Fight or . . .

Marilyn McEntyre
Aug 24, 2017 · 3 min read
image courtesy of snappygoat.com

I pick up a lot of invitations to fight in my morning e-mail. Most of them are from groups I support, led by people I deeply admire for their commitment and focused activism. Some are fighting poverty and hunger. Some are fighting for human rights in war zones and sites of oppression. Some are fighting racism, white supremacists, police brutality. Some are fighting corporate crime, environmentally destructive policies and pipelines, covert surveillance and abuse of power in high places.

I am encouraged by the force of political will and the numbers of people willing to spend hard-won hours and dollars on these causes. I support them and participate where I can. I subscribe to their e-mails.

I also find myself fighting mental and spiritual exhaustion. My eye stopped this morning for a long moment on the word fight. I’d seen it too many times in the hour I took to check on the state of the world.

I’m not really a fighter. I have a lot of sympathy for the young man who told his oncologist he couldn’t really work with the idea of fighting his cancer, because, having been a deeply committed Quaker and pacifist all his life, fighting was not an energizing or life-giving idea for him. I wonder if a lot of us might sustain our energies more effectively for the work that lies before us if we lived by another verb.

Work isn’t a bad one, for instance. People need and want work. Finding our work in the world can be exhilarating. Hammering nails for Habitat for Humanity; packing lunches at the church where homeless folks can pick them up; picking up groceries and unpacking them for a hospice patient are simple kinds of work that make a difference. I like working better than fighting.

Gather is a good one, too. When we gather around a problem and solve it in circles of trusting, creative conversation, we almost always discover a whole greater than the sum of the parts. Gather is a gentle invitation to pool resources. It doesn’t even have to mean joining — just showing up and allowing oneself to add to and be restored by the energy and will to “change what we can” that we can’t summon alone.

There are other verbs — alternatives to fight — that can give us direction as we face the formidable threats and challenges to the planet and its people that come down the daily newsfeed.

When we’re in a position to do so, we can teach, coach, instruct, direct, educate, model, enable, fine-tune.

When strong opposition is necessary, we can begin by showing up, speaking, standing, supporting, calling out, undergirding, and sometimes, more quietly, weaving the conversation. We can report it, emphasizing and articulating and reframing what needs most to be seen, heard, and understood in order for consciousness to be changed, hearts to be awakened, and a million small right actions to be undertaken.

Strong opposition is necessary these days. Every day decisions are being made in the Oval office, in corporate boardrooms and over expensive lunches paid for by well-funded lobbyists that threaten the common good. It may be a time to fight — as Hamlet not too convincingly puts it, “to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.” But perhaps those of us who are by nature and conviction inclined to think wars and conflict don’t solve much could contribute to the common good in some other way. Add our voices to a swelling chorus. Document, investigate, expose. Encourage and equip. Nourish and nurture. Identify, recognize and affirm. Correct and admonish. Uphold. Choose. Challenge. Pray. Share. Create. Make ploughshares. Then till and plant.

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Writer, Speaker, Professor , Author of Word by Word; Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies; What’s in a Phrase; A Long Letting Go (marilynmcentyre.com)

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