I am returning to my original question that I asked my friend when in Colombia near the early days of my trip: How do we become better people? Again, just as a recall of the context that gave birth to my question. We had just seen and tried to help two different fathers, each who approached our car at stoplights, each carrying their young child in their arms, asking for money. At that time I had already been feeling overwhelmed by the social inequality in Colombia, the huge economic division between persons, particularly in Bogotá, where we were waiting in traffic for said stoplights to change. When addressing the social and economic inequality in both Colombia and our own Utopian Canada, I was musing out loud that, for things to really change significantly, then we all have to become better people, which also gave rise to that million dollar question, how do we become better people?
What have I done, since returning, to become a better person? What makes a person better, or what makes a better person? What are the field markings, or characteristics that will identify us in the wild? These are such difficult questions to answer, because so much that happens in our lives, happens in community. It doesn't mean we will be living together, nor that we will necessarily be seeing each other every day. Community is a very loose, sometimes useless catch-all. But we are more than one, we are definitely more than just me. Or just you.
I have actually left my church. I have left my denomination, so, so much for community. I am still in contact with two friends from my church. And I do want to take care to not forsake other people from my parish church, which could imply some future connection or contact with people there. I have no idea, so far, how that's going to look. I am done with the Anglican denomination. The archbishop, when she sicced her dogs on me, made this a necessary amputation. I have no regrets. Neither am I about to consider their arch-enemy, the Anglican Network of Canada, as they are borderline fundamentalists, and they owe their existence to their homophobia, from back in the day when they split from the archdiocese in 2002 because they didn't, and still don't, approve of same sex marriage.
Does this make me a better person? Well, I had to make a decision, for my own spiritual and mental health, which also means that I had to bail out of an abusive and potentially dangerous church situation.
I have also become more assertive with two of my more right wing supervisors at work, especially around pay and expectations of job performance. I have stated clearly to both of them that I am not about to offer a lot of extra labour with new clients until something is done to correct our atrociously low pay, which remains just nickels above minimum wage, even after an embarrassingly modest raise. I have made it clear that I am so angry and frustrated following sixteen years of working for an employer that remains blind and deaf to our needs and human dignity that I am going to be increasingly vocal and assertive until my retirement in less than ten months.
Does this make me a better person? I have just stood up for myself, to Big Church and to Big Boss. But how does this help others? I want to help and care for others, and not just stay focussed on myself. But I have been, increasingly focussing on the needs and well-being of others, especially since this damn pandemic, trying to stay connected, to be encouraging, uplifting, supportive. And it seems that this renewed assertiveness is coming as a fruit of this experiment at love in action, rather than vice versa.
Is there room for improvement? There will always be room for improvement. Am I going to obsess over becoming perfect? No, because that is the self-hater in action. Perfectionism is the slightly less ugly sibling of self-hatred. What it means is that we are going to continue to grow, and to grow, one must remain open and vulnerable, which also brings us back to the Beatitudes, the Blessed's of Jesus, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for justice, the humble, the compassionate, the pure of heart, those who work for peace, the persecuted....That is where we must begin, and that is where we must end, Gentle Reader....
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