solidarity continues to ripen...

There has not been a lot of blogging coming out of my study over the past month. Clearly, my attention has been elsewhere: preparing the garden, writing and researching my weekly live-stream gathering each Sunday morning on Face Book (check it out @ https://www.facebook.com/Be-Still-and-Know-913217865701531/), painting the kitchen, starting to practice guitar again, working on a weekly homily and music for my L'Arche  Ottawa community, etc. It has been a weird combination of intense new connection with friends both local and international and even deeper personal solitude. So, for what appears to be the foreseeable future, I suspect this new rhythm will abide. 

During this time I have slowly been working my way through Christine Valters Painters book: The Soul of a Pilgrim. There are a number of useful insights in it as well as tools for contemplation. One, in particular, spoke to me: discerning the thread that has been a constant in our lives. The idea comes from a poem by William Stafford that includes this line:

                                    There is a thread you follow

Nothing you do can stop times unfolding.

You do not ever let go of the thread.

Like many of us who have been privileged to self-quarantine - and can do so without much obvious distress - these past two months have been a journey. Paintners speaks of this as an inward pilgrimage guided... 

... by the monastic vow of obedience - which means deep listening - to whatever emerges in my life. Being a pilgrim means following wherever the call takes me, even if it takes me off the trajectory I expected. This is one of the places where the heart of the pilgrim and monk intersect.

St. Ignatius once wisely observed that contemplation is the polar opposite of navel-gazing: the true contemplative takes a long, loving look at what is real. Without illusions. Without judgement. Without expectations. And as this season of solidarity in solitude has deepened I have noticed two developments in the public realm. First, the inevitable reaction and push-back to our extended shut down has materialized with all the rancor, ignorance, fear and loathing that is all too well within the American soul. After our initial acceptance of social distancing as an act of love and self-preservation - and the poetry of what this might mean for our future - the flow of social polarities guaranteed that an ugly and mean-spirited response would simmer for a spell just below the surface before boiling over in public Now it has taken shape and form as militia men with trucks, camouflage and guns parade their conspiracy theory bravado through state capitals with a pumped-up swagger that oozes aggression. It is not coincidence that the murder of Ahmaud Arbery came from this ilk. The history of white American is one of unrepentant racism, genocide and insecurity fueled by social manipulation and greed. The current regime is more icing on the cake than the cause of such hate-filled action. - although it does its best to pour gasoline onto the flames. To have believed that this strain of American reality would not rise up yet again was naive at best and even delusional. As Richard Rohr so wisely teaches: 

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children. 

Clearly, this transmission is at work among us in public once more. So is a second development that holds greater promise and even more popularity. I am thinking of the increasingly compassionate and progressive social analysis that has taken root among us.  What was once dismissed as abstract ivory tower radical pipe dreams - a living social wage as well as the importance of universal health care and the reshaping of business priorities - is now mainstream common sense. It is as if the United States went to sleep as Ebeneezer Scrooge and woke up as Bernie Sanders. Two recent developments in popular culture point to this depth of this emerging transformation: 

+ The bastion of centrist public reflection, The NY Times, has been working on public policy essays re: how can we rebuild the USA in a vibrant, creative and authentically compassionate manner. In other words, how can this crisis empower us to become our best selves. If you have not seen the Nicholas Kristof report on the difference between a MacDonald's worker in the US and one in Denmark - one who has insurance, paid vacation and sick leave as well as a secure social safety net and the other left to fend for him or herself - it is worth the time. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/us-denmark-economy.html) The same goes for their new series entitled: The American We Need (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/opinion/ americainequalitycoronavirus.htmlcampaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20200511&instance_id=18387&nl=opiniontoday&regi_id=88188211&segment_id=27249&te=1&user_id=0eda16b56f0c867e69fc1f00f235f5ad)

+ A growing encounter with public grief is also bubbling to the surface in these barely United States of America - something that has been anathema for generations. Showing grief in the USA has long been seen as a sign of inner weakness. Just look at the way we used to mourn: three private days were allowed as the maximum time allowed for dealing with a close personal death or tragedy. Then, it was back to work. Perhaps the better resourced private health insurance allowed for short-term grief counseling. But it was to be done in private and only 8 sessions would be covered. This still has not shifted completely. Grieving is a work in progress for us. And with half the American work force now unemployed and at risk of losing their private health insurance, it is not clear what will happen next. But that, too is a source of our collective grief. But beyond the blustering bullies clogging traffic in state capitals, and the self-righteous posturing of toadies like McConnell in the US Senate, more and more ordinary Americans are being forced to own our personal and collective suffering. This extended quote concerning the American heartland is sobering and insightful:

Folks from Milwaukee to Muskegon were having their misgivings (about Trump) before the pandemic shut us down in March. Trade wars with China, Mexico, Canada and Europe knocked the wind out of steel wheels and soybean prices. Workers at John Deere, the huge tractor builder, were getting pink slips in Davenport. Ethanol plants were idled. Farmers in north-west Iowa’s Sioux county, where Trump took 90% of the vote, said last fall they would not vote for him again. The 23 proclaimed they were “fed up” after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency allowed 31 petroleum refineries to shun ethanol blending requirements. Ethanol comes from corn. Corn is a religious totem in these parts.

Trump’s approval ratings sank underwater in key midwestern swing states he won: Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. Any number of polls showed Trump and Joe Biden in a dead heat in about a dozen purple states, or with Biden in a comfortable lead. Bluster and blunder were coming home to roost.Corn prices dived 19% since January. Meat-packing plants are exploding with the coronavirus – 60% of the pork plant workers in Perry, Iowa, are infected. The sheriff for Waterloo, Iowa, said he wanted to stomp a boot on Tyson’s plant. The mayor of Sioux Falls argued with the South Dakota governor to shut down a Smithfield pork facility overrun with the virus. About 65% of people polled think folks should stay home and not dine in at the restaurant buffet. Although the Iowa governor allowed churches to reopen, they aren’t taking her up on the offer with Sunday services. They would just as soon wait until we can get some tests done around here. Republican leaders are not in tune with voters.

The Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat on Biden’s VP shortlist, held forth ably against armed men in the capital lobby and remains far more popular than Trump. In Wisconsin, Democrats were outraged when Republicans forced a primary election involving a key state supreme court race. Voters stood up for democracy, in line for hours braving Covid-19 infection to cast their vote. The Democratic-backed court candidate won. Wisconsin unseated the Republican governor, Scott Walker, in 2018 and elected a gay woman to the US Senate, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, before that. It is the land of La Follette, after all.

A reckoning is due for incompetence and neglect. Farmers are disconsolate. Every dairy worker suicide resonates. Hogs are backed up when one of the huge, consolidated slaughterhouses goes down for lack of healthy help. Producers are left to shoot them and bury them. People in nice SUVs line up for free food. It makes everyone nauseous. Everyday people can’t understand why NBA players can get tested but packinghouse workers ordered to keep the pork loins rolling can’t. Rural communities prone to vote Republican live under a cloud of fear that virus from immigrant workers will spread to them – that the health of your neighbor is in fact your health. Immigrants become human, and their treatment is realized as shameful. We’re waking up, all right. When 30 million people can’t get through to the unemployment system, and half of them lose their health insurance by fall, incumbents should cover their flanks.

Polls show that in the upper midwest, blue urban voters are more motivated to vote than rural red voters by fair margins. Armed people of color escorted an African American legislator into the Michigan capitol last week in response to the white armed men. Talk about stuff getting real. Do you think every African American in Flint is not motivated? “The iron is hot,” Custer said. “This is the time to make permanent change.” Even while sitting in his basement unheard, Biden is winning the midwest for all Trump’s blather. The genius may think we are suckers, but in Iowa we don’t ruin good corn liquor with Clorox. The gig is up. (https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/commentisfree/2020/may/11/mi)

Our shared pain is not only exposed, it is being owned by those who are often the most tight-lipped and taciturn. The anguish within communities of color is increasingly open and bold. Nothing is for certain, of course, and there is likely to be tons more anguish before any semblance of normalcy returns. The belligerence on the Right is not over - not during this bizarre presidential election year. And yet out of all these ashes there is the emerging promise of a new beloved community. Not perfect and barely taking shape in these tremulous times. But ripening and stretching within and among us. 

The Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann, has written that only when a broken society grieves deeply can it burn off the dross of its hubris. When we are truly empty and open - willing to consider new possibilities and authentically repentant - then the Sacred historically shares with our artists, poets, musicians and creative beings visions for a new life together. Behold, says the prophetic poet of ancient Israel, I am doing a new thing among you. Brueggemann believes that one of the clues to this legacy occurs in Isaiah 56 where the blessings of the ancient covenant are extended to all who do justice and share compassion - including those once considered ritually unclean. What the new social contract after exile means is honoring the Sabbath and sharing compassion.

Thus says the Lord: maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come and my deliverance be revealed. Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing any evil. Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel,I will gather others to the besides those already gathered.

I continue to trust the steadfast love of the Lord even in the darkness.

credits
+ James Lumsden
+ Sojourners @ https://sojo.net/articles/faith-action/trinity-wholeness-contemplation-action-and-healing
+ Solidarity @ https://ips-dc.org/international-solidarity-in-a-time-of-crisis/
+ Solidarity @ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/519391769525412087/?autologin=true
+ Solidarity @ https://thejax.online/event/jax-meetup-solidarity