Looking back to go forward

Controlling our Outrage

Again.   

Revised December 14, 2020

Not long ago we had in place more controls over the passionate emotion of outrage. We can return to these controls to resolve our polarity now.

The Creator blessed us humans with the shared emotion of outrage. Throughout our past, we used it to collectively to unite around real threats to ourselves and others of our kind. The emotion blessed us. Misused, it has cursed us. Jesus himself encountered it from before his birth, and charted his way, recorded in the Gospels of the Bible, to defeat threats of uncontrolled outrage and thrive together. It’s an easily missed part of the first Christmas story.

 

We are again in a time of uncontrolled outrage. We have been watching trusted people collecting power to eliminate others of our own kind. These are no longer dangers of a rogue bear or tiger bent on human flesh. It’s time to direct our attention against uncontrolled outrage against our own flesh and blood (see NPR’s podcast “The Hidden Brain,” from last week).

 

Following is a story from an acquaintance of mine. I first heard him tell this story decades ago. Last week I requested and he sent me his own words of this story.*

 

When I was a young boy, my grandfather, father, and I travelled some distance from our home community to go fishing at a spot ‘known only to my grandfather.’ Having driven as far as roads would take us, we got out of my grandfather’s old beater, and gathering our gear, set out on the trail toward this favourite fishing spot. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a deep, dark woods making our way along a narrow trail where, with each passing step, the way ahead and behind became less and less perceptible. On more than a few occasions I expressed my concern to my grandfather; each time he sought to reassure me.

 

Finally, unable to hold in my anxiety, fearful about what lay ahead of us, even more anxious that the way back would never again be found, I tugged frantically on my Grandfather’s arm. “Grandfather, Grandfather,” I cried out, “We’ll be lost! We’ll be lost!” Sensing the rising fear in me, my Grandfather knelt down, and after reassuring me more fully, taught me a lesson, one that has guided my thinking and actions from that day to this. In the mixture of languages that was his habit of speech, he told me that each new trail we take could seem like it leads along an uncertain path; the way back can seem unclear, obscured by the landscape. “But,” he said, “When you set out on a new trail, if you spend twice as much of your time looking over your shoulder at where you have come from as you do where you are going; if you fix the landmarks behind you in your mind the way they will appear to you when you turn to take the trail back, you will never become lost – you will always be able to find your way home.” 

 

That day my grandfather gave me the ability to find my way to and from all of the various destinations in life that would lie before me; all of which, as I set out on each new trail, were initially unknown. Contemporary societies – not just North American – are no longer used to looking at where they have come from. They are far more fixated on an as yet unknown and unknowable future – on what comes next. Rather than use the past to help determine where they are on the trail of life in relation to where they started, they plunge ahead, frequently blindly, expecting that the future will correct any mistakes they make in navigation.

 

How can we recover the good use of outrage, as felt by this child? Might this be a late night topic this holiday season? Join the conversation on my blog:

Greenwoodback40@blogspot.com

 

 

* Terry LeBlanc, a Mi’kmaq-Acadian, is founder and Director of NAIITS, An Indigenous Learning Community as well as adjunct professor at several Canadian and American seminaries. He holds a PhD in Theology and Anthropology from Asbury seminary. Terry has worked in a variety of roles equipping Indigenous people for leadership in their homes, communities and places of faith. Working with Elijah Harper at the Sacred Assembly in ’95 Terry co-authored the event’s “Reconciliation and Principles” documents. He is an award-winning author, speaker and professor, teaching about Indigenous peoples, cultures in context, anthropology, missions, and the church.  

 

Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016 1

 

 

The following additional paragraphs have possible discussion points:

 

1.     We are peaking a centuries long trajectory of tyrants increasingly gaining power over other people. They have been building outrage against other human beings to the point of extermination. It’s a dangerous emotion even for a child as portrayed here. It was undermining his confidence in the most trusted adults in his life. The emotion blocked his normal ability to see evidence his father and grandfather were trustworthy. 

 

2.     Why didn’t they present his confused distrust with the facts? They knew he couldn’t see it by being corrected. That’s where we are now as a nation, with a sizable portion of our population unable to see evidence, unable to receive correction. And a sizeable portion of us believe this outrage-generated falsehood: “All we need to do is force the truth as a weapon against those who refuse to believe it, and our power over them will get them to believe truth again.” 

 

3.     Fortunately, we Americans have the world’s best judicial system­—the father and grandfather in the story—with a possible process to arrive at evidence-based truth. It allows acting on the truth more than trying to attack the lies. But it is a new for us, old for indigenous culture, way forward. 

 

4.     What steps can help us navigate away from the no-evidence outrage endangering our nation from both sides of our polarity? 

 

5.     What can help us past the outrage fanned by President Trump’s continued aggression against even victims in his own party? 

 

6.     How can we support the discredited professional Republicans who have found the courage to stay on the evidence track for the good of all of us? Are these not our real heroes: our police, teachers, healthcare providers, election workers and attorneys who help us access responsible, caring ways to grasp us lovingly, turn us around, and point us to truth that frees us from consequences of unregulated outrage? 

 

7.     How can we answer words of outrage with love, like Jesus did, and ignore the evidence-missing outrage still emanating from too much of our political, news, religious, and entertainment media.

 

 

A Thanksgiving Parallel

 

Wampanoag still fighting for their land and water 

written November 25, 2020

Disinformation and outright lies flooding our media have darkened our vision. Getting past Thanksgiving invites us through our fears directly into this darkness. We best can’t go around it, we gotta go through it. Just maybe, more of these leaders with courage can help us throught the darkness false fears many of us have taken for granted. It’s possible the branding of religious, racial, gender, economics, birthplace and ethnicity groups of real people as enemy can now be removed. The Bible can show us truth through these falsehoods by “whatever is true, whatever is honorable..” (read on, Philippians 4_8). Now is a good time, after Thanksgiving, for truth to take us through the darkness of our lies about pandemics and politics, guided by the light Jesus gave us.

 

The Wampanoag nation’s elders and the documents of that history offer us  a historical example of this truth. This is the nation who first hosted the pilgrims (look up Patriot Pledge 2020/11/25/ National Day Mourning). After they disembarked bad things happened. There was a brief sharing of food and celebration. It will not be obscured for us by finding the evidence in the darkness. It’s true a small nation of some 40,000 citizens mostly perished from a combination of a pandemic and bloodshed from gunfire. But there were hundreds of survivors, unlike the report in some of our children’s history books that this nation went extinct (See Time Magazine “Wampanoag First Thanksgiving”).

 

Historical revisionism was almost inevitable as settlers arrived on our shores. Yes they were fleeing slavery and mass extermination. There were real reasons for fleeing to the New World. President Roosevelt did want to honor and update this national holiday in 1941, celebrating the welcome by those who hosted the Pilgrims as honored guests. But the tragic truth of what happened, the words actually spoken and written down as well as documents from the time, are now supported more by teachers in our schools and elders in our families. These good people know a right time to give children access to this real evidence, when they are ready. And the process is healing.  

 

The 400-year-old story is long, and difficult. The present story of our pandemic and increasing violence could now repeat the original Thanksgiving history of pandemic and war. We can grow in strength nationally from the pain of the truth of the first Thanksgiving. Will there be a similar truth behind our nation’s covid19, and its continuation into the next months or years? The greatest benefit would come as we discipline ourselves to the pain of truth-telling and hearing, and change our behavior accordingly as we are able.

 

The Wampanoag people believed a logical lie. The sound of gunfire had to be the cause of their deaths. The closer they were, the more immediate and bloody their death.  With no projectile visible, people died when close, and much later when far. No wonder it took generations.

 

Their pandemic spread, along with the gunfire, and 80% and more of the nation’s towns and villages had been wiped out already by the first Thanksgiving (see Wikipedia, or the Times article on Day of Mourning Thanksgiving) It appeared to many that the whole nation perished as the Indian wars, guns against spears and arrows, raged on. But hundreds had fled, and survived to keep their nation alive. These are the remnant tragically threatened again by our pandemic and by land seizure by our politicians.

 

After 400 years the Wampanoag are still fighting for their land and lives. In late March, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced proposed termination of 321 acres of tribal land in Mashpee and Taunton, Mass., to lose reservation status because the tribe supposedly didn’t meet the definition of Indian. In June, a federal judge described this decision “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to law,” and the matter is not resolved. The tribe awaits Interior’s new decision, and is hoping for permanent protection through an act of Congress.

 

A parallel history of hidden truth is becoming accessible to our Montana students and their teachers, and to the Wampanoag in Massachusetts.  This is now:

1)    Covid19 is in fact extremely dangerous.  We can learn from our epidemics in the past if we stop the blaming and get to work.

2)    Wear a mask. The fabric of even the best filters cannot prevent virus transmission when we must mix with those outside our family circle. But a mask properly worn, with proper ambient ventilation, drastically reduces the catching of each other’s breath! It’s in the air we share.

3)    Base our kids’ learning upon our families, not on our factory culture curriculum. Our schooling loss and our covid transmission can be stopped simultaneously. But it takes a huge change to recover trust for our 5,000 year-old outcomes-based learning unit: the family pod, its circle of security, the learning circle it encloses, with cross-generation engagement in real life needs. See The  Atlantic article, “School Wasn’t So Great Before Covid,” November 2020.

4)    And prayer changes things. There’s real evidence. Mostly God changes our own hearts. Let’s welcome some change, it’s part of living life.  Christmas is coming.

 

 

Parting our Covid Cloud

 

Written November 18, 2020

Our human need is relationship. All of us agree on this

 

But do we agree it's key to our covid cloud needing parting?  Covid clouds our capacity to know and respond successfully to each other. It’s a job to build the courage to care and respond around the constrictions, mandates, and yes, legitimate fears.

 

What can we do when we must have a mask? We still have our eyes. They talk too. And we still have our voice. Many young children not easily heard need help realizing they can actually be heard through a mask. Our eyes, our hands and our voice can reach past a mask. Physical distancing makes it harder to hear and touch, but when the attempt is seen it counts too.  Most of us don’t like stopping our voices in fear our larynx might slew out a virus cloud against a loved one.  Most of us can be asymptomatic super-spreaders like this. It all assumes physical presence.

 

Enter the digital age. Can this be a gift to part our covid cloud? We need to thank our caregivers who often focus on our shared technology to connect with loved ones in case of exposure or a positive test. It is not a diversion from health care. It’s at the heart of our loved ones’ capacity to survive an infection.

 

All of us can prepare for the possibility of isolation. We can be sure phone numbers are updated and working. We can practice active face video so we know how to see and respond with faces unmasked.  We can ask hospital caregivers to help our family elders make our digital connections work–and thank God we have this option.  

 

What’s not widely known is that loss of human responsive relationships almost certainly will damage human health, mentally and physically, and interfere with recovery. Medical schools now train integrating physical medicine with the spiritual and relational, a practice deeply centered in the heritages of indigenous people here in Montana. All of us have a generations-old heritage of valuing mutually responsive relationship with children. We now have an urgent need to understand how.

 

The Adverse Childhood Experiences study helps.  In 2014, retired, I responded to an ad to attend a conference in Billings with Center for Disease Control epidemiologist Dr. Rob Anda. I signed up and took two additional training sessions with his training group in Montana the next two years, and was certified a master trainer. This is where I learned the often ignored importance of responsive relationship in children’s development.  I thought it was enought to get children's responses to me. I had no idea this needs balance with response to them. Now I know this extends to elders as well, and to all family members. And after this past week of funerals, visits, and phone calls with best friends and family members ill with covid, I thought of this training. It changed my mind, and charts a way forward with covid.

 

I always knew the fun of mutually responsive interaction.  I enjoyed my kids; building and crashing block towers, peekaboo, playing catch, learning to dance or drum with our adopted family–when I had time. Now I know that learning and doing things back an forth, exchanging giving and recieving responses, is really fun work. In younger children it is essential to develop the executive function of the human mind.  Skills needed to do things, skills being with family to cooperate, care and share, all help children grow strong, and builds capacity their capacity to heal and grow through life.

 

But most important is the science-based fact that we need mutually responsive physical interaction through life. We all were born in an experience of trauma. We reached for and found human response beginning with our mother. Now when older, more vulnerable to covid, when connections like these are clouded, we need the same deliverance we found at our birth. Again we all need games, even the World Series, and being face-to-face in real time even if it must be digital screens.  It’s not “just for fun.” It’s where the Divine is present in the human realm. It’s why our religious practices are so important. We know God responds to us, and we know it best when humans do too.  In joining in religious practices together, even online, we are parting the confusion of the covid cloud.  God gifts us to see and cherish our human relationships as He did in the story of Jesus. Let’s join more in parting the covid cloud here.

 

Fanning the Tiny Flame of Truth

 

 

–Against incendiary disinformation, conspiracy theories, and character assassination.

 

The most dangerous of the growing American disinformation business tells us not to trust our elections. We could be on the road to losing our democracy, and moving into repeating the chaos and destruction of the race riots of the 60’s.

 

I was there then, immersed in our civil rights revolution voter rights drives in the south. I was too young a college student to grasp the impact of the death and destruction I saw then.

 

I met pastors in tears sorting through the ashes of burned church buildings, in Black and Choctaw communities. I saw the gaping hole in a pond dam along a lonely piney woods road between Philadelphia and Meridian, Mississippi. That’s where three bodies were excavated a week earlier, when I passed by in 1965.

 

Shortly before that, I was with a young man at his college dorm over spring break, the first black student allowed at Mississippi State University. He was still grieved with the loss of his brother, one of three demonstrators tortured, murdered and buried by a bulldozer in that dam.

 

One early December morning before then, in Canton, Mississippi, I parked my ’51 Studebaker convertible in front of the only open eatery I could find after driving all night. I ordered my egg sandwich at the bar and was going to eat it there. The only other patrons were three middle age men at a table in the Northeast corner.

 

I didn’t know why they glared at me.  Much later I realized they likely saw my Iowa plates.  “What the h--- are you doing here, Yankee boy?” The fat grey-haired one got my attention.  

 

“I’m hungry, looks like the only place open.” 

 

“Where do you think you goin?” 

 

“Visit my girlfriend’s family for Christmas, at Gulfport.”

 

“We don’t want Yankee n____ lovers helping Martin Lucifer Coon stir up our n____s  here. You wouldn’t happen to know him?”  

 

“No, I never heard the name.”

 

“Some folks call him ‘Dr. Martin Luther King.”

 

“O yeah, he does demonstrations, right?” I answered, and then he responded with a volley of anti-Communist  and anti-demonstrator rants unwritable. 

 

I grunted a thanks for the education, wrapped my sandwich in a paper napkin, paid my bill, grabbed my coffee in a paper cup to go, and headed for the door. Their last words were scant comfort, 

 

“You’ll be OK if you don’t git mixed up with our n___’s, …and stay away from that ‘coon fella! Have a good trip.”

 

I tried not to run to my car, closed the door and headed out, With one hand on the wheel and the other with my sandwich and coffee, I kept looking for that white rusty pickup I parked beside, the only vehicle there when I arrived. My coffee spilled. Gradually, I quit looking in my rear view mirror and finished my egg sandwich, and tried to think clearly.

 

Hours later, arriving in Gulfport, I was fortunate to have time for reflection with my family-to-be there.

 

I still remember pondering this with them, after my first serious white supremacy encounter. They had decades of experience with this. How could human beings come to believe any group of human beings is any less than fully human, any less worthy of respect by others? 

 

Start toward the answer: they didn’t choose that belief. It comes from kings, and the way kings get their subjects' loyalty, and willingness to shed blood to defend their king.

 

Our nation’s founders did not want a king. They choose the ballot over the bullet, a spiritual war over a war of flesh and blood. The result has been elections for a president, and more recently a presidential term limit. We now have safeguards to make sure our president does not aspire to kingly power. Until recently, the whole world looked up to our election system with its protections against abuse and fraud. Here’s some facts:

 

1.     Most nations of the world have shown their respect for our tradition by quickly endorsing Biden’s election.

2.     Our current lame-duck president, using language I heard from white supremacists in the 60’s opposing black voter rights, repeated offensive language with claims our election for Joe Biden was “rigged, fake and wrong.”

3.     Last week our free press, another long-time credible institution of our nation, reported that 60% of all Republicans believe our lame-duck president: the election was falsely won by Joe Biden, and should be overturned.

4.     Even the mismatched signature controversy in black majority counties in Georgia, leading to talk of throwing out an entire black-majority county's ballots–voter suppression itself, can come nowhere near overturning the strong results currently electing Joe Biden as our president.

 

We need a caution: Our lame-duck president is not alone a major threat to our democracy and strength as a nation. Nor are our many friends who in fear of law and order breakdown are arming themselves to protect their families. The most danger comes from leaders who have gained enormous trust of one side, and hatred of the other. We are in danger because almost none of our national leaders are respected by both sides.  It’s almost impossible to find them on TV or internet. 

 

But they are with us, yes! They are here in our own towns and countryside. These are the ones who, with skillful listening to both sides, use respectful language to probe into a better understanding of the root of our prevailing fears.  Our popular pundits, politicians, and preachers on the media do not hear them. They have the power here in our towns and countryside because they have respect across our crazy polarity. We need their words now, to help unmask the beautiful truth under horrific portrayals cast against our American armed militia members, American Muslims, American white supremacists, racists, Chinese, Black activists, etc. etc. These leaders are the ones with power to empower troubled people with words respectful of real people on both sides of this irrational polarity. 

 

In this process lies the true strength of our nation. This is our truly American culture of democratic and Christian strength. Grasp it to listen and understand the other side, and build respect. This is the core defense against the current lurch toward civil unrest, disrespect, or even widespread breakdown of law and order.

 

It happened in the 60’s death, destruction, and breakdown of law and order. We as a nation just didn’t keep on keeping on then. Eighty years later we again have a beautiful challenge: pursue our God-given destiny as members of the human race, “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

 

 

Lets keep on keeping on FTFT:

 

IN OUR many wars after our revolution, we have been on an unwitting trek to understanding that humans over other humans is not only against God and the Bible, it’s against the very fabric of human love and relationship God intended from creation. The nationwide angry polarity in health and politics needs us all to quiet down and listen. Only with patience can a few of our politicians and preachers come out from behind the Bible and God and speak the truth of the lies of supremacy plaguing our nation. There is truth. It's here in our towns and countryside. Some of our religious and political leaders here are finding the courage to speak it. It’s a good time to do so. The latest loud lie is apparently (the news says so) believed by some 70% of Republicans (all over the news) came out this past weekend: “The election was rigged, and false. I am still president.”

 

Unfortunately, our supremacy cults have renewed energy, and many more adherents among our citizenry.  In spite of obscene language and aggressive threats couched in supremacy humor, these people are to be respected. That doesn’t mean we should respect the slogans and ideas of supremacy hiding as the invisible elephant in the joined rooms of our pandemic and our violent protests. We need to name the incitement of citizen against citizen, pro-lifers against abortionists, socialists vs patriot militias, as unpatriotic, unchristian, idiotic behavior. We need to remove the misuse of our Bible, our God, slogans like pro-life, anti-socialist, and family values to see the vile truth behind the propagation of these words. Those wanting a fight to the death over supremacy, using these good terms falsely with evil intent, have wreaked enough destruction on our nation’s families and homes over the past centuries. We can, as a nation, be led away from what appears to be looming as another historical fight to the death weakening our nation and our families’ ability to thrive.

 

We can agree truth can stop our drift toward polarization leading to violence gain. Of course, we Christians all believe Jesus is the Truth.  His Truth must mean that respectful words, humble acts and real evidence are also sacred. Jesus had courage to stack his disciple band with both sides. He and St. Paul both attacked their politicians’ ideas about truth being relative, and opposed the violence of both sides in the Jewish wars of the first centuries. That’s when both sides joined in his execution (See the Bible, the four Gospels).The truth of what really happened to Jesus in his polarized worlds is now impinging on us again.

 

We need pastors and leaders to direct us toward the truth Jesus taught. Our pandemic and our systemic racism can only be healed as folks with power (religious, political and business leaders), do three things:

1)    stop hiding evidence,

2)    stop pretending there is equal truth to every side of the many disinformation and conspiracy theory voices sowing hatred for real groups of human beings.

3)    Stop joining the crowds now rushing to buy guns for fear of demonstrators and/or for fear of white supremacists.

 

As in the 60’s, and farther back in the 1780’s, there were both white and black people afraid of people with guns. From the 60’s to now the polarized worlds of demonstrators and that of right wing militants are priming for an escalation in violence in America. In 1780’s it was black slaves getting guns to rebel against rape and breakup of slave families in their homes. We today forgot that the primary reason for the 2^nd amendment’s ratification was to protect white families against slave rebellion in Virginia (Carl Bogus, U.C. Davis Law Review 309 1998). That protection took the form of independent “well organized militias,” organized for the specified purpose of quelling slave rebellions. On one side, white supremacists feared abolitionist federalists, who could send the federal army into the south to disarm the militias. On the other were mothers and fathers who wanted to protect their families from kidnap, rape, and slave trafficking. Both sides got guns, and our 2^nd amendment’s ratification arguably extended the carnage of polarized separate worlds from then into the civil war a hundred years later. Will we repeat our history again? 

 

For us now, the right wing is responsible for highest spike in gun purchasing our nation has known, over a million last April. Recently the left is beginning to buy up guns and ammo too (see Politico, October 25). The new news is it’s just about as many Democrats as Republicans buying guns. How will we avoid a civil war?

 

Our religious leaders would do well to follow folks like Bonhoeffer in Germany during the holocaust. Make room by ending right wing Christian media preachers, politicians and pundits with alternative theology fanning flames of fear and hatred against Muslims, Democrats, Planned Parenthood and Black lives matter extremists.

 

People right here in our towns have the courage to speak truth instead of remaining silent. Our folks know truth: it’s patriotic to trust our election system, proven again this November to be the best in the world. We have pride rights to our American Democracy. It’s also patriotic to trust our oldest, most respected media resources and tradition of journalism, especially when not loyal to powerful politicians. We must use that trust, or we will lose it. It takes our respected truth-tellers here in Big Horn County to come out of silence.

 

It’s a dangerous time for us to forget or ignore our history. Like then, we need Jesus now. His way is that eternal flame of truth that gets tiny, even goes underground, but is always available with persistent constant respect for others of our species' rights to exist and to be free.

Jesus, Law and Order

 Jesus, law and order

 

The fake politics behind this rallying cry killed Jesus. Our politicians are again returning to this time-worn phrase, to again provoke violence, which can be met with greater violence, which can again prove the threat of political/military authority over subjects for peace and security. For us, it started with King George citing law and order against his subjects in our colonies. See “The Double Standard of the American Riot,” The Atlantic, June 2, where John Adams is quoted having told the British—“We won’t be their Negroes.” Although increasing violent responses to peaceful demonstration often brings the oppressed into violence, it's false history to say this is the only way. 

.  

Can we learn from our history? How can we step off the trajectory we are on that could lead to civil war after our elections 2020? Where is God wanting to lead us? This is a time for every religious person to pray hard, and seek God’s help to find true stories of our fellow humans finding security following Jesus’ way. Here is mine.

 

I was in Chicago during the reign of Boss Mayor Daly with Curtis Burrell, my college roommate in 1963. He had been a safe cracker for a street gang in Chicago in the late 50’s. He spent two years in the Cook County Jail, where a pastor with a prison ministry led him to accept Jesus as his Savior. The greatest miracle was finding a more powerful response to the pervading violence in his childhood. That was the peace of Christ, not accessible by guns and violence. He became allied with Christian activists for the poor in Chicago. He decided at age 24 to totally set aside his violent past for a college education. He came to the Christian college I attended.  

 

Curtis and I were striking opposites. I was a pale-face150 lb farm boy with almost no exposure to the urban Black culture of  Curtis’ childhood. He was over 6 feet tall, over 240 lbs, and his exceptionally dark black skin stood him apart if not his stature. I was wakened most mornings at end of his 50 pushups on, when he jumped his torso with his finger tips to clap hands between each of the last 10 pushups. I learned to accept that as his mental fitness exercise, not a reversion to his violent past.

 

Being a felon, he could not get a drivers license.  I had my Dad’s car, only for transportation to and from college. When Dr. King came to speak at a nearby college, he was despondent I had agreed with my dad not to drive that car except back home. I grudgingly got it out of mothballs, put in fresh gas and we were off.

 

The speech was loaded with lawyer jargon that connected with the useless retributive justice in the Illinois state penitentiary and the Cook County Courts, based on “law and order,”  that my roommate experienced. I reluctantly agreed to go to the stage with him afterward so he could meet Dr. King about his new ideas now known as restorative justice. It was January, 1963, and the heater in my dad’s old Studebaker gave out on the way home. We kept warm arguing and discussing the ideas.

 

Curtis graduated from college and advanced Biblical studies, and became a pastoral leader in his racially tense community of Woodlawn, the south side of downtown in Chicago. He got into housing rights initiatives there, threatening the slum lords’ income handled by the mob and Mayor Daley. That’s where I first learned the fake use of the terms “law and order.” Everyone in his circle knew “law and order” protected the rights of police to use any violence they chose against citizens advocating for fair rent prices and justice with the mayor’s mob rule threatening their family security in their homes. Yet his work, and the community organizing around hope and peace instead of fear and threat, eventually defeated the mayor and the mob in Chicago, and eventually Barak Obama was part of the move toward a more peaceful, prosperous city less divided and angry. But now we are back again...

 

Once again we have Christians divided. The chaos and caustic cacophony of obscene charges not only unsubstantiated, but designed deliberately to breed fear and anger apparently was planned. In exchange for Trump support for the conservative Christian political agenda, some major evangelical leaders agreed to support Trump’s disinformation campaign inciting the American population into fear and hatred. He was explicit. Inciting fear and hatred would guarantee his political advantage into 2020. (see “Reverend Reveals what Evangelicals Say Privately”, Youtube, June 19, or any other sources on this agreement).

 

We have many courageous people of faith in our community here in Big Horn County. It’s a good time for our religious leadership community to lead us toward Jesus’ better, stronger alternative to the lawlessness and death that so often has followed the cries for law and order in our nation’s proud history. They can help us find those stories where Jesus’ way triumphed, and can again. Those stories start in the Bible. They exist in our nation’s history. And they are relevant now. God will help us find His way in these extremely dangerous times. 

DO NOT vote for the Trump empire to lead our United States of America. Be both patriotic and Christian this November.

 

(End of article for Big Horn County News Sept. 3, 2020. The following is discarded paragraphs rescued in case of interest)

 

 President Trump should not alone be blamed. It’s his empire of loyalists that has blocked access to evidence and truth.  His loyalists now dominate every sector of our federal government except the House of Representatives. It’s a coup against our democracy. Our confidence we once had in our national institutions and federal government is possibly at an all-time low.  It’s led by the official designated responsible for bipartisan investigation of political criminality or wrong-doing. Now it is openly partisan, something that never happened in our nation. William Barr, the current Attorney General of the United States, appointed deliberately for his loyalty to the Trump empire, still refuses the hard evidence of the reliability of mail-in and absentee ballots as overseen by our seasoned county election commissioners across the state, and the nation.

 

There is a well-researched trajectory nations typically go through when regressing into civil war or genocide. It happened in Germany, Rwanda, Slovenia, Belarus, Ireland, and many other nations as vulnerable to a propaganda machine as we now seem to be.  It brings on civil unrest, violence, and tragedy. We in the United States, unbelievably, seem to be on that track. Many of us now believe truth is relative, our elections can or will be rigged, the Spanish films of violent demonstrations used in the Republican convention were really in Seattle, Hillary and Biden will bring pedophilia, homosexuality and take away our guns, democrats block Trump's medicine against covid 19 because they want more deaths on Trump’s watch.  Now that there are separate and legitimate realities for our polarizing media frenzy, is all simply false? And foreign governments hating our freedoms and constitutional rights are gloating. Their success in starting this frenzy to undermine or nation’s values of democracy and Christian pursuit of truth and righteousness has gone too far.

 

It’s time to name the deception. but the cacophony blocks hearing it. Trump officials in his defense department and the justice department leave open using selected federal troops to monitor our upcoming election, setting the stage for a military takeover in case the election is close.

 

Anyone against law and order? Or family security, or religious freedom? It’s time to be simply biased. voices now telling us truth is relative, and all these essentials of our nation are almost gone unless we become activists, stockpile military weapons, and prepare for war. We truly are stuck in separate, polarized realities watching either MSNBC,  or the other extreme, Fox News. Almost all of the news reporting takes us one direction or the other. Which one is true?

 

I remember my college days in the 60’s, when  the loudest advocates of law and order were the most lawless and disorderly. They wrapped themselves around our flag, our Christian faith and and patriotism.  With friends and fellow Christians concerned about the extremism of the John Birch Society, the KKK and FBI director J Edgar Hoover,  I joined with an activitist college friend from the south to inquire directly what was happening in voter registration there. It was spring break, and we did not go to Ft Lauderdale beaches. Instead we walked the streets of St. Louis and Chicago, seeing square miles of government housing horribly wrecked from rioting, looting and burning. We visited Choctaw Indian communities with bombed churches in Mississippi and Alabama. My college friend had been an exchange student at Tugalo College, the training institute for disciplined demonstrating in King’s way of non-violence.  We stopped at Ole Miss (Mississippi State University) campus. We four white boys walked the campus incognito, saying nothing so as not to betray our Yankee dialect. We eventually found James Meredith’s dorm room on spring break in 1964. He was the only black student on campus, quarantined not from a virus but because his life was threatened. He was the one who broke the wall of segregation on that campus in Mississippi in the early 60's.

 

Eli, a good friend of his from demonstrations that turned violent, called his name and he responded “Eli!  It’s You, You’re alive too!” He unbolted and unlocked the door to hugs and grateful tears. We had just sat down and gotten briefly acquainted when the shout came through the door, “Police, open up!” James said, “What’s your name and number?” It was  federal agents, on their job to protect him from the “law and order” radical right in Mississippi vowed to take any means necessary to stop integration at Ole Miss.

 

 

Returning to the loud voices of "Law and Order"...

 

 Their voices are the most dangerous, not because of the good values they proclaim, but because of their behavior. The ideas of freedom are hypocritical to the degree of their fear mongering. In fact, they are anything but committed to these national values upheld by our constitution and enshrined in our Bible.

Jesus let the chips fall, and went with the least of these, the disenfranchised, the slave class, the poor, children, the women, and the outcasts. For that he was marked and ID’d with the rebels and activists of his time, complete with elevation to a cross with the sign “King of the Jews” in case anyone mistakenly claimed his cause, the one he died on, was unpolitical.

 

Today We all agree we need to abide by our laws for order, truth, freedom and security. It’s true there is endangerment for some of our our families, our faith tradition, and our nation. What we see now in our nation is our government wrapping these words in Christian faith and patriotism while fear-mongering to promote disorder, violence, disruption, racism and murderous vigilantism. The federal executive branch promotion of extremist hate groups with a track record indulging in immoral, lawless, and disorderly attacks on our own citizens is shocking and totally unprecedented.This is increasingly happening again in the name of national security, law and order, and other easily abusive labels of communist, socialist, racist, anarchist, muslim, jewish, democrat, republican, or whatever. The most dangerous lawlessness, violence and murder is now coming again from those standing proud with the flage and wrapping themselves around our Christian faith. Their behavior is neither patriotic nor Christian. It’s time to be simply biased against this fake Christianity and patriotism.

 

We’ve been there before as a ntiona. . white people about the socialists and the communist n…’s and Martin luther King, Jr.

 

It was not that long ago. I was there

 

Trump can be blamed for his neglect. But the loyalists around him, though some are falling away, remain surprisingly faithful. And foolish.  These Republicans want every snake oil they make distribute with their belief in law and order. That’s what our federal government has undermined and damaged. When they talk “law and order,”  I remember living in Mississippi in the 60’s. That phrase remains today the same rallying cry for those who support systemic racism across the nation. And systemic racism undermines real law and order.

 

But I’m not a trained historian. I am simply an observer and participant in life on both sides of the polarized divide in our nation, state, and even families.

 

I sat in a dorm room at U of Mississippi on 1964 spring break time. Four of us radical college students did our spring break visiting black voter registration sites in the deep south. We stopped in mostly small black towns from  Louisiana to Georgia. An exception was to spend a few hours with James Merideth, the first black successfully enrolled at that university. Afraid to go home for spring break because of threats to his life, he was essentially in quarantine, stuck in his dorm room for almost two weeks. He was guilty not only of defying laws against registration of colored people at the university, he also helped of organize demonstrations that became violent. He was shot twice. His good friend and collaborator was murdered. He graduated with honors eventually at the University of Mississippi, now a very different place.

 

We also stopped in at Dr. King’s father’s church on Easter Sunday Morning, in Birmingham, Alabama. I heard Dr. King recount, with his congregation chiming in, the real truth of what advocates of “law and order” and “national security’ were doing. He spoke of beating, siccing dogs, bombings, bashing skulls and outright murder. The label our FBI then smacked on these human beings was lawbreaker, rioter, Communist, and worse.

 

This was in the 60’s. It’s escalating like it did then.  But this time, it’s not just FBI.  It’s the entire executive department of our nation, which has taken over the entire judicial branch of our nation, and successfully threatened all senate Republicans but one, to kow tow to politically correct speech with the tag “Law and Order.”

 

It seems every government spokesman and its media minders has aligned to cover up the lawlessness, disorder, endangerment, lies and citizen right-to-livelihood our government has has broken in the last four years. Real fake news originates from those with the loudest protests of “fake news!!”

 

I saw this in China fon CCTV when teaching there 20 years ago. Now it’s the Communist bosses in Hong Kong and in Western China’s Xinjian provine. It’s Putin, the head of ___? . It was Stalin, Dragomir Milošević of Sarajevo, Rewanda’s leaders, and in our country George Wallace, Andrew Jackson, Bull Conner, the list goes on. Most have been unseated, repudiated, or worse. I am gratified that few of us in Big Horn County join in advocating the mayhem portrayed as law and order by all these authoritian leaders and more. But I am aware that all of them had enormous popular support by at least a minority of their citizens.

 

Two days after King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, William Sullivan, the FBI’s director of intelligence, famously responded by writing, “We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.”

 

.  Administrators had trouble finding someone who would room with someone not of the same race.  I didn’t mind because my father welcomed a black boy two years my younger, who walked the ten miles from town to help on our farm for nothing, except the food on the table. We took him home. So I had a case of color blindness thanks to my parents.

RETURN TO HEART LEARNING

RETURN TO HEART LEARNING​ 7/19 ​by Dave Graber . Amended 7/20 for blog

I started teaching in Southern Montana Indian schools in 1973. I was soon discouraged with large numbers of students who seemed rebellious against my teaching. In time I realized most were probably unable to sit down, hold still, be quiet and pay attention. A trusted grandparent friend came to my parent/teacher conference. He said it was the Cheyenne way to enjoy seeing children physically active, the more the better. Sitting down, holding still, being quiet, and paying attention were not taught. The Cheyenne way of child upbringing built strong hearts so respect and quietness were learned when the child was ready.

I remember faculty room conversations back then criticizing parents for not teaching their children to obey. Children came to school with difficulty respecting teachers, and often erred in responding to teachers’ demands for obedience. It took me years to start respecting a culturally different way, what I now call “heart learning.”

My respect for these ways grew slowly over the decades. At first I could not see the self-discipline of elders patiently responding to my questions. It seemed they joined in rebellion with their children. Desperate for better ways of handling their young, I began imitating these elders. But this was largely new to me, and to nearly all other non-Indian faculty. Back in 1973, in a school 99% Cheyenne Indian, we white teachers were opposed to having our European cultural way of discipline undermined. We resolved to continue the culture of reward and punishment for students established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs leaders. We were frustrated that rebellion against us was not only just OK, it was encouraged. We faculty could only see only one way out: use force and fear to dominate our classrooms. Our use of consequences were failing. But the community was patient.

I began to notice in family gatherings children getting positive attention from adults more than adults requiring attention and correct responses from children. Games, dances, song, and stories built children’s hearts by eliciting responses from adults without correction. Children danced out of time, or sang improperly, without being corrected. I wondered what was wrong them. Cheyenne elders didn’t care whether their children danced or sang correctly or not. I was helped along patiently by my friends at singing and drumming sessions with White Buffalo Singers.

Now I know that volumes of new scientific evidence supports the ancient ways of the Cheyenne and other indigenous nations for children’s learning. Yet today, especially in Montana, mainstream education has maintained an anti-indigenous culture of discipline for learning. It mistakenly bypasses heart learning. Instead it focuses on teacher-assessed corrections of student efforts.

self-assessment of learning.

How do we find heart learning? Engaging the whole body, collaborating in fun and games with others, with child self-assessing. This is the heart learning foundation for all learning. It invites balance in responses. No one person, not even the teacher, elicits all or most of the responses. Everyone in the class is empowered to do and be. With freedom to enter into song, dance, and verbal or vocal expression, emotions are connected with others in joy and safety to engage. Instead of teaching, the teacher attends to structures and scaffolding. Then school subjects are included as needed in the quest children’s minds and hearts are together engaging. The quest for skill and understanding of a game, life skill, story, or other real challenge normal in the community is the learning focus.

All children can engage in collaboration with teacher and others regardless of developmental level. Then the teacher, with the ancient kinds of training, becomes the facilitator. The child constructs knowledge in collaboration with adults and peers as friends and family. The heart’s need for fearless trust, engagement, joy, and celebration is the foundation for cognitive understandings. These are built by the child at the appropriate developmental level.  Direct instruction happens with natural requests of the teacher. The student, not the teacher controls the teachable moment. Teacher controls the scaffolding and the structures designed so learning can happen.

Humankind’s survival needs mainstream education to return to educating the heart. It should not have been separated from cognitive learning. Heart learning is the foundation of human achievement. It engages with other human beings for the good of all. It builds the evidence that grades or money are mindless and ineffective motivators for life success. Many new (ancient) standards of Montana’s current common core uphold the better, internal motivators. Now is the time for each Montana child’s heart learning foundation to be accessed by our schools. A good place to start is see how other nations have adapted or discarded assessment protocols deploying external assessment over children, replacing them with internal heart motivators.

Developmentally appropriate standards

Worldwide, Non-Western cultures have been rebuilding heart learning with quality outcomes-based research. It attends to the full developmental needs of children. The total social, emotional, spiritual, kinesthetic and cognitive learning together, in other words, heart learning are accessed together. Children and parents are weaned from the concept that children must sit down, hold still, be quiet, and pay attention to adults so they can learn. Of course discipline to do this is essential as children mature! But external discipline for learning at too young an age hinders achievement in heart learning. Even one child suffering heart learning damage at school, destined to be a loser because of this toxic pedagogy, is a problem worth solving. We need a change back to inclusive heart learning, as it was in all our heritage family learning before the industrial revolution, when children were engaged placing themselves at their developmentally appropriate level for learning anything.

Executive Function of the Mind

Heart learning accesses the mind’s affective domain in the building of executive functioning. Decades of research have demonstrated that when children’s bodies are engaged in kinesthetic, social, spiritual and emotional learning, cognitive learning happens much better. It's easily demonstrated that the most troublesome children in any given classroom in elementary are often the brightest. Is it possible our modern obsession with cognitive learning steers some children in dysfunctional directions? Harvard University’s Developing Child Center has extensive studies on the mind’s executive function development–the center of heart learning.

Direct Instruction

An essential element of this return is developmentally appropriate direct instruction. Children better learn to learn from others directly when it’s not demanded too early. When a child says, “let me do it!” parent/teacher trainers should have been building systems and scaffolding so the child can do it with a sense of autonomy. Mainstream education commandeers the instructional task children love to do for themselves. Direct instruction needs modification with adult self-discipline. Adult wisdom must learn when the child’s empowerment to self-teach is better than the adult’s ability to impart knowledge. Unfortunately, teacher education has focused on lowering the age when children are content to accept disempowerment to learn. So enormous college coursework like “teaching in the content area” needs discarding and rebuilding from scratch. When we start solving the essential heart learning problems of Indian education the whole nation’s education system will benefit. Unruly children will be thriving again. Direct instruction as a strategy will return where it belongs, away from the teacher’s initiative, so the teacher has energy to build the systems and scaffolding, designed so teacher can easily self-limit DI to responsivity.

Culturally Sustaining and Restorative Pedagogy

How can we do it? By listening to elders who remember the old ways of respect for children, and studying both modern science of human development, and other indigenous decolonized ways of learning. The academic field of Culturally Sustaining and Restorative Pedagogy (CSRP), where evidence exists empowering learners to learn and to be is a great way to start in academics. Before getting into academics, it’s best to listen and experience the old learning in families or cross-generational gatherings at work, play, in ceremonies, with singing, dancing, and multisensory intergenerational engagement. Or visiting classrooms designed around heart learning or any of the many labels for accessing the Creator’s intent for children to thrive. This is unfortunately rare in Montana schools, and most needed in Indian education.

Curriculum exists to help children do what they can.  (By DG  8/19)

It helps if children are allowed to do stuff with real stuff, and are expected to with adults or peer collaboration.  The process itself is so simple and natural. Every successful culture, family, or community has built and run their own curriculum... until recent centuries. Now, modern society pays specialists to do this for children at younger and younger ages. 

The best practices in school reform strategies reverse this. They promote building content from life practices, celebrations, arts, and in the heritage and current culture of the child’s family connections. Children thus empowered to do elder-familiar stuff can elicit approving responses from community/family. This becomes a true foundation for success in school and life.

Modern mainstream schooling often deprives children of heart learning.  Outcomes-based strategies entice children to want to do what they normally would not want to do.  It would be good to ask some questions again: What should my children learn?, when should they learn it? How should they learn it?  Where should they go for help and wisdom?  Who should be doing the learning (teacher or student)? Who can assess whether it’s learned? Who bears the responsibility of not having learned it? These should be answered by the child, and the child’s best interests.

Then success is better achieved, and assessed by the presence of:

1)    multi generational learning, across ages, like a human family not a puppy litter.

2)    Culturally appropriate activities..  what has been done in child raising for generations

3)    Place- learning: doing what families have long done in the community in this place.

4)    Imagination and creativity: Each child must be guided to enjoy making toys or models or pictures of his/her own learning stories and experiences to match his physical, cognitive, social and spiritual competencies important where they live.

5)    A learning circle: Where children’s right to be heard telling their own stories aurally, visually, non-verbally, and spiritually, moving into verbal expression after syntax is built, continually having their own stories /songs heard and not discredited.

6)    Hands on activities—experience based with real stuff.

7)    Respect for everyone’s right to be engaged at their level.

8)    Teacher providing structure and scaffolding: questions, challenges, and puzzles children can figure out.

9)    Children telling stories & acting/dancing on their own before books or paper are prioritized

Curriculum like this will be rebuilding children’s dysregulated stress response systems with self-actualization, healthy attachment, mindfulness, attunement, responsivity, reactive relationships appropriate to build children’s proactive capacity for their own management.

Curriculum questions? Schools with track records of doing this? Look up  progressive education, indigenous pedagogy, compassionate schools, trauma sensitive schools, escuela nueva foundation, culture sustaining restorative pedagogy.