“Not everything that is faced can be changed,” James Baldwin wrote, “but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” The task at hand is not to change behavior but rather to see clearly. After all, God doesn’t want anything “from” us, only “for” us. God won’t be loving a homie more if he stops gangbanging. God only has this holy longing to free us from terror and anxiety. A by-product of knowing this is behavior change. Then God’s vision becomes ours. “When we see clearly,” says Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein, “we behave impeccably.”
