TIME FOR A CHANGE

I went to our church building yesterday to set up some things for “virtual worship” (whatever the hell that means!).  I happened to look at, not just glance at, the bulletin board by the front door.  It still had the Lenten flyer with the schedule and the list of Sunday Gospels.  I had written it in late January, in order to send it out ahead of time, and had forgotten our theme of Lent. It is: “A Big Change Is Coming!”  I guess so!  I was referring to the wonderful stories of liberation: the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, Lazarus raised from the dead.  I did NOT anticipate thousands dying, the economy ground to a halt, physical isolation of our flock.

I’ve seen memes on social media that say something like:  “Look out for a bush of babies born nine months from now!”  Maybe.  But maybe, also we need to look out for a rush of divorces in two or three months.  Sharing space all day has it’s blessings; it also uncovers some of our defects of character and lack of real communication gifts.

For me, it has also opened me up to reflecting more on the world view, or cosmovision of how we live together.  Let me start by sharing some reflections on this old, battered book that I’ve been reading during Lent:

If you can see, the book has been with me a long time. The price tag says $1.45, but I think I may even have bought it for less at a used book store, back in the 1970’s.  Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander was published in 1966. It was written by Thomas Merton, who was a Cistercian monk, part of an order that maintains a strict silence.  And yet, Merton was one of the most astute commentators on social issues of the day, from civil rights to the war in Viet Nam to the environment.

Merton writes about the “disease” of the U.S. involves seeing ourselves through lenses of innocence.  That way of seeing (which is really a way of blindness) imagines our country as being liberated from history: we are the New World.  We’ve started fresh, without the old evil of the places we left (meaning Europe).  Because of that core belief, our ideology refuses to see evil as something in us.  Rather, evil, decay, sin are located “outside of us”.  In other cultures and ways of thinking.  In the sixties, Merton sees how the prevailing ideology locates evil in communism, “outside agitators” and “uncivilized peoples” and how our collective memory celebrates only our unique goodness.  Even the evil we have done—for example, slavery—is celebrated as something we ended.  We took care of it with a terrible war, and then moved on.

Of course, that is not the experience of those who were enslaved—before and after legal slavery. Nor the genocide experience of Native Americans, nor the experience of Vietnamese and Central Americans, where the US “fought for democracy”, and for many other people.  In “seeing for innocence”, we make even the victims of our oppression and violence into the guilty ones.

I can’t find the exact quote from him, but the essence is that when we locate evil as something outside of us, we always end up being violent.

Merton also reflects on the great Myth of the American State, which flows from our supposed Innocence: a fervent belief in Progress.  It is so hard for me not to fall under the spell of that power.  I so want the world to be better, and I have seen advances we have made.  But faith in Progress is a shaky faith.

I’ve heard over and over during these past weeks the phrase: “we will get through this”.  I’ve said it to others, usually adding the word “together” at the end.  On the one hand, it is a message of hope, and hope is so needed right now.

But clinging to the idea that “we will get through this” can keep us from doing the hard work of grieving that this terrible crisis is causing.

The truth of it is that we will not be all right.  Not all of us will be all right.  Our Lt. Governor’s brother has died of Covid-19. A Latino owned  restaurant was destroyed by fire, and four other businesses adjacent were heavily damaged.  Five people living in an apartment above the restaurant are now homeless.  Many of our members work in the service industry and have been laid off.  Those who are undocumented will get nothing from the government programs.

Not all of us will be all right.  And in profound ways, all of us will not be all right.           

We may not get through this as we imagine.  We may never “return to normal”. We don’t know what is coming, but we do know that what is happening now is horrible. 

Hope has an answer for that, but true hope—as opposed to optimism—is born out of suffering (see Romans 5:1-5). In order to get to hope in this time, I think we need to lament first.  So much of what is presented to us by the news—and what we ourselves share on social media—are ways to distract us while we are sequestered.  Read books, do home repair projects, binge watch TV series and movies.

Some of those coping mechanisms may be necessary.  But what if we took time to actually feel our grief, experience our loneliness, accept the fact that we are going to die—not in this epidemic necessarily, but some day—and mourn all the daily losses we suffer.  Grief is hard to bear alone, but we do have means of communicating when we can’t be in person.

Many people around the world—Palestinians in eternal lockdown, Yemenis starving in the midst of war, families separated at our border—have learned how to live in the midst of grief and uncertainty that things will get better.  Maybe they can be our teachers.  What better time to do that but Holy Week.

I encourage you to read Merton.  Another good book I’m reading is “Glimpsing Resurrection” by

Deanna Thompson, who writes about living with the trauma of incurable cancer.

The poem “Lament” I include here is first of all, a call to me to not run away from my sorrow and the sorrow of my family and my flock.  It doesn’t offer answers, but I hope that it can help us to journey through our grief together.

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be lament.

Patrick

LAMENT

God is the straw within the straw.

                                                Edith Sitwell

God is the straw within the straw.

The quota of bricks not lessened.

The lash across the slaves’ backs.

God is the straw within the straw.

The family shamed to give birth with the animals.

The baby barely born laid in a feed trough.

The body hunted like a plague.                      

God is the grass within the grass.

The withering, the scythe,

The roaring oven,

The word that does not end.

God is the flesh within each battered flesh.

Bones ground like wheat,

Wind ripened and let loose,

A goblet of sweet and bitter wine passed around the table.

God is the stone within the stone.

Lapis angularis shattered with iron rods.

The rock struck and then struck again,

The pool stirred by the angel.

God is the water within the water.

Leviathan hung by a hook.

A coin in a carp’s mouth.

Rain that refuses to wash away the blood.

God is the wood within the wood.

The seed dead and sprouting green.

Limbs sheltering birds and their songs.

A box shaped like a no.

God is the night within the night.

Moon full, stars strung like teeth,

Comet slung across the horizon,                    

Silence hounding silence.

God is the cry within the cry.

Nipples cracked and bleeding,

The war child’s mouth rippled with sores.

The storehouse locked, horses ready to ride.

God is the question within the question.

How long?

Why me?

Where are you?

God is the pain within the pain.

God is the prayer within the prayer.

God is the doubt within the doubt.

God is the hope within the …