Community Means Courage

What is courage? We often see movies and literature portray courageous people as embodying fearlessness; they jump into burning buildings, run toward fights they can’t possibly win, and generally save the day with their heroics. And while it’s pretty cool to watch your favorite action hero be chased by an explosion down a crumbling hallway, these actions don’t really reflect authentic courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the innate ability to act despite fear. It is both a deep awareness of inner fear and a stalwart commitment to understand and move beyond that fear. Courage is being able to look at our inner demons and see the core wounds behind those fears. Courage is the ability to set ourselves free despite every barrier our fears build to block our way. We all have this courage within us, because God is courage, and we are always unified with God.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the innate ability to act despite fear.

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther King, Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Bodhi cannot help Chicago build Dr. King’s ideal of the Beloved Community if we cannot help ourselves uncover, understand and confront our own fears around building a better community. “How do you know we’re afraid of community?” I hear you ask. I know this fear exists because I feel it; and if I feel it, it’s a good bet I’m drawn to people who also fear it.

Bodhi cannot help Chicago build Dr. King’s ideal of the Beloved Community if we cannot help ourselves uncover, understand and confront our own fears around building a better community.

In fact, if we look at society, we are more comfortable building virtual communities on Facebook and Twitter than we are in our own backyard. That’s because the digital age is easy, right? Talking to my neighbors is hard. My neighbors are crazy!

Engaging in authentic community begins with authentic communication, and an authentic commitment to nonviolence. The first principle in The King Philosophy states:

Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. It is active nonviolent resistance to evil. It is aggressive spiritually, mentally and emotionally.

Hold on a second! What’s with all these angry words, like aggressive and resistance and evil?

Nonviolence is not simply sitting out the fight while others struggle and die; it’s quite the opposite. Aggression in and of itself is not bad; it is simply energy to be directed. Imagine directing that powerful energy toward nonviolence! What might that look like?

Well, if we look at pioneers like Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Nelson Mandela, we see courageous people who stood up and faced the injustice of their time. They actively engaged and fought against those who would oppress them, those who would deprive them of their freedom. Moreover, they aggressively fought to deny the spiritual separation being imposed on them, be it in the form of racial segregation in the United States, Apartheid in South Africa, or the British occupation in India. They found a way to do this even when they were in jail.

But their aggression didn’t take the form of guns and bombs and kung fu. No, that would have been easy. Their aggression was a spiritually-driven desire to understand the false separation presented by their opponents, and to bring Truth to the circumstances surrounding this separation to reveal true unity.

Their aggression was a spiritually-driven desire to understand the false separation presented by their opponents, and to bring Truth to the circumstances surrounding this separation to reveal true unity.

It’s Bodhi’s desire to reveal this unity in a way that lasts, which means practicing nonviolence with our words as well as our actions. It means taking full responsibility for the choices we make, and it means opening ourselves up to the vulnerability required to truly be in our authenticity, be it at Bodhi, in Chicago, and beyond. It means recognizing that we have a responsibility to help ourselves and those around us be seen without the broken filters of hatred, prejudice and fear.

All of these acts require us to act with courage. All of these acts require us to accept that our lives are a work in progress, and at every point in our lives we have the freedom to choose how we wish to act and react to the challenges life presents us.

These acts require us to choose love.

My name is Russ Legear, and I choose nonviolence. I choose love. I choose The Beloved Community. Will you join me?

Image courtesy of the Public Domain. Credit: Yoichi R. Okamoto – Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

Guest Contributor, Russ Legear
Russ is a Spiritual Practitioner Student at Bodhi Spiritual Center.