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Powerful Intent
By Eloise Owens | January 31, 2010
So far I’ve avoided any political thoughts on my website due to electricity in the air –no matter which side of the political mirror you look into. But this last week I felt extremely nudged to make an observation from the looking glass.
To all my African American friends who heard the comments, “For an hour, I forgot he was black!” I was stunned, were you? But then a few days later as the buzz started to build over Chris Matthews comments made the night of the State of the Union address, this funny predicament started to occur. Because he is clearly a Liberal Democrat cheerleader, people on that side of the aisle didn’t blast him for those comments. Instead, they gave Chris this huge dose of grace saying “he didn’t mean anything by it,” or “he didn’t intend for that to be a negative comment.”
Even one of my African American democratic buddies on Facebook said, “Please friends, don’t ever forget that I am black.” But no one shouted for his resignation. No one shouted for him to retract the statement. Instead, people immediately gave him grace.
I am not a democrat. But that’s not the point. As a life observer I am interested in the power of judging one’s intent. Seems to me that we are much more able to do it when we align with the person in question. That alignment allows us to give them the benefit of the doubt. That alignment frees us to widen the latitude of misspeaking because there are so many other reasons to love them.
But what happens to that grace when, heaven forbid, we disagree and are out of alignment with the person? Does that give us the right to harshly condemn and go tone deaf to the apologies of the offending party? Where did the grace go? If it’s true we all screw up, why can’t grace be extended to people you don’t align with? The bible so beautifully teaches (and I’m paraphrasing here) ..so what if you love the people that love you back. The real strength is in loving the ones who don’t love you. Now that’s real love!
Take a look around. People say dumb stuff all the time. Look at Ministers. We hear them speaking for God in absurd ways, deciding to enlighten us all as to why God allows bad things to happen. We heard it as recently as the earthquake in Haiti. And, as sure as shooting, (that’s just a term), some jumped all over that minister while others, because of their alignment were in quiet agreement. The day that that statement was heard through the press a favorite blogger of mine wrote a beautiful piece admonishing others to show him compassion instead of criticism – empathy instead of hate – even when we disagreed passionately with his statements, let alone the timing.
In today’s Sunday paper an article just made my pulse quicken. It is about a minister (another one) who keeps preaching for people to give to his ministry because he will be giving back to them a promise of billions. People keep giving and he keeps promising. Here again, the alignment to this minister is allowing the grace to flow when his promises are starting to ring hollow. Many people in his congregation however are starting to smell a rat. And so is the Attorney General’s office. But people, through their alignment, will give him the benefit of the doubt for another year and continue to open their purses. I add this story to lend some balance to this post. Sometimes, our alignment can cloud our judgement and the free pass we give to some needs to be reexamined. This alignment business is tricky.
This grace stuff is hard- in politics or religion. It pushes a person to move about the noise and always stay hyper aware when the temptations to be more competitive than kind are seducing and enticing you. Politics today is a breeding ground for all things judgemental. Just because we choose to give grace to the humans around us doesn’t mean that we can’t have our opinions on where the direction of the country should be headed. I have many friends and relatives that are on both sides of the looking glass. And even through our frustrations on both sides, we are challenged to rise above the noise. It’s not always easy. Especially when I know I am Absolutely right. (ahem..just kidding.)
I am challenged to give grace. I am nudged to encourage you to do the same.
Till the next time crazy words come out of another human’s mouth,
Be graceful,
Eloise
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