Letter to the President-Elect
by Rev. Colin Bossen, January 18, 2009
Dear Mr. President-Elect:
In two days you will become the 44th President of the United States. As you prepare to take office I do not doubt that you are being overwhelmed with advice. Thousands, perhaps, millions of people have contacted you. I have seen entire magazines devoted to memos and letters directed at you. These texts suggest what you should and should not do during the course of your presidency. Some are policy driven, some are philosophical or even religious in nature. All contain both the hopes and the fears of your fellow citizens.
I doubt very much that you will ever read this advice, let alone heed it. Perhaps your advisors will let some of it filter up to you. Most of it will probably be lost to the void. Nonetheless, like many religious leaders across the country, I offer you this letter the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Perhaps the sentiments contained within it might reach you.
I have only one piece of advice to offer you. Do not let your hopes be overrun by your fears. As Alice Walker wrote in her beautiful letter to you, "Most damage that others do to us is out of fear..." Though Walker does not write it, it is also true that most of the damage we do to ourselves and to others is rooted in our fears. Our fears limit us. They keep us from reaching our dreams and from realizing our full potential as human beings.
It is natural to fear. We humans are animals. Much of who we are is determined by our material nature. Our brains are wired such that we respond to the world emotionally first and rationally second. When we are startled, threatened or in pain our more primitive instincts dictate that we react fearfully. Fear suggests that the only proper responses to danger are fight or flight. Fear does not leave room for understanding, negotiation, reconciliation or hope. Instead our fear tells that we must neutralize the danger or remove ourselves from it.
We can master our fears through a combination of religious or spiritual discipline and the support of loving community. And tomorrow we celebrate the life of a man who would not let himself be mastered by fear. Martin King, like all great prophets and leaders, was a prophet of hope. He was able to give hope to so many millions because he stood face-to-face with his fear. He knew that if he was to help realize his dream of better America he could not be afraid.
King told a story about mastering his fear in his biographical work "Stride Toward Freedom." You might remember it.
One night during the Montgomery bus boycott King received a death threat. The voice on the phone said "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now and if you aren't out of this town in three days, we're going to blow your brains out and blow up your house." King had received many death threats before but for some reason this one really rattled him. He realized that he could lose his wife and infant daughter at any moment. He realized that he himself might be lost to them. He could not sleep. So, he went into the kitchen to heat up some coffee and think.
King thought about who he could call upon for aid at a such time. He realized that he could not call upon his father, who was often his pillar in times of need. He realized that, in his words, "You've got to call on that something, on that person that your daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way."
So King prayed out loud. He said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now, I'm faltering, I'm losing my courage, and I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage they will begin to get weak." In response he heard an inner voice say, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world."
As the theologian James Cone tells it, "From that point onward, King never doubted God's presence in the struggle for justice, reassuring him that love and nonviolence, despite the odds, will triumph over hate and violence."
And we know that love and nonviolence did triumph over hate and violence. We know that because in two days you will become the first African-American President of the United States. Your Presidency will serve as a symbol of the possibility of ending ancient oppressions and healing racial wounds. It will not end the dire poverty that so many across the country, especially in urban centers like Cleveland, face. It will not stop, overnight, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not end the violence in Israel and Palestine. But it will serve as a reminder that by overcoming our fears transformation is possible.
Now, I am a Unitarian Universalist clergyman. Most people would probably call me, at best, an agnostic. I do not know about God. When I hear a story like King's I am as apt to think that the human creature is a marvelous thing and that we have resources within us, wells of hope, that we can plumb in our moments of need as I am that God spoke to Martin King that night. However one understands prayer, Mr. President-Elect, to whatever one prays, I know that prayer in times of trial can help us face our fears. It allows us to access those wells of hope.
Mr. President-Elect I would recommend to that when you are confronted with fear you take time to pray and meditate. While modern neuroscience teaches us that we respond first to the world with our emotions it also teaches us that we have the power to reset our emotions. Fear is physiological and we have the great power to change our physiological states. It is easy to do. All you have to do is change your breathing pattern. By changing your breathing pattern you can increase or decrease the amount of oxygen flowing to your brain and the speed of your heart. The shift in the amount of oxygen in your blood and your heart rate alters the way your brain functions. This in turn changes your emotional state.
This is what prayer does. It helps us reset our emotional state. It calms us down, allows us to examine fear and find a source for hope.
Hope comes from both inside of us and the world around us. If I were to name a primary source for hope I would say that it is that which Martin King, echoing the philosopher Josiah Royce, called the "beloved community." The beloved community, like the kingdom of God, is often thought of as some far off distant thing. It is the vision that sustains as we struggle for a better world.
There is truth to that. However, the beloved community is also present when we struggle for a better world. Those who struggle mightily for justice know that their vision is possible because from time to time they see it made manifest. As they work for their vision they bring it into being, if only for a transient moment. King experienced this. It gave him great hope and allowed him to proclaim, the night before he was struck down by an assassins bullet: "I've been to the mountain top...And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land." King knew that eventually humanity would reach the promised land. He could see through the gathering storm precisely because on all of those marches, in all of those struggles, he had seen the beloved community, the vision for a better America, embodied in those who marched and struggled alongside him.
The beloved community that gave King hope should give you hope as well. As you assume office you are being told about what is not possible. The country is deep in debt, fractious and at war. Do not, you are urged, overextend yourself. Do not recast American foreign policy. Do not hold the previous administration accountable for its crimes. Do not enact too progressive of a domestic agenda.
This advice originates in fear. It is derived from a belief that our human resources are limited and that there are not enough of the good things in life to go around. When you hear such talk, Mr. President-Elect, I ask that you take a moment to pause and remember the beloved community. The beloved community teaches us that if we work together, if we stretch beyond ourselves, anything is possible.
I suspect that you know this. I think that you have experienced the beloved community. You told a beautiful story about it as part of your speech on race during the Presidential primary campaign. You spoke of a young white woman named Ashley who worked on your campaign. You said: "She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community...and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling... why they were there.
...Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And...[she lost her job] and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy...Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she...really wanted to eat...was mustard and relish sandwiches...that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this...until her mom got better...she told everyone at the roundtable...she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents...
...Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons....finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue...He simply says to everyone in the room, 'I am here because of Ashley.'"
Mr. President-Elect please know that you will become President because of millions of people like Ashley. You are burdened with their hopes. Your very being has helped them bear witness to the beloved community.
I know that you will not live up to many of our hopes. There is too much to be done. You cannot, and will not, do it all. But perhaps you will inspire us collectively to work together for a brighter tomorrow. You can remind us that we have come a long way on the journey towards justice. That journey is not complete but we can continue along the path step by step. If you hold steadfast to your own hopes then maybe you will inspire others to hold onto theirs.
Earlier this week I visited a member of my congregation who was a teenager when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office. We spoke a little of the crisis that this country and the world faced at that time. And we talked about hope and fear. Fear in the nineteen thirties led to the twin horrors of fascism and totalitarianism. Hope gave us a strong labor movement, laws meant to help the common person and a social safety network.
In first Inaugural Address, as Roosevelt took office, he asserted "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." If we can heed Roosevelt's advice and refuse to succumb to fear then we can realize our hopes. And perhaps one day we will see the world that Hebrew prophets of old proclaimed. A world where justice flows like a river and righteousness like a stream.
May it be so. Amen and Blessed Be.