Dear Heaven Maker:
As part of co-creating Heaven on Earth, we have to deal with the issues that threaten our lives and well-being – Global Warming, Nuclear Proliferation and COVID-19.
Solve all of these and we have a more physically safe and hopeful world.
But there’s another suffering in today’s world that also has to disappear. What kind of world do we have if racism still exists – certainly not Heaven on Earth?
Racism is now demanding that we give it urgent, immediate focus and attention.
In the U.S., George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s deaths, among many others, and Jacob Blake’s shooting, among many others, has unleashed an explosion of the suppressed anger from blacks at the way they have been treated for centuries.
This is an energy that can no longer be suppressed or contained.
I experienced a very small taste of racism when my very dear friend Faye, a black woman, and I once went out to lunch. I remember I was wearing a large black cowboy hat (we were in the west of the US) and for some reason a white man wearing that hat and being with a black woman got us looks I’d never experienced before. I felt the looks, looks of disgust and anger – racist looks. I felt it deeply, I felt it painfully.
What I experienced in that one lunch, Faye experiences every day.
I tried to feel into what that must be like for Faye. Day in, day out, subjected to cruelty, disrespect, and potential danger.
Faye was a race relations instructor for the US Department of Defense in the 1970’s and had a lot of experience in this field. She offered to take me through some of the exercises that she and her co-instructor, a white man, had done. She told me it would be hard and it would be painful and it was. We spoke truthfully and honestly to each other about our own experiences of racism, she as a black woman, me as a Jew. It was gut-wrenching.
Faye also told me about having to have ’The Talk’ with her grandchildren about what to do and what not to do in a tense situation and about what to do if they are stopped by the police. Add to that her daily worry about her grandchildren, her son, her daughter, her friends. What happens when they’re out in the world, just going for an ice-cream, going for a walk, or in the case of her grandchildren, just going to school?
What could I do that would make any kind of difference toward ending racism? What could I say that might not be immediately shot down because it was not politically correct? I was afraid that speaking up might mean I would be not accepted, or worse, cancelled, or that it might hurt my business.
For several months I’d been wrestling with this. Faye and I have had deep, honest, searingly truthful talks about what it means to be black in America and what it means to be white. Faye has told me things about the black experience that she’s never said to a white person. I felt very honored by that. I told her about my own experiences of being called names as a Jew. While those words hurt me deeply, they’ve only happened very occasionally…very different from what Faye has to go through every day.
Faye kept persistently prodding and encouraging me to step up….as a Leader, and speak to this RACISM. I didn’t know what to say that would positively add to the conversation and have an impact. And, I have to admit, I was also scared. Would it be enough? Would it make any difference? Would I say the “wrong” things?
I kept struggling to find an answer. Then an expansive, discerning question popped into my head.
Without racism what is present in the world?
This opened up new possibilities for me. It set a new context, a new story, a vision of a world my Soul yearns for: A World Free of Racism.
Another way to say this: Describe the Heaven on Earth that is present after racism disappears.
As I thought deeply about the question, the answer suddenly appeared … Peace.
There would be Peace. It was a simple and deeply profound answer for me. I finally felt there was an opening, something I could fully be a part of and something I wanted to contribute to.
It is a world where every person is treated with respect, where justice is seen to be done fairly, where every person has the opportunity to meet their basic needs and more, where every person knows they are a part of the human family, and as family we treat each other with love and acceptance.
I ask you, Without racism what is present in the world?
and
Describe the Heaven on Earth that is present after racism disappears.
Once you have your answer, ask yourself, “What simple, easy, concrete step will I take in the next 24 hours to make this real?”
(My answer is writing this blog and then I’ll look to see what my next action will be.)
Ending a suffering is an emerging idea that is coming into society. It’s not ‘working on ending the suffering’ which is a good thing. It’s ending the suffering.
This kind of thinking began for me with Jeffrey Sachs’s now famous book, The End of Poverty.
That was the first time I’d ever encountered someone speaking about ending a global suffering. It opened an entirely new door in my thinking – ending a suffering.
Since then there have been other books, all with the same premise….End This Suffering:
The End of Illness
The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All
APOCALYPSE NEVER: FORGING THE PATH TO A NUCLEAR WEAPON-FREE WORLD
I Believe in ZERO: Zero Hunger, Zero Poverty, Zero Disease
As you look at these book titles, can you see how the end of the suffering of racism is an idea whose time has come? The possibility has to first be there so we can then take actions that contribute to that happening.
When I went back to Faye with what happened to me, it was difficult for her to get my experience. Of course it was. Look at the reality she’d been experiencing ALL her life.
I had to begin somewhere and now I have a way to do that.
We can and we will co-create a post racism world. We will end this suffering. An ever-expanding number of people worldwide are committed to it.
I’m definitely ‘in.’ Are you?
Thank you Faye for your love and persistence with me. You are indeed a Heaven Maker.
Love,
Martin
Please share this blog with one or two people.
Martin Rutte
