Radical Be(com)ing

Millions of people in the United States are part of this organically evolving cultural revolution. Because we believe in combining spiritual growth and awakening with practical actions in our daily lives, we are having a profound effect on American culture. - Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution (2011)

Note: a tad longer than our usual quarterly updates, this is an abridged and edited version of a way-too-long end-of-the-year review Tommy wrote for the Radical Discipleship blog. 

Fifty-five years ago, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King warned that American society was in a spiritual death spiral and that we would not be able to come out of it without undergoing a radical revolution of values. That same American society assassinated him when his radical values led him to speak out clearly against the Vietnam war, and when he threw his support and efforts behind the mass-organization of sanitation workers in our country. 

Is it any wonder that same American society has been working hard ever since to demonize the notion of anything "radical," which simply means to get at the root? Root causes expose America's sins, so we are trained to fear, dismiss, and mistrust anything radical. Grace Lee Boggs was a Chinese-American with a PhD who moved to the eastside of Detroit with her spouse Jimmy Boggs to live in solidarity with low-income residents and labor organizers. She was fully committed to the spiritual and political revolution that Dr. King participated in. Grace used to say this:

We can transform the world if we transform ourselves – and we can transform ourselves if we transform the world.

Grace Lee Boggs believed that this two-sided transformation is rooted in an interconnected network of diverse and scattered partnerships and groups, most of them small and barely visible. These radical incubators can cultivate in us the kind of moral courage we need in order to openly break rank with the supremacy stories (like racism, materialism and militarism) that control every major American institution - and create new ways of being and living. When two or three are gathered in the name of a love supreme, the long arc of justice, a compassionate groan, the inconvenient truth and a whole-hearted humility, Something Else is present and working towards transformation (pictured above: the Nahar Family, beloveds we visited in Elkhart, IN just after the new year - they inspire and lead, in manifold ways, with their enduring and dynamic embodiment of Boggs' and King's vital visions for our times).

We believe that our prayers, social media posts, protests on the street, and bigger conferences have the power to shift some things in us and in the world. They certainly have for us. However, we believe that the enduring transformation of spiritual, emotional and political work happens when we intentionally connect with a few other confidants and comrades in relationships that are deep, meaningful, messy, intimate, inspirational, confessional and accountable. This is the work that we call soul accompaniment.

We believe that this shift to a radical revolution of values does not happen overnight. We cannot just flip a switch and convert to the radical life-ways King and Boggs spoke of right now, all by ourselves. We only know what we’ve seen and heard – and experienced. This process of radical be(com)ing is long, intentional and never done alone. Throughout 2023, we were reminded over and over and over again of this inconvenient truth – and we were blessed to be around many models of what radical be(com)ing looks like. They have amplified hope for us during this hard year.

We were blessed to have confidants and comrades who dared to share vulnerably with us over meals and happy hours, on the trail and in the water, on zoom and phone calls, on retreats and post-evangelical recovery sessions, in text and email and exchanges, during structured discernment sessions and unstructured Marco Polo chats, in couples check-ins and lectio divina sharing circles and on the street (right: with Justin and Tiffany Ashworth in Pasadena, CA).

I (Tom) was blessed to have a marriage partner who knows how to mourn and mobilize and marinate in beauty. She moves on a mixture of intuition, experience, expertise and ancestral knowledge. She harvests wisdom from harsh experience and warns me when Mercury is in retrograde. She is the spiritual leader of our household. Because she knows the secret recipe for soul sauce. Just add presence, play, an agenda-free curiosity and full transparency.

We were blessed by the radical practitioners who nursed Lindsay back to life. Her bout with long covid exposed the limits of Western medicine – and invited us into a more holistic way of thinking (and practicing) around everything.  

We were blessed by the 12-step meetings we attended. So many shares resonate and empower us to take responsibility for our own healing and recovery. "If we are not the problem, then there is no solution." Our codependency cons us into believing that it’s up to us to change, cure, care for, or otherwise coax others into increased healing and recovery. That some good 'ole willpower might conjure up the perfect combination of listening, logic and love that leads to increased insight, understanding, and transformation. Our program reminds us to take care of our side of the street, and that it’s all about progress, not perfection.

I (Tom) was blessed by confidants like Rev. Dr. Nick Peterson (right), a seminary professor in Indy, and Jeremy Porter a post-evangelical spiritual director and school bus driver in Lexington, KY. Nick texted me one morning in October to remind me that all our little quests for perfection are counterfeit attempts to claim God’s place in the world. When I was in Lexington in May, Jeremy took me out to Kentucky Native Café to share a meal – and his presence, his tears and more of the deep roots of his life story.  

I (Tom) was also blessed to be in a group of white men who meet monthly. We commit to taking inventory of what holds each of us back from being fully human and to tapping into our vulnerability and tenderness so we can transform. After one session focused on shame, one of the guys texted me. “Seems my entire existence has been formed by a system that my soul is fighting against.” Maybe this is the radical epiphany that we all must experience – and come back to over and over and over again for the rest of our lives.

We were blessed to be represented by Rashida Tlaib, a leader who has modeled moral courage more than anyone else this year. She is a Muslim and the only Palestinian-American in Congress. She spoke out against the aggression, apartheid, occupation and genocide committed by the state of Israel. US politicians, including many in her own party, called her everything but “a child of God.” Rashida just kept telling the truth – even after she was formally censured by her colleagues in the House. 

When Rashida came to Dearborn in December for a teach-in on the state-wide water affordability legislation she is working with the community to co-sponsor, we stalked her on the way to her car afterward. We thanked her for bearing witness. Lindsay told her that she prays and lights sage for her and for the Palestinian people daily, and that she is committed to not washing her hair until there is a ceasefire. (True to her fast, Lindsay has yet to wash her hair - going on 85 days as of this writing!). Rashida told us that she cries all the time. She used to get two or three migraines every year. Now she gets them once a week. Meanwhile, the fascists continue to slander her – and the moderates just stay silent as they go along to get along. But she is undeterred. 

Continuing to raise the bar for her colleagues, Rashida works unwaveringly and tirelessly for her constituents. She, and the people of Gaza, should not be forced to endure such an unrelenting firehose of slander, censure, dehumanization and oppression, but their endurance and moral courage in the face of the worst humanity has to throw at them has inspired our own faith to no end. We are challenged to dig deeper, spiritually and collectively, as we throw in with this radical revolution of values they keep leading.

I (Tom) was also blessed by so many sources that subvert counterfeit corporate media reports. On October 9, I was in Southern California, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-5 just south of the Culver offramp. It was 5am. I had just embarked on an 850-mile drive to Bend, Oregon. A fatal accident shut-down the freeway. So I turned on Amy Goodman’s live broadcast on Democracy Now. That morning, she interviewed a journalist in Gaza, a member of Israel’s parliament who would later be suspended by his colleagues for criticizing the Israeli government and Rashid Khalidi, the professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years War on Palestine.

On my dark detour through the side-streets of Orange County, I listened to Khalidi use extreme language to describe what had previously been done and what was about to be done to the people of Gaza and the West Bank. Khalidi said that, in the weeks ahead, we would see horrific war crimes, an awful, unparalleled massacre of innocent civilians. Those the Israeli defense minister, just the day before, referred to as “human animals.” Khalidi said that it was imperative that we put the events of October 7 in context. He summarized the history using terms like ethnic cleansing, occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.

Khalidi lamented that, in this context, the kinds of atrocities committed on October 7 were inevitable. He was not justifying. He was explaining. Khalidi called it a “pressure-cooker.” He specifically named the Israeli government’s takeover of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the heavy limits on food, water and electricity in Gaza, the annexation of more and more Palestinian land on the West Bank, two different laws for Israelis and Palestinians and the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians (without charges).

Since October 9, we have listened to many moderates, online and in person, describe a situation much different than what Khalidi narrated. His description, however, has been supported and deepened by other voices in the wilderness. Palestinian martyrs like Refaat Alareer. Palestinian journalists like Motaz, Bisan, Bayan and Mosab Abu-Toha. Palestinian Christians like Naim Ateek, Munther Isaac and Jonathan Brenneman (photo right, with 2-year-old Belén). Jewish journalists and scholars like Norman Finkelstein, Miko Peled, Gabor Mate, Zachary Foster, Ilan Pappe and Amanda Gelender. Radical Christians like Claudia de la Cruz and Cornel West who are promoting alternative political platforms. Scholars like Noura Erakat, Sylvia Chan-Malik, Dylan Rodriguez, Maya Mikdashi, Omar Baddar, Ali Abunimah, Marc Lamont Hill, Chris Hedges, Biko Mandela Gray, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Steven Thrasher and Nick Estes. Long-form, independent journalism provided by Amy Goodman and Brianha Joy Gray. If you want to get to the roots, follow a few of these.

We were blessed by invitations to join Jewish Voice for Peace and Palestinian organizations in the streets of Detroit. These mostly younger leaders facilitated marches, rallies, protests, boycotts and vigils calling for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation in Gaza.

One November night, at a downtown vigil to honor those who have been murdered in Palestine, several folks shared about their family members back home in Gaza. A guy about Tom's age said that he could not get a hold of his sisters and nieces for the past week. Another talked about his uncle, a dentist and a father of young children, who was found dead under the rubble. One young woman named her dad, her mom, her sisters, her cousins. All of them murdered by Israeli missiles. A big screen scrolled the names and ages of children. Now gone. The screen kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. 

At another vigil, in front of the Holocaust Center in the suburbs, 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Rene Lichtman (right) grabbed the mic to tell the world that Zionism is not the same thing as Judaism. He called passionately for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the Israeli occupation. This was right before he walked out into the street and laid down in the middle of a busy intersection. Stopping traffic to tell the truth.

Finally, I (Tom) was blessed by so much of the more-than-human world (so was Lindsay, but this update has to come to an end!): the huge leaves of Catalpa trees, the sweet mulberries we picked on our walk to a brewery on the north end, the coyote who stared me down at dusk just a block away from our condo, the red-tailed hawk who hovers over our neighborhood and the hummingbirds in my mom’s yard, sucking on the nectar of the trumpetbushes my mom planted at the edge of her front porch. I am convinced that they zipped by me to give me permission to pursue a radical, cross-pollinating pleasure that does not come at anyone else’s expense.

All of these, and so many others, are the salt of the earth. They flavor and preserve the whole planet. Not just their own profiles or their own families. We’ve been profoundly blessed by their presence.

Here's to a lot more of this in 2024.