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Ron sometimes does this "That's bad --> That's good --> That's bad --> That's good" story thingie at the beginning of his teachings.  (e.g. He fell off the roof; that's bad.  There was a haystack below; that's good.  There was a spike in the haystack; that's bad.  He missed it; that's good.)

That's how my birthday was last week.

I've been feeling really low lately.  I'm lonely, and I'm sad.  I've been spending most of my non-working time at home in my room with the door closed, mostly sleeping.  It's not a great way to deepen the relationships I've started since coming here.  I didn't have anyone to do anything with, not anyone that wouldn't, though I may really like them, make me feel exhausted.  I had a deep, loud cry that morning.

In the afternoon, I went on a gorgeous, hope restoring hike.  As I started it, I got a promising email about a job I've applied for.

When I got home, some of the crappiness had settled back in, and I had to take a nap.

I got up and made an appointment to quick go over to the shiatsu place and get a massage.  After that, I met Neil and Jarlath for a drink and a burger.  I wore my favorite baggy-ass ripped jeans and a new shirt I found at Goodwill that's an exact copy of a shirt my old principal had that I was jealous of.

When I got home, the sad was back.

7 x 70

I was struck particularly, yesterday as I rode the bus to work, by the difficulty of finding something new to say about "Martin's dream and look at us now... no better," etc.  And yet it's worth saying every year.  Worth it, but it feels fucking futile.

Reports of police murders of unarmed People of Color keep coming and keep being infuriating.  And we should keep marching.

Mass shootings keep on happening.  And every time we say, "What's it going to take?," and "Something has to be done," and we keep pointing out, and we should, how coverage of White shooters leans toward mental illness and coverage of violence committed by People of Color condemns "terrorists" and "thugs."  I'd love to hear someone on the news call for moderate White people to speak out against White supremacist extremists; but we always hear how moderate Muslims need to take a stand.  And we should keep being pissed and saying so.

Though it usually doesn't get much new coverage, men perpetrate violence against women at outrageous rates.  And actually, not often enough do we make a big ol' deal about that -- which is why this interview about the rape of a woman by a bunch of teens in a playground is so gratifying.

CNN newscaster: She was drunk, combative, and bit a police officer.  What would you say about that? 

Badass: I would say that that's typical.  That individuals often talk about the woman.  We rarely talk about the individuals who actually committed the rape.  Those are the individuals we should be focused on right now... We need to focus on those five individuals who committed this heinous crime.  And what were the bad decisions that they made all throughout the day?  Had they been drinking?  Had they been smoking?  What would put something in someone's mind to make them think that that was okay?

So mundane and so exhausting and then so fucked up for being mundane and exhausting.

(And I want to be really clear that as a White person, I by no means claim the kind of exhaustion that I might be party to had I not this White body that keeps me safe from the same kinds of danger that I'm railing against.  I'm in no danger of being gunned down by a police officer who thinks I'm dangerous just by the look of me.  What a privilege.)

I sat on the bus wondering what was the point of it all, and I was struck with remembering the time when one of the apostles is sick and tired of being sick and tired and asks Jesus, "How many times am I supposed to forgive these fools? Seven times?"  And Jesus says, "Seven times seventy times."  -- Which I have to believe is a Biblical way of saying what I might call "a thousand billion trillion million times." Because it seems like he's saying so many times.  And it's 986 people that were killed by the police last year.  And that's more than 490.

How many times do we have to notice on Dr. King Day that White (patriarchal, homophobic, capitalist) supremacy has what seems like an impossibly firm hold on our lives? A thousand billion trillion million times.

the soul felt its worth

"Long lay the world / in sin and error pining / 'til he appeared / and the soul felt its worth."

Still my favorite.  I cannot get enough of this song.  I even listen to the Christmas song radio session, suffering through the likes of “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime” in case they play “O Holy Night” next.

“The soul felt its worth”

I’m writing this from 30,000 feet, on my way home for Christmas.  As we took off, I noticed that I was terrified.  That’s typical for me except that last year, I remember feeling that if the plane crashed, I would really be okay with that.  No fear.  Whatever.

“Appeared” and “Felt”

Past tense.  I love that.  Jesus has already appeared, has already helped us to make sense of the worth of our souls.  Reminds me of the Magnificat, Mary’s prayer upon learning of her pregnancy.  She praises a God who has already brought justice to our world – an audacious and almost praise given the continuing injustices in her world and in ours.  Her past tense praise claims an absolute faith in God’s intention to keep God’s promise to us – that we are Good and that God wants to be with us and wants to work with us to bring us in to closer relationship with God.

Mary’s prayer reflects and moves beyond Hannah’s prayer on the occasion of her own conception of Samuel, centuries before Mary lived.  Hannah finishes her own past-tense praise with a reiteration of her faith in God’s promise to the people of Israel; Mary finishes her prayer with the assertion that God’s promise extends to all people.  I went on and on about this here.

And Mary’s and Hannah’s past-tense prayers are reflected in “O Holy Night,” written in 1847.  And Mariah Carey killed it in 1994.  I mean am I right or am I right.

“Long lay the world / in sin and error pining”

Laying versus pining.  One passive, the other more active.  Both demonstrations of hopelessness.

I talked with Theon recently about a sermon on waiting that he was working on.  So difficult, he said, because it doesn’t seem like a time to wait.  I know what he means.  Each time I hear about another atrocity committed against Black folks by the state.  They executed Mario Woods.  He raped thirteen Black women. I want the world to change right now.  I so identify with the compulsion to break some fucking windows.  But the way that change happens is so much more annoyingly slow than that.  And I don’t just mean generation-by-generation.  I mean that right now, organizing a protest means sending out emails ahead of time, making phone calls, strategizing about where and when – all activities that matter to be sure but don’t exactly quench the urge for intense emotional release.  Even attending the protest, shouting and marching.  It matters, but nothing changes in the moment of the marching.  We gotta wait. 

We gotta lay there in our “sin and error.”  Sin is such a blaaaaaghhh word.  Ron always asks us to understand “sin” as“missing the mark,” as inadequately demonstrating the Goodness that God created in us.  So yeah, I sin.  Sometimes intentionally – and sometimes accidentally, in “error.”  We just lay there.  I just go to bed and sleep for hours and hours because I don’t have the energy, physical or mental, to face the world.  The afternoon that I learned of my banishment from the prison, I left work early, went to bed, and didn’t get up until two days later.

But we also pine.  We do organize those protests.  I did meet with the warden and get myself back in.  Waiting is not essentially passive.  We can actively wait.

Theon used Romans’ acknowledgment of our groaning in his sermon.  When we groan, we lay there and we try to pine, but we can’t find the words, the energy, the effective strategies.  We try and yet sometimes all we can manage is to groan, and God hears our groaning.

“O Holy Night.” 

The darkness, it’s still holy.

Donna told me a couple of weeks ago, as I feared aloud that I could feel the lowness setting back in, that it could take over again: Use the hopelessness.  Write about it.  Let it teach you.

At Bible study this week, a year from my first time at Bible study, we read again the story that we read and I wrote about last year.  This year, what struck me was the genocide caused by Jesus’ entry into our world.  He appeared, and the soul felt its worth, and Herod had all of the Jewish baby boys slaughtered, and the mothers weeped.

We got a genocide, and we got a baby.  And we’re supposed to accept that the baby is it.  That’s so hard.  They keep killing Black people.  They keep raping women.  They keep demonizing immigrants.  They keep refusing refugees.  And we get a baby.

Sara from Bible study collected money last week so that we could send baby toys and some cards to women incarcerated in the private prison up the street.  They’re there because they’re either in the last months of their pregnancy or somewhere in the first three months of their babies’ lives.  I can’t imagine.  We get a baby, and we get an incarcerated mother.  I’m not okay with that.

But we gotta wait.  And he’s already appeared.

"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?": Jesus keeps it real.

I really love Holy Week.  So much.  As a kid, I was in the choir at St. Albert's, and Holy Week was so intense.  There were certain colors we had to wear, weird prayers/songs/psalms in the misselette that we had to do that we only ever did on Holy Thursday, or Good Friday, etc. I specifically remember a big-ass fire lit in the middle of the nave on Holy Saturday.  And once on Good Friday, when the mass started at 3, the priest came up the nave in silence and laid himself prostrate, arms out to the sides, behind the altar and at the foot of the crucifix.

The choir director also put on an elaborate passion play that I was in every year.  (I loved that choir director, and she died several years ago.  Here's the new janky version of St. Albert's passion play.) I was just a kid in the crowd for most of the play, but I also got to play an angel several years in a row.  (1) I had the biggest crush on the guy who played Jesus.  (2) We got to wear these white leotards with flowy white skirts and do this silent and beautiful dance to "This is Holy Ground" with all of the lights in the church turned out except for the black lights shining on us.

The acute somberness of it all freaked me out in the best way possible.

I'm saying that facetiously, but also seriously.  I'm grateful that my catastrophically boring experience of religion during my upbringing did not ruin my capacity to really feel Holy Week.


Some favorite readings --

On Holy Thursday, Jesus acts like a straight-up human: "[H]e fell with his fact to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.'" (NIV Matthew 26:39)  He knows what's coming, and he's like, "Ohmygoodness, is there any way you could make it so that I don't have to do this?"



On Good Friday:

Before the cross is anything else, it is a catastrophe. It is the unjust and violent lynching of an innocent man. It is the murder of God. Jesus is sacrificed by the Father only in this sense: The Father sent his Son into our system of violent power (civilization) to reveal how utterly sinful it is — so sinful that it will murder the Innocent One. God did not will the murder of his Son, he simply knew it would occur.

Also, Jesus acts super human (not super-human) again on Friday, when he can't help but scream out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" It's not easy for him to "just trust that God has a plan" for him, that "everything happens for a reason."  He's like, "Holy fuck, why are you letting this happen!?" (It's also a beautiful echo of the tortured and desperate faith expressed in Psalm 22.)




On Holy Saturday:

There are some things we can know on this Saturday. Jesus is dead, to begin with, dead and buried. He said the world was upside-down and needed a revolution to turn it right-way-round and so he was executed for disturbing the peace. He came and said love was greater than power, and so power killed him.

... 

Why should we expect that tomorrow will be any different? 

Seriously, just look around. Does it look like the meek are inheriting the earth? Does it look like those who hunger and thirst for justice are being filled? Does it look like the merciful are being shown mercy? 

Jesus was meek and merciful and hungry for justice and look where that got him. They killed him. We killed him. Power won. 

...

“But in fact,” St. Paul says, everything changes on Sunday. Come Sunday power loses. Come Sunday, love wins, the meek shall inherit, the merciful will receive mercy and no one will ever go hungry for justice again. Come Sunday, everything changes.
If there ever is a Sunday. 

On Easter Sunday:

Sundays have always been important to Black people. Sunday was the only day that slaves were given a break from their unpaid labor to praise God and openly dream of deliverance. Sunday was the only day that shines became pastors, maids became deaconesses, “boys” and “aunties” became “Mr.” and “Mrs.” But Easter Sunday took things to another level. Men and boys rocking pastel colored suits, little girls wearing shiny shoes and white gloves, and church mothers with huge ornate hats proved that White supremacy had not stolen our joy or stripped our style. Easter Sunday was a sartorial testimony to the beauty and power of Black culture.  

...  

Easter calls us to remember the plight of the prisoner. Because of his political activism and message of social justice, Jesus was declared an enemy of the Roman State and sentenced to the death penalty. His crucifixion was a State execution that was both “cruel” and “unusual.” His most important followers, Peter and Paul, were prisoners who died in custody. The story of Jesus is a reminder to challenge state authority, question unjust laws, and offer humanizing mercy to the prisoner. 

The holiday is a testimony to the power of actionable love. Most of us confess love for someone or something: our partners, our friends, our families, our community. But the story of Easter is a reminder that this love is best actualized through the choices we make and the sacrifices we offer. Love of the poor should translate into humane public policy. Love of the Black community should be reflected in investment, both by the State and other Black people. Love of women should lead to the elimination of rape culture. Love must become a verb.

I also really loved the way Tóibín took up Holy Week in this book.  All playful/for-real jabs at hypermasculinity aside, the book takes up Mary's horror in devastatingly beautiful ways:

"[I]f you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.  It was not worth it" (80).

And while we're giving Irish men the mic, this, too.

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured. 

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home. 

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme. 

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells. 

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky 

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.