Our Mutual Humanity

Leo Tolstoy, as a child, was told by his older brother Nicholas that there was a green stick buried at the edge of a ravine in the ancient Zakaz Forest in the heart of Russia. It was no ordinary piece of wood. Carved into its surface were words "which would destroy all evil in the hearts of men and bring them everything good." Though never searching for the green stick itself, Tolstoy spent his life searching for its revelation. As an old man he wrote, "I still believe today that there is such a truth...."

I doubt if this green stick, were we to dig it up, would provide a text never read before. Would it not, in fact, be something we have heard again and again but which - in the practice of life - lay buried on the edge of a remote ravine within ourselves, where it wouldn't trouble us too often? I mean these words of Jesus, as recorded by Luke: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you...As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them" (6:27-31). It is a much ignored patch of the gospel.

Also in Luke's gospel (10:29-37), a lawyer asks Jesus the question, "Who is my neighbor?" The neighbor, it turns out, is an enemy of the questioner: a Samaritan. The chief villains in the story are respectable people who live in the best part of town, the very people the lawyer must have thought of as his neighbors.

For Jesus the question "Who is my neighbor?" is glued to the question "Who is my enemy?" Still more profoundly, it is connected to the question "Who must I love, and what does it mean to love?"

Personally, I feel hesitant to name my enemies, even in my own hidden thoughts. I resist posing the questions that might pry out such uncomfortable admissions: Who is it that I can't imagine loving? Whom do I feel threatened by? Who considers me their enemy? Whose troubles are good news to me? Whom do I wish didn't exist? Whom do I wish would drop dead? These aren't minor questions, because it is impossible to do much with the commandment to love one's enemies until you admit they exist and are willing to name them.

The ones I think of first are my domestic enemies, people close at hand. Obviously I'm not alone in this. It seems that domestic hostilities burn the longest and hottest. These involve family members, co-workers, people in the same neighborhood. Murders are often family affairs, and the courts are full of domestic quarrels.

Then there are the more anonymous enemies acquired through racism or other kinds of group contempt. Or there are those people I feel free to hate because I find their theology or politics hateful. I've had a very hard time loving U.S. presidents, for instance.

Finally we get to the most expensive and dangerous enmities, acquired simply by virtue of living where I live, enmities I'm born into, raised into, and cannot imagine not existing. For the Jews 2,000 years ago, the collective enemies were, among others, the Romans and Samaritans. For Americans 45 years ago, they were the Germans and Japanese. Today, in the Cold War, our main collective enemy is the Russians. Whether we subscribe to Sojourners or Time, whether we wear peace buttons or military uniforms, we're involved in this huge enmity, this constant preparation for war.

Loving our Cold War enemies
THIS ENMITY IS the most likely cause of a future world war, and it is the linchpin of so many other terrible events going on right now. For we find the Russians not only by noticing where most of our missiles are aimed, but by looking in almost any direction.

Why is the United States involved in a war in Central America? Because otherwise the Russians might gain a new foothold. Why the U.S. hostility toward Cuba? Because it's an ally of the Soviet Union. Why do we send arms to Afghan rebels? Because they use our weapons to fight Soviet troops and a Soviet-backed government. Why do we support various corrupt, tyrannical, anti-democratic governments? Because they are anti-Communist governments staunchly opposed to Moscow.

Why will there be no more civilian projects on future U.S. shuttle launches? Because all the available space is needed by the military. Why are U.S. cities slowly rotting away before our eyes and so many Americans going to bed hungry and homeless every night? Because the money and energy it would cost to build a more humane America would drain money from our arms race with the Soviet Union.

U.S. foreign policy and even much of U.S. domestic policy is dominated by our enmity with the Soviet Union. Very little can be done about any of the other problems that occupy our minds unless we pay attention to this one.

But even if there were not good, practical reasons to want to change the way we and the Russians relate to each other, there is the fact that we are called to love our enemies. We are called to this not as a kind of postscript to the gospels but as something central to Christian life, something Jesus not only says but demonstrates continuously with Romans, Samaritans, Pharisees, tax collectors, and Zealots. Jesus doesn't require us to join the choir or teach Sunday school. He does call us to love those whom we feel threatened by.

What does love mean? In our own culture, it has mainly to do with feelings. Love, most people would say, is a feeling of intense affection, or it has to do with sex.

But as used in the Bible, love has to do with action and responsibility. To love is to do what you can to provide for the life and well-being of others, whether you like them or not and whether you are in a good mood or not. An act of love may be animated by a sense of gratitude and delight in another person. Or it may be done despite anger, exhaustion, depression, fear or aversion, or simply as a prayer and response to God, who links us all, who is our common Creator, our Father, our Mother, and in whom we are brothers and sisters: "Who makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust" (Matthew 5:45).

IT IS THIS UNDERSTANDING of love that the saintly Fr. Zosima speaks of in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Fr. Zosima is confronted with a pilgrim who is racked with doubt about the existence of God and asks how she can find certainty in matters of faith. Fr. Zosima tells her:

"There's no proving it, though you can be convinced of it."

"How?"

"By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively and tirelessly. In so far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul. This has been tried. This is certain."

The pilgrim responds that in fact she loves humanity to such an extent that sometimes she imagines abandoning everything and becoming a Sister of Mercy, binding up wounds, even kissing them. But then she wonders whether those she served would be grateful or whether instead they might respond with complaints and abuse. Dreading ingratitude, she does nothing. Fr. Zosima responds:

"Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. People will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude...."

However, it isn't saintly monks in Russia that we feel threatened by. It takes very little for Americans to remind themselves that overwhelming force is the only thing Russians - or at least Russian Communists - understand. Through films, comic books, novels, and news reports, we are given vivid daily reminders of what we're up against. News reports may be the hardest to guard against. We tend to view the press as an independent channel of communication rather than the biased agency it tends to be.

The U.S. press collects stories about what's wrong in Russia; the Russian press collects stories of what isn't working in the United States. The information provided by the mass media in both countries is mainly true but generally excludes anything that would animate sympathy, understanding, or a sense of identification. We are kept from entering what Thomas Merton called "the human dimension."

I DIDN'T REALIZE how much de-humanizing propaganda had found its home in my own head until I went to the Soviet Union for the first time to take part in a small meeting hosted by the Russian Orthodox Church. Though flying to Moscow is no more remarkable than flying to Rome or Jerusalem, it seemed to me that there was something vaguely unpatriotic just in going there. Moscow seemed farther away than any other city in the world.

Once inside my room in the Ukranya Hotel, on the south bank of the Moscow River, I couldn't believe I really was alone. "Surely there is someone listening. The room is bugged. In some other room in the hotel, some KGB agent with earphones is listening to me, or at least everything is being recorded and someone will be listening to the tape in the morning," I thought. I had learned this from all that I had ever seen or read about Russia. (And maybe the room was bugged. It certainly would have been easy. In the early '70s, I found a micro-radio concealed in my office telephone in New York City; secret police in every country do this kind of thing all the time.)

There were situations where it was possible to see that the shaping of my expectations by the Cold War had very little connection with reality. I love walking, and even on that first night I decided to go for a walk, partly to escape the discomfort I felt in my room, partly out of eagerness to have a look at Moscow.

With an English co-worker, I walked down the avenue that led to Red Square, several miles to the east. It was late, and the weather was wet. There were few cars and still fewer pedestrians. Even then I kept glancing around, expecting to find someone following us (an experience I have had, in fact, in the United States during the Vietnam War). "Surely two Westerners, having just arrived in this city, wouldn't be permitted to wander about unwatched!" I thought. Two hours later, now past midnight, we were still wandering the streets of Moscow and we found ourselves totally alone.

That was the first of many experiences of late-night solitude in Moscow. Within a few days, I felt quite free to wander in Moscow, even to get lost, whether above ground or on the Metro beneath the streets, as I kept discovering that there were people who would manage to understand me and who would help me find my way.

IN THE COURSE of those walks and subway rides, I began to think anew about what Jesus said on the subject of love. Love one's enemies? How can you love those you don't even know? I realized that hardly anyone in the United States knows anyone who actually lives in Russia and doesn't want to live anywhere else.

It startled me to think how little of what I knew about the Russian people was based on first-hand experience. My sources had mainly been the mass media, which had shaped my consciousness far more than I ever imagined. I had read more Russian literature than most Americans, thanks to Dorothy Day's advice and a quiet year in prison during the Vietnam War. But almost all I had read had been written before the Russian Revolution. I had seen very few Russian movies. I spoke no Russian. I had never heard a good word about Russians in any church I had ever been in, but often had heard about the evils of communism and the Russian threat.

On this subject, it occurred to me, both the churches and the peace organizations were no different from the U.S. mainstream. U.S. peace people, if we hoped to be listened to, had to make it clear we weren't the Russian agents that Reader's Digest and the White House said we were. We did this by being as outraged as anyone else with human rights violations in the Soviet Union. We did nothing - dared to do nothing - to challenge anti-Russian stereotypes. We were careful to say nothing that would make us look "soft on Russia." In fact, we were as ignorant of the Soviet Union as anyone else.

Now this is changing just a bit. The change is not enough to alter U.S. foreign policy, but it is enough to encourage hope that the small efforts now under way in the United States will, in time, give Americans a fresh way of thinking about Russians, so that we begin to see it as a challenge to live together rather than to survive each other.

HOW DO YOU BEGIN an engagement with the Russians?

Probably the easiest and best beginning point is to read Russian writers, and not only those of the last century but of this one as well. Try Yevgeny Yevtushenko's recent novel Wild Berries, or the short stories of Vladimir Soloukhin, such as his collection Honey on Bread, recent bedtime reading in my house. Russians read a great deal of contemporary American writing and are avid fans of U.S. films.

Read a general introduction to the contemporary Soviet Union, for example the beautifully illustrated National Geographic book Journey Across Russia. Read some Russian history; you might start with Peter Ustinov's My Russia. For weightier introductions, James Billington's The Icon and the Axe and John Lawrence's A History of Russia are helpful. For a particularly good introduction to religious conditions in Russia, read Discretion and Valor by Trevor Beeson; to get a good look at Russian believers today, see Fred Mayer's stunning photos in The Orthodox Church in Russia.

If possible see current Russian movies, such as Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears, which won an Oscar a few years ago as the best foreign film of the year.

Learn to cook something Russian from one of the various good Russian cookbooks around. Sometimes we have "meals of reconciliation" in our home: Moscow borscht as the main dish, American apple pie for dessert. Delicious!

Pray for the Russian people. Cut out a few pictures of them from newspapers or magazines and keep them in a Bible, hymnal, prayer book, over the kitchen sink, or wherever you will see them often and pray for these unmet sisters and brothers. Learn about Russian religious traditions. In my home, at bedtime, my family prays every night before several Russian icons and often uses prayers from the Orthodox liturgy.

Then, if you can manage it, actually go to the Soviet Union. Various church and peace groups are now organizing small tour groups, though often these require that you put up with a lot of speeches. If you don't like speeches, just make a holiday visit.

In Moscow, I especially enjoyed exploring the Metro, the underground train system with its cathedral-like stations. If you're lucky, you will get lost and have to turn to strangers for help. The Russians are fascinated by Americans and are, despite all you have heard to the contrary, very approachable people. Hang around a park or public square, and sooner or later, usually sooner, people will find a way to talk to you, maybe offering roubles for dollars, or wanting to buy your running shoes.

Worship with Russians. The churches in the guidebooks are often only the museum churches, like those within the Kremlin walls in Moscow. But the best churches are the living ones. Many churches are open for evening prayer every day. You might go to Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow on a Sunday morning. It is a huge church, but certainly not too large for the crowd that worships there. Worshipers are packed together like matches, with just enough room for the half-bows that the Russian Orthodox liturgy requires. (A Protestant friend who had never bowed or made the sign of the cross was scolded into doing so by an old Russian woman at her side who wouldn't tolerate such passivity in worship.)

But don't focus only on the religious people or, for that matter, dissidents. That's easy enough to do - they resemble ourselves. Though they are among those targeted by our weapons, they aren't the reason for our weapons. The Communists are. They're the enemy, and in the Soviet Union you have the chance to meet the genuine article: card-carrying, atheistic Communists. While they are, in fact, far fewer than the believers, there are nonetheless millions of members in the Communist Party.

One party member I happened to talk with, a translator, was visiting the famed Trinity Monastery in Zagorsk, a town north of Moscow. It was his first visit to this center of Russian Orthodoxy. Being there made him think of his mother, who had been a devout believer all her life, praying at least twice daily before her icons. But she was an anti-clerical believer, he said. "The priests are only interested in themselves, not in the people," she told her son. "They got rich and fat at the expense of the poor." She warned her son never to trust them.

In fact, in the years leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution, many priests, such as the one Dostoyevsky presented as Fr. Zosima, were deeply committed to the poor and stood with them against the rich. But they were the exceptions, a monk at the Trinity Monastery told me. Because too many had been indifferent to the poor, he said, the church in Russia since the Revolution had entered a penitential time that had not yet ended.

If you can take some of these steps, love of enemies not only becomes possible, but not to love them becomes impossible. The Russians cease to be ideological objects. Even when you discover in a personal way various things you don't understand, or that you disagree with or find appalling about Soviet structures, you can no longer speak of the people who live in the Soviet Union as enemies; and people, rather than systems, die in war.

Beginning to know personally those who are the targets of war, praying for them daily, learning about their history and culture, bringing their food to your table - all these are truly disarming experiences. It becomes unbearable to do anything that might result in their being burned alive, for truly they are our sisters and brothers. We discover that their lives are in our care - and ours in theirs - and that each of us holds in our hands the green stick that Tolstoy sought.

When this article appeared, Jim Forest was general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and a Sojourners contributing editor.