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A Prayer for Tenderness
by Norm Lowry
November, 2015
"It is those who have never accepted life's realities who always think there is an escape. That's why, for example, many people believe in building bomb shelters. It does not occur to them that life might not be worth living if conditions for a life worthy of human beings no longer exist." --Arno Gruen
Ours is a culture of purposeful violence, whose powerful demand compliance, which societally equates with responsibility. All who choose to be unsubmissive are deemed to be irresponsible and thus subject to sanction, ostracization, and imprisonment. The problem with this is that our culture of violence is based on lies. So to be in bed with the powerful in any way, shape, or form entails cosigning the lies, whether one is aware of them or not.
For those of us who choose prison over gross submission to the lies, living with death, which comes in many forms, is our daily lot. Two days ago, a close peer died from a severe cancer, exacerbated by poor health care and nutrition. A coupled days before this, a peer died of a heroin overdose, enigmatic due to the poor grad and dosage generally sold. A few days prior, a peer confessed to contemplating suicide rather than to face being stabbed by those extorting him, who had already raped him as a preemptive strike.
So along comes a letter from a friend who says, "I'm praying that you will maintain your tenderness…" You've got to love a precious friend like this! Here is one who gets it, who understands what it takes to make life work in our hardest moments. Tenderness; being kind and gentle, is the only solvent which can penetrate the admixture of the submissiveness to violence all around us, whether in your prison or mine.
In 1957 I saw black people burned in fires and hung from lampposts. While adults salivated, we children knew this was not supposed to be.
In 1960, after observing numerous atomic bomb tests, we would hunker beneath our school desks, to practice being "safe" from imminent nuclear attack. Again, while adults salivated at the thought of besting some contrived enemy in a death match, we children nervously shook our heads at the utter absurdity of those whose place it was to teach us dignity and integrity.
In 1965 my first friend died in Vietnam. Danny was 18. I was 12. The adults told us it was for the greater good. We children heard it as a question.
In 1991 I "won" my first lottery. The adults said I was one of them now and that going to war was an honor. With tears in his eyes, my did laid his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes, the went off to get drunk. I sat, confused. I couldn't get drunk at my age. I'd never had sex. But I could go to war. I gave up desiring to be the typical adult that day.
I did enter the military but I did not go to war. I resigned after being told we could rape Vietnamese women if we thought they were beautiful, as long as we killed them when we were through with them. My supposed superiors were baffled that I could not see the normalcy of such behavior. To them, since war was necessary, they had to offer young men something to make war worth their while--all the sex, drugs, alcohol and murder their hearts so desired. The trouble was, I wanted none of those things, not even the sex if it was outside of loving, affirming relationship.
The whole scope of violence is predicated on one individual or group inflicting suffering on another or others, in hopes of avoiding suffering themselves. This is insanity, of course, yet we continue to make it a sanity, or so we believe.
So here I am 45 years down the line, fast-forwarded from 18 to nearly 63. It's actually been quite an adventure. While our culture has severely degraded, as far as destructiveness and inhumanity is concerned, many of us have escaped by reassuming our birthright to actual, as opposed to blindly obedient, humanity. For this, some of us sit in prison and many in graveyards, both far better options than our old, chosen alternative of merely going along.
Today, overwhelmingly due to the United States, we sit on the edge of a monstrous precipice. The U.S. Constitution still says that Blacks are only 60% human. The U.S. nuclear threat is greater than ever, as the U.S. arsenal contains more nukes than most, if not all, other societies combined, The U.S. war threat is the greatest threat of war on earth, buoyed by the 100+ wars and interventions waged in my lifetime. Our fragile earth is telling us it cannot much longer sustain our abuses. The U.S. and its allies (partners in crime?) are publicly hinting at the need for a one world government. Even the Pope, on his recent visit, stated that we need one world, United Nations, governance--eek!
So what of tenderness The answer lies in the nature of tenderness, itself. There can be no genuine or expansive tenderness in violence, for the violent seek to crush tenderness, seeing it to be a weakness. How else can the rich and powerful hold exclusive reign over "the initiation of wars, the destruction of livelihood, and the poisoning of nature and of other human beings," while excluding themselves, largely, from imprisonment? "Official statistics on criminality include more poor people than rich because those statistics reflect the ideology of the rich and powerful and do not include all forms of destructiveness." (Arno Gruen). Tenderness thrives on nonviolence The more one commits to a life of nonviolence, the more tender one can become. True nonviolence must be embraced and espoused. It cannot be imitated for long. To me, nonviolence is the essence of our Creator, as it stems only from love. And from love flows tenderness, as gentleness and kindness.
Through the years, I've caught a lot of flak for believing our Creator to be absolutely nonviolent. Yet since the so-called "ten commandments" are said to be first a reflection of our Creator's essence, each statement would necessarily read more like "I don't murder so you don't murder." Thus, our creator could not have been the god who told "the faithful" to murder those who did not believe as they. Sure, some god told the people this. In fact, the dominant empires of the day had 8-900+ violent gods who would have perpetuated such a ruse.
Also through the years, I've caught no small amount of flak for my stances of opposition to the American traditions of colonialism, violence, racism, bigotry, poverty-production…injustice. That I absolutely hated these driving traditions enough to renounce my association with government-registered religion and my U.S. citizenship disturbs most people, who consider these moves to be un-American. If it is un-American to hate tyranny and love truth, then I'm un-American. But I ask you, "Is it un-American to love all people boundlessly and indiscriminately, enough so to be willing to model another way of running the world: absolute nonviolence, even if it costs my life and my all?"
So the most glaring and applicable question remains--do conditions for a life worthy of human beings still exist in the culture in which we live; for me, the United States of America?
What does tenderness say?
