Practicing Responding to a Prompt About Civility in Everyday Ramblings

This is a writing prompt I came up with to share with a poet friend, who feels as I do, that we are not working on the craft of writing enough, particularly the difficult parts of writing. The idea for this prompt came from a comment one of you left on a post of mine back in May or June that got my brain all riled up. :)

In a civil society is it considered shaming to reply to a letter from the White House (and to post a copy on Facebook) with grammar corrections? Is expressing an opinion about policy to an elected politician or a staff member at said White House, when they are in public eating, uncivil or inappropriate? What expectations do we have about our government and our communication with it?

This is her response…

Everyday the ship of state is slipping perilously closer and closer to being ripped from its moorings and listing towards tyranny. Freedom of speech, the anchor that has held America secure for all these years, is under relentless attack by an administration whose dark divisiveness seems to know no bounds. Now decency and common sense appear to have become antiquated concepts from a long gone era - a time before the wholesale perversion of social media, before the false cries of fake news, before a world where allies are vilified and enemies are glorified. We must not succumb to this madness!

To be a civil society, its members must also be civil - so for those of us who do not see America becoming great again - rather entirely the opposite - let us remain unerringly civil. Let us stand up for our freedom of speech by responding to letters from the White House with full and staunch but polite expression of our true sentiments. If we feel the need to share more broadly - we can share a synopsis of the letter and our rebuttal opinions on Facebook - but it serves no purpose to post a copy of the original White House letter with our grammatical corrections included. Then we are reduced to pettiness, and we do not have time for pettiness.

We are being flooded with pettiness and vindictiveness - let’s not add to it. If we encounter a public official who is ‘off duty’ eating at a restaurant, or walking with their family in a park, or buying pastries at a bakery - let us give them their privacy. There are many other forums in which protest is appropriate - this is not one of them. If we harass those we disagree with in these settings - we are behaving in a discriminatory manner and we become hypocrites - and the darkness wins. Let us keep our spirits turned towards the light.

FIght back - YES ! Fight back vigorously and never give up hope - but fight with civility, with decency even though our current government does not. To do otherwise is to betray ourselves and the very values we are striving to resurrect.

This is mine…

In this period of what often seems like a manifestation of the concept of “End Times”, with fire and flood, bad air and poisoned water that sickens a number of us; we often find ourselves tempted to act out of a place of vulnerability and fear.

There are those that profit from this and encourage us to lash out, to move away from hope and towards cynicism, a term that is derived from the image of wild dogs pissing in the public square.

It seems lately the dogs have been let loose.

This temptation is so strong, almost overwhelming at times, we are hurt, we are scared, we are worried and deeply deeply concerned about the state of things and how that voice that is so loud, that overwhelms, that induces shame when we interact with those that are watching us from the rest of the world.

As with much of what we hear in this hyper spinning news cycle, what we perceive as accusatory and bullying and disparaging is all projection from inside the heads of those we elected and those they appointed.

It is human for us to reflect that shame back in loud angry and sometime petty ways.

So many of the people we are seeing take the reins of our power in our country are individuals who have lived their lives on the periphery of talent, bestowed privilege and power. They have longed for a chance, a shot, an opportunity to get in there and show those they have envied and despised what is what.

We are better than that. All of us. Even them.

We can think of it not only as a responsibility of citizenship, but as a spiritual practice to express rage and frustration and concern for the world we have created and are passing on to our young people in a civil way.

It is a hefty challenge that we need to support each other in. The term civil disobedience starts with the idea that we respect each other and believe that all of us are worthy of love and care and the ability to be heard and understood.

I love what Father Greg Boyle (from Homeboy Industries’) says, “Love is the answer, Community is the context, Tenderness is the methodology.

We all succumb to the temptation of expressing our anger inappropriately and in hurtful and often snarky ways. It can feel good, oh so good.

But we can be better than that.

We are better than that.