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I used to care about politics. For all my life
in Montana, I felt committed to one candidate or another. I sent
money. I wrote an occasional op-ed piece. I attended sessions of
the state legislature when issues of interest to me were up for
discussion. I went to hearings. I believed that what I thought,
and how I voted, mattered.
New Mexico is a different story. I was willing
to leave Montana for New Mexico because its diversity appealed to me
– an ancient and deeply present Indian culture, the overlay of
Hispanic culture, the Johnny-come-lately arrival of Anglos. There
are much larger African-American and Jewish populations than exist
in Montana. (The Jewish population includes – to the extent they
wish to be included—descendants of the crypto-Jews, people outwardly
converting to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition, then
emigrating to Mexico and what is now New Mexico as a further
safeguard against the Inquisitors. Some of these people – often to
their great surprise -- have been discovering their Jewish roots
ever since.)
What did not occur to me in my fascination with
the diversity was how complicated New Mexico politics would be.
Corruption is the usual main story on the pages
of the Albuquerque Journal. There is cronyism on every level;
an elemental disorder attending ethics, education, health, law,
energy, and virtually every other segment of public policy (it has
made some environmental strides). My response has been to ignore
how the state works. It’s New Mexico. It works as it works. The
same way it has always worked. The conscientious, ethical public
servants who certainly exist in the state don’t get much press.
Finding the idea of politics in New
Mexico disheartening, it was easy to focus instead on the
magnificence of its nature and the glorious multiplicity of its
art.
Until recently. David and I attended a
fund-raiser for Lawrence Rael, a life-long New Mexican whose entire
career has been in non-elective public service. Rael is running for
Lieutenant Governor. Invited to the event by our intellectual
rights attorney, we attended in support of her. We came away
supporting him.
We had already read his quite extraordinary
background. What we got from the time we spent with him was the
person. And politics – I remembered in his presence – is people.
People are why politics matter. People are why
it is worthwhile to keep wading through the divisiveness and
polarization that currently stand for politics, but are, in fact,
simply excuses for doing nothing.
Meanwhile, in my yoga-meditation class, we are
discussing compassion. For compassion to be real, it must extend
beyond the people we care about to those we find it difficult to
love. Only by viewing all people (this includes, but is not limited
to, drunk drivers, murderers, rapists, religious fanatics,
terrorists, con artists and political idiots) with compassion can
change happen. “Be the change you want to see” is a cliché, but –
like all clichés – comes out of truth. (I could, for instance,
start here by not calling people “political idiots,” which is,
perhaps, not a compassionate term.)
We see the power of the social networks to move
one person’s idea into the minds of thousands. Even when the idea
is not yet fully integrated into the minds and hearts of those
thousands, it can explode outward, resonating in ever expanding
waves. While a true compassion is a deep and permanent expression
of humanity, rather than something we can just throw over ourselves
and call truth, those expanding waves of an idea have a power to
make many of us think.
It is a start.
For me, what has happened in this combination of
meeting a good man with political ambitions, and attempting to enter
a compassionate relationship to the world, is a kind of awakening.
This is no chance juxtaposition. But then, nothing is by chance.
Copyright © 2010 Ruth
Rudner |
