next time (2-4/4)

Speaking of privilege... A view of the Halwilersee from the Vitabella Hotel, where we have our annual choir weekend.

I had visions of writing a post on each of the four The Fire Next Time workshop sessions. Which isn't going to happen. I did finally watched all of them though!

In the end Rev. Ali'a didn't really do much beyond talk at the group, usually something that frustrates me to no end. But I listened to each session at least twice. There was just so much in there that resonated with me. Maybe I liked that rather than selling one point of view, she spent her time trying to draw lines between things - to weave her own particular web of humanist philosophy, Black liberation thought, Nichiren Buddhism, and the writings of James Baldwin. Drawing lines between things is a hobby of mine as well!

In that spirit, here are four things that I've been chewing on this week.

Thing One:

White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.
- James Baldwin, Letter from a Region in my Mind

I'm thinking about this idea with reference to Christianity and evangelization. What is it that makes the unsaved so incredibly necessary to our self-image as a religion? How/is this related to capitalism and continuous growth?

Thing Two:

There's a natural obligation
To what we own and claim
Possessing and belonging to
Acknowledging a name
So keep your hand wide open
If you're needing love today
'Cause you can't lose it
Even if you throw it all away

[Chorus]
Throw it away
You can throw it away
Give your love, live your life
Each and every day
And keep your hand wide open
And let the sun shine through
'Cause you can never lose a thing
If it belongs to you
- Abbey Lincoln, Throw it Away

So I tried out an online prayer group on Wednesday and we read the story in Genesis 16 of Hagar being abused by her mistress Sarai, fleeing into the desert, meeting God, and having him send her back to Sarai. And I just couldn't with the number of people in the group whose reaction to this story was some version of "isn't it amazing how God is always taking care of us!" No. Sending someone back into an abusive situation does not count as care: not now and not 3,000 years ago either.

I think that we generally mean one of two things when we talk about God: either we mean God as in All That Is or we mean God as the force for Love in a world in which there are other forces as well. I'm so tired of people blithely claiming that these two Gods are the same - effectively refusing to acknowledge the suffering of others, because usually they aren't suffering themselves - and calling that "faith."

But. The mystics of the world, among them Abbey Lincoln, tell us that there is a unity between All That Is and Love. Not a facile equivalence, but a deep truth: trust and generosity is the right and natural response to this rare and precious gift of life. Even in the face of all that holds us back. Rev. Ali'a: "our goal is to liberate our love from disappointment, frustration, fear and anger, cynicism, apathy and hopelessness."

Thing Three:

So I lived in Berlin during the time of the Wall, and I once wrote something about what I started hearing in East Germany, which actually ... the wall did not surround the East Germans - it surrounded West Berlin - but they felt that it was around them. And how children in school, when they were invited to draw pictures of where they came from, the wall was there, and then there would be birds flying over it, and insects crawling under it. And a little girl who I knew very well came to her father one day, and he told me about this with great pain and said, “My daughter came to me, she’d had this incredible idea. And she said, ‘Papi, let’s go along the wall and keep on going and keep on going because somewhere it will have to come to an end.’” And of course, he had to tell her that that was not true.
...
we’ve heard a lot of stories in the last few days of people ... realizing that they have to engage the future precisely because children refuse to not have a future.
- Krista Tippett, in the "On Seeing the Trauma of the Other" episode of the On Being podcast

Children refuse to not have a future. On the one hand: it's the very definition of immaturity to be unable to face your own finitude. On the other: the force of that!

Thing Four:

“This is precisely where I need to be, and I think exactly where we need to be as a nation, at this moment,” Mr. Hegseth, standing at a lectern bearing the seal of the Defense Department, said in his opening remarks: “in prayer, on bended knee recognizing the providence of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.” He added, “Knowing that there’s an author in heaven overseeing all of this, who’s underwritten all of it, for us, on the cross, gives me the strength to proceed.”
- U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during his "Secretary of Defense Christian Prayer & Worship Service" held in the Pentagon’s auditorium (as reported in this NYT article)

So see what I mean? Yes indeed, there is an author who has underwritten all of this. It's happening, so All That Is is behind it. But does that mean we get to claim that it's Good, that it's underwritten by the Love of a man who was crucified? No. Love stands firmly on the side of disenfranchised, the unloved. This is power claiming for itself a gospel proclaimed to the weak. See: Thing One, above.

The truth is that I'm with him on the "we need to be in prayer" front. But not like that.