Facing the Dark Suffering of the World (Part 3)

Sometimes we mistakenly think that feeling guilty for what we have is some sort of worthy penance for what we do not share.  We end up not enjoying what we have. But does that really do any good?  Does that help either us be more compassionate or the poor be more empowered? Not really.  It simply confuses the real mission. 

This is where it gets very tricky.  Born American middle class we really do have SO much, but that is always relative to what's around us.  And what's around us is more wealth. We see both sides: extreme wealth and extreme poverty. We feel the burden to somehow lessen the gap.  How do we start, knowing we were born with blood on our hands?

The American middle class is perfectly situated to be a case study either in greed or compassion. Literally being between the extremes we are almost given to think those the only options. They, of course, are not.

Compassion can certainly be used as an excuse for laziness. In the name of associating with the poor we can forgo pesky work loads to take life at a simpler, lighter pace. Is that really doing the poor themselves any good? 

Greed of course is over-stated. From certain perspectives any sort of initiative is ultimately wrought with greed. Anywhere down the line where someone stands to sustain their vision there is some sort of greed attached. There has to be some positive form of greed. Call it ambition, initiative, leadership, hutzpah, etc, not all is bad. Even those who start non-profits in our sarcasm-rich culture can ultimately get the epithet: greedy one. The unintended consequence is that we create two fictitious options for most young adults: be greedy and win, or be compassionate and lose with the rest of us. Part of loving the poor, ironically, requires we adjust our thinking on this.

We have inherited a sense of guilt with winning, with profit, with success. There is no doubt. It is almost easier in today’s world to fail. We are so suspicious of those who succeed, especially those who succeed continuously. How are they doing it? Are they paying people off? Have they made a deal with the devil? Are they simply ruthless? Do they stay up all night every night scheming ways to make more money? That is certainly how it seems today.

Certainly we have seen corrupted men succeed. Whether bank CEO’s, organized crime leaders, or franchise owners, men who do little to none of the work stand to make the most money on other people’s backs. That is the perception.

*And today it feels like the well has dried up. Those who will succeed have. There is no room for newbies. All these suspicions create a scarcity mentality: “there is not enough, only certain people will get it, wealth is a privilege I am not afforded.”

Facing the Dark Suffering of the World (Part 2)

Some will, with razor sharp intelligence and precision, associate suffering with poverty, and poverty with injustice. They will compelling point out how the wealthy few make decisions in their self-interest that negate the needs of the many.

They, in most cases, decry this phenomena as obscene and unnecessary. In so doing they will often either employ some faith roots (often Roman Catholicism) or point out the feebleness of piety-driven religions aimed mostly inward.

In both cases they are usually quite accurate. Still most themselves fall quite short when it comes to envisioning solutions that could actually work in the real world. Most are meant not to provide answers but to provoke passion about the problems.

Is there something to this almost prophetic approach? Let’s help the people feel the unfairness at a visceral level. Let’s let that anger and passion rouse a future-response that will be far more suited to long-term solutions and steps toward change.

God Himself tried to prohibit super-rich and super-poor in the Hebrew Scriptures. The year of Jubilee was set everything back, keep people from cyclical poverty or extreme wealth and acquisition. Did people find ways around the system?

Surely. But fundamental to it was the idea that it’s not about all that. No matter what was coming. Everything would be reset. Certainly that would effect the way people were driven. Would it be worth pursuing more in year 48?

Can we get to that point today, where somehow the rich are challenged to stop amassing? Or at least to give generously? Of course, those with the money can dictate to those without how the money will be used or shared.

Can the rich find ways toward innovation? Can we find ways to connect the rich (the money) to those doing innovative things to help the poor? Could we create a system or process that would accomplish that very thing?

We do not go blindly into compassion.  We cannot afford to be so emotional about things that are so complex.  If we do we end up hurting the very people we aim to help.

If we are so set on "fixing" a problem than likely we will go to any length to make it happen.  We can lose sight of the people.  We can lose sight of our humanity.

When we reduce humans to social problems with systematic issues we can clinically go into a situation aiming to help and simply replace one tyrant for another: ourselves.

Instead we need to listen to the people.  We have to work slow, and humbly.  There are no shortcuts. That's no excuse for being lazy.  We are deliberate, patient, watchful.

Facing the Dark Suffering of the World (Part 1)

Sooner or later we are confronted with abject horror in the world. It is everywhere, but particularly certain places. When discovered, it can totally wreck any ideologies built on hope that we have constructed. When found, everything else adjusts.

When one discovers that 1/3 of the world is so poor that selling their sons and daughters into slavery sounds like a good idea, it is overwhelming. How can this be? And why on earth do I have it so well? How can it be so unfair?

It’s been said 1/3 of the world is dying of causes related to starvation and 1/3 to overeating. Those kind of realities will fundamentally mess with who we think we are and what life is all about. We go from thinking one way to having to think another.

All the joy, beauty, and hope we find to be so binding and needful in our existence seems to deflect meaninglessly for these realties. There seems to be no intersection, or that the reality of our world can only remain in the ignorance of theirs.

Yet surrendering to suffering has a counter-intuitive effect. It does not bring us closer to caring for and serving the person in need. Ironically us being miserable does the world no good. We must internalize the suffering then transcend it.

I personally will never forget playing guitar music for a homeless shelter once. I was feeling the weight of their situations and what was coming out was darker blues music. A teenager rebuked me: “man this is a homeless shelter, we don’t need blues.”

What I thought was an attempt to connect was actually getting me the exact opposite. I was pushing away, and ultimately thinking very selfishly about the whole thing. I was feeling the blues, but that is not what was needed.

*Somehow it is incumbent upon the leader to look square in the face of the suffering but not be swallowed up by it. God is good. There is always hope. If some chose to find none there is nothing we can do. Find hope. We must find hope.

Where can hope be found? That is the only question. Where can we find hope in the places of such suffering? Where can we hear and see progress being made, despite what appears like only cyclical patterns of poverty?

That is where a new sort of hearing comes in. It is not the kind that hears and sees only what is there, but what could be. It starts with what is good, it sees potential, it harnesses the power of vision, it is the heart of a new generation.

It doesn’t have to stay the same. We can retain the essence of what is good without accepting the necessity of what is not. We can realize the mercy of God in the now and the power of God in the future. We can trust in transformative process.

But it will require suspending immediate belief. It will require not accepting what seems inevitable. It will challenge our sense of calling, our scope of responsibility. It will lay things at our feet we once thought had no business there. Are you ready?

Art as Entrepreneur (Part 5)

Art creates melodies that run through our minds when we wake up. It creates images that we dream about. It creates imaginary worlds that we see our own existence through. Art haunts our world with another.

That’s why it is so powerful. It gets beyond our rational defenses. It gets seeded deep into our imaginations. There is almost breeds without our permission. It clones and spreads and before we know it there is a mutiny.

Why is this melody stuck in my head? Why am I so drawn to this or that movie? What about this picture is so compelling? We don’t even know. Our rational mind can not figure it out. It’s because someone else is in charge for the moment.

That someone else is the imagination. The imagination, fueled with the great art, is given a certain power to take off and run with things. This may be scary, but we can trust the imagination, even though it does not seek our permission.

The imagination is our ability to dream about a world that could be. It helps us remove barriers that are not really there. It helps us to see an enduring world that actually is, somewhere, just not yet. Imagination inspires vision.

Without it we are restricted to what is. We are forced into a limitation that is self-imposed, but carries the weight of universal banishment. We see something as impossible. It is. We must strategically fight this false impulse.

Imagination always believes. It endures the insults expected for one who sees what others do not. It literally is that: seeing a world that is not yet. It is not science fiction as much as vision, or the ability to see into the future.

Ok, imagination is basically time travel to a preferred future. It is the catalyst to a road there that otherwise would not exist. We don’t create that road, we discover it, but only as we allow ourselves to see that future end. See it!

Of course it is possible that our imagination gets out of line, so out of touch with life that it becomes a distortion of reality. But that is not really imagination at that point, it is fantasy, specifically escapism. It is avoidance of reality.

True imagination is not the ignorance of reality, it is the full acceptance of it and through it. It is seeing a life possible within and without it. It is life fully realized, current reality fully redeemed. It is everything we think that life can become.

Some will certainly see it as wishful thinking. They would be wrong. That is something entirely different. At best, it is imagination that is completely lazy. More accurately it is the lack of thinking, or at least the lack of imagination.

Pure imagination is beautiful, a ride into the truest forms of reality. Real stuff. Stuff that has been created. It came from imagination. We came from imagination. Life has always come from imagination. It is a beautiful gift of God.  

Art as Social Entrepreneur (Part 2)

This work requires we take the long view of things, and a humble one. It’s easy for the artist to inflate his importance to the world. Like any field, dominance in that field is quickly mistaken for dominance worldwide. We forget our niches. Even the greatest of songs will ultimately be relegated to the place of background music. Great art masterpieces will be used to dress up a living room. They will be forgotten, or at least under-utilized, or perhaps rightly utilized.

Think for a second of the shoe-maker (or cobbler). They make good, sturdy shoes that protect our feet and hopefully keep them comfortable. They provide humanity a great service, one that is completely taken for granted regularly. What if providing the world a great song or a great piece of visual art is really more like making a great shoe (not even so much in the fashion sense). Through artistry, integrity, and commitment we can provide great pieces that will be put in a closet. In other words however important a work may be at one time it will not remain that for long, especially in today’s world. The reality is that humans can only consume so much, and for so long. After we absorb something we have to move on.

The artist, fortunately, is the same. He or she must move on as well. He must find a new thing to say, a fresh reality to explore and articulate. Like the consumers, the artist can only live with and under a certain creation for so long before moving on.

Of course certain works make it into a category of “transcendent,” which means at its core that a work is timeless, or breaks normal cyclical rules about consumption. It has a sense of timelessness, or “staying power” - longevity in its connective power. But those are exceptions, and even those have cycles of use and re-use. The reality is that we are creating consumables, things enjoyed (consumed), and then forgotten, at least for the moment. Lasting impact, though, may have already happened.

That is the magic really of art (and all created things really): we will never totally know there intrinsic value. No matter our attempts to measure outcomes we will never accurately know how our pieces effected others, let alone ourselves.

How can we know the reality of a world without our works? Even the slightest influence of a background song my have changed the nature of reality for one big decision. Let’s be honest, it usually is the small things. Art may be one of those small things.

Ours is ultimately not to know the value of intangible things. Inner compelling may not be justification for some people, and certainly for some pieces, but it ultimately must play a part in the value of art, if not for the artist.

In our valuation of art we mustn't forget to measure its effect on the artist. What might life look like for the artist without his art? What would happen if an artist did not have a creative outlet? What would spoil and turn rotten within him?

Art as Social Entrepreneur (Part 1)

There are certainly enough social evils and enormous problems in the world to keep good-hearted people busy for a few lifetimes. What we can do to help is almost as limitless as the problems themselves. So much to do. And the problems are legitimate. They are serious. They are felt, currently. They are being experienced by someone right now. And I, potentially, could do something about it. The fact that I’m thinking about it makes it so.

In light of this incredible human capacity to care, to innovate, and to help, how could we not spend our time actually doing just that? How could we waste our precious little here sorting out emotional details within us, narcissistically looking inward?

And that right there may be the right question about the nature of art. Is art, by its very nature, inward focused on the artist’s own journey only? Or, is art, by nature, focused on the real world around all of us and the human problems we all face? Have you seen the documentary Conflict yet on Netflix?

Maybe some will point out that might be one and the same. In other words, the inward journey of an outward focused person who is wide aware will and should reflect the struggle in us all to make a positive difference. It may be more direct than we think.

Think of it, who does not struggle first inwardly? It could be argued that all of man’s battles start inside. If we, no since we as artist’s get to address such internal tensions do we not have an amazing capacity and power for change? Ok, we may not directly be effecting human lives in desperate need, but indirectly we could be softening the hearts of those that could, and encouraging the hearts of those that do. And, of course, we are not only an artist anyway.

What if we were to think of a piece as an address to a group of humanitarian workers? How would the message translate? Or, what if were addressed to the people who were actually suffering. Would they understand or resonate with it?

And maybe, at the end of the day, there is not really that much separating the sufferers from the helpers. In other words, those are physical needs are so apparently different, our emotional or soul level existence is ultimately one and the same.

On a different scale we all deal with figuring out what to do, wondering if we are doing the right thing, trying to do what’s best, pushing ourselves to great extremes at times in order to. We all struggle with human existence in similar ways. And perhaps that is art’s great contribution to the human race. Perhaps it is what reminds us that we are ALL on the same journey, just at different parts. Sure some will refuse to go along with life but even those consequences are universal. There may be a hierarchy of needs, but sooner or later we are dealing with ourselves. Once and if we get to food and shelter, then we have plenty of other problems to deal with.

The good news is, we can endure and even enjoy them together!