Denali was a spiritual teacher and friend (now crossed over) whose teaching was all about truth, love, and innocence. This was his Holy Trinity and Innocence was the union of masculine and feminine and the very essence of being.

As soon as I first heard that emphasis on innocence I was hooked. It felt good in my heart and it become a guiding light. It can’t be separated from presence or the paradoxes inherent in being human. It doesn’t bypass the messiness but speaks directly to my (limited) experience of true nature. It’s innate, not earned, not something that can be stripped away. It’s relaxing and loving, healing and empowering.

This is innocence as wide eyes, soft heart, open hands, and an unshakable resilience and courage.

Innocence and Restorative Justice

Innocence is also very relevant and challenging in a restorative justice context. We acknowledge harm and the need for accountability and repair. Adding in a foundation of innate innocence deepens the work and makes it more potentially transformational.

We can start by being honest that the belief in guilt and punishment are part and parcel of the dominant worldview and the belief in separateness, and that we’re all still healing from that wound.

The lens of innocence catalyzes the dropping of guilt, blame, shame, and punishment. Instead, we see the full person before us, the universal human needs that are in play, and what wants to happen to repair the harm and restore relationships. Framing harm as unmet needs goes a long way in moving us beyond old paradigm thinking and tendencies toward conflict avoidance in general.

Here we have innocence as a clearer way of seeing people and our interconnedness and a way of manifesting a life-affirming, deeper kind of justice.

Innocence as Ignorance

There is also a distinctly American kind of social-political innocence that is deadly. It landed on my radar with a resounding thud while reading Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons For Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

Here is Glaude, following Baldwin, in the context of race and racism:

Blasphemous facts must be banished from view by a host of public rituals and incantations. Our gaze averted, we then congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come and ruthlessly blame those in the shadows for their plight in life.

Here we have innocence as naiveté, as ignorance, denial, and avoidance. As a lie that is deadly because it’s ahistorical and anti-historical, because it disregards the ugly, murderous underbelly of empire, justifies and perpetuates all forms of violence against anyone deemed “other.” Deadly because it’s a choice made by so many over and over again.

Baldwin saw it as part of the American character and I agree. When I went out into the larger world at age 22 (off to Sweden to live), I was steeped in this kind of innocence. When my Swedish classmates would confront me with the implications of then president Reagan’s policies, my first response was not to weigh the facts and opinions before me but rather, “don’t talk shit about my president.” It never surprises anyone that they knew more about U.S. history than I did.

It’s not just those who go so far as to ban history books and attempt to institutionalize ignorance, but all of us have something to look at here because the myths and mantras, the beliefs and bigotry, are woven into our DNA and ignorance is the path of least resistance.

May these reflections support maturity, justice, and healthy forms of innocence. I’m ever grateful to Denali for peaking my interest in this topic and I’m sad his books are no longer available. Blessings on all the truth tellers and all the people working to wake themselves up and respond accordingly.  The title of Glaude’s book comes from a James Baldwin quote:

Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.