Metanoia – The Day The Story Died

Ted Reads Metanoia

15:18

Metanoia. A word meaning radical change. A conversion. In my case, a radicalization. I am writing this blog because I asked a few Republican friends of mine, on the day that one of the Minnesotans was shot dead in the street what it might take for them to say, “There is something wrong here, and it is not the guy who was shot or the little 5 year-old sent to a detention center in Texas”  

The essence of the answers I got back was they couldn’t imagine anything which would cause them to question their beliefs or support for the current regime. I read a few answers later that were heartening from strangers - not from my friends - that gave me some hope.

That took me back to the day when I realized there was something wrong with the story I had so fervently believed and promoted. The day THE story died.

My father worked for the United States Air Force from the mid-1930s through the 1970s. I was born into that world. I grew up during a time when we were taught that our enemies propagandized and America told the truth. America was the benevolent sentinel. The shining city on a hill. Defender of the vulnerable. Moral compass of the world. All this time there existed a dark hidden underbelly of American actions that were as bad as any other country on earth; no better, no worse, and maybe even necessary.

I never questioned anything American. Not once. I moved through high school, college, and graduate school, a full-on patriot. Flat-top haircut. Combat boots. My uniform was as clear a political statement as a red hat today.

I applied for and was hired by one of the premiere intelligence agencies in the country. I passed every loyalty test, including a polygraph. I was exactly who I appeared to be. Those Protesters? Troublemakers. Anti-war activists? Commies. Hippies? Reprobates. Rock and rollers? Moral decay. Lock them all up. Better yet, make them disappear. That was me.

Then came the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was watching the coverage on television. Grant Park. Nighttime. Young people gathered. Some chanting. Some marching. Some protest signs. The cameras were there. I noticed a young man about my age, hands in his coat pockets, simply standing and watching. Not shouting. Not marching. No Posters. No fists in the air. Just standing there.

Suddenly, half a dozen of Mayor Richard Daley’s tactical police rushed him. Batons swinging. They knocked him down before he could get his hands out of his pockets. Kicked and beat him into unconsciousness. Threw him into a paddy wagon along with some others. Drove them all away. Cameras documenting the whole scene. In that moment, a voice inside me said: “There is something really wrong here. And it isn’t that kid.”

That was the crack. The first fracture in what I “knew” to be true armor. I didn’t yet understand what it meant. But I knew it wasn’t a random thought.

Soon other events widened that crack: My Lai. Kent State. The nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, naked, burned skin dripping off her body as she ran screaming toward a camera and away from the napalm that had been dropped on her village.

Children bombed in churches. Civil Rights’ marchers beaten, jailed, attacked by dogs, blasted with water cannons. Event after event. The message repeated: Something is radically wrong.

What stunned me was not only the events themselves, but the response from those closest to me. Some ignored it. Some justified it. Some celebrated it. Some rationalized it. “If they hadn’t…” “Collateral damage.” “Anti-American.” “Commies.”

My church took sides. They echoed the government’s messaging. Questioning authority bordered on sin. “Under God” had been added to the Pledge of Allegiance within my lifetime. Church and state felt sealed together. No sermons questioned the morality of what was happening. Only the protesters were condemned. The cognitive dissonance became unbearable.

If this was God’s will, and God was just and all-powerful, then what kind of God was that? I didn’t want anything to do with that God. I still don’t.

I left. And I paid the price: shunning, ostracism, isolation.

I wish I could say I became heroic. I didn’t. I resisted quietly. Carefully. I had two children. I needed my job. Maybe I was protecting them. Maybe I was afraid. Others continued to die, the brave ones.

I worked in one of the most conservative counties in Michigan. The local KKK chapter marched openly in parades. Crosses were burned on lawns, one of them on mine. School buses were bombed. A Black school administrator was tarred and feathered.

My rebellion was small and symbolic. I grew my hair long. I grew a beard, at a time when that could cost one their employment. Fellow coaches mocked me. Embarrassed my father. Threatened by colleagues. I became an outsider.

During the national anthem at sporting events, I looked down instead of up. I visualized the dead. The burned child. The unconscious young man in Grant Park. The little girls killed in Sunday School.

I required my students to follow the news nightly. Information is like water. (I didn’t tell them that but I knew.) It hopefully dissolves clots in the brain.

I didn’t know exactly what “right” was. But I knew what wasn’t. Beatings weren’t right. Lies weren’t right. Human beings treated as disposable weren’t right.

I had been lied to by people and institutions I trusted. And that realization changed me.

That was my metanoia.

Today, whenever any group - political, religious, cultural - try to convince me that what reeks of cruelty, indignity, injustice, or torture isn’t happening… or is justified… provides the energy for the red lights to begin blinking. I recognize the smell. I remember that voice. Something is not quite right here. 

Rabbi Hillel is said to have summarized what is right this way: “If what you are doing would be hateful or intolerable if done to you, don’t do it to me. Anything else you might have to say, is commentary.”

That is my compass. I sometimes wonder whether those fiercely loyal to the current powers will ever have their own crack in the wall. Their own moment of internal rupture.

I hope so. I also know how hard that is. I know how humiliating it was to admit I was wrong. How costly it is. To do so can threaten my community, my identity, even my livelihood. I have compassion for those who cannot afford to see. Awareness can cost everything they value.

I still hear that voice. It is quieter now. More seasoned. But it speaks when something is off. And when it does, I listen.  I speak up. Here, now. And it costs me in tangible ways. In direct ways.

But I also remember this: There was a time when a critical mass of Americans finally said, “No more.” Perpetrators went to prison. Presidents resigned. Laws were passed. Changes came. Not because people weren’t afraid, but because enough people were willing to face what they saw and fear was forged into grit.

I have some hope.  A couple of days after the second execution in Minnesota, I overheard a Trump apologist say, “Any normal person would recoil by what happened Saturday.”  Another said, “What happened is not ok.”  That is courageous.

I’m wondering if you have ever had one of those moments. A moment when a story you fervently believed cracked open? Maybe not on the scale of a Metanoia, where your whole life changed, but when an illusion died. I’ve asked a few people and they all can remember one.