Max's Story Continued — and Some Thoughts On Caring, Justice, and Love

Max and me, downtown Portland, February 20, 2020

 

"In our time, when high technology guided by values such as conquest, exploitation, and domination threaten our very survival, we need economics driven by an ethos of caring. We need a caring revolution."

— Riane Eisler

When I recently emerged from Powell's Books in downtown Portland, I recognized Max standing across the street on the same corner where I'd last seen him two months earlier. The video above is one that I took and posted, with Max's permission, last December.

I could see that Max was continuing to sell copies of Street Roots, which I knew to be his only income. And I knew that I would want to check in with Max and see how he was doing. We talked, we hugged, we both agreed that our economic system is unjust and sucks. And Max spoke about how selling Street Roots has helped him to survive and to not be like his brother, who Max said slept on the street a couple blocks down and would always spend whatever money he had on alcohol. 

Max said he'd argued with his brother just that morning. We both agreed how that's hard. And I shared that I lost my brother to alcoholism many years ago. And we had this moment of shared sorrow. 

Max went on to say that he's 58 years old, and he again spoke of burying his wife last September, who he'd lost to sclerosis. Max also expressed gratitude and that he's especially grateful to be selling Street Roots and able to support himself. And Max told me, "I'm not going to die on the street."

As I said goodbye and we hugged one last time, I knew that Max would be returning later that day to the tent he had somewhere not too far away that was his home. Max is a veteran. And he is among the 500,000 Americans — including 30,000 veterans — who will sleep on the streets tonight.

*****

There was a time when I turned away from the suffering of others. The truth is that I was ignorant and apathetic about what others outside of my small circle of caring were experiencing. I was wrapped up with the many demands of my own life — in getting sober and healing childhood trauma, with how to juggle my work with abused children while learning how to mother my own, and most especially with learning how to "break the cycle" of pain and addiction and trauma for my three young sons. This, at a glimpse, was my life.

Then, over 20 years ago, I had the blessing of reading Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, and of meeting and maintaining a connection with its author, James Garbarino. Jim was the first one who I heard speak of "circles of caring" — how our circles of caring are smaller or larger depending upon the circumstances of our lives and how we are impacted by fear and trauma or by love, caring, safety, and protection. This was when a seed was planted within me, a conscious awareness and intention to expand my circle of caring and what it is that truly matters to me.

Perhaps this is when the Bodhisattva was first awakened in me — this heartfelt and soulful intention to engage in the work of acting to alleviate the suffering, not just in myself and my loved ones and my immediate community, but also in the world. This is such a powerful and transformative intention — to seek to care about all beings, excluding no one. I have found this to be the path of an awakening heart.

First, I have also learned that I needed to go deeper into my own heart. And over the years, and with the support of loving friends and wise teachers, I have discovered many layers of ungrieved losses, fear and shame, mistrust and ruptured attachments, and unhelpful beliefs which I had mistakenly believed protected me from pain and loss. I was engaging in this ongoing process of cultivating mindfulness and learning to recognize my triggers, my illusions, and the obstacles that I have built within my own heart against love, vulnerability, intimacy, generosity, compassion, and truth. This path of heart has also been gradually empowering me to meet my own wounds, ignorance, and unskilled actions with understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and love. 

I've also learned along the way the truth of how difficult it is to bring a depth of empathy and compassion to anyone else if we are not first offering this understanding, kindness, and tenderness to ourselves.

For me, this has been a gradual awakening — a journey that has been bumpy and messy, scary and humbling, and empowering and amazing beyond my wildest dreams. I've had to give up a lot along the way. This has included unhelpful coping skills, relationships that were not able to be healthy, attachments to people who I came to recognize were causing harm, belief systems that did not serve my highest good or that of others, and a limiting worldview — one that was constricting my capacity for courage and generosity, compassion and kindness, understanding and truth, and wisdom and love.

This journey has broken open my heart. I used to turn away from the Max's of the world. But no more.

So today, Max matters to me. And my heart weeps with each tent that I see lining our sidewalks and streets and freeways because, now that I'm not turning away, I know that each tent is the only home that another human being knows. This is wrong. Today I know that this is wrong. I care. And I know that it does not have to be this way. I know that another world is possible.

 

***** 

A friend of mine shared with me many years ago that her therapist had told her that a primary part of sobriety and healing ourselves is learning to recognize and lower our tolerance for violence. Being the quote collector that I am, this one really stuck with me. And over the years, what I discovered is that I had a very high tolerance for violence. This wasn't just because I grew up in a family where there was violence, which I did. This is also because of what I've come to realize is true beyond my family of origin — that our culture normalizes violence in its countless blatant and more subtle forms. 
 

I have discovered that this pervasiveness of violence in American society acts to indoctrinate us into being complicit and enabling the violence that we've been taught is "normal." Or, we're just taught to not see it at all. At least this has certainly been true for me, and I believe for many of us — that there are so many blind spots that we can be experiencing related to the suffering that is all around us and often unattended in our own hearts.
 

And there are those who have long been aware of the injustices that have been part of American culture since the first days of slavery and the genocide of Indigenous Peoples. There are millions of Americans who endure the experience of being marginalized, oppressed, discarded, dehumanized, and blamed for their suffering, poverty, mental illness and addictions, race and religion, and the zip code that they were born into.

Once I was blind, but now I've come to see. I've opened the eyes of my heart and come to see so much that I did not recognize before as being among the many faces of violence. I'd been so habituated and indoctrinated into a culture that justifies and promotes violent belief systems. In her brilliant work which is acclaimed worldwide, Riane Eisler [https://rianeeisler.com/] differentiates between cultures of Domination and cultures rooted in Partnership. America was founded on the ideology of domination, which very much so continues to this day.

*****

It's my belief that there are many different pathways which will lead us individually and as a society to lower our tolerance for violence and which will move us to act to alleviate the suffering that we find within ourselves and our world. 
 

One antidote to my places of ignorance and disconnect that I have found helpful is asking questions and courageously following the threads of truth, wherever they may lead. For me, this process has more than once led to a collapse of belief systems that I came to recognize were not in the best interests of myself or anyone else. All that family of origin "shadow work" that I'd been engaged in for nearly 20 years was now turning into a process of collective shadow work — work that was connecting me to our society at large and to my planetary sisters and brothers. The barriers of separation were coming down.

I sense that asking questions may be one key element for us as a whole to break through that which polarizes, divides, dehumanizes, and ultimately perpetuates the pervasiveness of many different forms of violence in American culture and beyond. As it has for me and for countless others, questioning and the deepening into their answers can serve to connect and unite us and clear away the illusions that we are all that different. Maybe I’m wrong, but in my deepest heart I do believe that most of us actually do care about one another — that we do want to act on behalf of those we love and also those we do not know. 
 

Which again brings me back to Max. This one human being who is struggling every day to survive is also a symbol of millions who are struggling and suffering in America and billions of humans and nonhumans who suffer worldwide. It's so easy to lose sight of the Max's who live in our cities and communities and beyond, and especially if we are forgetting to ask ourselves some deep and heartfelt questions. It may be too easy to point our fingers at someone else and say that that other person(s) is the cause of so much that's wrong and painful in our world. And, added on top of that, I believe that there is a pervasive polarizing propaganda which we are continually immersed in that seeks to divide and distract us. Because then we won't notice Max. And if we don't see the Max's all around us, if we are blind to their suffering, then we won't be moved to act to do something about it.

Thus, the epidemic of disempowerment. 
 

That said, I absolutely do not believe that it has to be this way. I say this humbly and with my own first hand experience of once absolutely living in the fog of my disconnection from my fellow humans, other beings, and our Earth Mother. It is not easy to be awake in a world which seeks to deaden our consciousness and feed our ignorance and disconnection from one another.

And then there is the power of Love. 
 

Love can awaken us and strengthen our hearts, nourish our capacity for consciousness, and feed our passion to act to heal ourselves and act on behalf of others, including those we don't know. Like Max.

*****

In America, tragically, we are bombarded with questions like "how much will it cost?" — but these questions are primarily limited to when it comes to things like healthcare or sustaining a livable planet. At the same time, the cost question time and again gets a pass whenever it has to do weapons and wars, bailing out Wall Street and the Big Banks, perpetuating the use of fossil fuels, and funding the exact large corporate interests that are at deep odds with the interests of the people and well-being of the planet.

These questions which are asked and not asked are frameworks, narratives, and cultural beliefs and values which contrast domination vs partnership, violence vs caring, injustice vs justice, systems of death vs systems of life, justifications for dehumanization vs values rooted in love.
 

If we could turn these patterns reflecting domination ideology on their head and take on a different perspective whose core values are grounded in partnership and reverence of life, then these questions might highlight what connects us rather than divides us and what can move us in a transformative direction which will benefit us all —

1. What is the cost of continuing the status quo of not implementing the Green New Deal and instead continuing to drill baby drill and be complicit with the power of the deadly fossil fuel industry? What do the world's scientists tell us we must do over the these 10 years right now if there's to be any chance of a livable planet by the end of the century? What is the cost if we fail to make this our priority above all else?

2. What is the cost of the military industrial complex and perpetuating endless wars and worldwide militarism rather than choosing to fund peace and what nourishes life rather than kills — like transforming our economy and caring for our children and the poor, providing healthcare for all, and making college and continued education accessible for everyone?

3. What is the cost of continuing to enable Wall Street and a neoliberal predatory capitalist system that has 43% of Americans living at or below the poverty line and 500,000 human beings — including Max and 30,000 other veterans— living on the streets tonight all while 3 people own as much wealth as half the country? What is the cost of enabling and continuing this profoundly immoral and vast redistribution of wealth upwards?

4. What is the cost of a healthcare system based on profit and greed rather than health and care — and which causes 30,000 deaths and 500,000 bankruptcies every year alongside countless human beings not being able to afford the medications, the mental health treatment, and the treatment for addictions that they desperately need? What will this system cost us in lives and unfathomable medical bills now that the coronavirus will be sweeping across our country?

5. What is the cost of continuing with a corporate owned government based in patriarchal neoliberal capitalism with an ideology of domination and violence at its core — rather than partnership, caring, justice, and generosity? What is the cost of continuing with predatory capitalism as our economic system?

6. What is the cost a corporate owned mainstream media that misinforms us and encourages us to act against our own best interests and those of other people, nations, and the planet? What is the cost of the propaganda of polarization which feeds our fears and separation and encourages us to falsely blame innocent others rather than being informed and empowered to accurately see the root causes of so much suffering, inequality, injustice, and death in America?

7. And what is the ultimate catastrophic cost of denying and minimizing the climate and ecological crises that we are in the midst of and continuing on a trajectory which is heading us right over the cliff into civilization collapse and extinction by the end of the century?

I just have to believe that our mutual caring and compassion and love towards each other as human beings and as all of Earth's inhabitants is so much greater than any box of being moderate, conservative, or any other label we might attribute to ourselves or others. My values are grounded in love and justice. At our core, I believe that we humans all share this in common. 

There is just this messy business of peeling back the fog of our illusions, embracing and healing and transforming our wounds and unhealthy belief systems, and courageously opening to the greater wholeness of who we truly are.

*****
 

And so what are we to do about the Max's of our world? I know that I can no longer turn away. Instead I am compelled to allow my heart to break open again and and again. I hope that you will join me.
 

Deep bow of love...

Molly  

WE NEED A CARING REVOLUTION. THE MORE WE LOVE, THE MORE REAL WE BECOME.