The life circumstances of each generation informs the way we think and act.  The ways of the father, born of his era, are not the ways of the son.  But what do we take from our fathers before us, and what must we change as time passes and advances our  understanding and recognition of our common humanity?

The two greatest instructions of the New Testament can be distilled this way:

First, be mindful that there is something greater than ourselves; be humble and recognize, we are a part of something greater and our best action is in solidarity with others.

Second, be conscious that just as we each individually want to be treated with respect and fairness, so too is this the desire of each and every individual we encounter.  

How do these great instructions inform the lives of men today? 

Million Man March, Washington, DC, October 16, 1995 (photo by Joacim Osterstam)

Men today are experiencing a challenging change in perception of self and the roles they play in American society.  The nuclear family has changed radically since it became firmly established in the 1950's; the workplace has evolved to include women at every level, from entry to top management; the "community green" now includes interracial and gay couples walking hand in hand, past Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues, Sikh mosques, and Buddhist temples.  Significantly, not every town and city has opened up to these changes as much as the Bay Area and other parts of America have.  But again, how does this affect the lives of men today?

Perhaps it comes down to a simple question: what is power?  We are coming to a time where the masculine notion that "might makes right" is no longer accepted by citizens of the world, both in the way their respective governments treat them, and in the way their governments treat others.  The recognition that building consensus to achieve common ends, is a recognition of power in our time.

We find this way of life exemplified in men who are recognized throughout the world as human rights champions.  In India in the middle of the century, Mohandas Ghandi used the principle of non-violence to create solidarity and mobilize a nation to peacefully achieve independence.  More deeply, he saw the political use of non-violent principles as an outward expression of the individual's inner transformation.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took much from Ghandi on his own journey for equality for all people, understanding that through common purpose and common effort, bridging lawyers and doctors with garbage collectors and laborers, solidarity would achieve a sea change in the perception and the reality of equality in this country and the world. 

In South Africa in the 1980's, Nelson Mandela was at the center of a monumental achievement, the dismantling of apartheid. His leadership was nurtured in a process of self-purification that allowed him to suffer decades of isolated imprisonment, yet still emerge with a sense that retaliation would not effect the change he desired, but that solidarity with all South Africans, both the oppressed and the oppressors, would be the power to eradicate the racially unjust system.

It seems evident that these men, who came from different religious backgrounds and different parts of the world, saw power through a prism elucidating those two great instructions: that they were agents in a greater movement of change, only as powerful as all the individuals who joined them step by step in the march toward justice; and that the willingness of individuals to join in is based on their innate desire to be treated with respect and fairness, and that treating others with respect and fairness is the way to solicit their trust and participation.  This is the power that created the solidarity that drove the British from India, the old Jim Crow from America, and apartheid from South Africa.

Each of these men acknowledged that their outward, political work was predicated on their inner work, on creating a non-violent self within.  Perhaps power today is the recognition that we ought petition each other like a prayer to one's Creator, be it an apology to one's wife, or an overture to one's rival, with the acknowledgment that there is something greater we all are working towards, and working within.  If  this petition is offered with respect and understanding, we may receive the same in return.

 

Pamela, her husband Vernon Crawley, and young Men of Iron from West Oakland who attended the screening of Red Tails in Marin County