I'm Freaking Out!

By Jim Segaar

Some mornings I wake up thinking, “Which horrendous problem with our society should I freak out about today?”
 
Because we definitely have choices.
 
This year, following the murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many people are freaking out about gun violence, and I’m one of them. In some ways this is an “easy one.” Nations from Great Britain to Australia to Canada have dealt effectively with gun violence by implementing what even Dick’s Sporting Goods refers to as “common sense gun reform.” So even though the powers that be resist needed change, at least we have a pretty good idea of what those changes are.
 
But other problems seem even more intractable.
 
In March, Time magazine devoted an entire issue to the Opiod crisis in the United States. Drug overdoses killed nearly 64,000 people in the U.S. in 2016 – that’s about twice as many as are killed in the U.S. with guns in an average year. Photojournalist James Nachtwey’s work fills the Time issue. He commented, “ I had no idea what it looked like on the ground. The only way to make real sense of it, I told my editors, was to see what happens to individual human beings, one by one.” Where do we even start to address this crisis?
 
We can add many other problems to the list. Climate change. Our political system rotting from the head down. Systemic racism and sexism. Homophobia. Islamophobia. Imigrantophobia. Or maybe we could just call it all “NOT-LIKE-ME-ophobia.”
 
Where do we even begin to pick what to focus on, let alone solve the problems? I don’t have a clue. But I’ve found a few hints in my recent reading.
 
According to the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who collaborated on a recent book, the key to achieving happiness not only on an individual level but a societal one is compassion. Per the Dalai Lama, “A compassionate concern for others’ well-being is the source of happiness.”
 
In addition to compassion, or perhaps as part of it, we need to take action. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared many words of wisdom regarding action, including:

• “Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”
• “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
• “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

 
And all of the above find inspiration in the life and teachings of Jesus. In addition to compassion and action, Jesus stressed nonviolent resistance. This is supported not only in the Bible, but in Roman references pertaining to Jesus, according to authors John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan . Per to the Roman penal code: “the authors of sedition and tumult, or those who stir up the people, shall, according to their rank, either be crucified, thrown to wild beasts, or deported to an island.” Jesus of Nazareth, the leader of a nonviolent resistance and a Jewish peasant, qualified for crucifixion. The fact that his followers were not also crucified means that his movement was nonviolent, according to the Crossans.
 
So what do we do in our troubled world? How can we move beyond freaking out every day?
 
Our traditions tell us to begin with compassion, action, and nonviolent resistance. And we need to add one more element for more complete picture. We have no guarantees of success, at least in our lives or per our own timelines. The arc of the universe may bend toward justice, but no one promises that our efforts will bend it fast enough so we see the results personally.
 
So what do we do next? We have an opportunity to join our voices with thousands, perhaps millions, of others on Saturday, March 24 by participating in the March For Our Lives, which will take place in many cities and calls for that “common sense gun reform” mentioned earlier. The Seattle march begins at 10 a.m. at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill.
 
We don’t have any guarantees that the march will lead to needed legislation regarding firearms, or that any of our efforts to fix our broken society will bear fruit any time soon. But we must take every opportunity we have to show compassion, to take action, and to nonviolently resist that which we believe to be wrong. To do anything less means we fail to move past freaking out.
 
 
Sources:

• Dick’s Sporting Goods statement: www.facebook.com – search Dick’s Sporting Goods
• Time magazine, March 5,2018 issue
• Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu: The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
• MLK quotes: http://www.abundance-and-happiness.com/martin-luther-king-jr-quotes.html
• John Dominic Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan: Rising Up with Christ, Christian Century, January 31, 2018

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