I am formed by my friendships. I forget so easily that so much that seems obvious to me—maybe everything that seems obvious to me—arises from my particular friendship formation. Why do I forget?
Possibly vanity. The struggle to let go my ego. The desire to have been original. Goofy mind game.
This all falls apart when I remember Lee Smithey. We go way back. We’ve known each other since we were six. I played Jud to his Curly in a 1988 production of Oklahoma! at Franklin Road Academy. We became Waterboys fans at the exact same moment when we heard “Fisherman’s Blues” playing on the PA right after The Indigo Girls opened for R.E.M. on the Green Tour. He persuaded me to join him as a volunteer at the Green Hill YMCA in Newcastle, Northern Ireland when we graduated from college. He introduced me to the music of Bruce Cockburn and the witness of Will Campbell. Are you getting the picture?
There’s no hierarchy in beloved community, but…if there were…I’d say he’s been slightly ahead of me my whole life long. I can’t explain myself to myself apart from Lee.
But enough about me. I bring Lee up today, because he’s written the best thing I’ve read on the fact of young people across these United States deciding to risk their livelihoods and bodily safety to put the breaks on death and deprivation and forced starvation occurring on what Rich Mullins once referred to as “the other side of the world.”
If my description of what Lee wrote wasn’t enough to compel you to click on and read it before reading this far (or if it was and you’re ready to process it with me), I have some highlights.
His analysis of where we are and what those prepared to publicly oppose the strategic starving of children are up against and what remains possible is, to my mind, breathtakingly helpful. He’s so specific and so right.
Repression backfires and fuels solidarity. Maybe not everywhere. But lots of somewheres. This is an insight I see at work in Robot Soft Exorcism theory. I wonder if you see it too.
Lee very wisely addresses educators specifically while holding a door open for parents, donors, administrators, board members and morally serious onlookers to see themselves as moral actors in the mix. Listen to this: "A status quo does not bend easily, and its beneficiaries tend to protect it — so when norms and rules are disobeyed, everyone has to assess risk based on their own social position, politics and conscience." Too right, right?
In Lee’s words, I hear something of the Reverend James Lawson’s assertion that everyone is invited to the work of beloved community. Different roles. Different gifts. Different contexts. Different risks. "Do you feel the tension?” he asks. “If so, the nonviolent protest is working."
"Optimize conflict," he advises. I believe that's the prophetic task in a handy-dandy two-word phrase. Conflict, we will always have with us. What we do with our conflicts….what we make of the tension…is what we will have done with our lives. In a given day, we can decide to stop avoiding conflict and instead dwell in the creative tension of new and better discernment over and over again. It’s hard and even troubling. But it can be good trouble. Optimize conflict.
Discern. Decide. Act. Regroup. Circle back. Make the most of what comes of it. Culture, as Rob and Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma remind us, is not optional. And decisions, thank you Dr. Christina Edmondson, create culture. Is good culture optimized conflict? I wonder.
I was also struck by Lee’s deployment of the word “instigation.” Watch what Lee does here: “Faculty at Columbia University have grappled with whether and how to sanction President Nemat Shafik for her instigation of the arrests of more than 200 students.” Notice how he spreads the sense of moral agency out among players in the scene. Students made decisions. And now faculty get to grapple with the decision their colleague made concerning how to respond to the students’ decisions. And yes, “instigation” is the right word for the decision President Nemat Shafik made.
Has President Shafik been demonize or villainized by this word choice? I don’t think so. Lee’s regarding everyone on hand has an “adult in the room” (or a potential adult in the room). Adults make and, in some cases, assume responsibility for decisions in a wide variety of settings. It’s complicated, but it isn’t that complicated.
Here’s Lee again: "When students occupy space on a campus in ways that break routines or disrupt business as usual...administrators may choose, or be compelled by Boards of Managers or politicians, to prioritize their managerial roles over educational missions."
Read Lee again. They—administrators—may choose to do a thing, but…they might also be compelled to do a thing. I want to return here to that word decision. I sense so much compassion for all the players involved when Lee speaks this way. Some decisions are made under compulsion. That’s here and there and everywhere. People have ways of getting to people via pressure points. That’s Nashville and New York and Pyongyang and Swarthmore and Arusha and Belfast and Belize.
Sidebar: A governor was once asked if he would serve as an in-person witness to the executions he carries out with his signature. “I have not felt compelled to,” he answered. I think about that sometimes. The presence of compulsions. The absence of compulsions. Conscience. Data points.
But back to Lee. Hear this: "Conflict is hard. Period. Might we wish that we could be queen for a day to ensure that conflicts go the way we prefer? Sure. Is that realistic? No." When Lee speaks this way, I’m brought back to the realization that his angle on people and events and the work of doing what we can to proceed as freely and lovingly and respectfully and specifically (which is to say poetically and prophetically) as we can through the conflicts we’re confronted by on the daily has largely formed my own. Not that it’s an angle exactly. Maybe it’s a vocation. A calling made manifest in the minute particulars of a person’s witness.
So anyway, I’m with Dr. Lee Smithey (or hope to be). I welcome your thoughts if you’d like to share them. And…if you’re in a safe place to do so, I’d encourage you to share Dr. Smithey’s essay with people who might be helped or challenged or helpfully challenged by it.
Qualifier: And when/if you comment, make a special effort to keep in mind what Dr. Smithey said rather than what you imagine he said (or meant). Imagining one another wrongly is, in some instances, a threat to public safety. Motive attribution asymmetry is real. Know what I mean?
Optimize conflict, y’all.
Editor’s note: The image up top is Roy Lichtenstein’s “Mirror #1.” I thought it appropriate as I contemplate where Lee Smithey’s work stops and starts in relation to my own wild and precious life. Mimetic rivalry is tricky. The image after that is Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac holding the hand of a statue of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And the final image was provided by Joyce Carol Oates. I believe it’s from a Harvard University student publication from 1979 or 1980.
You had me at "Indigo Girls opened for R.E.M."
In seriousness, I always appreciate the light you shed and the perspective you bring. I'm looking forward to reading Dr. Smithey's essay.
“Optimize conflict” helps me see what I do in a whole new and positive way, thank you so much for this! Lee Smithey’s essay!!!