Robert Jensen
School of Journalism
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
work: (512) 471-1990
fax: (512) 471-7979
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert Jensen 2005
by Robert Jensen
[Remarks to an interfaith service at St. Andrews Presbyterian
Church, Austin,
TX, August 14, 2005]
We gather here this afternoon, challenged by Cindy Sheehan’s
courage. Out of her
struggle to come to terms with the ultimate loss has come a moment
for all of us
to commit ourselves to peace, and to the actions necessary to
bring peace to the
world.
There is another opportunity that arises out of Ms. Sheehan’s
vigil, a struggle
that takes us beyond that ultimate loss. Though I am not of the
church, I will
borrow its language: It is the struggle to reconcile that we are
spirit living
in flesh.
Because we are flesh, we know best that with which we are
familiar. We love
most those around us. We yearn for connections to real people in
real places,
people we can touch and who can touch us. We love most intensely
those people
around us. We hold our children in our arms, and we breathe with
them as one,
and we love them deeply in each breath. And that is as it should
be. We are
flesh that touches and is touched.
But at the same time we are spirit. We know that to live our
humanity to its
fullest requires moving beyond the flesh.
And so we know there can be no difference between how we treat
those we love and
those on the other side of the world who we will never know and
never touch. If
our lives and the lives of the ones we love have value -- if by
virtue of being
human we have a claim to life and dignity in living -- then
everyone must have
that same claim.
We know that the children we hold in our arms have exactly the
same value as
those children we will never see, held in the arms of those we
will never know.
If our lives in flesh are to make any sense, our spirit must move
beyond the
ones we touch, the ones we love.
This is our struggle, and it is hard, because when we lose a loved
one, when
someone we have touched and who has touched us suffers, we cannot
help but feel
it more deeply. Our flesh aches. That is what it is to be human.
And at the same time we have to push ourselves to think about the
suffering of
those we will never touch. Our spirit has to ache as deeply as our
flesh. That,
too, is what it is to be human.
If we are the people we say we are -- if we believe the things we
profess to
believe, if we want to build the world we claim to want to build
-- then we
must struggle with this. And it will be hard.
Cindy Sheehan has been forced to do something the mere mention of
which produces
panic in me: She has buried her own child. I will pray -- to any
god and all
gods that anyone has ever dreamed of -- that I never have to face
what she has
faced, that I never have to look down into the grave of my own
child.
Cindy Sheehan and all the others who have lost loved ones in the
U.S. invasion
and occupation of Iraq belong to our community, to our nation. It
is easy to
grieve for them and with them, and we should. That is what decent
people do.
But as we mark our belonging by sharing her grief, we are called
to a becoming,
to become something more, to see that as we grieve there are
thousands of
Iraqis, tens of thousands, who have buried their children, buried
their
parents, buried their friends. Buried those who they have touched
and who have
touched them.
Somewhere in Iraq right now, there is a mother looking into the
grave of her
child. There is a friend weeping over his loss. There is a
community that
gathers, much like we gather here, to find meaning in a world of
suffering. In
Iraq right now, there are people grieving in exactly the same way
that Cindy
Sheehan grieves, that we all grieve.
We belong -- to a congregation, to a community, to a nation. We
belong, but we
must become more than that to which we belong. Belonging is not
the end. It is
the place from which we struggle to become.
What is it that we must become? We must become more than a person
who belongs to
a congregation, a community, a nation. We must become spirit, in
our flesh.
And when we do that, here in the United States, our obligation
comes into
focus. We live in the most powerful nation in the history of the
world. We live
in the most affluent nation in the history of the world. That
power and
affluence was born of violence and is maintained by violence. We
can choose to
protect that power and affluence, and hence be part of that
violence, or we can
choose to help create a different world. To create that world, we
must choose to
take risks, far beyond the ones most of us have taken so far.
There will come a
time, perhaps not too far away, when those choices will be even
starker than
they are today, and we should prepare for that, together.
If we do that, we can imagine a better world. Not a world without
suffering, for
there can be no such place. But a world in which no one suffers
merely to
protect our power and affluence.
To do that, we must become more than members of a congregation or
a community.
We must become more than just Americans.
This is hard, but it is worth the struggle. I believe that as we
become that
spirit, we will find that we can love more deeply than ever, in
the flesh,
where we belong.
-----------------------------
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, board member of the Third Coast Activist
Resource Center (http://thirdcoastactivist.org),
and the author of The Heart of
Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege
and Citizens of the Empire: The
Struggle to Claim Our
Humanity. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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