MIPOTW: Hate

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity”

It’s a phrase from a poem called “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, and it could easily be my Most Interesting Phrase of the Week. Except, it’s a mere fragment eclipsed by my more aptly acronymed Most Inspiring Post of the Week–MIPOTW nonetheless. It wasn’t inspiring in the warm, fuzzy, chocolate-covered, rainbow sort of way (although, yeah, rainbow is somewhat applicable). It was inspiring in the “please don’t let me be lumped in with the best who lack all conviction” kind of way. Let me join the extraordinary in matching word for word, passion for passion the intensity of the worst.

The post was written by my friend, Polly, author of Lesbian Dad. (Although we probably don’t actually know one another well enough to be more than acquaintances, I’m hedging my bet on friends.) Prompted by the hate-fueled shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum this week, the piece chronicles some of the recent hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by the “extreme right wing” that may or may not have graced the 6 o’clock news. It offered, in particular, a very moving story and comments about the nature of hate — a story ironically set in my own home state where those supposedly of my own faith played an infamous role.

Polly wrote of a visit she and her wife made to Mississippi in 1995 to visit and interview two women (lesbians) who founded a “folk school and retreat center” in the southern part of the state. The story of Wanda and Brenda Hensen and the sheer harassment they endured stopped me in my tracks. Stopped me because I was not reading a history or social studies textbook about the 1950s and 60s. I was reading a testimony not even 15 years old. Sadly, I can read (as Polly did) the same testimonies, the same stories on every news website I encounter. The names are different, some of the issues are different, but the hate is the same.

Polly rendered this account of her visit to Mississippi:

Of that afternoon, two things stay with me most. First: these women were the embodiment of lives lived in absolute, direct contact with everything they believed in, and it was inspirational. Second: Wanda told of an incident in nearby Hattiesburg. They were well-known in the area, and when one particularly vitriolic man recognized her on the sidewalk, he wanted to spew an epithet at her, but was at a loss as to what to call a white lesbian.  ”You– you– you damned faggot!” he told her. “You damned n****r!”  Tough as nails, she wasn’t fazed. But she was bemused by what happened in his mind. And careful to point out that he went to the place where all his hate resided.  It mattered not that she wasn’t a gay man, or that she was white.  His hate, in that moment, felt all the same to him.

I was struck by the profound, but simple notion that hate is all about the hater. The object really doesn’t matter–doesn’t matter in the sense that it’s interchangeable. John Bradford’s phrase, “there but for the grace of God” go I, comes to mind. As LD so movingly reminded me, none of us are immune to the hater’s short view:

Our multiplicity, the utterly inextricable, tight weave of the various parts of our selves ramifies in every direction. We are able-bodied until we are disabled; we are young until we are old; we are free of tragedy and hardship until we are struck with them.

A shift in economic position, a religious conviction, a post written, a person befriended, a left turn into a different state, a marriage or divorce, the simple act of existence–any of these or countless other facts may now or might one day draw the ire of the hater. For surely, a hater seeking something to hate will always find it.

Describing the end of her visit, Polly wrote:

The beloved and I stayed hours later than we planned, talking to the Hensens past sundown.  And as we drove back to our friends in New Orleans that night, in our city-slicker Honda with the out-of-state license plates and the rainbow sticker, we looked at each pair of headlights in the rear view mirror with a keen attentiveness.  Scared, because of stories we’d just heard (particularly of rage at the “element” from outside the area that Camp Sister Spirit had drawn).  But also grateful, frankly, for the lives of ease we were driving back to.

Yes, all lives of ease are easy right up until they come into the headlights of hate. As I wrote to Polly, reading this post partly made me want to phone up and personally apologize to countless folks who’ve been the recipients of fellow “believers” and countrymen gone awry. No, gone awry doesn’t really cover it. I suppose I truly mean those who’ve made me cringe, who I think have misrepresented the Jesus I follow, those who have done wrong in the name of right. But, I must admit that desire at it’s core is self-centered. It seeks to distance myself for the sake of myself, which is probably ok on some level, but, frankly is too small a viewpoint. It’s a viewpoint I’m not sure we can afford in this world of passionate intensity. While it may surpass the lack of conviction of the “best”, it doesn’t reach the extraordinary requirements of matching hate with equal love and a little more love to tip the balance. I’m working on that.

Please read the post in its entirety: “The worst are full of passionate intensity” I’m not doing it justice.