CIVIL REVOLUTION: CROSS-POLLINATION

 ross pollination is when one plant pollinates a plant of another variety. The two plants’ genetic material combines and the resulting seeds from that pollination will have characteristics of both varieties and is a new variety. Sometimes cross pollinating is used intentionally in the garden to create new varieties. For example, a popular hobby is to cross pollinate tomato varieties to attempt to create new, better varieties. In these cases, the varieties are purposefully cross pollinated. Other times, cross pollination in plants occurs when outside influences, like the wind or bees, carry pollen from one variety to another [unintentionally].*

What in the world does this have to do with a civil revolution, you ask? Our relationships are a major source of brokenness and blessedness in this life. In order to increase the blessings we give and receive, we can learn a lot from nature on how to grow in understanding each other. The mixing and combining of genes in plants creates the genetic variety that fosters diversity and long-term stability of populations. Isn’t that what we should be pursuing in the midst of today’s lack of civility and rampant civil unrest? 

Richard Dawkins created the term “meme” to describe how ideas can flow like genes through populations (The Selfish Gene. 1976). I think that is the key to the continued success of our species; the sharing of ideas and culture. Exchange [cross-pollination] facilitates understanding. I haven’t done a survey, but I’d be willing to bet most racists did not have significant multicultural experiences. When we are surrounded with people who are exactly like ourselves, we get nothing but reinforcement of our own ideas – which may or may not be true. Case in point – poll 100 people at a Maroon 5 concert who is the best band of all time.***

In my own life, I have witnessed the benefits of both types of cross-pollination – unintentional and intentional. The first ten years of my life were spent in New York near Ossining, home of the infamous Sing Sing prison. I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t settle here in order to help me and my siblings to cross-pollinate with other cultures. It was the unintentional reality of living a mere stone’s throw from New York City. We were not the ‘white majority.’ Instead, we were just one of a multiplicity of ethnicities: Italians, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, Blacks, Portuguese, Jews, and Whites – a hodgepodge of humanity.There was a constant interchange of ideas as we roamed the neighborhood, rode the bus to school, and navigated our way through the public school system. Every child was taught at home to be proud of ‘where you came from,’ but it was rarely a cause for serious conflict with kids of other ethnicities. In fact, it was not unusual to share a meal at a neighbor’s home where the parents alternated between speaking their native tongue and English – adaptation at its finest. Through it all, my siblings and I learned a lot about the larger world from the little corner we inhabited. It gave me a thirst to want to seek to understand people who were different than I – not realizing at the time that it would be a lifelong occupation. Because, “to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived. None of our energy will go into what we need to be doing for the rest of our lives: engaging in ongoing self-awareness, continuing education, relationship building…”***  and putting our newfound knowledge into practice. That is what we might define as wisdom, moving forward from merely being receptacles of information to acting upon the knowledge we have gained.

Moving to southern California on my tenth birthday altered the garden completely. Suddenly, the majority of people we were surrounded by looked just like us. My brother called it “Wonder Bread Land.” The opportunity for cross-pollination of ideas would be slim here – unless you considered The Beach Boys and the culture they eschewed. Racial and cultural variety was at a bare minimum. Many we interacted with seemed to be like gardeners who were “afraid that the plants in their vegetable garden will accidentally cross pollinate and that they will end up with fruit on the plant that is sub-standard. [But] Most cases where the fruit looks odd happens because the plant is suffering from a problem that affects the fruit, such as pests, disease or nutrient deficiencies.”^ Why is this? Because without a community, we are prone to listen only to our own lives and buy into our own delusions, which are often a direct result of our ignorance or arrogance. 

A specific example of this comes from the life of Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play major league professional baseball:

Although he never did anything overtly negative, I felt that Manager Clay Hopper had never really accepted me. He was careful to be courteous, but prejudice against the Negro was deeply ingrained in him. Much, much later in my career, after I had left the Montreal club, the depths of Hopper’s bigotry were revealed to me. Very early during my first Montreal season, Mr. Rickey [President and part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers] and Hopper had been standing together watching the team work out, when I made an unusually tricky play. Mr. Rickey said to Hopper that the play I had just executed was “superhuman.” Hopper, astonished, asked Mr. Rickey, “Do you really think a n_____ is a human being?” Mr. Rickey was furious, but he made a successful effort to restrain himself and he told me why. “I saw that this Mississippi-born man was sincere, that he meant what he said; that his attitude of regarding the Negro as a subhuman was part of his heritage; that here was a man who had practically nursed race prejudice at his mother’s breast,” Mr. Rickey said.^^

“Like the smoker so accustomed to the odor, the atmosphere in which they live, the person with polluted speech has little or no sense of it - no sense that they exhale bad breath every time they speak.”^^^ If we are going to be intentional about cross-pollinating, we have to heed the words of John Bunyan: “I was as willing to be taught as to give instruction, and I looked upon it as my duty to do both.” And there is a heightened warning from the Reverend John Wesley regarding Christians’ need to be humble when communicating with those who do not share their same views on Jesus: “To imagine none can teach you but those who are themselves saved from sin, is a very great and dangerous mistake.”^^^^ 

Video: Why It's Worth Listening to People You Disagree With

 

Music: Black or White 

Without cross-pollination of ideas, “a species cannot adapt to a changing world. So, generally speaking, gene flow keeps a population healthy – whether we’re talking plants, animals or people. There are definite reasons why so many plants have mechanisms to promote cross rather than self pollination. [Because] gene flow allows for adaptation and helps minimize deleterious genes… If a deleterious gene appears and it’s not selected out, that could be disaster for an isolated population.”* 

How do we make sure that we do not become isolated, allowing the recessive gene pool to wreak havoc on an entire population? We must proactively seek to cross-pollinate by listening to others with humility, then speak with love into their lives, serve alongside them, and move forward by offering forgiveness. We must remember that John Donne’s oft-quoted words ring forth as true for entire communities, not just individuals:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

The following is an example of one man’s effort at cross-pollination that began with the simple act of picking up a phone to speak with a person who held a widely divergent belief system than his own – someone the world might consider his ‘enemy.’ If you don’t think this is a front-burner issue, you must be avoiding the media in all its manifestations. As stated at the beginning of this paper, a glance at social media and news will show how vitriolic people are when they disagree with each other, even when they’re on the same ‘team.’ And the whole political CNN/Fox debacle continues to show the ever-widening chasm. Civility in communication is at an all-time low. Yet, the conversation that ensued between these two men shows it is very possible to create a new ‘variety’ in the human race by “turning from evil and doing good, seeking peace and pursuing it.”**

For nearly a decade now, my organization, Campus Pride, has been on the ground with student leaders protesting Chick-fil-A at campuses across the country. I had researched Chick-fil-A’s nearly $5 million in funding, given since 2003, to anti-LGBT groups. And the whole nation was aware that Dan was “guilty as charged” in his support of a “biblical definition” of marriage. What more was there to know? On Aug. 10, 2012, in the heat of the controversy, I got a surprise call from Dan Cathy… I took the call with great caution. He was going to tear me apart, right? Give me a piece of his mind? Turn his lawyers on me?

The first call lasted over an hour, and the private conversation led to more calls the next week and the week after… His questions and a series of deeper conversations ultimately led to a number of in-person meetings with Dan and representatives from Chick-fil-A. He had never before had such dialogue with any member of the LGBT community. It was awkward at times but always genuine and kind.

It is not often that people with deeply held and completely opposing viewpoints actually risk sitting down and listening to one another…Through all this, Dan and I shared respectful, enduring communication and built trust. His demeanor has always been one of kindness and openness. Even when I continued to directly question his public actions and the funding decisions, Dan embraced the opportunity to have dialogue and hear my perspective…Throughout the conversations Dan expressed a sincere interest in my life, wanting to get to know me on a personal level… Dan expressed regret and genuine sadness when he heard of people being treated unkindly in the name of Chick-fil-a — but he offered no apologies for his genuine beliefs about marriage…He had to face the issue of respecting my viewpoints and life even while not being able to reconcile them with his belief system. He defined this to me as “the blessing of growth.” He expanded his world without abandoning it. I did, as well.'***

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*Heather Rhoades, Cross-Pollination in Plants, Gardening Know How. https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/vgen/cross-pollination.htm Accessed 5/31.

**Erick Lux, email correspondence, 5/28/2020

***Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2018, Kindle – location 317

^Heather Rhoades, Cross-Pollination in Plants, Gardening Know How. https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/vgen/cross-pollination.htm Accessed 5/31

^^Jackie Robinson, I Never Had it Made, New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2013, Kindle – location 932

^^^John Piper & Justin Taylor (General Editors), The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009, 49

 ^^^^John Wesley, The Works of Rev. John Wesley, New York, NY: Harper, 1827, 53

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*Erick Lux, email correspondence, 5/28/2020

**Psalm 34:14

***Shane L. Windmeyer, “Dan and Me: My Coming Out as a Friend of Dan Cathy and Chick-Fil-a,” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-l-windmeyer/dan-cathy-chick-fil-a_b_2564379.html.accessed 8/10/17