Engaging the Sanctity of the Process, Not Just Pursuing the Win
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.1
In 2008, Uri L’Tzedek,2 a Jewish social justice organization, led a nationwide boycott against Agriprocessors, one of the most powerful and prominent kosher meat producers in the United States. It was discovered that the family that ran Agriprocessors—the Rubashkins—had used unethical business practices in the course of their daily operations. Reports showed that they treated their immigrant workers terribly, they treated their livestock terribly, and their accounting practices were corrupt. The Agriprocessors case remains a blight on the Jewish community to this day.
As one of the leaders of the boycott, I knew there needed to be systemic change. There needed to be a response—a positive and sustainable one—to ensure that nothing of this scale could happen again. Along with some other colleagues guiding Uri L’Tzedek, we decided to create the Tav HaYosher.3 This seal, which would be provided for free to kosher restaurants committed to having the highest ethical standards for their workers, would become a signature initiative of Uri L’Tzedek. Once the Tav HaYosher was created, I worked a mile a minute to ensure its success. I spent countless hours visiting restaurants, talking with restaurant owners and interviewing workers to make sure they were not being exploited. I raced from restaurant to restaurant, putting every fiber of my efforts into the ethical seal. After months of doing the hard work of getting restaurants to sign on to the certification, engaging staff and recruiting volunteers and fellows (mostly college students) to assist me in the push for more equitable treatment of workers, I was absolutely exhausted.
I learned a lot during this time. I came to realize that the desire to protect as many workers as possible was not the only goal of the project. The countless hours cultivating the skills necessary—and the holy process to get there—were just as important as going out into the real world to actualize this worker justice vision. I saw how my character traits, for good and bad, were stretched to their limit. I saw how my leadership skills were tested, for good and bad, for the cohort of volunteers I selected to assist me in my journey. Indeed, in the end, I saw how a victorious grassroots campaign is not won by the vision of an individual. Rather, the positive results of any activist pursuit depend on shaping the process toward success. That is where these battles are truly won.
Activism is a chaotic, messy pursuit, and it is easy to become fully focused on tangible results rather than on the get-your-hands-dirty process. For many activists, the thrill of the win is the primary reason to get involved in the first place. But we must embrace our limitations. Shortly before his assassination in 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador wrote:
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work…We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but is it a beginning?4
Volunteering in villages in El Salvador with the American Jewish World Service, I witnessed first-hand the injustices that Romero was fighting and the people he inspired to lead and build.
Many with poor intentions, and even some with good intentions, will show up to derail our work. When fundraising for a cause, we may need to decline proffered donations, in order to maintain our integrity. We cannot accept blood-money nor can we publicly celebrate those guilty of great injustices just because they’re willing to donate to our work. This is again about attending to the holiness of the process, even while striving for just outcomes.
We cannot do everything, so we have to set our priorities before acting. And while advocating for legislation, planning meaningful actions, and placing much-needed attention on vital issues of contemporary import are crucial to the work of an activist, ultimately, the win (as it were) is only a small fraction of the enterprise. Indeed, perhaps counterintuitively, too much true progress is lost if we, as spiritual activists, only focus on the thrills of the win rather than the journey to it. If a sustainable, systemic approach to social change is the intention, then the path to see it made concrete is one made up of understanding the process of activism rather than the acts that constitute its disposition. Let us not be mistaken on our journey. According to Kahlil Gibran, ‘Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.’5 The work of an activist is not only about acting ethically to ensure we don’t fall into the philosophical trap of justifying the means through haste and force, but about seeing the meditative value in the power of the moment. Certainly, as laid out by Robert P. Jones in his book Progressive and Religious: ‘Perhaps the most fundamental feature of a progressive religious orientation is a social vision, which sees the heart of the religious life not only in developing personal piety but also in addressing structural injustice.’6
Jones’ thesis of ‘vision’ defines the heart of the social change work that activists undertake. We have the inner power to control the external destiny of our most deeply held values of helping the afflicted and vulnerable through pluralistic interfaith work. But we may not always have the control we desire. Thus, we cannot always govern every outcome as religious progressives, but we can be sure to influence our own behavior and our reactions to outcomes as they appear in real time.
Such a statement is easy to write, of course, but more challenging when put into action. Almost immediately, there are challenges. In our modern era of instantaneous, confusing communication and online gratification, it’s often difficult to concentrate for long periods of time on one task. Between text messages, phone messages, email, and other social media, we are continually responding to communications from all directions. Our brains continually adjust to these different technologies and forms of communication. Gloria Mark, a professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California at Irvine, found that, in the workplace, the average employee gets around 11 minutes to focus on a task before being interrupted. It then takes around 25 minutes to return one’s focus to the original task.7 If not addressed properly in the long run, any of these distractions, of course, disrupts the delicate process of activism work.
Of course, concentration in contemporary society is a difficult proposition; meaningful change is frequently disrupted. This isn’t a new phenomenon. While critics once complained that Baby Boomers grew up in the early days of television, where commercials tended to break viewer concentration every seven minutes, today the difficulty appears much greater. A Pew Research poll conducted in 2011 noted that on average, Americans aged 18–29 send or receive about 88 text messages a day, and of those aged 18–24, the average is nearly 110 messages.8 When accompanied by interruptions from email, breaking news, and social media alerts, it is difficult to keep concentration at a level that allows us to move forward with any task. These distractions consistently challenge me to focus on completing the tasks at hand and being efficient with my time. When I find myself in this situation, I often think back to the words of the Dalai Lama, who said that, ‘True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace.’9 Realizing that the process requires a silencing of external forces is not an easy thing to do and it’s only getting more complicated with each passing day.
Losing focus in our endeavors can lead to spiritual damage. On the other hand, Friedrich Nietzsche succinctly explained the importance of interacting with the world and even the value of distractions from our intellectual focus:
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors—walking, leaping, climbing, dancing, preferably on lonely mountains or near the sea where even the trails become thoughtful. Our first questions about the value of a book, of a human being, or a musical composition are: Can they walk? Even more, can they dance?10
So, what does returning to focus mean in the context of interfaith and spiritual activism? A key part of our consciousness as spiritual activists is being aware of the holiness of every moment while also keeping the integrity and sanctity of the process at the forefront of our minds. Tolstoy says, ‘The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.’11 For activists, our task is to understand that our role is to facilitate important change steadily, rather than in bursts of fancy. Concentration is paramount. Let us look at other facets of our culture: When we admire a great painting or sculpture, a musical composition, or a work of literature, we admire the products of great feats of concentration. We admire the work that went into creating the final product. Do we suppose for even a brief second that these pieces of art were created quickly? Certainly not. So it is with effective activism.
Indeed, when we think about the process of activism, what is the best approach to measure if what we do will be effective? Truthfully, I sometimes doubt if I am in the right frame of mind whenever I begin a campaign for social justice because I, too, succumb to the temptation of wanting to get as much done in as short a time as possible. When events don’t turn my way, I get frustrated. But hope is never lost. Indeed, I remember having a conversation with the Spinka Rebbe, a Hasidic spiritual leader, on this topic, and he told me that the primary practice for success is to connect to God and focus spiritually on the physical amazement around us. To do so, he suggested that one take the time to contemplate the spiritual origins of life at hand. When we allow ourselves the chance to truly concentrate on something, the prefrontal cortex of our brain is filled with dopamine, the neurotransmitter most associated with pleasure, and this enhances our ability to concentrate. It is no surprise, therefore, that many conditions associated with disruptions in our ability to concentrate, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, involve disequilibrium in our dopamine levels.
Yet, no matter how much we may try to wrestle with the contrary, the ability to concentrate on the long-term goals of a task is challenging. Consider how Rabbi Lawrence Kushner contextualizes the task of being present in all aspects of spiritual endeavors:
If Moses were to ascend the mountain, why would God also bother to specify that he ‘Be there?’ (Exodus 24:12). Where else would he be? The answer, suggests [Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, also known as the Kotzker Rebbe], is that people often expend great effort in climbing a mountain, but once they get there, they’re not there; they’re somewhere else.12
Fortunately, we can still concentrate if we allow ourselves the necessary budget of time and the proper space. Just as we are grateful that surgeons, pilots, and our fellow drivers have the necessary concentration to carry out their tasks without incident, so should we be grateful to have the opportunity to concentrate spiritually and receive the rewards of this concentration. Learning to focus spiritually can not only save our lives physically, but also allows us to achieve our dreams for a better world. This delicate art must be mastered to achieve more effective social action within local communities, as well as (inter)national progress.
There are always times and places, however, where we should lose ourselves in the great distractions of the world. But we need to know how to separate those amusing moments from the serious ones if we are going to be effective and successful in our work. Even further, to be spiritually attuned, we need times of wholeness free of fracturing interruptions. The great Jewish sage Nachmanides (thirteenth century, Spain) argues that we miss some of the most significant revelations in our lives because we have not prepared our hearts (Commentary on Exodus 3:2). To engage in the world with spiritual vigor, we must prepare ourselves to have times of intense focus, concentration, disappointment, and triumph. We don’t have to rid ourselves of every piece of technology, or dismiss its incredible value for organizing, but we have to keep our mind focused on our ultimate objectives.
When confronted with situations that strike fear in us, we must desire perseverance, we must directly look at our fear and, most importantly, we must shift our perspectives of the past and of our current selves. This is not easy work, of course. The Hasidic masters taught that we must take the negative energy inside of us and, rather than destroy it, channel it toward the good. Boyd K. Packer, the late president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church), observed that ‘fear is the opposite of faith.’13 When we feel fear or despair, we should channel that energy toward just and holy means. When human beings oppress others, God becomes alienated from the universe. It is through our redemptive acts of love and justice—faith-based or not—that we bring God back into the world.
Because there is so much at stake, it is important that we get our emotional intelligence and leadership right. To be honest about our fears, we have to look at them directly and understand them. We must hold these emotions, not be held by them. We must control them and not be controlled by them. When we externalize them and understand their influence, we can manipulate them. Too many people try to distract themselves from their concerns as if they will just disappear.
We can hold that fear as we move forward with courage. Indeed, as Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and director of Children’s Defense Fund, puts it, ‘A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us.’14 We must often live with the unknown qualities of our choices. We should revel in intellectual tension and not merely dismiss the sources of our anxiety. We should channel it toward productive ends and we should always strive for the veracity of our work. Writing in 1778, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a playwright whose works inspired much of the German Enlightenment, wrote that:
If God were holding all the truth in the world in his right hand, and in his left the ever-active drive to seek the truth—coupled with the promise that I would always go astray—and told me: Choose! I would humbly fall upon his left and say, ‘Father, give! Pure truth is for you alone.’15
We can hold that courage while we continue to experience tension and anxiety. Thus, embracing an emotional paradox is part of the process. Being vulnerable to failure leads to authentic paths of accomplishment. When we make ourselves susceptible enough to experience the full emotional intensity to the extremes of spiritual defeat and achievement, we prosper in that sustained tension. Finding this balance leads to internal and external transformation. There is much to be said about the remnants of Enlightenment thought in contemporary activism work. It has been noted that the Enlightenment left somewhat of a complicated legacy:
The Enlightenment held humankind to be naturally good and infinitely [perfectible], blithely ignoring all the evidence about human nature to produce a picture that’s as pretty as it is removed from reality.
The Enlightenment held every problem to be resolvable by reason, arrogantly overestimating the intellect and underestimating the emotions.
The Enlightenment held nothing to be sacred and made everything profane. Its stance is the stance of ceaseless irreverence, ignoring human needs for the holy.16
While these statements are interesting to consider on an intellectual level, they shouldn’t define our collaborations or the tasks at hand. To be sure, internalizing this balance leads to understanding and as ‘understanding is the reward of faith,’ such harmonizing is beneficial to the development of our activist potential.17 And, as transformative people possessed with our unique senses of faith, we cannot limit ourselves to the intellectual exercises of our service. We can’t remain ensconced in our ivory towers of manuals and theory. We must make our voices reverberate in the halls of powers. We must shake the foundation of the street. We must demand truth.
To be sure, there will be times when activists look to change their location—physical and emotional—when things aren’t going their way. We often assume one’s location determines one’s mental state. On vacation, one is happy; at work one is unhappy; at home one is calm; in the street, one is fueled with holy fire! But a change of location actually does little to change one’s mental state. The ancient teaching found in the Talmud ‘Change your location, change your luck’ is an aspirational one (BT Rosh Hashanah 16b). Our states of being shift most when we have disciplined self-control and focus back on strengthening our inner world.
The process, therefore, demands that we see that eternity and infinity are present in the moment. This is not only a behavioral change that is necessary, but a perception change. William Blake wrote, ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.’18 Further, he writes:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.19
We should see that these holy life moments, holding all possibility, contain the full experience that is constitutive of who we are, and what we all are. To do so, we must let go of the illusion that all that matters is the success of our efforts, rather than the inner work and relationship-building done in the process. Consider the words of Viktor E. Frankl:
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.20
Our consciousness with regard to the process of activism should never be reserved only for private spiritual exercises. Rather, one of our primary objectives is to bring our deepest commitment to the moment to everything that we do. Such an approach has the potential to bring us joy and spiritual meaning, to enrichen our relationships, and—most importantly—to add integrity and depth to how we advocate for change in the world.
Each of us possesses the capability to overcome enormous challenges. Our spirit demands it. And as Mother Teresa taught, ‘Few of us can do great things, but all of us can do small things with great love.’21 Certainly, the most significant act we can pursue is ensuring that our small acts are achieved with integrity, intentionality, and love. For that is the process of true activism. And, if we are faithful, we can make our dreams manifest in the world. Taking the time to separate ourselves from the bombardment of information allows us the space to grow as people, sets our souls aflame, and lets us conquer our latent doubts and fears. These challenges not only make us better as activists; they also transform themselves into incredible opportunities that allow for spiritual growth, ethical renewal, and deserved accomplishment in repairing the world.
To be sure, while we are emphasizing the value of embracing the sanctity of the current moment and the holiness of all the people around us, rather than just the win, it would be spiritual narcissism to live just in the moment. Indeed, we need to maintain a consciousness of the past and the future and our responsibilities to each. We can exist both within this moment and on an eternal sphere gliding between the past and the future. We pray in the moment, but are living connected to all time, transcending beyond each moment. Deepak Chopra writes:
Intention combined with detachment leads to life-centered, present-moment awareness. And when an action is performed in present-moment awareness, it is most effective. Your intent is for the future, but your attention is in the present. As long as your attention is in the present, then your intent will manifest, because the future is created in the present. You must accept the present as is. Accept the present and intend the future.22
The goal is not to arrive into the heavenly sphere, but to bring the heavens down to earth. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, an ambassador for civil rights, explains:
Resorting to the divine invested in us, we do not have to bewail the fact of His shore being so far away. In our sincere compliance with His commands, the distance disappears. It is not in our power to force the beyond to become here; but we can transport the here into the beyond.23
On that point, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, in a passage inspired by the Quaker philosopher Douglas Steere, Merton writes that activists, with good intentions, can nonetheless ‘become so immersed in their commitments that they lose clarity, composure and true self, which leads them to commit unintentional violence’:
There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work…It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.24
This is not easy. After all, if we are committed then we want to be completely immersed. But there can be casualties in this; not only ourselves but also others. Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the French writer and poet, mused, ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.’25 We can’t become so immersed that we lose our souls and treat others as objects. Rather, we must remain dreamers who can keep our head above water and see the bigger picture and see the humanity within everyone.
Many think of activism as something impulsive and reckless, but responsible activism must be just the opposite. Rabbi Avi Weiss explains:
Activism is precisely the opposite of what most people think. It involves engaging in serious analysis, grappling with tough political issues, and attaining a deep understanding of the ethical precepts that must be at the heart of any planned action.26
Exercise 1: In your next campaign meeting, set aside time before, during, and after the meeting to break into pairs and share emotions and process what each participant is feeling.
Exercise 2: When you are at a rally or vigil, set your alarm at various points to help you focus on the holiness of your breath. Fill yourself with gratitude for life and for the present moment that you are embracing.