person is entitled to and equally accorded dignity, opportunity and justice. 

Keep the dream alive, and make it come true; nothing less will do.

___

Source: Christian Century74 (6 February 1957): 165-167.