In an earlier post in the JTN manifesto series, we explored one of the foundational earmarks of the nonviolent ethic: the power of love to overcome violence.
This ideological affirmation has implications in reality, and that brings us to the next point we affirm:
Offering creative, life-giving love in response to any degree of violence or hatred.
Really, this point gets down to the nitty-gritty.
- What are we doing in real life to express this love we say has the power to overcome violence?
- Do our actions generate life, or do they perpetuate toxicity and death?
This is an affirmation that asks something of us. It asks, “What kind of person will you choose to be?”
On this point, we choose love in response to any degree of hatred or violence because it is the small, incidental choices that begin building in us a character worthy of greater acts of love.
We must begin where we are.
The journey toward nonviolence begins with a single step.
I remember one of the first times I tried putting this into practice.
I was driving in a car with someone who was, in all honesty, not a lot of fun to be around in that moment. No matter the topic discussed, their response was negative, sarcastic, or just generally unhelpful. Any attempt to spin a positive outlook by me on any broached subject was met with immediate dismissal.
I felt at a loss in that moment.
And my immediate inclination was to spew exasperation and frustration all over the conversation, once I reached what felt like my upper limit of patience. (Truthfully, that has been my reaction on more than one occasion before.)
But in that moment, I allowed myself to take a longer view.
Or rather, to take a longer look at the person sitting beside me.
Somehow, I was given the grace to see that their pessimism and fatalism were really symptoms of something larger: a great degree of disappointment in their circumstances. This colored their view of everything else they saw.
And somehow that produced a new wellspring of patience in me, as well as a willingness to demonstrate love. (This goes back to that curiosity bent that produces compassion we discussed in a previous post.)
Instead of returning their negativity with more than a bit of my own (“I’ll show them how difficult they are to be around right now!”), I turned toward their heart and sought to address its tender places.
This doesn’t mean I invaded their space or trespassed emotional boundaries.
It means that I listened what what they were saying.
And instead of telling them why they shouldn’t feel that way, I mirrored back that I heard their concern. (This goes back to the compassionate listening we’ve also discussed previously.)
I was surprised to find the conversation turn a corner.
Something came disarmed in them.
I have my suppositions about what happened.
- Perhaps they felt seen in a way they hadn’t in a long time.
- Perhaps they felt safe because I extended patience, acceptance, and care, rather than immediate judgment or rejection.
- Perhaps they simply no longer felt a “me against them” tenor to the conversation, but rather an “us, together.”
Whatever the reason, it gave me greater faith in love’s power over all that carries the stench of death.
Granted, circumstances are not always this simplistic, nor are the outcomes always this positive.
But we must begin where we are, and adopting a nonviolent ethic of love means choosing to move toward another with generative and creative energy in moments that normally invite us to fight back, dismiss, reject, judge, ignore, or altogether avoid.
So, what about you?
How have you chosen love in the face of hatred, negativity, or violence in your life? What was that choice like for you? Did it make a difference at all?
In conversation after church today, my Mom and I were talking about some of the challenging personalities we deal with in Kidz Church every Sunday…
They can be so flippant and disrespectful (“cool”), which only serves to distract the other kids and make a very difficult time of communicating anything to the group.
But from time to time…it’s interesting to see the change in some of these attitudes when you make eye contact and ask them a sincere question…something that taps into their everyday experience.
Lots of times the change is fleeting…but it brings some moments of clarity…a deeper understanding and (oh yeah…) love.
But ask about my attitudes toward certain individuals I work with/for…or difficult moments with family members…oh, I’ve so much room to grow in love.
So glad you are offering these thoughts from your heart, my friend. They breathe life…
Barb, your story of Kids Church reminded me of your work with a young girl when we were taking Mojo’s class. I can’t remember her name, but you took her to a street fair, and she would come to your house some afternoons to visit. I remember she was a difficult personality at times for you. But I can’t help but think how much of that difficult personality was learned over years of neglect and rejection … what can happen in someone over time as they are loved, invited out, listened to, encouraged, and challenged in a way that is personal to them? It takes patience and a long view for change in the soul to happen, doesn’t it? You and I both know a little something about that. :)
Though this didn’t happen to me directly, the following event had a profound impact on me.
My Mom works in a job that faces the public and so gets the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of people. A woman came in with her teenaged daughter to pick up something she had ordered. There was a misunderstanding on her part about when her order would be ready, and she positively lost it.
She yelled at my Mom, getting right up in her face, pointing her finger just inches from her and yelling at her.
In the course of all the yelling, it was revealed that one of her daughter’s friends had just committed suicide. The order she was picking up pertained to this young life that had been lost.
My Mom was shaken and rattled, but understood in that moment that this mom was sad, grieving, and deeply frightened, knowing it could have been her own child. Mom didn’t yell back and didn’t make accusations, but was calm with her, despite the customer’s insistence that it was my Mom’s fault everything was so screwed up.
Mom was so rattled by the event that she left work for the day, but when I talked to her just hours after this had all transpired, I heard in her a deep understanding of this woman’s fear.
I always think of that when I find myself offended at how someone is behaving toward me or speaking with me. I don’t always have the advantage of knowing exactly what is behind their attitude or behavior, but it drives me to think: I’m so sorry for whatever happened to you. As a consequence, I’ve seen myself become patient and forebearing, and just willing to listen.
Wow, Kirsten. What a story. I can imagine how that would have the potential to rattle, to have the yelling and the finger-pointing so close to home. But how great that your mom had the presence of mind to see that these were symptoms of something much greater and altogether heartbreaking for this woman.
It reminds me of a story I heard once of a man and his two kids riding the subway. The kids were out of control, climbing all over seats and yelling and just generally wreaking havoc. Everyone on the subway was visibly irritated at this father who did nothing to calm his children or make them behave. He sat in his seat in a bit of a stupor. Eventually, he somehow came to be more present and made a quiet comment to one of his seat neighbors: “Please forgive my children. They’ve just lost their mother, and we’re returning from the hospital now, having left her side.”
Yikes. We just never know where someone is really coming from, do we?
I work on the phones all day. “But they are all Christians, so it is easy right?” I would take my old job collecting past due bills any day over some of the doozys I have that are “Christ Followers”.
It is very easy for me to get judgmental about people, and unfortunately do so more regularly then I care to admit. I have a strong intuition with people and when that intuition is telling me I am getting B.S., I just want to give it back.
Non violence means choosing naivety sometimes and just setting aside prejudice. I have had some moments in my life like Kirsten’s mom did and it just blew me away. Steven Covey calls them “paradigm changers”
Steven relates the story of him, or someone he knows who was on a bus early in the morning. A woman had kids that were hyper and going nuts. Instead of bearing it in love he confronted her. She apologized but said that they were on the way home from the hospital where her husband had just died. He had a drivers license and she did not so she needed to get home.
Powerful thoughts indeed.
If we allow ourselves to be present in that moment we can often “bear one another’s burden”. The bible does not tell us to take a whole burden of a person when making that statement, but taking a piece of it at a time among 100′s of people who are grace filled and kind can change the whole paradigm.
Carl, your story of the bus is the same story I told of the subway in response to Kirsten! Yes, it was Stephen Covey’s book where I first heard that … just had a few of the details mixed. :)
What you said about the call center and embracing naivete got me thinking … if we are being fed “a line” by another person, does it serve them well to just grin and swallow it down? Here again we bump up against the balance of grace and truth.
I think of nonviolent leaders like Gandhi and MLKJ … they were about nonviolent resistance, which inherently means resisting something that wasn’t right in favor of truth and goodness. When someone is not acting well or asking us to participate in their tomfoolery, nonviolence doesn’t necessarily mean succumbing to naivete.
Now, suspending judgment, yes. That is another story. But being willing to call a spade a spade is okay, I think, and still in keeping with nonviolence. Though it’s all in the spirit in which it’s called a spade, of course!
Oyy, this is where I admit that I sometimes summarize comments and do not read them all. Case in point.
Sorry.
No worries, Carl! I think you remembered the story more accurately than I did. :)
Here’s a recent example from my life that left an impression on me:
I live with a family that has a son (we’ll call him Jeff) who is about my age. Jeff and I have very different personalities. He is naturally an “avoider” and I am a “connecter”. It recently came out that my friendly subtle attempts to connect with him had been getting on his nerves. I asked him to explain to me why he felt the way he did, so that I would know if there was something I should change in my behavior or if his irritability was coming from a place in him that didn’t have anything to do with me.
I sat at the kitchen table, with another member of his family around, and heard Jeff out. He said some hurtful things, including some things he believed that just aren’t true about me.
I had had a long day, and was already emotionally spent before this conversation began. So it may have been my own exhaustion that contributed to my response, but somehow I had the patience not to retaliate. What he said hurt me, but I just listened. And wanted him to feel heard. I knew that any defensiveness on my part would make him more upset than he already was. And it turns out, I didn’t even need to explain my side of things very much. He just needed to get those feelings off his chest. And now, apparently, he no longer feels irritated by my quiet forms of connecting with him and the rest of the family when I share common areas of the house to work, read, etc.
I could certainly provide many other examples of ways that my heart naturally bleeds violent thoughts and feelings toward people who hurt me or just plain annoy me. But this was a positive example in my life of responding to someone that I generally don’t understand, someone who was genuinely angry at me and was willing to actually explain to me why.
I was positively affirmed by the experience the next day when that other member of the family who was present during the conversation told me that how I responded was exactly what Jeff had needed. I was glad that I had brought peace to the discussion and had not bred more violence by my response. Now, let’s see how this experience might inform the rest of my life…
Katy-Did, I so love this story! Thanks so much for sharing it! What you did here was offer a glimpse into the daily reality of living nonviolently. We are going to have a recurring feature on this blog (which I’ll share in one of the upcoming posts) where we have opportunities to share stories exactly along the lines of what you did here: places where we chose love.
I was glad that I had brought peace to the discussion and had not bred more violence by my response. This is one of the most powerful lines of what you shared. You’ve caught the essence of this road … it is in the small encounters each day that we choose to bring peace or violence into this world through our interactions and our hearts.
I’m so glad you’re here with us, Katy-Did. I’m looking forward to learning alongside you on this road. xoxo
Hi Christianne
It has taken me a while to get over here. I am so glad that you are writing these individual stories because they are practical everyday wisdom that stretches the faith of the person reading them.
It is almost like reading the book of Proverbs in layman terminology. You can’t help but be challenged and impacted by these examples. I see them as mini sermons but without judgment or sounding preachy.
I remember these things you write here. They stick with me and they speak to me at times when I find myself in undesirable situations. I don’t always do the right thing mind you.
Your life reminds me a lot of Romans 13 where Paul is saying love is the fulfillment of the law. Christianity is a whole lot deeper than keeping a do and don’t list. It has taken me years to understand this and still I am not sure I get it. Your life reminds me of what Christianity is supposed to look like.
Love You
Miss You
Tammy, I’m glad these conversations leave an impression that resounds.
Yes! Love as the fulfillment of the law is exactly right. I think a lot of our work here in this online community will be about the work of understanding what love is and how it takes up greater and greater residence inside our hearts and lives. That really is the subject this blog centers upon and the subject I desire my entire life to be about pursuing.
Love you.