Love in Rage

Jun 12

By Niall Twohig

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

- James Baldwin

The opposite of good is not evil; the opposite of good is indifference…. where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

“I’m not afraid of what the administration will do to me. I’m afraid of what it will do to my soul if I do nothing.”

- Professor at UC Santa Cruz (May 2024)

Intro

I typically introduce these Easy Essay collections with an intro written for… well, written for whom? A theoretical reader who will one day read these essays? That seems wrong now, especially given the urgency of this moment. What feels right is writing directly to you, my students of Spring 2024.

I write to you who have been shaken by the ongoing genocide and who, with peers across the country, were called to encampments and protests. You took my usual thought experiment—would you step onto the freedom bus—and made it real. You did so by putting your books aside. You did so by walking out, speaking out, acting up. Such choices are not done to make you “cool” as a reactionary peer claimed. In fact, you’ll likely be punished with bad grades and ill repute. You may be doxed and cast out of certain circles. Protest, it seems, is not good for brand image. And in an age that is all about brand, you chose to be off. In my book, though, you are right on. You are acing a test far more important than any you will take in school: the test of conscience. You listened to yours and acted accordingly, no matter the cost. You knew that not listening would be a greater price you were unwilling to pay. But, in listening, you also discovered something both painful and luminous, a binding force that can only be felt when one embodies solidarity in the flesh. The students on the buses during the Freedom Summer felt it. You felt it too at the encampment. You discovered you were more expansive than this system allows. You discovered the other’s pain is your pain. You discovered that those, 7,600 miles away, felt you reaching towards them, enough even to thank you. You discovered you were not alone anymore. Not isolated. You were crying together. Dancing together. Sitting, praying, moving together knowing that our destinies are, at the deepest level, intertwined.

Thank you, dear students, for being our teacher this quarter.

I write to you who were willing to look beyond your given Truth. Especially those raised with ideologies that paint this solidarity movement as hateful or antisemitic. You saw that the lived reality was far different from the stories spinning through your social media and social circles. You questioned. You questioned. You questioned. “How can my intelligent loving mother justify bombs being dropped on children?” You may not have found solid answers, but your inquiry matters. As does your radical openness to listen. You listened to the other’s testimony. You allowed their histories and experiences to fill in gaps in your knowledge. To show your were listening, you looked your peer in her eyes. You held your tongue and let her words sink in. You changed your profile picture from a flag to your face as an unspoken act of love. You listened, too, to your senses. You knew what your eyes and ears told you. You saw the bruise on a friend’s stomach beaten by police. You saw your roommate’s eyes swollen from the pepper spray. You know your friends. You know they are neither hateful nor naive. They are, rather, moved by their hearts and minds. They are moved by love. You are moved by the same as you encounter loved ones who may call you brainwashed or deceived. May your love chip away at their walls. May you always answer them honestly, as you did when your mom asked you, “Is it difficult to be friends with your Palestinian roommate?” Your response: “No. Not at all.”

Thank you, dear students, for your radical openness to other truths.

I write to you, my student, who said the protestors are only out there to be cool. Don’t let snap judgments close your eyes, contrariness close your ears, prefabricated analyses shield you from people’s lived realities. What you might find, through openness, are students called to protest by the same depth of soul that calls you to prayer. You have a sharp mind, my friend. Your peers recognize that. I recognize it. But the danger of a sharp mind is that it might excise the heart. With you, though, I have faith that your sharpness will pierce the heart allowing an outpouring of love. We would all be better for that.

Thank you, dear student, for your stubborn resistance.

I write to you who lost hope this quarter, you who became indignant toward authority, and disillusioned with the possibilities of nonviolence. You who was tempted by the way of the gun. I have no magic balm to do away with your despair. Nor should I. All I can say is that I am glad that we held space for it. What I noticed—what I think you noticed—is that such space for despair was necessary. It made our discussions real. It allowed us to see that once despair has space, we are able to wrestle with it collectively. Or maybe “wrestle” isn’t the right word. Those feelings could sit next to other stories and experiences, more joyous and tinged with hope, and suddenly we were left with a feeling best described as hope-in-despair, love-in-rage.

Thank you, dear students, for filling the space with our collective feeling in all its complexity.

I write to you who cried from the depths of your soul the day after the encampment was violently cleared. “Why, why, why can’t more people see the wrong of dropping bombs on innocent people, of spending tuition dollars on bombs, of our university’s complicity in warfare and genocide!” Your cry vocalized what many of us hear echoing through our being. Many more do not yet hear that cry or ignore it. I wish they heard you that day. They would have heard their soul’s cry calling them back to life. A cry filled with rage, yes. But stemming from love. A love that recognizes your kinship with those buried in rubble, with those whose bellies distend from hunger, with those seeking refuge from hell only to find hellfire. Your love rages when it encounters indifference to this suffering. And so it should! May the flames of your enraged love burn through the manmade walls that keep us apart and at war!

Thank you, dear student, for the gift of your soul’s fire.

Finally, I write to you who were mostly silent this quarter. I know your silence does not equate to indifference. Thank you for listening in your own quiet way. Thank you for allowing yourself to feel what your peers articulated with their words. May the seeds planted in your silence grow into words or actions that resist the darkness.

Thank you, dear students, for your sacred silence.

To all of you, my students-turned-teacher, I write this collection. It documents what I witnessed and felt during the strange days of Spring 2024. After writing the last of these easy essays, “Foundation”, I felt called to write something more public, something that attempted to hold a mirror to collective feeling and experience. With the help of friends, I wrote this statement. In truth, I couldn’t help but write it. My conscience wouldn’t let these hands sit still. My Irish and Filipino ancestors, bloodied by empires, wouldn’t rest till I put words down. Those ghosts stir still, of course. For there’s more to be written. More to be done by all called by conscience. And there’s a greater urgency now. I know you feel it. Darkness encroaching. A darkness capable of stealing 15,694 children in nine months—each one of them innocent, each one miraculous. Let our love for these children, for our children, turn to fire.

For, in the words of the American prophet Frederick Douglass, “It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”