[2] Connect the Dots.
A few days before the Summer Solstice, Lindsay and I rode our bikes over to Wayne State University. Three security vehicles and two cop cars were parked on the periphery of the large patch of grass where students pitched tents the previous month to protest the school's unwillingness to disclose and divest from companies profiting off of Israel’s occupation and mass murder. The large rock that was at the entrance of the encampment still had a Palestinian flag painted on it. We rolled up to the Law school to listen to a panel of young people committed to Black and Palestinian solidarity in this season of escalating police repression. One of the hijab-wearing panelists was a co-founder of the disclose and divest campaign on campus. She was arrested with a dozen others a few weeks earlier. The cops came at 5am fully armored to tear down tents. The students chanted, "Why are you in riot gear? There is no riot here!" On the panel, she spoke passionately about the debates she’s been having with her mom, and the other Gen Xers in her life, who are telling her to hold off speaking out about Palestine until after she gets her degree and starts her career. She rejects “the long game” approach, as she called it. She is actively disrupting middle-class conventional wisdom because waiting is simply not an option. The time to take a stand is right now. Because if we don’t, she said, there won’t be a future. The fascism is fermenting. Fast. I found her testimony to be extremely credible. Because she was saying true things, hard things, that surely threaten her physical safety and financial security. She knows that without taking this risk, her future, and her people's future, will look even bleaker than it does now - and that's saying something. Her words were not reckless and idealistic. They were, in fact, clear-headed and rational. Her entire testimony was soaked in spiritual depth, moral clarity and political courage. Lindsay and I experienced this same compelling brand of Gen Z boldness back in May when we drove out to Ann Arbor to check out the Gaza encampment at the University of Michigan, which boasts an endowment of $17.9 billion. On that Friday night, they were hosting a shabbat service. About forty of us circled up under the huge Douglass Fir in front of the library. Two young women from the U of M chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace led us in song and dance. One of them proclaimed that real peace is impossible without a free Palestine. Because real peace in Hebrew is “shalom” – and it has nothing to do with staying civil or steering clear of conflict in an aggressively unjust world. Shalom demands the health and harmony of the whole community. Shalom is committed to collective liberation. The assurance that all God’s children will be protected and provided for — no matter what we look like, where we were born, who we know, or how much we make. The other young woman unpacked the problematic use of the word “Israel.” Jewish folks coined it four millennia ago as the title for the community of God committed to being a moral and spiritual light to the world. However, for less than a century now, Zionists have turned “Israel” into an apartheid nation-state built on the oppression of Palestinian people. She said she will not use the word around Palestinians because of the trauma inextricably tied to it. However, in a circle of Jewish folks, she will proclaim “Israel” to reclaim the original meaning of the word from the Zionists. *** Taking in the courageous testimony of these college students reminded me of the time I asked community organizer Monica Lewis-Patrick what the most important thing middle-class folks could do to advocate for justice in Detroit. She said that all we need to do is connect the dots and tell the truth. Right now. In public. In whatever context we find ourselves in. It sounds so simple, but middle-class Americans are weighed down with three heavy millstones that keep us from making this spiritual practice an integral part of our lives. Disinformation. The fear of differentiation. Denial. The rampant spin in our news cycles and social media algorithms is designed to script a middle-class conventional wisdom that protects corporate profit margins. What is particularly pertinent about these brave college students is that they are up against a strategic, well-funded, coordinated campaign that portrays them in the media as violent, hateful and antisemitic. The state of Israel, lobbies like AIPAC, non-profits like the ADL and most US politicians from both political parties - including both Presidential candidates - have participated in this extremely destructive propaganda. When middle-class folks go on a spiritual journey that breaks rank with business as usual and breathes with those America has abandoned, we inevitably come to a breaking point. We look around and realize that most of the people in our social network are still stuck in the social and economic safety of the spin zone. If we go public with inconvenient truth - if we differentiate from the perspectives and practices of other people in our life - we will most likely lose friends, status and job opportunities. This is scary. Especially if we feel like we are walking alone. Differentiating from friends and family members is about being open and honest. It is about asserting ourselves online, in conversations and in public spaces with truthful, loving and just alternatives to disinformation and denial. Differentiating often requires putting up a boundary. Which is not the same thing as canceling, aggressively calling people out, or completely cutting people out of our lives. Differentiation is hard and holy work. This is where denial usually rears its ugly head. It is often unconscious. When we live with unresolved grief and trauma, our minds and bodies do whatever it takes to keep us safe. And differentiation is not safe. Because it might mean that we lose friends and status. So we go along to get along. We hide out in the hallways of conventional wisdom. We walk on eggshells. We hunker down with the herd. We avoid all topics that might bring up tension. We minimize, rationalize, intellectualize, play both sides and blame the victims. Growing up in middle-class America, I learned to stay safe by making it my mission to codependently meet the perceived needs of others around me. I became a beast of burden. Even today, I feel most secure, safe and valuable in production and performance mode. I make busyness my badge of honor to avoid dealing with the truth and facing reality - in myself and the world. I am just beginning to understand that these are some of my denial strategies, passed down from previous generations, to protect myself from the trauma of my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. I believe that the most underrated aspect of personal healing and collective liberation is cultivating the capacity to connect the dots and tell the truth. The middle-class people I know who are differentiating from friends and family members mired in disinformation and denialism have certain things in common. They take cues from impacted communities. They go to a therapist and/or attend 12-step meetings and/or are committed to a rigorous contemplative practice. Every single one of them is walking this path with at least one friend, or a beloved community, that values vulnerability, transparency and accountability. *** Connecting the dots and telling the truth is a subversive practice that sets us free. It is also the mustard seed that can liberate others. It is contagious. It is permission-giving. It has the power to normalize love, justice, compassion and humility. It is the yeast that can raise the level of consciousness in a critical mass of the population. It also requires spiritual depth, moral clarity and political courage - which is awfully hard to come by, unless we are committed to Something Else. The Palestinian Muslim at Wayne State and the anti-Zionist Jewish women at Michigan actively defy conventional wisdom and “law and order” – not by ditching the faith of their fathers and mothers – but by reclaiming it and reframing it around what Dr. King famously called the fierce urgency of now. I have way more in common with these young women than I do with the vast majority of church-attending Christians in the US who condemn them with their slogans or their silence. These young women are persona non grata in a destructive imperial context. Just like all the heroes of the prophetic biblical tradition. *** About two decades ago, I followed Jesus out of fundamentalism. I started unpacking the baggage of bible-supremacy. But I did not bail on the bible itself. I joined the prophetic few committed to taking back the sacred text from the privileged and powerful white men who hijacked it and cherrypicked it to sanctify their human hierarchies of value. In this process, I found Something Else. This greater Power rejects the conservative Christian premise that Jesus had to die to atone for the sins of the world. Atonement faith is a supremacy story that starts with a prayer to invite Jesus into your heart to be your personal, capitalized Lord and Savior so you won’t go straight to hell when you die. Atonement faith also protects power and wealth by accepting the status quo as God’s Will, no matter how unjust and oppressive it is. Atonement faith says things won’t get better until Jesus comes back—or until we go to heaven when we die. Something Else says that Jesus did not die to atone for the world. He came to live at-one with the world. Jesus the dark-skinned Palestinian Jewish rabbi is an icon for empowered people who stay awake and present, who pay attention, who are authentic in the moment, who live with a profound sense of awe and wonder that we are intimately connected to divine Presence, to each other, to our ancestors and to the more-than-human world of trees, bees, birds, wind and water. For me, Jesus is the human face of a Love supreme – and nothing can separate us from Love. Not disinformation, denial, or even death itself. Something Else does not confront Christo-Fascism with a “liberal” version of Jesus. Over the past decade, I’ve watched all sorts of liberal Christian institutions and organizations avoid the “extreme” convictions of these college students by emphasizing niceness, neutrality, acceptance, tolerance and a “both sides” diplomacy. Liberals emphasize peace and unity – too often at the expense of justice and collective liberation. This is terrible news for those who have been abandoned by the conventional wisdom of America. Jesus lived at-one with the world. He died for it too. Jesus was not sacrificed to wipe away our sins. He was executed by a coalition of ruling elites who wanted to stop his radical movement. They knew their wealth and power would be scrutinized if a critical mass of Jesus followers lived at-one with what was really happening—and were willing to respond by connecting the dots and telling the truth. No matter what it cost them. Just like Jesus did. Just like what these Muslim and Jewish college students all over the country are doing too. ----------------------------------------------- Here are a few compelling sources that connect the dots and tell the truth. The Night Won't End is a documentary that just dropped a couple weeks ago. It investigates the killings of civilians by the Israeli military and the role of the US. Check out here for free. Check out the Human Rights Watch report on whether Israel should be considered an “apartheid” state. Jewish Voice for Peace released a report on the disproportionate role that Jewish students have had in organizing the largest anti-war protests in a half century. The Bad Faith podcast with Briahna Joy Gray has been vital for me to digest what has happened in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7. She releases two interviews per week and I eagerly await them because it is extremely hard to find these kinds of conversations on corporate media outlets. In this episode from last month, Briahna interviews college students who got suspended after they organized the Gaza encampment at Harvard. I found it to be extremely eye-opening and heart-warming. I teared up at the end when she asks them about their families.
Consider joining Christians for a Free Palestine in Washington DC from July 28-30. You can register to participate in-person or online here.