Yes, you know I love

Then he said to him a third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’

Peter was upset that he asked him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ and said,

‘Lord, you know everything; you know I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.

John 21:17

From the moment each of our children is born, our hearts expand to open up to the wonderful new possibilities that love brings. Twenty odd years ago my mother and my nephew drove across the USA and then bought a van in Ireland and travelled to Russia and back. Not too long before my mother died, my nephew made the journey home from Canada with his wife and son. Speaking to her by phone, I said, ‘That would have been lovely catching up with your favourite grandson.’ She was deeply offended. ‘I love them all the same,’ she retorted. I dismally underestimated my mother, and not for the first time.

That ache in our hearts when our children are struggling, when they experience their own sadnesses, when they recognize their own limitations and those of their parents, is a stark reminder of the generous self-giving that loves calls us to. We walk with them until they can run.

What words do we use that will convey to our children how much we love them? Indeed, what words do we used to tell our partners how much we love them? Words will always be inadequate, insufficient and we turn to action ‘to speak’ for us.

After the post-resurrection miracle of the fish and Jesus’ breakfast with his disciples, Jesus asks Peter, ‘Do you love me?’ By the third time, Peter is anxious. Is this to gently balance Peter’s three times denial of Jesus? This is in fact a test for Peter. Jesus is inviting Peter to leadership, for to lead the community of the faithful, Peter’s love for the Lord must be unquestionable, singular and focused. Despite Peter’s protestations that the Lord knows how much Peter loves him, Jesus’ demands a demonstrable statement that is be carried out in action.

Peter’s actions over the succeeding decades until his martyrdom in Rome are an explicit demonstration of that love: Yes, you know I love. I will follow you.

In your life, in your family, with your children, it will be the actions that flow from you more than the words that fall from your lips that will matter. It is so easy to dismantle loving relationships by promoting dependency, lack of resilience, fear, inadequacy – especially when our mouths are saying, ‘I love you’, but our actions say something completely different.

Peter Douglas

HEAD OF SCHOOL SERVICES, NORTH

Will fascism trump democracy?

by Parker J Palmer

"We must love one another or die." —W.H. Auden

On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln spoke to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on the dangers facing American democracy. Lincoln was only 28, so it’s unlikely that many in his audience had him pegged as a prophet. But 23 years later, when the Civil War began, his words proved as prophetic as I believe they are today:

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? … Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a Trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Lincoln did not anticipate the global reach of nuclear warfare, but his point remains sound. If American democracy fails, the ultimate cause will not be a foreign invasion. It will happen because “We the People” become so fearful of each other, of the economic, cultural, and security threats we believe to be posed by “the other” — and so dubious about finding a way forward while remaining true to democracy’s values — that we empower a fascist “strong man” who promises to make us “great” again. This is one way for a democracy to “die by suicide,” an act we seem to be contemplating at this very moment.

I don’t speak of “fascism” lightly. One of democracy’s values is open, honest, and civil conversation across lines of political conflict. Calling something or someone “fascist” sounds uncivil, to say the least, and tends to be a conversation-stopper.

And yet there are times when no other word will do to name a political phenomenon that can be rationally defined and factually identified, and must be stopped in its tracks. The ultimate conversation-stopper is not the word “fascism” but fascism itself, which aims at shutting down the dialogue of differences that characterizes democracy at its creative best.

Full disclosure: I’m a Democrat, but I’m not a fan of indiscriminate Republican-bashing. My father was a staunch Republican and the best man I’ve ever known in both his public, business, and personal life. A Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, started me down the political trail I’m still tracking. Can Republican political convictions and democratic values go hand-in-hand? Of course they can. The fascist threat we face today has a base that reaches across party lines.

That base is aroused when would-be leaders appeal to those fearful, angry, and resentful parts in us — in all of us — that yearn for an authoritarian “fix” for our problems and a “strong man” to administer it. Lest we forget the hard-won lessons of bloody history, here are three traits of a fascist leader in the making:

One. The leader of a fascist movement doesn’t need a realistic plan to solve anyone’s problems. All he needs is scapegoats, and a promise to eliminate them. If he can convince enough fear-ridden people that their safety, jobs, and most cherished values will be preserved as soon as he rids our land of, say, Mexicans and Muslims, his movement to power is underway, no matter how false his assignment of blame may be.

Such a leader will behave in ways that make him look like the “strong man” his followers need to compensate for their own sense of impotence — and the more odious his persona, the stronger he seems to them: “See how he insults the powerful right to their faces!” “See how he feels free to say whatever is on his mind, no matter how crude!” He might even boast indirectly of his own sexual prowess. Ironically, this will win him support even among folks who bewail the loss of “Christian family values,” and still somehow believe that public vulgarity reveals the kind of strength required to bring them back.

Two. The leader of a fascist movement has a simple approach to dealing with critics: he kills them off, either literally or metaphorically. I don’t need to explain what “literal” means: hundreds of thousands of Hitler’s critics as well as millions of Jewish scapegoats were murdered in the Holocaust. But that’s not the only way to get the killing done. A fascist leader is skilled at the kind of labeling and name-calling that kills critics off with words. He employs verbal violence to render his critics irrelevant, a legal and effective way of doing them in.

If he gets a big enough megaphone — easily obtained from media outlets that traffic in sensationalism — and hurls his insults often enough, his political opponents will soon be known as “whiny babies,” “pathetic losers,” or people so “ugly” that “you don’t want a president with a face like that.” A fascist leader silences his critics, grows his base, and accelerates his quest for control with the same tools the fifth-grade bully uses to make kids afraid to cross him.

Three. The leader of a fascist movement knows how to turn “We the People” into a circular firing squad, setting us against one another in a way that robs us of collective power. There is irony upon irony in a fascist leader’s rise to power, but this may be the greatest irony of all: people’s sense of powerlessness leads them to empower a leader who makes them even more powerless.

Fascism’s divide-and-conquer tactics, if we succumb to them, deprive us of the kind of civil conversations on which democracy thrives — conversations that allow us to reach a rough consensus on at least a few elements of the common good and hold our leaders accountable to it. When people-power is defused, a political vacuum is created in which fascism can move uninhibited, unchecked, and unhinged.

Of course, the leader of a fascist movement would get nowhere if he could not attract followers who believe that he can meet their needs. And there’s the rub. Fascism is hard to fight because, at bottom, its support comes more from a psychological and spiritual pathology than a political ideology. Leaders of fascist movements appeal to the “authoritarian personality” that’s been a subject of serious study since World War II.

That fact takes us down a rabbit hole that’s beyond the scope of this essay, as one example will reveal. Behind his arrogance, the fascist leader is a tightly-wound bundle of deep-seated insecurities. This should be a turn-off to an insecure populace. Yet, in the twisted authoritarian psyche, masked insecurity attracts adherents. The leader who is so insecure that he must compensate with braggadocio about everything he has or has done gives his followers a way to translate their own insecurities into what passes for strength. A mob is no more than insecurity shouting to cover up its fears, which is what makes it so dangerous.

Will fascism trump democracy in America? It depends on “We the People,” on our honesty about our own dark fears, our capacity to call out fascism when it arises among us, our courage to speak up against it, and our willingness to join the resistance.

It also depends on, at least, modest regard for facts. In the 15 years since 9/11, 45 people in the U.S. have been killed in violent jihadist attacks, while 48 have been killed in home-grown, far right wing attacks, often by white supremacists and nominal Christians. All of these deaths are tragic, of course. But why are so many of “We the People” lining up behind a leader who pledges death to jihadists — and their families — while playing footsie with white supremacists who are measurably more deadly here at home?

I’ll give the final word to W.H. Auden, with the last two stanzas of his poem, “September 1, 1939.” That’s the date on which Germany invaded Poland, launching a war fueled by a fascism more virulent than most Americans imagined possible, and some continue to deny to this day. Lest we forget,

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

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