OK I'll bite.

Whatever a faithful response is it cannot support the status quo.

It cannot be based on the exercise of secular power. 

It cannot collude or make common cause with power.

It must renounce the use of power.

It requires a renunciation of the methods and culture of power. (I guess that would mean it must be grounded in humility).

This would seem to be require giving without expectation of reward, recognition or thanks.

It would be made from the heart and for its own sake.

It would be inclusive for power operates through difference.

It would involve community because power aggregates in institutions and devolves to individuals. 

Yes, qwerty, good list...but maybe some mention of power to do good...? Which we do have. So do we need to differentiate between using power for good or not good?

Call me a hippy or a naive kid.... (I am however mid forties)

My answer is L-O-V-E.... the pure kind, not the what-do-you have kind or the what-can-I-get from-you kind or any of those kinds but the love that feels and looks like LOVE and that does what LOVE does. .

Okay...now I feel safer to jump in. ;)

I agree with weeze that power can be channeled into good purposes as long as that power is not used to exploit...but rather is used with the objective of raising the less powerful to an equal level whereby they can continue to carry their voice.

Okay...now I feel safer to jump in. ;)

I agree with weeze that power can be channeled into good purposes as long as that power is not used to exploit...but rather is used with the objective of raising the less powerful to an equal level whereby they can continue to carry their voice.

Call me a hippy or a naive kid...... (I am however 60+ ,  - not so sure I want to admit to the "mid" bit.)

My answer is also L-O-V-E.

That's where the real power of God resides, IMO.

Any bully can start throwing his/her weight around, but the ability to love unconditionally - that's  the kind of power that lures me.

I believe in that too, but how to make it happen, not just on an individual level, but on a broader level, is where I get stuck--how does it get channeled in an organized way that's effective? There's always going to be some sort of organized power structure guiding the flock, and consequences for those who don't go along--which would seem to those people who have deviated from the flock not to be unconditional love. I can love a person with whom I don't agree, but it takes two people to reach an agreement on how to tackle issues, not just an acknowledgement of feelings, in order to move forward to make any difference. If one person or group say to the other, I love you but I absolutely do not agree with you...there's an impasse.  And then what about the bully, they need love too, no?

I'm not sure if love is always patient and kind. Civil rights didn't come about because of pure patience and kindness...but I don't think anyone would say Martin Luther King was a bully...he loved people so much and wanted to see racial equality happen he spoke out loudly against oppressors of the marginalized...he spoke out against war, and against people perpetuating war...he was not just a passive lover. He had already garnered a lot of respect in his community, as an acedemic and as a preacher, he had a lot of clout...and he channeled it into doing good...some of the most good, that had a worldwide influence, of the past century. There would not be equal rights in regards to race and ethnicity in western nations if not for King. He was a powerful leader who used his weight when he needed to, and gave voice and power to those who previously had very little.

I think maybe people romanticize the 60's, it wasn't all good music, happy hippies, free love, and flower power-- there were people who went through terrible persecution, and fought hard (non-violently, but with every bit of strength they had), even died (as with King) to achieve the outcomes we now take for granted.

Here is a snippet of an interview with Saul Alinsky (Saul Alinsky is, along with Thomas Paine, Henry George, and Dorothy Day, one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left.) conducted by Playboy magazine.

Alinsky was a master of a sort of activist jujitsu.  He was a fighter, not a lover. He played rough.  He was confrontational and worked to raise the level of uncertainty for his "opponents" in order to bring movement to issues and edge his cause forward.

 He was tremendously successful.  He sought out sources of power and used them.  He did a lot of good.

The interview snippet deals with the famous Rochester strike against Kodak.  I have bolded a couple of phrases I think are important.

How does this fit in with the lists we've been making?  Is this a faithful response?  Note the involvement of the Unitarian Church in this ...

The Struggle with Eastman Kodak

PLAYBOY: What was your next organizational target after Woodlawn?

​

ALINSKY: I kept my fingers in a number of pies throughout the Sixties, organizing community-action groups in the black slums of Kansas City and Buffalo, and sponsoring and funding the Community Service Organization of Mexican-Americans in California, which was led by our West Coast organizer at the time, Fred Ross. The staff we organized and trained then included Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. But my next major battle occurred in Rochester, New York, the home of Eastman Kodak -- or maybe I should say Eastman Kodak, the home of Rochester, New York. Rochester is a classic company town, owned lock, stock and barrel by Kodak; it's a Southern plantation transplanted to the North, and Kodak's self-righteous paternalism makes benevolent feudalism look like participatory democracy. I call it Smugtown, U.S.A. But in mid-1964 that smugness was jolted by a bloody race riot that resulted in widespread burnings, injuries and deaths. The city's black minority, casually exploited by Kodak, finally exploded in a way that almost destroyed the city, and the National Guard had to be called in to suppress the uprising.

​

In the aftermath of the riots, the Rochester Area Council of Churches, a predominantly white body of liberal clergymen, invited us in to organize the black community and agreed to pay all our expenses. We said they didn't speak for the blacks and we wouldn't come in unless we were invited in by the black community itself. At first, there seemed little interest in the ghetto, but once again the old reliable establishment came to the rescue and, by overreacting, cut its own throat. The minute the invitation was made public, the town's power structure exploded in paroxysms of rage. The mayor joined the city's two newspapers, both part of the conservative Gannett chain, in denouncing me as a subversive hatemonger; radio station WHAM delivered one-minute editorial tirades against me and told the ministers who'd invited me that from now on they'd have to pay for their previously free Sunday-morning air time. A settlement house that had pledged its support to us was promptly informed by the Community Chest that its funds would be cut off if it went ahead; the board retracted its support, with several members resigning. The establishment acted as if the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan was camped on its doorstep.

If you listened to the public comments, you'd have thought I spent my spare time feeding poisoned Milk-Bones to seeing-eye dogs. It was the nicest thing they could have done for me, of course. Overnight, the black community broke out of its apathy and started clamoring for us to come in; as one black told me later, "I just wanted to see somebody who could freak those mothers out like that." Black civil rights leaders, local block organizations and ministers plus 13,000 individuals signed petitions asking me to come in, and with that kind of support I knew we were rolling. I assigned my associate, Ed Chambers, as chief organizer in Rochester, and prepared to visit the city myself once his efforts were under way.

PLAYBOY: Was your reception as hostile as your advance publicity?

​

ALINSKY: Oh, yeah, I wasn't disappointed. I think they would have quarantined me at the airport if they could have. When I got off the plane, a bunch of local reporters were waiting for me, keeping the same distance as tourists in a leper colony. I remember one of them asking me what right I had to start "meddling" in the black community after everything Kodak had done for "them" and I replied: "Maybe I'm uninformed, but as far as I know the only thing Kodak has done on the race issue in America is to introduce color film." My relationship with Kodak was to remain on that plane.

​

PLAYBOY: How did you organize Rochester's black community?

ALINSKY: With the assistance of a dynamic local black leader, the Reverend Franklin Florence, who'd been close to Malcolm X, we formed a community organization called FIGHT -- an acronym for Freedom, Integration, God, Honor, Today. We also established the Friends of FIGHT, an associated group of some 400 dues-paying white liberals, which provided us with funds, moral support, legal advice and instructors for our community training projects. We had a wide range of demands, of which the key one was that Kodak recognize the representatives of the black community who were designated as such by the people and not insist on dealing through its own showcase "Negro" executive flunky with a Ph.D. Kodak naturally refused to discuss such outrageous demands with us, contending that FIGHT had no legitimacy as a community spokesman and that the company would never accept it as such.

​

Well, that meant war, and we dug in for the fight, which we knew wouldn't be an overnight one. We realized picketing or boycotts wouldn't work, so we began to consider some far-out tactics along the lines of our O'Hare shit-in.  ...

​PLAYBOY: ... So what finally broke Kodak's resistance?

ALINSKY: Simple self-interest -- the knowledge that the price of continuing to fight us was greater than reaching a compromise. It was one of the longest and toughest battles I've been in, though. After endless months of frustration, we finally decided we'd try to embarrass Kodak outside its fortress of Rochester, and disrupt the annual stockholders' convention in Flemington, New Jersey. Though we didn't know it at the time -- all we had in mind was a little troublemaking -- this was the seed from which a vitally important tactic was to spring. I addressed the General Assembly of the Unitarian-Universalist Association and asked them for their proxies on whatever Kodak stock they held in order to gain entree to the stockholders' meeting. The Unitarians voted to use the proxies for their entire Kodak stock to support FIGHT -- 5620 shares valued at over $700,000.

The wire services carried the story and news of the incident rapidly spread across the country. Individuals began sending in their proxies, and other church groups indicated they were prepared to follow the Unitarians' lead. By the purest accident, we'd stumbled onto a tactical gold mine. Politicians who saw major church denominations assigning us their proxies could envision them assigning us their votes as well; the church groups have vast constituencies in their congregations. Suddenly senators and representatives who hadn't returned our phone calls were ringing up and lending a sympathetic ear to my request for a senatorial investigation of Kodak's hiring practices.

As the proxies rolled in, the pressure began to build on Kodak -- and on other corporations as well. Executives of the top companies began seeking me out and trying to learn my intentions. I'd never seen the establishment so uptight before, and this convinced me that we had happened onto the cord that might open the golden curtain shielding the private sector from its public responsibilities. It obviously also convinced Kodak, because they soon caved in and recognized FIGHT as the official representative of the Rochester black community. Kodak has since begun hiring more blacks and training unskilled black workers, as well as inducing the city administration to deliver major concessions on education, housing, municipal services and urban renewal. It was our proxy tactic that made all this possible. It scared Kodak, and it scared Wall Street. It's our job now to relieve their tensions by fulfilling their fears.

PLAYBOY: What do you mean? Surely you don't expect to gain enough proxies to take control of any major corporation.

ALINSKY: No, despite all the crap about "people's capitalism," the dominant controlling stock in all major corporations is vested in the hands of a few people we could never get to. We're not even concerned about electing four or five board members to a 25-member board, which in certain cases would be theoretically feasible. They'd only be outvoted by management right down the line. We want to use the proxies as a means of social and political pressure against the megacorporations, and as a vehicle for exposing their hypocrisy and deceit.

Unconditional Love ... free of all responsibility? Cracked belle Libre Tae ... just a word in pas in ... resonance ... like egos ... rapturous thought! A real RIP'Urin reality ... a pain/paen? Say it in a story that is troublesome for an emotional person to resurrect! It would take some desire to start however ... sense of Ba'aL antes ...

Perhaps we should put some thought on that as to how some passions can be purely destructive when set free.

Then we could argue it is a way to a new world theology ... if everything from the past institution was destroyed. Fall off the Jaqobean Latter Ares! Did you know that "Ares" is confrontational ... like water to the flame? Its an ancient archetype! Hoo dah goan there? Sort of a fringe statement from the edge ... dark mire ... bottomland earth place for kinetic infiltration ... moving thingy?

One has to love the metaphor as something else ... sort of like myth of the soul in a realm without thought ... just spiritual people ... emotional ... with exception ... always the exception ... nothings perfect and God is "nothing" sort of like an eth ... in the beginning of the bi cycle ... de deux IT! Endless loupe like the sun going round and round followed by a sun-dog ... maw 've following Shadow (discipline) of doubt in reality ... a dark point. That makes one stop and ponder that wee pool ... follow'n like awe. Awe; look that up in Thesaurus, partly daunting ... just awe full, overflowing grail?

Geofee:

Solution:

National, local, personal:

Get by with less.

Another great profound exhortation: Forget the powerful.

(smile) Respect your elders.  (I've long wondered the why of that sentence --

perhaps it's the fires of desire for power going out  (I thought of it as a hallmark of survival.) - at 83 I am amazingly content with 'official poverty'  - but in want of nothing. -

I have no power, little influence {Even my yawns ore not catching} BUT

I have paint, canvas, piano, and time

And wine, highly endorsed in word and action by Jesus,,,and Rumi.(As well as followers of Bacchus et al)

Perhaps I have a problem...is being goal-less a problem or a solution?

Wait. I have a goal. Wait. Many goals! To understand the philosophical implications of M-theory. To convince my cat that he likes me, even when he is NOT hungry.... To become more knowledgeable.

In this day and age, does happiness require genius? Or dumb luck?. A blessing is also a possibility.

Enjoy your posts...sorry for gliding off topic.

I get that the 60's were not all wine and roses for some. Some were beaten and battered and they marched on. People seeing hate met with resistance and resolve, but done in love made them go "wait a minute".

This country did not allow same-sex marriage, it changed by the actions of countless people who demanded it be changed but did so non-violently. It is, like King demonstrated, in reaching across the divide to clasp hands that one can dream with a chance of it being real with your eyes open.

It was those people willing to stand in love and speak of love when they might be hated, to be vulnerable, to show their love.... that made others say "wait a minute".

So, is love a power to be reckoned with? Yes.

Do both have to agree on a "something" or even agree to love each other? No.

Those who insist on loving, who hold fast to it, will make the world see that haters are haters, that what is unloving must stop...

Jesus, Gandhi, Chavez, King, the Dalai Lama.....

Thank you each and all for letting your point of view speak to the opening post.

I have continued with my own thinking and have the image of Jesus speaking about the Jerusalem temple paling by comparison with a flower of the field.

That temple was built by Herod the Great and folk were comparing it with Solomon's. Jesus seems to take the achievement of Herod's power as inconsequential and without any real future; unlike the flower in the field, or the sparrow, or the single coin lost and found.

We, too, may be much impressed by the marvels springing from the imagination of our minds and the initiative of our wills. In some sense the towers springing up ever taller are considered the manifest evidence of human power to order the raw material of creation.

In the shadow of those towers there is a great deal of attention given to the celebration of the latest, newest achievement of power at micro and macro levels.

Looking at the things forged from nature we, like the ancients we respect, and from whom we learn, may benefit from a gentle reminder of nature's own claim to power.

May we not put words in the mouth of Jesus to make it plain that all of our powers to manipulate the material realm are paled by comparison to the flower in a field, the widow along the way, and the wonder of personal faith effective contrary to all evidence and proof?

God knows our powers have produced marvels. God knows just as well that we long for some power to break us free of the implications and consequences of those self made marvels. Has our power not opened the way to chaos by the seduction of our hearts and captivity of our minds? Can our power set us free?

From a Buddhist perspective the problem is desire and the way out is to desire the end of desire. 

May we say that the power we have is best dedicated to the subordination of power, beginning at the core of our own opportunity for difference in a world hungry for difference?

Subordinate power to what?

LOVE!

I've just returned from the first public meeting of the Sydney Alliance - and I'm all fired up with enthusiasm!

It's an alliance of trade unions, community groups, and faith groups.

The Town Hall was packed to capacity.  As regards faith groups - it was wonderful to see Catholic cardinals on stage with orthodox Catholics, our Uniting Church in Australia moderator. Also present were those from the Islamic community, leaders from the Jewish Board of Deputies, Hindus,,,,,,,,,

As they emphasised, "we are here to share our common human experience, not to focus on our differences". 

We intend to act as a pressure group to politicians - and we were gratified to see many politicians present.

I have decided to work for the social inclusion group - as I find the racism and religious intolerance in my country troublesome.

A young Lebanese Australian spoke of how he felt an outsider in this country - despite the fact that he was born here.

I intend to do my damnest to convince as many folks as I can how insidious is the fear of difference, whether it be racial, religious, or sexual.

The drive for conventional power has, at it's base, fear.

That fear can relate to a desire "to have more than" in some form.

As I see it, the only power that can surpass this is the power of love. 

Oh, so many aliens, so many things to fear and hate ... although the script stated at least 366 times not to fear ... thus hate would subside? Hate is SAN' in the archaic Hebrew tongue .... and yet power has corrupted the word ...

Now does mite make right? You get that impression! Where does thought reside? It's a wee small thing beyond in an upset world sort of reciprocal ... few have found IT ... in an emotional state ... one must focus small ... sort of humble like the wee match girl .. that'll set fire to your legacy on this side of the line ... Dagon in an old myth ... beyond the mortal field is a dark flowering ... some called Ur Lilleth ... but perhaps lull'd into peace by the change in letters accomplished in a slippery way so mortals wouldn't see ID ... live in the primal power is humble ... like the page supports word ... food for psyche in a cyclic loupe that's a pain ... Romantism is inclusive there ... as vast enclosure ... of Phi Li Stein ... sacred trust? Few can see ID!

One must put the Mos Ache together .. to get the full story of man's brutality to mankind without psyche ... that's sol' eh! Yah gotta feel IT ... others walk numbly and blind, what IHS said were the sleepers ... those on the other side of threshold ... that's Dagan in allegory ... Allah Gory Humour ... or just bloody odd to catch our foci ...?