Of God and Governors

This already has been done by many others, and likely better, but I still feel compelled to write my own response to the hateful, cynical attacks leveled at community organizers at the Republican National Convention. You see, as a legal services lawyer, I’ve always admired community organizers because they are what I am (and what we legal services lawyers, generally, are) not. We spend all of our time sorting through theories trying to find the right argument to expand our clients’ economic opportunities and improve their lives, but all too often, the good arguments have precious little to do with what my clients really need and want. In contrast, community organizers always seem to have a much better focus, a much better sense of what clients want and need, and a much better sense of how legal services lawyers can be helpful to the process. Lawyers don’t make good organizers, although one of the best lawyers I know used to be an organizer. For one thing, organizers generally are not control freaks, and lawyers, well, you know . . .

Anyway, while I’m puttering around with my legal theories and worrying that not only am I not making a difference, but that I might actually be making people’s lives worse, a community organizer always will be moving full steam ahead on something, exuding an enviable certitude in the rightness and necessity of the cause. This isn’t simple-mindedness or a lack of subtlety; rather, it is the product of inner strength, conviction, and an unwillingness to compromise essential principles – admirable qualities unless, apparently, you’re a Republican.

And so, I wasn’t surprised to see someone make the point last week that Jesus was a community organizer, while Pontius Pilate, the governor, was the one with executive experience. Indeed, it got me to thinking about the church I attend every Sunday. We Catholics make a practice of honoring saints – those who we believe have led such exemplary lives that they must be in heaven, experiencing the grace of God first hand – by depicting them in paintings, tapestries, and statues in our churches. Because my church is only 10 years old, and because it is a university parish, the saints honored in its artwork are more diverse and contemporary than in your average Catholic church. The point is to remind students that saints look like any and all of us and that they walk among us now, just as those honored did not long ago.

This weekend, as I looked around at the artwork and thought about the lives of those saints, I noticed a theme: no generals, no politicians, no CEO’s, but quite a few community organizers: Archbishop Oscar Romero, Mother Theresa, Mother Elizabeth Seton, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Mohandas Gandhi, and “worst of all” from the GOP perspective, Francis of Assisi, who was both a community organizer and an environmentalist. The truth seems pretty obvious: community organizers are special people who bring special blessings to the world.

Sometimes that grace is unmistakeable, even to a lawyer. What follows is a poem that I wrote six years ago, inspired by my affection for Selma Goode, one of Detroit’s great community organizers, who has worked for years for the Westside Mothers welfare rights organization. Selma had given a very moving presentation at a training I attended about how lawyers can work more productively with community groups.

Today, I Saw the Face of God
(for Selma Goode)

Today, I saw the face of God
Not surprisingly, the face of God was the face of an older woman
It was a face given easily to smiling
With an occasional twinkle in either eye,
In eyes that never lost sight of the prize

It was a face well-lined with the passage of years
And with struggle
As I looked, I thought of the years of union organizing
Of marching for civil rights and working for equality
Of standing shoulder to shoulder with poor women and their children
Of never focusing on all the things that divide us
Because, after all, there are so many more things that ought to unite us

It was, truth be told, a face marked by weariness
But not resignation
A face of someone who was right there
Every time we came this close . . . and missed
And a face of someone who would be there again
The next time we got close . . . and maybe we wouldn’t miss
Or maybe we would, being so frustratingly foolish and human, after all

It was, most of all, a face of love
And forgiveness
And immeasurable empathy,
Despite often registering disbelief,
Especially at the foolishness and humanness

Today, I saw the face of God
And, as I expect to do the next time I see the face of God,
I wept