When I first learned of the soul force discussions involving gay people across the
nation, I was very excited. I signed up and have been receiving the e-mails from
Mel White ever since. I welcomed the chance to reflect on the teachings of Gandhi,
the implications of Soul Force for gays, and how we might contribute to creating
a more soul fused world. These themes have been important to me for many years.
I remember being deeply moved as a student by the movie Gandhi. It made a cultural
icon out of a man who’s life and message were contrary to prevailing American values.
By the standards of; “might makes right” and “who ever dies with the most things
wins” this guy was a bit “queer.” He quickly became a hero for me. Martin Luther
King, Dorothy Day, and Harvey Milk too all made it onto my list of heroes. My interest
in non-violence dovetailed my coming out and the realization of my own outcast status
in this culture. This gave me the acute realization that my struggle for personal
liberation and gay liberation were just subsets of the larger struggle for human
liberation which included all other oppressed souls. I became convinced that non-violence
(Soul Force) was the only means of activism which leads to the conversion of the
heart, so necessary to bring about the kind of world in which all souls can be free.
I had the privilege to spend most of 1987 in India. The first period of my time
there I was enrolled in a study program at the Gandhi Peace Foundation called “methods
in non-violent social change.” At the time the study of “satyagraha” or soul force
seemed very remote from my experience as an urban queer man. It would take years
for me to see how intimately they were in fact connected. And Mel White has again
made clear this connection with his soul force initiative.
During that summer of 1987, I met a distinguished looking man with thick white hair,
chocolate colored skin and deep green eyes his name was Duraswami. He had come to
speak to a group of students of which I was a part, about his experience of marching
with Mahatma Gandhi during the struggle for Indian independence. As a young man
he was full of idealistic zeal. He left his studies behind as well as his privileged
life as the eldest son of a wealthy Brahmin family, to join the non-violent revolution
which was sweeping the subcontinent in the early to mid 1940’s. He had been a freedom
fighter, a label of which he was proud. He had marched and had taken the blows of
the enemy and had not fought back. He had bravely wielded the sword of non-violence.
Imagine his shock, when he along with several of his peers were sent to a backward
Indian village to learn to spin and serve the under privileged. Both unthinkable
tasks for the sons of Brahmin families, yet of this most humbling experience he said,
“the real training in non-violence began.”
Gandhi’s program for political and spiritual change is a call to transformation.
His teaching invites a radical conversion of the heart through which we become new,
and through which we can transform the larger society in which we live. His “experiments
with truth” must if they are to have any effect on our world, ignite our own experiments
with truth. This is the challenge for us. You and I, like Duraswami can only open
to the deeper lessons of non-violence when we let go of our limited identifications.
His was that of being a Brahmin, what are ours? We must surrender who we think
we are, and here in lies the real challenge for anyone who is interested in the flow
of the souls force. Non-violence is not easy. It forces us to grow and weed out
the roots of violence in our own hearts. Martin Luther King reminds us how hard
it is when he says, “We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity
to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with Soul Force. We will
not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. But we
will soon wear you down with our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom
we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win yours in the process.”
To win hearts, our own and those of others, we must be willing to suffer. And while
some of us will suffer the pains of violence inflicted from out side, most of us
are called to suffer the “internal suffering” of an ever expanding consciencnous.
The movie opened with a scene from Gandhi’s funeral. An American news broadcaster,
Edward R Murrow, describes the procession. He quotes the American Secretary of State,
who said “Mahatma Gandhi had become the spokesman for the conscience of mankind...”
He went on saying “He was a man who made humility and simple truth more powerful
than empires...” He read comments from world leaders, including the words of Albert
Einstein; “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in
flesh and blood, walked upon this earth”. These powerful words described a man who
began an experiment with truth one step at a time. He responded to the injustice
of his own circumstances. Our circumstances though different, no less call out for
action.
It’s no news to anyone that we live in a very violent world. Each day includes story
after story about the violent conditions in our world. Yet at times a situation
or an incident of violence or injustice will strike close enough to home that it
will shake us up. It will call to us in a loud voice; WAKE UP! For Gandhi it occurred
in South Africa. For some of us the beating and death of Matthew Shepherd was such
an incident. We wonder what can we do? We want to create solutions. We want to
make the world safe for ourselves and those we love. Initially the response is a
very personal one, perhaps a self centered one. That is how it was with Gandhi.
He was appalled that he, a lawyer, a privileged citizen of the British Commonwealth
could not ride in a first class train in South Africa because his skin was brown.
This injustice shook him. He tasted his outcast status. He took action, and the
seeds of soul force began to sprout in him. It would take many years and deep commitment
for the Mahatma (great soul) to emerge. What action shall we take? To make the
seeds of soulforce sprout in us.
The story of Matthew Shepherd’s beating and death is being retold in the news as
the trial of one of his alleged killers begins in Wyoming, and the meeting between
Mel White and Jerry Falwell and their respective followers is also being reported.
As Mel White put it, “What we have here... it's a small start, but it's a start."
It is indeed a small start. Personally I have wondered what good talking to a “nut”
like Falwell would do? It seemed to me, to be about White’s attempt to reconcile
his own right-wing past with the truth of being gay. Perhaps it is. Yet it takes
action, even small or self centered action. The power of soul force is awesome.
Gandhi’s first move was quite self centered, and see where it led. Soulforce is
ignited when we take action. It starts with very personal action and it grows.