Last week, we explored the importance of the inner work necessary to effectively engage in the spirituality of resistance. We took a look at different forms of prayer and why this inner work matters. It gives us the opportunity to discern our call to mission, to work for more justice, and to usher in the Reign of God. What are the internal drives, the innate passions, that call us? How do we best use our skills, education and talent? All of these questions and many more can find answers in prayer and meditation.
We can view this symbiotic relationship like this:
Prayer/meditation and discernment: As we develop a prayer practice, we begin to discern how God calls us to mission, a spirituality of resistance. We engage in naming what’s wrong in our world, especially locally where we experience life on a daily basis. We start recognizing what needs to be improved or changed altogether.
Preparation: We then find others with shared interests, skills, and compassion, and develop strategies to make a difference. We study the issues and evaluate where the power rests to determine how best to speak truth to power, as St. Paul so eloquently put it.
Action: The study and planning become transformed by the little and big actions of resistance to injustice that we take. Not every action will be successful, we know this. And complex problems take a lot of work and a lot of time, so the work may seem slow at times. Yet, actions are vital to change, even when they are small or slow or both. If we don’t try, nothing will change, that is for sure. The reality is that we live in an America where half the voters want to roll back the civil rights victories we’ve gained, especially since the American Civil War.
I believe that every time a committed person or group endeavors to make a positive change, the energy also changes and becomes more positive. By publicly naming problems that need solutions, we unveil them a bit more — they can no longer remain shrouded in mystery 100% of the time. Systemic injustice proliferates when we let it stay hidden. I believe that by allowing injustice to remain hidden, we then also give injustice permission to co-exist with us, and that gives it credence. Worse yet, unjust systems become further empowered.
Reflection: Each time we engage in an act of resistance by challenging injustice, we must look honestly at what we did to evaluate if it was successful or not. By reflecting on our efforts with care and integrity, we can improve our method and approach. We are much more likely to enjoy greater success in future efforts by learning from what we have done, both successfully and unsuccessfully. Then we repeat the cycle with new knowledge, experience and inspiration.
The spirituality of resistance helps us reject systemic ills of society
Last week, I introduced Roger S. Gottlieb’s theory about the spirituality of resistance. “I believe that if a spirituality of resistance is to succeed, it must not lead us away from what we face here and now, but ever deeper into it. Indeed, I do not believe there is anywhere else to go (29).”
Gottlieb carefully identifies the two essential aspects for the practice of the spirituality of resistance: the inner work of prayer and meditation, and the outer work of action as mission to “reject evil and ignorant destruction.”
Gottlieb asserts that two emotional responses inhibit our spirituality of resistance: avoidance and denial. They seem like the same thing, but they’re not.
Avoidance. When we avoid the negative, worrying, catastrophic things going on in the world, we still know underneath that they exist. But by burying them in the “floorboards of our consciousness,” as Gottlieb maintains, we use a lot of finite energy to keep them buried. And we know that the emotions associated with those woes become suppressed and morph into even more spiritually and psychically dangerous issues, like depression, hostility, and even numbness. Gottlieb writes,
“If spiritual life means a quiet enjoyment of what we have, a spontaneous gratitude for what God has given us, an open-hearted empathy for both the joy and the suffering that exists around us, then spirituality will be diminished if I give my energy over to avoiding the world and choking off my reactions to it (38).”
Too often our social messaging tells us that in order to live well, we must avoid that which threatens us, or our happiness and constant comfort will be lost.
The bottom line is that we live better when we appropriate our energy outwardly in positive ways than when we bottle it up and try to keep a lid on these pressurized issues.
Denial. We are living in a weird world of collective denial. While in office, Trump has uttered 30,573 false or misleading claims as president, with half coming in 2020-21. The level to which our society has endured outright lying by this president is both unprecedented and exhausting. Denial looks truth in the face and unequivocally rejects it. Avoidance involves moving away or leaving out unpleasantries and crises but not denying their actual existence.
But denial, according to Gottlieb, “is simultaneously to confront, to reject and to obscure (48).” I’ll go one further. Denial often results in the deniers rewriting reality to fulfill their longings or outright fantasies. An excellent example comes from the QAnon theorists who have experienced shock and anger that Trump did not pardon them after they invaded the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Mark’s story of being possessed by impurity
The Gospel reading comes from St. Mark this Sunday, January 31st. Jesus went to the city of Capernaum and taught in the synagogue on the Sabbath. “For he taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes (v.22).” So, those present were amazed by Jesus’s teaching because it was extraordinary.
Then a man came into the synagogue who was impure — he was possessed by an unclean spirit. The unclean spirit said, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God (v. 24).”
Then Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit by saying, “Be silent, and come out of him (v. 25).” The spirit convulsed the man and cried out as the unclean spirit left him. (Mk. 1:16-28, my paraphrase).
I think it’s significant that this story comes right after Jesus has been tempted by Satan in the wilderness for 40 days. I’m sure that Jesus was in no mood to deal with this unclean spirit for one more minute considering what he had just experienced. He did not deny or avoid the spirit. Jesus faced him without one word from the man who was possessed.
How does this story apply to us in the 21st century?
Let’s consider spiritual possession. The late psychiatrist Gerald May wrote that he believes that we all have some form of addictive behavior that possesses us, and indeed sometimes controls us like this unfortunate man in our Gospel story today. The unclean spirit, also translated as being “impure,” can properly resonate for those of us who feel that sometimes something other-worldly controls us.
I agree with Dr. May and believe that we all wrestle with being possessed by or addicted to habits, things, money, and sometimes even destructive people. These possessions or addictions that we habitually avoid or deny become demons that haunt us. These challenges affect us personally.
For example, I’m possessed with a desire for sweets, which doesn’t seem harmful on its face, but I’m diabetic. For my own health and for those who love me, I need to be mindful of the power and allure of sugar and its long-lasting effects on my body. This obsession-possession takes a toll on me spiritually and emotionally because it is a constant battle. I make no excuses, this is just reality.
Yet, we also make a habit of looking the other way while societal impurities continue to poison all of us. I believe this sickens and diminishes our “social spirituality,” our collective sense of peace and justice. I recognize and agree that we engage in denial and avoidance in part as a survival instinct. If we are constantly tuned in to the many local and global crises, we will go mad. Sometimes I feel like if I start crying over all that is wrong, I may never stop.
Strength for the journey
We have a lot of work ahead of us, first, to bring people back to reality, and second to grapple with our myriad social crises like healing racism and achieving immigration reform, addressing poverty, dismantling homophobia and sexism, and the list goes on.
It seems our first order of business is to discern where we best can help. St. Paul writes that we are all one body, divinely made to complement the skills and gifts of each other.
Let us let go of avoiding our social problems in our meditations and prayers, that inner work that is so vital to the spirituality of resistance.
Let us stop denying and help others to stop denying what is really going on.
In the next few weeks leading into Lent, I’ll offer resources to assist in prayer, discernment, and ways to find communities where you as a child of God and your gifts will make important contributions to achieve greater social justice and usher in the Reign of God.
Blessings on your journey.+
Image: Limbourg Brothers. Jesus Casts Out the Unclean Spirit, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.
