Minnesota is our night light…
How to resist as humans
Minnesota…can we talk for a minute?
How are you doing this? Thousands of masked agents flood your streets, go door to door, harassing and capturing your neighbors and you keep responding like this?
Godammit Minnesota— I’m running out of tissues. How have you not become like them?
It’s human nature, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It would be so easy to give in to the dark side of our nature, and hit back…but “I say to you, love your enemies…” This “turn the other cheek” business isn’t for the faint of heart.
Yet, you’ve responded with a quiet but firm resistance.
You’ve made meal trains for poor immigrant families. You’ve trained 30,000 observers. You’ve posted up at snow covered street corners in subzero temps.
You are a people from the North. You were born in the cold. You know how to wait out ice. As a Minneapolis friend said, “we’re prepared to stand out in the cold for as long as it takes.”
As Thomas Merton said, a strong hate is really just a weak love. But Minnesota, your refusal to become like the darkness surrounding you springs from a depth that cannot be extinguished. There is no force that can overwhelm this kind of resistance. Hate can submerge love for a time, but it can never sink it’s eternal buoyancy.
It’s true resistance. It’s action, not from ego or self (though I’m sure many have faltered…we’re humans, not perfect beings here). It springs from Love, the ultimate power source. And you, Minnesota, are the closest to the power socket. We can see by your example. You’re our country’s night light. It’s by your light that we find comfort in the darkness, and see a path.
The fear of civil war, of jackbooted thugs trying to start something, became a quasi reality in your city. It would be easy for any one thing to light the match, ignite the fuse, and a war erupt. But by your loving resistance, you may have just prevented a second civil war. I don’t think that’s an overstatement.
I know it’s hard and the times are rough, but the rest of us need you to keep going. You’re like the oldest child: it’s not your fault you bear the biggest burden for the rest of us, but your siblings need your example. Keep showing us how to choose love, even in the face of evil.
If it helps, remember your Star Wars Catechism: hate may give you power, but it doesn’t win in the end. Love does. Their weak hate cannot touch your strong love.
Don’t let your love turn into hate. The people who do this are lost themselves, and in seeing your love, it makes them hate more. But they’re not your enemies (and that’s easy to say as I sit at a computer thousands of miles away). When they’re in your face, and you can feel their hate, in pepper spray form especially, the temptation to fight back is unbearable. To raise a hand. To strike back as they strike you.
Do not lose your humanity in this. Remember who you are, and remember who they are. They’re human too; lost, but human. Your love may move them later on, but you don’t give in to their weakness. We need you to keep doing the hard thing, to keep choosing love. This was the power of Martin Luther King. This was the example of Gandhi.
Our country is very dark, and it is by your light that we hope. True resistance is not out of hate, for even that will not last. True resistance flows from love. You are the tether to our humanity in inhuman times. Don’t let your light go out Minnesota.
Remember that scar over Harry Potter’s eye? It was love that saved his life. That scar was the seal of love. Your seal is being burned as we speak. Two of your family have been killed, and countless more have been ripped away in the middle of the night. The pain is deep. And it’s hard to see how this persists.
But take the long view: carry decisions today that on your deathbed, you will be proud of. Even these ruffians, when the time comes, will regret how poorly they treated you…because you chose love when they chose hate…
Minnesota…thank you. We didn’t know just how much we needed you. But we do. You are showing us how to hold on to our humanity. How to stand in the cold. How to hold on for the ice to melt.