Be the Peace and Safety You Wish to See

Bringing love and compassion to the 2020 election process.

Ours is a most unusual, potentially dangerous election season.

Many of us are scared. Not only scared that our candidate and party might actually lose the election — perish the thought! But scared that passions may turn into violent actions by individuals and/or groups of people.

What if it takes days, weeks, or longer to declare a winner?

Does that mean we are about to go into a bleak period of civil unrest? Does that mean stepping outside our doors involves taking our lives into our own hands?

We do that already because of COVID.

Thankfully, there are precautions we can take — masks and social distancing. Unfortunately, not everyone has bought into the need for this, and even that has become politicized along party lines.

But now new dangers emerge.

Lots of people have been increasingly bold about flaunting their weapons. Automatic weapons designed for military purposes, in the hands of civilians and veterans, with very little monitoring or regulation scares the you-know-what out of me.

Used to intimidate, used to encourage each other, often in deadly frightening combinations with alcohol. Groups like Proud Boys and citizen militia spring up like mushrooms, threatening real bodily harm. Sanctioned and encouraged by the current Commander in Chief.

Scary, Creepy, horrifying. Innocent lives are in danger. Often, people of color or members of the LGBTQIA community are perceived as the other and/or the enemy.

Sad to say, Walmart started to unstock the guns and ammo and then changed their minds and brought it all out again. As if to say, have at it, Good Old (Proud) Boys.

Pure insanity if you ask me.

If Trump wins, it could be bad. If Joe Biden wins and we have roving bands of white supremacist mercenaries running amok, that could be unthinkably horrific.

I’m not saying, change your vote. I’m saying we need to be careful, sane, and not go off the deep end.

I don’t believe in getting angry or, worse, responding in kind. It would only backfire anyway, literally.

We’ve got to meet hatred and fear with love as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bishop Desmond Tutu would do. Protest if we like, but non-violently.

How? By being the change we wish to see.

That quote is attributed to Gandhi. However, what he actually said was this:

If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.

This means not just change what we do or say, but change at the core of our being. If I rant and rave at Trump and his supporters, I am not peaceful or safe, even if my violence is mostly verbal. It is still violence.

Marianne Williamson and A Course in Miracles talk about how there is only love. What masquerades as hate is a lack of love or a call for love.

The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one of two things: either love or a call for love. — Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

Stories of Trump’s childhood attest to how he grew up without adequate nurturance, such that he spends all his time craving and getting attention. Even negative attention serves that need better than no attention.

The lack of love is not hate, it’s fear.

The fear of losing everything you have or believe you have is a powerful organizer and motivator. This kind of fear, manipulated by a charismatic leader, is how folks get pulled into fascist cults and societies.

I read today that if we think Trumpism resembles Nazism, just remember the Nazi’s studied the United States and how we treated black people as their model. We don’t have to borrow it; it’s homegrown. It’s ours. It’s organic to the American soil that got its start with a bumper crop of slavery as well as cotton. Gulp.

Earlier I wrote about looking at this election through the lens of power vs. force. We can’t fight these folks with guns and ammo even if we wanted to. We’d lose.

We don’t win with brute force, anyway. We win with true power. Power that is of the spirit of Love and Compassion. Agape love. True compassion.

I can’t tell you what to do if it gets uglier than it already is.

But I can encourage all of us to be more loving, more compassionate, more forgiving, more understanding than we’ve ever been in our lives.

To clear out room in our hearts for the so-called enemy.

To move forward with a mindset that has no enemies. A mindset and heart set that forgives as or even before the blows fall and the bullets puncture.

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.― Marianne Williamson

This, too, is an American legacy.

From the Civil Rights Movement. This was the stance that ended segregation and got laws passed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Laws that have been eroded and need shoring up today.

But this form of love in action — nonviolent action — was multi-faceted. It included marches, demonstrations, lunch counter sit-ins, bus boycotts, freedom rides, freedom concerts, voter reg drives, to name a few. These actions changed the heart of much of America and got those laws passed in the first place.

Let’s fully embody those changes.

No matter how much longer we have on this planet, the United States of America has a legacy for the world. Will it be fascism in red, white, and blue bunting?

Or continuing the time-honored tradition that Jesus started and Gandhi used effectively to bring the British Empire to its knees and off of India’s back and neck?

Seek the peace that passes all understanding by being that peace.

Bring safety to our streets by thinking, praying, and being that safe sanctuary of the soul so needed right now.

If this sounds paradoxical, that’s because it is. But we’re not talking flash in the pan here. We’re talking about the legacy we leave our kids. And grandkids — if indeed, we don’t destroy everything before they get here.

Marilyn Flower writes political humor and satire to delight socially and spiritually conscious folks. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, where she writes about faith and prayer. Five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times. Stay in touch!