We cannot change anyone but ourselves but we can create an environment where it is easy to reach and affect someone’s heart. How do reach a person soft or hard of heart? This might sound silly but recent experiences have confirmed my opinion that the way to another heart is our own vulnerability to endure suffering, rejection and insults without reaction or retaliation.

St. Ignatius of Loyola prayed for poverty, rejection and insults if it was God’s will. He got it, even being thrown in jail twice by his own Church. I am not able to pray for it but hope to endure such suffering, like Martin Luther King Jr., without fight back with same tactics. What I am talking about I guess is the creative nonviolence Gandhi speaks of.

Something I am getting better at is not reacting to persons attacking the messenger to ignore the message. I got a long ways to go in this area but stood firm when friends recently told me to give up on the struggle to build a thrift store in North Central Milwaukee rather than in suburbs or not to struggle against the people who are trying to take down the basketball courts in neighborhood park. I cannot stop but what I can try to do is not to react to attacks on me so they can ignore the message. Doing this has not been easy and I found out that even when I do not react people will still stereotype or stigmatized me. Every stigma has part of the truth but, as I have discovered, Stigma Stains the Soul if you are not aware of it and that every stigma has small truth in it.

It is a paradox that the way to another heart is enduring suffering, rejection and insults but unless the seed dies it will not rise.

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