Thoughts on Spiritual Resilience—Learning from Harriet Tubman

"It’s easy in the spiritual life to slip into a myopic focus on one's own individual journey with God. Then a book, a film, or, most powerfully, a conversation comes along and offers a new set of lenses that bring a much larger world into view"—Brian Morykon.

On Tuesday June 23, 2020 Renovaré sponsored a webinar called Finding Resilience When There’s No End in Sight: What Can We Learn from Harriett Tubman.  The participants in the discussion were Willie Jennings [Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale University], Donn Thomas [Renovaré Ministry Team Member—a self-described Musicianary], Chris Hall [Renovaré President], and Carolyn Arends [Renovaré Institute for Spiritual Formation], who served as moderator for the discussion.

Arends mentioned at the beginning that when the topic was conceived, and the participants started discussing what subjects to cover during the webinar, the focus was primarily on the need to live out faith “where there’s not end in sight” to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  More recently, the even more insidious 400-year affliction of racism has reared its ugly head once again.  Perhaps especially because we’ve been living in quarantine, the recent incidents of police brutality toward people of color have placed America’s original sin firmly in the forefront of our collective consciousness.  

Arends led the other participants through a series of questions that listeners had submitted in advance, and then a few that were submitted during the webinar.  The result was a lively discussion that lasted over an hour and covered a wide range of topics around race, resilience, and spiritual formation.  I highly recommend listening to the full version at the link above.  

Brian Morykon [Director of Communications for Renovaré] wrote a “high level” summary of the event in which he highlighted four themes that stood out to him when he listened to the webinar. I think he covered the key points pretty well.  What follows below are some of my thoughts on each of the areas that Morykon mentioned in his summary.  I connect these ideas to my previous blog post called Strengthening Our Spiritual Core.   I think that article touched on similar ideas to those discussed during the Renovaré webinar albeit using different terminology. 

Mysticism

Harriet Tubman is viewed by many as a mystic.  She had powerful visions.  Some attribute them to a head injury that she suffered as a slave; others say they were from God.  Maybe arguing over the source of the visions is not as important as observing their impact on Tubman's life. 

  

The webinar participants discussed how a mystic’s visions are never meant to be solely a private spiritual (or ecstatic) experience.  They are meant to be acted upon and lived out in the context of a spiritual community  Such was the case with Harriet Tubman.  Her visions inspired her to take decisive action and she impacted her community for good.

"What mystics finally do, it seems to me, is heal within themselves the fragmentation that is evident in the world"—Richard Rohr.   

The quote from Richard Rohr above seems to summarize Harriet Tubman’s ministry.  She spent her life leading others to freedom—which one webinar participant called the “ultimate act of building community.”  

I took an online course on Mysticism earlier this year. In that context, we considered several individuals who are considered mystics and a set of characteristics common among them, which included:

•    Clear moral capacity;

•    Solidarity with living beings;

•    Deep commitment to nonviolence;

•    Humility;

•    Ongoing spiritual practice

•    Ability to be a holy listener [really important skill right now!]

•    Mature self-knowledge [i.e., ability to see ourselves as we really are];

•    Simplicity of life;

•    Selfless service and compassionate action;

•    Speaking with a prophetic voice; and

•    A way of being that exudes openness, presence, spontaneity, and joy.

We could summarize all these qualities to say mystics are individuals who possess a strong spiritual core.  Looking at this list, you may recognize some of these traits in yourself, and others in friends, family members, or coworkers.  Does that mean that you and your friends are mystics?  Perhaps.  In a sense, we all have the capacity to be mystics.  (To learn more see Demystifying Christian Mysticism.)

“If the salvation of society depends, in the long run, on the moral and spiritual health of individuals, the subject of contemplation becomes a vastly important one, since contemplation is one of the indications of spiritual maturity.  You cannot save the world merely with a system.  You cannot have peace without charity.  You cannot have social order without saints, mystics, and prophets”—Thomas Merton. 

Racism

The webinar participants agreed that the status quo never changes by us being “nice.”  In fact, the status quo counts on us being nice—and not actually doing anything meaningful to challenge unjust actions (e.g., individual racism) and especially unjust systems (e.g., systemic racism).  

In my previous article, I made an analogy connecting planks, an exercise that strengthens our physical core, to spiritual practices that build up our spiritual core, or capacity.  In the webinar, the term used was resilience—which me might call “toughness”.  It is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties and to endure over the long haul.   This was a trait that Harriet Tubman exemplified throughout her life. and we likewise need to develop resilience if we wish to confront racism.  

There’s a saying when we exercise: No pain, no gain.  It implies that we have to be stretched in order to grow physically strong.  The idea is similar with spiritual practices.  

The true value of spiritual practices emerges when we apply them to real-life situations. So, while the analogy between physical exercise and spiritual practices was good, the rubber only truly hit the road when I applied it to a real-life situation.  In my article I connected the theoretical discussion to something in the headlines right now: our response to racism.  And of course, when rubber makes contact with the road there is inevitably friction.  My words offended some, who thought I should keep my thoughts to myself.  They are entitled to their opinion—as am I.    

The fact is, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel to think about in these terms, racism is a sin.  Now,  like any other sin, we don’t have to be burdened by shame and guilt over it—but we do need to confront it, name it for what it is, and then work to identify it in our lives, and then eradicate it as much as we can.  That’s not going to be easy.  That’s not an overnight fix; we’re going to have to have resilience.  Such long-term endurance is possible only if we have what I referred to as a strong spiritual core.  

Seeing Ourselves Clearly  

Author John Eldredge talked about how one of the keys to spiritual life is our being able to, “see things as they really are.”  Another phrase he used is that we have to become, “alert and oriented,” to what’s really going on in the world—which I believe starts with an honest assessment of ourselves.  

Racism is the elephant in America’s living room.   We can try to keep ignoring it as we've done for years—but it’s not going away.  It's getting harder and harder to avoid.  I don’t think any of us can honestly say it doesn’t impact us one way or another at this point.  Maybe we wish it would just go away?  Maybe it frustrates us to constantly have it talked about.  Some argue that this wouldn’t be an issue if the media didn’t keep bringing it up.  Some go so far as to say the message being communicated to white people by groups like Black Lives Matter  is that “being white is sinful” and something we need to feel shame and guilt about.  

In my opinion, we don’t have to feel shame over being who we are, but we do need to take time to consider our own racial identity—including the fact that we actually have one as white people—and the impact that racism has had on our lives.  

That kind of reflection requires spiritual resilience on our part.  We need to look beyond the obvious surface-level good/bad moral binary of individual racism to consider the deeper, more nuanced issues of systemic racism, and how it may be operating in our lives.  

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Let's consider an analogy that might be helpful. 

If the whole iceberg was only what could be seen above the surface the HMS Titanic might well be on display in a museum in Belfast today. 

Of course, what the captain and crew of Titanic saw that fateful night in the North Atlantic was, literally, “the tip of the iceberg.”  It was the massive structure underwater—invisible to the crew until it was too late—that sliced across her hull and took down the “unsinkable ship” in a matter of hours.

Similarly, our debates over racism tend to focus on the obvious individual dimension of racism.   Such acts (e.g., the murder of George Floyd in broad daylight by a white police officer) are almost impossible not to see and most people condemn them without hesitation.  Far more insidious, however, is the systemic dimension of racism in our nation today.  It’s a massive structure that has been built up over the past 400 years intended to maintain the status quo of white supremacy and white privilege.   Systemic racism often lurks just beneath the surface of our conversations.  Whether we name it or not, it’s there—and it poses a great danger to us.  It is systemic racism that often slices us open gaping wounds in our societal structures and runs the risk of sinking us entirely unless we can figure out a way to effectively address it—and soon. 

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The webinar lifted up another point that we need to see clearly.  White people are accustomed to seeing ourselves as hosts.  That is, we invite others to come be with us—and then we expect them to become like us.  We’re less comfortable going into a setting where we are not “in charge”—where we can’t control what will happen.  (You might think about what it feels like to worship in an African American church, or to attend an event where it’s clear you are in the minority racially.) 

To be a Christian is to be a guest.  We are now part of (Paul says grafted into, which evokes the image of a grapevine) Israel’s story—not the other way around as we sometimes think of it.  Jesus didn’t come to replace all that happened before.  He came to complete it and to fulfill it.

Hope

“Many of us feel helpless right now.  Harriet Tubman shows us how to live in the helplessness doing the work of God... We are always in the hands of God.  God is always holding us up... Now that the veneer of us holding ourselves up [or we might say “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps”] maybe we can rest in the joy of a helplessness that leads us into the strength of God”—Willie Jennings.

Last—but certainly not least—the webinar focused on hope.  Everything begins and ends with hope.  Paul tells the Corinthians that it’s one of the enduring triad:  faith, hope, and love.  

  

The webinar stressed that hope was key to Harriet Tubman’s spiritual endurance, and that she’s a role model for us, particularly as we live out our faith in the context of the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism.  

To be clear, the kind of hope being discussed here isn’t the same as when we say, “I hope my favorite sport team wins this game,” or even, "I hope it rains tomorrow."  That kind of hope is passive, fleeting, and random; it requires, “getting a few lucky breaks,” to have the outcome go in our favor.  No, this is active hope that expects a positive outcome—even though it may take a long time to get there, as it did for Harriet Tubman and so many others throughout history.  It echoes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that the moral arc of the universe points toward justice—even if the upward trend is nearly evident some days. 

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