Sinner Man

Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day

The words of Nina Samone haunt me from my iPad as I write. Earlier today not long after I arose, I was in Third Space Coffee sitting in a full room, amid the lulling uneven hum of conversation sipping my coffee, eating a breakfast sandwich, and writing to my eldest grandson at the communal table. And I thought, communal is a good word, a word of belonging, a word that is as much comfort food as mac ‘n cheese. These days it seems I crave that communal feeling more than mac ‘n cheese.

I find myself day-after-day watching the news, listening to the news, my legs unconsciously moving in nervous gesticulations as I twist and turn to find a comfortable sitting position. But it is not the chair that makes it difficult to sit. It is not some neurological condition or bout with clinical anxiety that keeps my legs in a low acrobatic state. It is the news itself, it is the discontent throughout the nation.

I sit there and watch children in separation from their parents simply because their parents want a better life for them. There parents sit waiting for judgement and waiting for their children in the somewhere away because they are deemed illegals. That is only half the story. Crossing into the United States outside of a designated immigration point is illegal, however the law provides for them to ask for asylum once they are inside US territory. Therefore, they are both legal and illegal caught in a narrowing view that judges them far too harshly. Pawns of power and paranoia.

The same power and paranoia that disenfranchise long time allies and embraces long time enemies and dictators. The same power and paranoia which wants to disband the European Union and the G7 and NATO and Trade Groups/Coalitions in an effort to return to a world of chest beating, testosterone driven isolation. Though we know from the tested work of John Nash that working for what’s best for the whole is ultimately better than working for the best for oneself, our policies focus on the one-on-one that dries up of the lushness of cooperation into a desert of winners and losers.

I also watch as the balance of the Supreme Court teeters towards harshness and away from balance.  A view that goes against the founding fathers’ desire to provide for everyone’s freedoms to a small panel’s judgement of which freedoms count and which don’t. This is a grave analogy to the state of our union which no longer has balance. That is driven into divisions by hate and fear mongering and lies. And after being beaten so relentlessly, after watching wedge after wedge strategically placed and driven, how do we the respond? Chaotically, further degrading the discourse. Splattering ourselves with the same mud used to obscure our sight.

President Obama was not just offering some platitude by saying “When they go low, we go high.” He was giving us a framework, a blueprint for protest and rebellion. A call to protest peacefully, to discuss thoughtfully, and to rebuff half-truths and lies with full truth. This does not mean we lay passion aside. It means we take up passion as our standard, and defend it not by fighting fire with fire, but defending it from the high ground and using the energy and voices of the people who wield hate against them. Hate does not conquer hate, it only supplants it with a new hate.

Love and compassion are hate’s enemies, and perhaps that is the silver lining to this grey cloud that enshrouds us. Today’s strife has driven into the light, the divides that were just inside shadow, wounds that oozed but now bleed freely. Today’s strife provides us with a mirror to see ourselves more clearly. And these divides that are being sought to exploit us can be used to unite us. If we are all different, then we must all be the same. Race, religion, and gender identification are simply our chosen clothing. We are the same flesh beneath our fashion statements. Our hearts pump the same blood. If we let that be our guide, then we can extricate ourselves from this maze and define a path.

If we can set aside our hate, if we can unite against division, then we can look hate in the eye and sing unflinchingly along with Nina Simone,

Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day