Who Are We? MNV Co-Founders Respond

Our co-founders recently shared their answers for the same question from our Listening Cards. This week’s question is from the Who Are We? category:

Why do you think humans continue to make space for hate and discrimination
in our speech, our stories, our religious institutions, and in our homes?
In what ways is it seemingly beneficial? In what ways not?

Victoria Chance, Executive Director

“Hate is often a large, childish emotion that wells up in my head, bypassing my gut and my heart. It tells me a story that makes me a victim and tells me lies about being separate from other people and from the very soil of my birth. As a child, the god I was introduced to seemed to approve of and sanctify hate, and weirdly He needed my help to judge, protect, and save others. This Almighty God was sneaky, vengeful, and could fit rigidly between the two covers of a fancy, floppy book. Still, admittedly, I loved the black and white righteousness of it all; the mindlessness, the stark boundaries—who’s in; who’s out—so easy when couched in a false love of what separates us, not in the reality of what absolutely binds us all together. So, obediently, I made room for hate out of fear and selfishness. I learned the handy targets for my white and privileged discrimination.

 But it never felt right or true or comfortable, somehow. That’s because, providentially, Agnes was my grandma. (And later, Spencer was my gay friend and Johnny was my first secret crush in 5th grade, and he was Black) Agnes was widowed young with two children who worked in the local mill all her life. Yet, she made room for her grandchildren, and as I watched and listened to her, slowly I began to realize that she was fearless, kind, unconditionally loving, and brave. Everybody had a place in her imagination, including plants and creatures. She’s the one who demonstrated the unfathomable power of love: not the pushing kind or the discriminatory kind, but the very opposite: the welcoming; the making-room kind; the forgiving-to-be-forgiven kind of love that has a tenderness toward every suffering one of us. She loved Jesus and so she loved her neighbor, which for her, meant everyone. She never spoke of hate. She loved me. She showed up.

 I guess we make room for hate because we haven’t had the inspiration, opportunity, or bravery to look beyond or beneath it. It’s easier. It’s large and loud. For some it’s political and godly. Hate gets temporary but wretched results. And if we look at it too long, we can see the trail of regret, shame, and sorrow spindling behind it—all things that only love can sort and soothe.

 I don’t know any wisdom teacher or sacred scripture that has ever taught hate as a path to wholeness, joy, and contentment. I guess that’s because it doesn’t exist. What I do know is that we can choose love just as easily as hate in any given moment. And it’s that choice that puts each one of us in the middle of the path of the peacemaker or the destroyer. I will always choose love.”

Mary Anne Inglis, Co-Founder

“I grew up in a large family with parents who taught us to live by the “golden rule” of “Do unto others what you would have them do to you.” I assumed it was to keep all of us siblings headed in the right direction with each other when I was younger, but as I grew up, I saw my parents living this rule out  in our community and beyond.  It was assumed that this was just part of how you lived, whether you were a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu or a person of another faith or no faith.  

Fast forward to the summer of 2010 when my husband was running for re-election in SC-4.  He was having a “health care tour” where he invited the public to come talk about what they thought were the best solutions for offering the best health care.  On one occasion, a young man had just poured out his heart about his young wife’s sudden decline into an unknown illness and the hurdles they had had to get through within the health care system.  An older woman wearing an American flag jean jacket and a large cross looked at him at the end of this story and said, “That’s not our problem, is it?”  It was then that I saw in full bloom what has always been simmering below the surface in our political dialogue - a real disdain for our neighbor. I was cut to the bone. Where was the teaching of Jesus, that she seemed to follow, in this woman’s heart?  Where was the fruit of the greatest commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself?” 

I am afraid that it is easier to hate than to love.  It is easier to rally friends and foes against a common enemy whether that enemy is real or made up. It is easier to garner support for movements when you are “against something”.  It is easier to be divisive than to seek common ground, which often means compromising to reach common goals. 

We all have a choice to either take the path of hate or the path of love. May we all choose the better path and start the healing that is so desperately needed right now.”

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Thank you for joining us for this special opportunity to hear the voices of the women who started it all, Mary Anne and Victoria.

Want to share YOUR voice? Join us for an upcoming event!