Life's learning.

While I was waiting for Cathy during her Gamma Knife treatment this morning I finished the book BROTHER TO A DRAGONFLY by Will D. Campbell. Will is Baptist pastor from Mississippi who worked for the National Council of Churches in race relations during the 50's and 60's. The 'Dragonfly' is his older brother about whom the book is a biography yet also in many ways an autobiography. It is filled with spiritual and practical insight and, yet, on one level blindingly naive.

Working for civil rights during that volatile time it finally dawns on Campbell that the members of the Ku Klux Klan were also human and suffered their own form of enslavement. In 1963 speaking to a group assembled by the U. S. National Student Association to watch a documentary on the Klan produced by the Columbia Broadcasting System Campbell said "My name is Will Campbell. I'm a Baptist preacher. I'm a native of Mississippi. And I'm pro-Klansman because I'm pro-human being. Now that's my speech. If anyone has any questions I will be glad to try to answer them."
Those words almost caused a riot. After describing the reaction he writes "But it took time to get my little band of radicals settled down enough to point out to them that just four words uttered-'pro-Klansman Mississippi Baptist preacher,' couple with one visual image, white, had turned them into everything they thought the Ku Klux Klan to be-hostile, frustrated, angry, violent and irrational. And I was never able to explain to them that pro-Klansman is not the same as pro-Klan."
It reminds me of a learning from the years when I was living in Davenport, IA. that a life changing realization came home to me. That learning, that every issue we encounter in life is at first an internal one, is critical to the way we relate to the world. For example, if we don't recognize the racism in ourselves we cannot effectively combat racism in society, or if we don't see the violence we harbor we cannot be valuable agents of peace. I remember sitting in a peace group and sensing that there was enough innate hostility in the group to start World War III. The learning came from reading Elizabeth O'Connor's books about the work of Church of The Savior in Washington, DC.
Unless we learn the lesson that every issue we encounter in life is at first an internal one we project our own unresolved issues out on to whatever issue we claim to be addressing. It is easy to project our own inner violence unto whatever person or group symbolizes for us the antitheses of what we believe, e.g., liberals on conservatives and vice versa. Dealing with our own inner bigot is not for the faint of heart nor is it popular to suggest to others that their efforts of behalf of a cause may be driven by their own inner demons.
The very painful part of BROTHER TO A DRAGONFLY is the abysmal, total lack of any awareness of the nature of chemical dependency. Campbell's brother is a pharmacist who gets hooked on prescription drugs and is probably also cross addicted to alcohol. His addiction is viewed as mental illness and/or moral failure. There's no clue in the book that anyone ever used any of the learning's about chemical addiction in addressing the violent, antisocial behavior of the brother. I found myself reading with a mixture of fascination, awe about the experiences and insights and, yet, frustration that no one had a clue about chemical addiction.
In spite of that glaring weakness the book is well worth the read.