I Am So Popular: Speak No Evil

I knew, in an instant, that the Amish, an order that embraces non-violence and forgiveness, would, in short order, forgive the gunman. And they did, many even attending his funeral and offering support for his widow.

With those murders—and more importantly with the Amish response to them— I found catalyst. I have a friend, non-Amish, who lives in that community, himself the father of two young girls. I contacted him in the aftermath and told him that in honor of the Amish and their overwhelming capacity for forgiveness, I would drop a grudge. I also invited several friends to do the same, making the rough analogy that our action would be, as in yoga, a sort of counterpose to the violence. The email I sent went mildly viral and prompted me to start the Office of Good Deeds, something I’d been thinking about for some time. The loosely formed group, mostly virtual, began with people performing kindnesses in memory of the victims and went on to help others in need, mostly in service, occasionally in cash.

Before the Arizona shootings, I’d been thinking about how I’d let OGD lapse in the last year or so. I still send out notes now and then to the three hundred folks on the mailing list. I continue to do good deeds on my own. But I made a mental note, as part of my New Year’s resolutions, to get the thing going again.

And then, another unwanted catalyst, Jared Loughner got out his gun.

I’ve been caught up in the commentary. The left blaming the right. The right blaming the left— most notably Sarah Palin unbelievably invoking the words “blood libel,” a term stolen from persecuted Jews, to absolve herself of any perceived connection between her urging folks to “reload” and for posting a cross-hairs riddled map targeting her liberal “enemies” and what went down in Arizona. So far, I think Robert Wright has had the most intelligent things to say about the vitriolic back-and-forth blaming.

Though I am outraged at the incessant audio and visual assault of extreme rightists— crazy like a FOX, if you will— I am trying to rein it in over here. I am trying instead to examine my own heated responses over the years— my rage at the Bush contingent for example. And, on a more intimate level, my fury at individuals I’ve personally encountered who espouse these views. The image I come back to is a moment in an HEB parking lot years ago when a screaming man, upon seeing my anti-Bush bumper stickers, charged me and lit into me.

I happened to be carrying a bag of rotten clementines I’d been planning to exchange. I took one out and, as that man was driving off, I hurled it at his windshield. He in turn hopped out, scraped pulp from windshield and tried, without success, to return the favor. Later, a levelheaded friend suggested that two people of equal maturity had had a “political discussion.” I wish she was wrong, but I was guilty as charged. I was shocked at my own behavior even as it was occurring—but things were so heated then, pre-cursor to now, that I just lost my shit.

With this latest shooting, I’m determined to get the OGD up and running again. And, as I first started that by dropping a grudge, I begin again with personal action, this time upping the ante. Buying into the notion that if we work to improve our own little corner of the world, these changes might have a ripple effect— I am hereby doing away with my Shit List, which I have maintained since childhood.

Friends have often teased me about the tenacity with which, until now, I have clung to my beloved list. And so, before I dispense with it entirely, a moment of defense: contrary to popular belief, this list is not long, nor is it easy to join. I have a very high threshold for bullshit, and a pretty good capacity for forgiveness. Sadly, some people seemed to have taken this as a challenge, eventually “succeeding” at breaking the barrier. I must claim some responsibility for having ever let those folks get close to me in the first place. Thanks to much therapy, at long last I have better learned to recognize and avoid narcissists— the type that overwhelmingly populates my Shit List— and thus I have stopped adding names. In fact the list has been static for years.

Mind you, I’m no saint. And eliminating the Shit List doesn’t mean I’m angling for canonization. Baby steps and all that, I’m simply going to transition to my friend’s Black Hole model. Whereas the Shit List requires the expenditure of great energy to sustain grudges, the Black Hole maintains that no energy may be given to the hurters. You just relegate them to a place where obsessing over hurt and imagining revenge is not allowed, leaving you energy aplenty to focus on doing good and being nice.

While I’m not planning to host a banquet inviting the Shit Listers back in, I did reach out to one this week, extending an invitation that surprised me, but it felt right in the moment. The invitation was tentatively accepted. Maybe we can work things out. I’m nervous, but I’m going to try.

Years ago, during a particularly hard time, I listened to a lot of Pema Chodron. This week, I’ve been recalling the advice she gave one troubled follower, who was having difficulty finding compassion for an abusive parent. The beloved Buddhist nun said quietly that sometimes the best we can do is remove ourselves from the path of our abusers, which in turn removes from them opportunities to abuse. Sadly, this is not an option when someone is coming at you with a loaded gun, as in Arizona. But in other situations, the possibility is viable, one I’ve tested, one that works, a gentler variation on the theme of Black Hole.

I had another thought this week as I considered all of the vitriolic language of our political landscape, and took in so much of the ink saturating the topic. This, too, led me back to the notion, most succinctly summed up by Ghandi, that we must be the change we wish to see. My mind wandered back to a bit of wisdom I read decades ago, in an advice column insisting that when parents divorce, it is vital that they not bad mouth one another in front of their children, because when you insult your child’s other parent, you insult half of what made that child and, in turn, the child itself.

My son’s father and I split before the kid was three. In what might be best termed a happy accident (certainly not a strategic plan), despite the suffering this ending brought, it did not foster hatred. And I think it is true that, for whatever disappointment we felt, not once did we vilify the other. To this day, we remain good friends. I wonder— I hope so— if this is one reason we are fortunate to have such a compassionate son.

Which brings us to rough analogy number two. Political parties are not parents. But politicians do claim to represent the people, often referring to a collective “us” the same way a family might identify itself as an “us” even if not all members see eye-to-eye. There’s a lot of chatter now, post-shooting, calling for unity. I’m not so naïve as to believe the hate talk will permanently end. But I like to imagine that if enough individuals lay down their own arms (literal and verbal) perhaps we can begin a little ripple effect. Maybe not a group hug. Maybe just a much-needed moment of silence.

Spike Gillespie apologizes to aspirants, but she is no longer accepting applications for the Shit List. If you’d like to be on the mailing list for the Office of Good Deeds, you can send a note to spike@spikeg.com. Spike writes for KnitBuzz, SpikeG.com, and the brand new WriteWithSpike.com