"YOU NEVER KNOW what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next."
This round of tears was evoked upon hearing the news that, after 60 years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was closing shop. Except for the New York Times, which I have been reading since my first subscription in 8th grade, I have relied upon PBS and NPR to make sense of the world around me. Yes, NPR’s current “hip” greetings (hey Ari, oh hey Ayesha) are annoying – so, too, the hyper-causal attire of some reporters – but since the middle 60’s, these resources have consistently been a part of my daily and weekly prayer cycles. Not only have they shared more facts than spin, but they also offer meaningful and compassionate analysis.
Like the death of any long-trusted friend, I feel an aching emptiness. I know my grief includes the horrific and cruel genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the relentless lies of the current administration, the war in Ukraine, the escalating damage of climate change, and the assault on the democratic institutions that have long contributed to the incremental redress of grievances in our search for a more perfect union. My tears are also aligned with my recent visit to my 94-year-old former Sunday School teacher. Malcolm has been a constant source of wisdom, gravitas, and integrity – and while he is still sharp and strong – the handwriting is on the wall. To everything there is a season, to be sure, and this is my time for tears.
David Brooks, one-time social conservative and now middle-of-the-road analyst for both the Atlantic Monthly and the NY Times op ed page, put it well this past Friday on the PBS Newshour: Why, he wondered, are Americans not rising-up against the authoritarianism of this regime like the rest of the world? Public repudiation is essential for dismantling neo-fascists, Brooks added, yet so many of us remain stunned and silent. Why? What else is at work in our confusion? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the MAGA movement has been successful in attacking mostly those on the periphery of bourgeois society. Most of us have yet to feel the pain and terror of ICE raids. Most of us are still able to live as if the foundations of our civil society are not shifting under us. Most of us, as Pastor Neimöller confessed after collaborating with the rise of the Nazis in Germany only to wind up in a concentration camp himself, have yet to feel the crack of the whip on our flesh or the boot heel of bullies on our throat to say nothing of our inability to accept that concentration camps are being constructed with our tax dollars that might soon incarcerate some of us.
"First, they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."
This current terror is not the end, but it has not matured fully either - and there will be more grief and suffering before the semblance of balance returns. Until then, I keep singing, and weeping. I preach the love of Jesus, seek ways to build new connections among all who are wounded and afraid, and trust that God is not finished with us yet!
