Holly Near wrote a wonderful folk resistance anthem, "Singing For Our Lives”. (Holly Near, "Singing For Our Lives”, 1979 Hereford Music). I learned to sing this protest anthem with lots of other LGBTQIA folk as we carried on in a world swirling with love and hate, hoping despite routine harassment and legal discrimination that love might win. When I joined the Unitarian Universalists, I found an arrangement of this song in the hymnal Singing the Living Tradition and met singing resistance as part of sacred practice.
Holly Near’s first verse in “Singing For Our Lives" is “We are a gentle, angry people, and we are singing, singing for our lives.” As with other songs in good American folk tradition, this song lends itself to zipping in and out new lyrics, inviting adaptation and integration of this music to the issues we face every day. So I wasn’t particularly surprised one day in a contentious religious meeting marked by some thoughtful responses and some fearful reactions and resistance to where love might lead us in change, to hear someone muttering “We are whining, irritable people…”
Where is the line between whining and faithful petition? This is a major question in this week’s reading, Numbers 8:1-12:16, in which the newly freed people have been free long enough to become restless and resentful. Maybe they hadn’t thought they would still be in the wilderness and would have been settled and relocated by now. Maybe they had imagined immediate transportation from the lands of slavery to the future home of freedom, or at least, not having to slog it out. Maybe they had grown jealous of the efforts put into making the Holy a Tabernacle (home) when they had none. We don’t know. What the story tells us is that, among other things, the people grew fractious for foods they found familiar — the taste of home. Manna, as wonderful as it was, didn’t smell and taste like home. When it first fell, it was the taste of life and of heaven. On some number of days of continuous manna, folks wanted to order up something else. Part of the human condition is that we adapt to the good stuff in our lives and tend to take it for granted, whether we are talking about clean water or awesome food or folks being nice to us.
One of the differences between whining and faithful petition is that when we whine, we typically are looking for someone else to take care of what we want. The two well-established practices in the Bible of arguing with the Holy and petitioning the Holy faithfully don’t descend into whining. We might argue to protect others, to save lives, and we might petition to ease suffering or grant us family. But in both practices we are agents, actively engaged in doing what we can at the same time, mitigating suffering and extending compassion, while also seeking divine redress, not begging for the holy donuts dipped in honey glaze. In the middle of resisting hatred and advocating for equality, we also have to cultivate self-acceptance and love, removing the hate and self-loathing twisted against ourselves that is a common result from oppression. No one can grant us our self-acceptance, love and dignity; only we can do that, even if we’re forced to endure discrimination and those who would strip us of rights, acceptance, and the aspects of living that make it a lot easier to live with dignity. I have known and know a lot of folks who live with dignity in the midst of enduring oppression. Dignity is a quality we create together, which means all of us involved have work to do, not have it offered up to us as a gift.
Wants and needs also has something to do with the difference between whining and faithful petition. The Book of Numbers very specifically describes manna as an amazing food of fabulous flavor that can be prepared in many different ways. And yet, the people want something else. This raises the question: how do we make home where we are now with what we have available? How do we adapt to change? Just as the people labored long to create the sacred home for the Holy that they could carry with them, what is it to be at home wherever we are and wherever we go? What do we need? Is it the taste of our former home? Or can we develop a taste for right here and now, trusting that we need not entirely relinquish the old tastes of comfort but accepting they are not currently available? How can we cultivate gratitude for what is good in the middle of times of discomfort?
Numbers doesn’t offer us a practice on cultivating gratitude amid our discomfort, just sharp reminders to be attentive to ingratitude and whinging (as in the Holy responding to the people asking for different food that they’ll have that different food until it nauseates them and it is coming out their noses). Personally, cultivating gratitude when I am in a time of discomfort requires me to stop, breathe, and really consider where I am in the wilderness. This basic practice of mindful attentiveness is part of what makes the difference between the terrifying wilderness and the awe-inspiring, wonderful, heart-healing and trauma-healing wilderness. But it is work and does ask me to be present to what is comfortable and what is uncomfortable. I might still feel drawn to yearning for comfort. Yet, when feeling grateful, I’m able to find new sources of comfort in this new way of having to live. When feeling grateful, I’m not going to be whining….or at least I can alternate between whinging about discomfort and leaning back into gratitude and awe. When I slow down into mindful attention in the middle of my uncomfortable wilderness times of my life, I may still petition for courage or strength to carry on, for generosity, for gracefulness, and I’m also opening to what is beautiful and wonderful and awesome is too much. There are gifts from these wilderness times, but I’m not going to know them as such unless my heart is thankful and open to awe and wonder.
Practicing gratitude is an active thing. Gratitude is a practice, meaning some days thankfulness will be easier than others. For many of us, our lives are complicated and full enough that attending to the goodnesses in them and cultivating the feeling of thankfulness takes intention. Choosing to attend to life’s blessings may be more work than noticing life’s challenges and discomforts. Choosing to attend to life’s blessings when we’re going through rough patches takes courage and discipline; it is not the easier way to live. It can be far easier to wallow in unhappiness about life’s troubles than to acknowledge them andnotice any gifts of goodness. Without gratitude, we are likely to become a whining, irritable people no matter the blessings we enjoy. Connected to gratitude we can be a gentle, angry people and a loving, kind people and a generous, joyful people singing for our lives, and the lives of others who are also in need.
