'Kinship with all humanity really means all, and all of ourselves.' Photo: by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
Social climbing: Abigail Maxwell considers kinship
‘I felt kinship with those attacking the Capitol.’
‘In my love and laughter, joy and pain, I feel kinship with all my fellow humans.’ This is from a prayer at an interfaith gathering, recognising things all people of faith value. It is beautiful. It was a Woodbrooke Meeting for Worship linked to Advices & queries 6: ‘Enter imaginatively into the life and witness of other communities of faith.’
I started to wrestle with some potential ministry that I didn’t trust. Jesus says ‘the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say’, but I feared my words would trigger people, so I didn’t speak. It was this: I felt kinship with those attacking the Capitol.
Watching those rioters, while opposing their aims, I thought: ‘What a demonstration.’ At the nuclear bomb factory near Reading, the police kept the gates open. We failed to disrupt them, and I was frustrated. The Capitol rioters were having an effect. There was something in their energy like the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. When they livestreamed, I felt kinship because I am addicted to the dopamine from social media ‘likes’.
Kinship to people is a truth Quakers can value. It is like a mountaineer’s spike hammered into rock, a sure foothold on the cliff-face. We need to climb above it, towards kinship to all humanity, including the difficult parts. I need to go higher, but the apparent solidity of my climber’s hammer seems to dissolve. Quakers can have difficulty with too much anger and pain.
‘I love you,’ said Trump, and the crowd chanted back: ‘We love you. We love you.’ Then he made a video telling them to go home, saying: ‘We love you. You’re very special.’ These are words every human longs to hear. Others say they should be prosecuted for terrorism, sedition or treason, suffering years in prison.
Quaker faith & practice 22.40 is the testimony concerning Jessie Gadsden, who lived with her companion Mary Mills. They were a couple, but the passage coyly avoids stating that, saying ‘It was a partnership’ rather than ‘They were partners’. Now, we celebrate same-sex weddings. What are we still unable to say?
If Donald Trump is Mr Hyde, Joseph Biden and Quakers are Dr Jekyll – not the good angel of humanity, but all humanity, light and shade. A Friend spoke of being taught to hate, in the 1950s. His schoolteacher would claim black people were dangerous. Fortunately, our Friend went to college and heard other voices. Another Friend said how generous his Trump-voting neighbours were, unless talking politics. Human, they experience love and laughter too. Bayard Rustin was beaten and did not resist, loving the man who beat him.
I lack conviction because it is hard to see how my passionate intensity can be creative. Tearing down is so much easier. Yeats wrote of ‘passionate intensity’ before the Irish wars, in which thousands died. I know from experience that when my life is threatened, I surprise myself in what I will do to survive. Kinship with all humanity really means all, and all of ourselves. Can Friends be ‘inspired by love and anger’ together?
