trusting the sacramental wisdom of autumn as american civil religion is shredded...

To a degree, I get why so many mostly white, working class women and men are unsettled these days. Stability and tradition offer us a sense of security; trust and affection for the status quo ground us in shared values, holidays, history, music and culture. This constancy evokes both a sense of place within the big picture and feelings of solidarity. The civil religion that once shaped our American mythos led many of us to believe that we lived in "the home of the brave and the land of the free" where "liberty and justice for all" was a part of the air we breathed.

When the stories that shape our national identity start to unravel, when the shadow side of our history begins to break through the cracks and the ugly truths challenge our lies, instability is to be expected. Social anxiety and reactionary political activity is not significantly different than individual emotional tumult born of betrayal or fear. It is dangerous - and often ugly - in any of its forms. Yet all too familiar, too. Wounded human beings - in isolation or en masse - tend to strike out in violence when their world is up-ended. I think of the viscous words I have used in my past. Or the raging inner violent feelings that screamed for release. Not justice or revenge. Release. As I confessed to a few trusted friends during my darkest hours, "I know where murder comes from now - and know that I have the capacity to do enormous damage - the way of the Nazi is no longer an abstraction. I have that hideous seed within me, too." Thank God for talk therapy and spiritual direction. Thank God for my community of accountability, too. In time I learned to own and let go of realities I could not change - even the ones that tore apart my inner peace.

Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche movement, has written extensively about how living with people with intellectual disabilities will expose us to our darkest secrets and deepest joys. We all have within us the power to create and the ability to destroy. Love and hate are intimately entwined. When the magnitude of this truth is experienced and embraced with honesty and trust - as well as spiritual and emotional assistance - it can lead us into authentic humility and compassionate patience. Ignoring the potency of our shadow, however, most often leads to violence and suffering for everyone. Small wonder that Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down her life for a friend." To own, and then release into God's grace, the universal inclination to hurt others rather than confront and accept our own powerlessness, is at the core of all healthy religion. Its opposite - personal or social bigotry, racism, hatred of women - gives birth to violence and death.

Once again in our periodically united but now profoundly divided states of America, truth and light are shining through the cracks of our lies and denials. When our current President won the 2016 election, wise people of color said to me with genuine sorrow: now many you (white folk) are going to experience the fear and social anxiety we (black folk) always live within. The seemingly abrupt but truly long-simmering explosion of the white nationalist and even neo-Nazi activity of 2017 gave shape and form to the fears and social wounds of people left behind by the dot.com economy. The courage and clarity of the #MeToo movement is now breaking apart not just the political, artistic and religious constructs of patriarchy, but it is also helping to redefine the mysteries of a healthy, holy and hopeful sexuality.

For some, this moment in history is chaotic and terrifying. Like autumn itself,

the signs of death are stunning and breed feelings of dread and loss. For others, however, even death points to new life - a new life of greater tenderness, justice and trust. I am not so naive as to think this cultural and political death will be easy. It won't. It will be anguished, protracted and bitter. But as Valerie Kaur so wisely insists, new life is coming to birth through revolutionary love.

Revolutionary love is a well-spring of care, an awakening to the inherent dignity and beauty of others and the earth, a quieting of the ego, a way of moving through the world in relationship, asking: ‘What is your story? What is at stake? What is my part in your flourishing?’ Loving others, even our opponents, in this way has the power to sustain political, social and moral transformation. This is how love changes the world. Love calls us to look upon the faces of those different from us as brothers and sisters. Love calls us to weep when their bodies are outcast, broken or destroyed. Love calls us to speak even when our voice trembles, stand even when hate spins out of control, and stay even when the blood is fresh on the ground. Love makes us brave. The world needs your love: the only social, political and moral force that can dismantle injustice to remake the world around us – and within us. To pursue a life of revolutionary love is to walk boldly into the hot winds of the world with a saint’s eyes and a warrior’s heart – and pour our body, breath, and blood into others. (http://valariekaur.com/quotes/)

As a straight, white, Christian man living as a secular monk in these wildly upsetting but holy times, over and again my heart urges me to rest within the wisdom of our wounds. St. Paul spoke of this as becoming holy fools who trust the life, death and resurrection of Jesus more than the evidence of the current moment. The prophet of ancient Israel, Isaiah, was equally counter-cultural: 

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy... Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near...

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Americans are not good at repentance. For too long we have lived within the power of privilege. We have not acknowledged the pain our privilege has wrought upon the innocent nor the suffering that is the consequence of our hubris and hegemony. I remember traveling in the once Soviet Union with the Council of Churches during the closing days of Gorbachev's era. It was a time of openness and national introspection. My colleague, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Dipko (then Conference Minister of the Ohio Conference of the United Church of Christ) said to me, "We North Americans have not matured enough to repent. Canada is learning to do so given their genocide of First Nations people. Russia is struggling with repentance now. And South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has given the world a model for what is possible. But that is a long, long way from where we are as a nation - and we need it so badly." 

I believe that part of our new birth in revolutionary love is leading us into the anguish white, male privilege has inflicted upon creation, women, children, GLBTQs, people of color and so many other sisters and brothers throughout the world community. It is a time for national repentance. Like the 12 Step movement teaches, however, some will go through this death and arise in wisdom and humility. Others will run, hide, and deny the pain while still others will attack everything and everybody that calls for truth. Let us remember that all of this goes with the territory. But as more and more of us start to let go of fear and live in trust, the blessings of repentance will be strengthened. I choose to trust the sacramental truth of this season: autumn is coming and within its deaths are the seeds of new life.