A Different Kind of Courage
Courage as We Know It
Working with community leaders over the past decade, I have seen many praised for taking courageous stands against wrongdoing. Courage usually begins with a series of meetings. People come together, reflecting on a fundamental injustice. In the inner-city where I work, the underlying condition could involve any number of serious problems: drugs, failure of schools, lack of employment, racism or other unequal treatment.
Leaders then emerge. Sometimes they are the group’s initial conveners, or the ones who called attention to the injustice, but not always. The group implicitly knows that it needs someone courageous to press its cause forward.
In the next phase, a single person, or a small leadership team, then focuses the group’s attention on a person or group that should be held accountable for the problems suffered by the community. During this phase, the group defines and identifies an opponent. Leaders must have courage when this targeted person or group is powerful and can threaten those calling for accountability. The powerful target of the campaign often controls legal power or funds being called forth to fix what’s wrong.
Then the campaign enters a public phase during which a confrontation or sometimes an outright attack ensues. Sometimes the process leads to change, sometimes not.
In the final chapter, the group celebrates those who fearlessly held the feet of the others to the fire. Plaques are made. Books are written. Interviews are given. Awards are given. The courage is enshrined and remembered.
I myself have often been directly involved in such efforts. At times I led them. At times I supported them actively. Sometimes, I merely looked on with a sense of approval.
Courage and Moral Certainty
Courage and righteousness in American civil society are close friends. A feeling of certainty and clarity in one’s moral compass provides a large measure of the initiative required to “stand up” and “stand your ground” against those bad elements that have let us down or failed us in some way. Courage involves confronting risk and danger. Risk and danger come when we threaten or confront something more powerful than we are. When we experience persons or factions as having greater power, we often experience them as limiting our own power. We may experience limitations on our power as oppressive. And that which oppresses us is usually believed to be unjust. What is unjust in turn becomes the focus of our courageous action. The unjust sit in the bull’s-eye of our courageous cause in which we determine to take back what really belongs to us, speaking our truth to their power.
Courage also entails the sense that the good to be achieved for our community outweighs personal risks. If we do not perceive this greater good in unambiguous terms, our courage may falter. Without that greater good, our actions may seem foolish, wasteful or wrong. For this reason, courage often entails suppressing doubts and uncertainties as we move forward. In our moment of courage, we cannot afford to suffer “analysis paralysis.” When action is slowed by nuances and shades of gray, it often loses its bold and courageous nature.  In the rear view mirror of victory, not much time is spent looking for ambiguity.
It is the courage to make change while preserving the dignity and moral status of those in part responsible for the bad situation we all face. It is courage willing to grapple with the complexity that the oppressor may also be oppressed. It engages those with whom we disagree in dialogue rather than squaring off for a fight.
American leadership in civil society abounds with individuals who would wish to frame their actions within the narrative structures I have outlined above. After all, a story about the crusade against injustice (with ourselves or those we care for cast as the crusaders) is the story most leaders would want to tell about their own lives, isn’t it? It is the story of those who confront evil, root it out at the source, and then go on to live a better life, their heroic personal narrative growing incrementally after each crusade.
But . . . (Did you sense that a “but” was coming?)
As I have grown older, (hopefully) gaining more perspective, I have come to appreciate a different kind of courage, growing from a different place. I would describe it as the courage to proceed to try to make the world better while maintaining clarity on the inherent moral ambiguity of real people and real situations. It is the courage to make change while preserving the dignity and moral status of those in part responsible for the bad situation we all face. It is courage willing to grapple with the complexity that the oppressor may also be oppressed. It engages those with whom we disagree in dialogue rather than squaring off for a fight. Can we change the world in a way that recognizes our own part, our own complicity and responsibility, for the creation of the world we now want to change? The usual concept of courage entails confrontation and combat. This “different” kind courage is not about fighting. It’s about converting enemies and morally questionable actors into partners in thinking and dialogue.
This different kind of interaction deserves the name courage, because to see that the innocent sometimes share the guilt of the guilty can be painful. To recognize that the guilty are sometimes innocent of much charged to their account can unsettle us.  To acknowledge that those labeled as demons perhaps share something profound with us can be threatening. To understand that we contributed to the problems we wanted to blame on others can disquiet us. From another perspective, the group that calls for justice can become a mob that persecutes.
It takes a different kind of courage to stare hard into the eyes of “evildoers” and see our own reflection staring back at us!
Am I saying there is no right and wrong in the world? Of course not. The problem though is that right and wrong in this world of ours is usually tangled up and embedded in strange and surprising ways that may cast our courage in a different, less flattering light.
A Different Kind of Courage
It takes a different kind of courage to maintain hopeful, constructive actions in the face of the astounding hypocrisy of the world. We live a world with unhealthy doctors, unethical ethicists, illegal lawyers, unfaithful fiduciaries, tax delinquent tax collectors, immoral clergy. Even the humble are immodest in their humility. It’s a fallen world. Imperfection abounds. The work of change must be done, will be done, at the hands of sinners, failures and hypocrites.
It takes courage to move forward knowing we will often fail by our own measures of success. If we did not fail often, our aspirations would terribly uncourageous!
Some may find this a dark view of human nature, a sacrificing of vision. But I see it as a grounding in reality that allows us to move forward in ways that are practical, serious and real.
It takes a different kind of courage to live with this inherent messiness of reality that will not stay put in the neat ideological and moral categories we create in our manifestos.
Something that fills me with hope is the kind of courage we see from Barack Obama in this regard. There have been many comments and situations in which this different kind of courage was on display. Appearing on Larry King during the campaign, he said:
“I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it’s precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It’s what keeps us locked in “either/or” thinking: the notion that we can only have big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace ’socialized medicine’.”
Similarly, in his speech in Philadelphia about race, he showed an unusual willingness to see people as they are, with their strengths and weaknesses, in their full moral ambiguity. He recognized that his white grandmother, who loved him dearly, also embraced racist stereotypes. He acknowledged that his black pastor, a man he clearly respected and admired, was a man who could provide important leadership and service to the community while also holding views that Barack Obama himself found wrong, divisive and racially charged. Barack showed us a different kind of courage.
It takes courage to see the shades of gray in this world of ours. Barack Obama notwithstanding, it is usually not the kind of heroic courage that gets your picture on the front page of the local paper or that wins you “the most influential person of the year” award. Reality and nuance generally don’t make for great headlines. But I suspect that this different kind of courage actually leads to more meaningful and lasting human progress.
What Worlds are We Creating with Our Questions?
“…Be patient with everything that remains unsolved in your heart… live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself living into the answer, some distant day.â€
~Rainer Maria Rilke
When our three children first learned to speak, our conversations with them usually began with their curiosities, fountains of questions bubbling from the moment they could string together a sentence: “Why is it raining? What was that noise? What is this? When will you be home? Why do I have to go to bed now? Who put grown-ups in charge?” Their questions asked for explanations and sought reassurances; they were at times silly, at other times challenging. They expressed wonder about the world and a great hunger to know and understand life. Their questions made me woefully aware of how much more I needed to learn and grateful for encyclopedias.
Children’s questions, the stories or answers they receive in response, and the questions they are asked imprint them with a frame of reference. I tried as a mother to ask my children questions that offered choices, inquired how they were feeling, acknowledged their struggles and joys, and expressed interest in what they thought or had learned:Â “How was your day? What story would you like to read? Where would you like to go on an adventure? What are you curious about? Why do you think that’s important?”
Questions shape us long before we find any answers. They are windows into how we see, what we want, and our open edges. The questions we ask (or avoid asking) come in many sizes and open or limit the worlds within which we live. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, a Holocaust memoir, Elie’s spiritual master suggests that a question possesses powers that do not lie in its answer. “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him”, later adding “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
Strengthening Questions
Questions set a direction. Every question leads somewhere; where depends on its often hidden assumptions. Our choice of questions is a moral act with impacts. “Why can’t you ever do anything right?” presumes and creates an identity of incompetence. “Who made such a stupid decision?” looks to assign blame. “How can we get even?” rallies support for retaliation. “Why bother to invest in a ‘lost generation’?” reinforces despair about the future.
Conversely, questions can inspire, intrigue, delight, clarify, invite and build community. They can create pathways to positive experiences and affections, stimulate reflection on issues of importance, and help people notice what is of value.  “How did you learn to do such a good job?” honors an individual’s skill and generates useful information about creating a path to work for others. “How can we support and learn from your community?” assumes there is much to be learned and invites relationship and trust. “How can we get this done now and how can I help?” infers confidence in an idea and a readiness to act on it, building solidarity and momentum to move forward. A positive community connection is reinforced by asking “What makes you glad to live in this neighborhood?” instead of “What are the biggest problems here?” Shifting ownership of the future to citizens is activated by “What can you do to make a difference?”
How can we ask questions that offer a path into life’s mystery and wonder? What “right questions” might we ask to help regenerate public life?
What Are God’s Dreams?
In 1991, at a conference about “Faith, Imagination and Public Life” I was running, someone asked two especially provocative questions that changed the course of my life: “What are God’s dreams for Chicago? And what would it take to bring them to life?” The questions challenged all of us at that conference to think from the largest perspective possible about what was ultimately worthy of the commitment of our lives. A vision emerged for me in response to that question of the recycling symbol as an image of God’s economy. Four days later, I gave up a sixteen year corporate banking career to devote myself to helping create an economy in which nothing and no one is wasted. That process became known as Imagine Chicago. It has had my wholehearted attention ever since.
Renewing Public Life
Imagine Chicago’s design team worked many months on designing what we hoped were a few “right questions” for renewing public life in Chicago. What questions would get people thinking about the whole, and invite new ways of seeing and connecting to Chicago’s future as one that citizens had the choice to create? When we had completed a draft set of questions, a design team member mentioned that the interview protocol reminded him of “appreciative inquiry”, a growing body of research at Case Western Reserve University about inquiry methods that evoked stories, and encouraged groups of people to envision positive images of the future grounded in the best of the past. That research suggests that questions that search for what has life, meaning and energy (rather than what the problems are) have the greatest potential to produce deep and sustaining change and inspire collective action in human systems.
Which brings me back to wondering: What worlds are we creating with our questions? What questions are you asking now as the world struggles to find a new set of structures and directions? What hope is emerging for you in the current restructuring? What new insights and connections are emerging? What are your sources of courage and perspective? What questions would you most like to see people in your community thinking and talking about together? What “right questions” might open up new ways of seeing and acting that will inspire hope in the face of the current losses? What can we each do to mobilize collective action on behalf of democracy as a creative activity that requires everyone’s participation?