WOKE
Take It as a Compliment
Did you know it’s GOOD to be woke? In fact, being woke (however ungrammatical) is a badge of honor. If you were worried about being called ‘woke,’ then you have been listening to negative, angry, ugly voices who have tried to characterize spiritual awareness and innate compassion as something to be ashamed of. Woke is not (as some insist) a political or partisan label. It does not mean you are necessarily a liberal or a conservative, though the far right has been using the word in every other sentence to label their perceived ideological enemies. Why do I say it ISN’T partisan? Because here is what ‘woke’ really means: you care! Yes. Care. Not only about yourself, not only about your family and friends, not only about people who look like you, talk like you, or share your opinions. Your caring goes well beyond those in your town, state, or country. The state of the world and all the people in it MATTER to you.
Woke is the past tense of wake, as in you woke up! You have chosen not to hide your head in the sand, not to pretend you have no connection to the 3 billion or so people on the planet, or even the 335 million or so people in the U.S. (if you happen to reside in America). Instead, you chose to become aware. One way of describing this state is an understanding of who you truly are—a spiritual being having a human experience—a willingness to acknowledge that every other person on the planet is going through his or her own human journey whoever and wherever they are.
Please don’t get hung up on the “spiritual being” part. It’s really just shorthand for knowing you have a warm, loving heart and your heart speaks volumes to you. Not every person has come to definite conclusions about the soul, or eternity, or other big questions. The sense of still searching for answers that resonate with you is pretty common. It’s not unusual these days for people to say, when asked, that they are “spiritual, but not religious.” That’s understandable. Being “spiritual” requires no affiliation except with the Love that dwells within you. Each of us has (or can have if we wish) a personal relationship with the All That Is. Some people have preferred names for that which created the universe, and that’s fine, too. No matter what your path or tradition (or even if you have none in particular), if you keep Love alive in your heart, you are spiritually awake.
So what is the upside to being spiritually awake? Why happily embrace “woke-ness?”
It enables us to be our best selves, to look at the world through a lens of compassion, kindness and empathy. When we are awake, we know that Love is actually our superpower. Granted, Love as a superpower may not seem quite as “cool” as X-ray vision or the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but, in fact, it’s even better because it doesn’t simply overcome one or two villains… it overcomes the worst of villains—hate.
L-O-V-E. People tend to use that word a lot, and often throw it around casually. In fact, I seem to recall being corrected when I was young and told I ought not use the word in reference to inanimate objects. Apparently one can really like, but not “love” hot fudge sundaes and really good morning coffee. I beg to differ, sort of, but I do get the point. It’s probably best to reserve that word for living things (people, pets, and let’s not forget all the flora and fauna Mother Nature provides). That being said, the kind of Love (capital L) I’m talking about here goes above and beyond the romantic attachment to a mate, or the deep affection for one’s family and friends, though those are wonderful ways to express our human feelings. But the ‘big’ L goes further.
It’s fairly common (though not always easy) to care about our family, our friends, our neighbors, in other words, people we know personally. Spiritual Love reaches beyond our immediate circle. It embraces as many human beings as possible, including complete strangers, inhabitants of lands both near and far away, people who speak different languages, have different skin colors, follow different religions, hold differing beliefs, and so on. When we follow this kind of compassionate path, we serve the cause of Love. And it needs us to do that. Love isn’t some principle operating all by itself in the universe. It can only work its healing miracles, find its voice, and restore peace and unity through US.
Being “woke” means embracing our innate talent for using Love to dissolve fear. We are actively creating a better world when we choose to count ourselves among the millions and millions of the totally “woke.” It’s sad and just a bit pathetic that the far right, the bigoted, and people with a generally “me first” agenda, think themselves terribly clever using ‘woke’ as a dismissive insult for anyone and everyone who disagrees with them over…well…anything. But they aren’t clever. Their view of the world can be summarized as “us versus them.” They find satisfaction in an illusion of superiority. Dismissing everyone who isn’t included in the “us” narrows their scope to their own interests, their own needs, their own beliefs, and their own desires. If they should stop for a moment to consider other human beings, whether in the next state or some other country, they can quash the inner debate with a simple phrase, “not my problem.”
There is a memorable scene in the film, “The Third Man.” Orson Welles in the role of Harry Lime is sitting in a swaying gondola atop a very tall Ferris wheel (much like the London Eye) with his former friend, Rollo Martins, who is berating Lime for having engineered a counterfeit penicillin scam that has killed many victims and caused others to suffer. But Welles points to the crowds of people on the ground far below.
“Victims?? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving — forever? If I offered you twenty thousand for every dot that stops, would you really tell me to keep my money or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”
To wealthy oligarchs, aspiring dictators, power-hungry politicians (and the not-so-woke), most of the world is populated with superfluous “dots.” I’m a dot, you’re a dot. A few dots more or less is not worth a second thought. That’s how greedy, selfish people justify evildoing. They dehumanize entire swaths of the population by slapping labels on the dots—it’s just ‘those stupid liberals’, it’s ‘just those poor people,’ ‘it’s just those damn women,’ it’s just those (fill in the blank with whatever comes to mind). But let’s be clear, the word “just” never belongs in front of any phrase referring to a human being. And no matter how many times a hatemonger sneers and spits insults like “woke,” we don’t have to buy in to their definition. We don’t have to be the least bit insulted. We could even chuckle and say, “Hey, thanks for noticing.”
Thankfully, there are many millions of us “woke” folk walking around. And all through our perambulations, we practice the art of SEEING other human beings. We recognize the spark of divinity in them. We know they have hopes and fears, have all the same desires for safety, security, prosperity and happiness that we do. We don’t dismiss them individually or collectively as being of inherently less value than ourselves. We live with open hearts and open minds and strive to be as awake as we can manage. The alternative is to sleepwalk our way through life, treating other humans we encounter as vague apparitions whose only purpose is to attend to our needs. But if we are awake to our life experience and present in body, mind, and spirit, those apparitions take on form and substance – they are real people.
What might that look like in everyday life? When we go into a store, we automatically hold the door for a person behind us. If we happen to make eye contact with other shoppers, we offer a quick smile. When we get to the register, we return the checker’s greeting and ask how THEY are. When the bags are filled, we say ‘thank you” and mean it. Back in the parking lot, we take care to open car doors without dinging someone else’s car doors. We return our carts to the collection area instead of leaving them in a parking space. We proceed home having done some good in the world… and it wasn’t hard at all. We simply stayed “woke.” That’s our “schtick” really – believing that there is more than enough time and energy to be kind. We don’t have to travel the globe solving huge problems, just bring some warmth and light to our own little corner of it. Every single day, humans everywhere are doing random acts of kindness and creating miracles out of the simplest expressions of love.
The one thing we don’t do is worry about “What’s in it for me?” Selfishness and greed have grown in popularity because much of society is laboring under the misconception that there is never enough of anything to go around. Whether it’s wanting to get the biggest piece of the pie, or ALL the pie, some people are determined to beat out the competition. What never occurs to them, and this is a simple truth, there exists enough wealth, prosperity, abundance (whatever you wish to call it) to feed, clothe, educate, and comfortably house every person on the planet. But as a species, we don’t, as yet, choose to create such an equitable and lovely way of life. Perhaps someday we will.
In the interim, all kinds of ‘woke folk’ are doing the best they can to be of service, to share what they have, to honor and respect other people instead of dehumanizing them. We want to live in a world where equality and justice are prized above all else, where everyone has the chance to make their own dreams come true. Yes, we all want a piece of pie; we like pie. But we are determined that others can and should have some, too.
To be clear, the kind of Love I’m talking about doesn’t ask that we approve of, agree with, condone, or ignore “bad behavior” or evildoing. We don’t want to run up and hug a serial killer, or cheer a Klansmen marching along in a white hood, or applaud the words and deeds of cruel, greedy people who, when they briefly turn away from admiring themselves in the mirror and look out the window, see nothing but a bunch of dots. But we need not hate them, however tempting. We woke folk know there will always be those who walk in darkness, who move through the world in anger and reject basic decency… for them, we can feel pity, but, again, we need not hate them. In fact, hate is never the answer. Hating a person, a group, a culture, a race, another nation… is like swallowing poison and expecting the ones we hate will die. They don’t. But a part of us dies—the heart and soul of us.
So we have to forego enmity and contempt even when it seems we might have every reason to feel that way. Instead, we stick to our principles, insist on equal justice for all, remain thoughtful and rational. We use good judgment when it comes to choosing our friends and our causes and our beliefs. We practice wisdom and discernment. We need not, of course, as a colleague of mine once said, “be so open-minded our brains fall out.” We THINK about our choices, we make decisions that resonate with our sense of morality and our deeply held values. But no matter where we are on our own path, we never lose sight of our humanity; we never dismiss anyone as intrinsically unworthy, and we never use mockery to hurt other people.
I’m going to close this post with lyrics from the song “Don’t Laugh at Me” as performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary for a 1999 album. [It was also recorded by country singer Mark Wills, but omitted some lyrics from the “bridge.”] I used to sing this for my congregants at least once a year. It made some of them shed a few tears. Me, too, because we can all find ourselves, or someone we love, in these words.
“I'm a little boy with glasses, the one they call the geek
A little girl who never smiles, 'cause I've got braces on my teeth
And I know how it feels to cry myself to sleep.
I'm that kid on every playground, who's always chosen last
A single teenage mother, tryin' to overcome my past
You don't have to be my friend, is it too much to ask?
CHORUS
Don't laugh at me, don't call me names, don't get your pleasure from my pain
'Cause in God's eyes we're all the same, someday we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me.
I'm the cripple on the corner, you pass me on the street
And I wouldn't be out here beggin' if I had enough to eat
And don't think I don't notice that our eyes never meet.
I lost my wife and little boy when someone crossed that yellow line
The day we laid 'em in the ground is the day I lost my mind
Right now I'm down to holdin' this little cardboard sign
CHORUS: Don't laugh at me …
BRIDGE
Cause I'm fat, I'm thin, I'm short, I'm tall…I'm deaf, I'm blind, hey, aren't we all?
I’m black, I’m white, and I am brown…I’m Jewish, I’m Christian, and I am Muslim.
I’m gay, I’m lesbian, I’m American Indian…I am very, very young, I’m quite aged.
I’m quite wealthy… I’m very, very poor.
CHORUS:
Don't laugh at me, don't call me names, don't get your pleasure from my pain
'Cause in God's eyes we're all the same, someday we'll all have perfect wings,
Don't laugh at me.