An Open (love) Letter

Dear Rural America,

I love you a lot.  I have been your son, your pastor, your biggest fan.  I have lived with you for years and been through a lot with you.  I know a lot about what makes you happy and what keeps you up at night, and that is why I love you.  But lately I have become a bit worried about you, because you seem to be buying something that is not good for you (and no I'm not talking about those deep fried twinkies at the fair).  I'm trying very hard to remember how good you are in your heart, so I'm going to start this with saying that I understand one of your greatest woes.  It is the woe that you sit at your kitchen table and lament, it is the woe that pervades your churches and your school boards.

It is quite simply the fact that your children are leaving you.  They are leaving you for the "big city," even if the "big city" isn't really big or even a city.  For the years I have spent with you I sympathized, I heard your explanation about jobs and opportunity, I listened with great empathy to the loss of a truly rural way of life that centered on growing and living things.  God knows I would want that too, if it really was the way you remember it.  I resonate with your Wendell Berry utopias where the people work the land and their labors produce all that they need.  That's straight up biblical, promise of God sort of stuff, I love that too. The fact that the sort of agrarian dream isn't really possible these days has been a long time coming.  Most farmers are far from self sufficient (except the Amish), they are perpetually in debt and rely far too much on subsidies (they don't like that one little bit either).  But look, that's not the only reason your children leave.

Your children leave because they have seen more.  Don't get me wrong, they all love the open fields and forests, the bonfires and the fairs, the animals and the natural beauty.  What they might also love though is the theater and sushi and art museums.  They might love these things because you provided a good education and some broader experiences than you had growing up.  You were good parents and gave them these things, probably not realizing that it would plant seeds in their souls that would grow like they did. On top of that, they have the internet and they see the variety of the world, and being young they don't fear it like you do.

Your children leave because your world smothers them. Some of those things they see out there in the world seem right and true and beautiful, but your churches (mea culpa) and your politics tell them that those things are wrong or evil.  They have openly gay friends who seem well adjusted and happy.  They have been taught a much healthier mode of sexuality, free from so much of the shame and guilt that has plagued such things for generations.  They consider that abortion is something that might be rendered obsolete by proper education, support and contraception rather than something to be rendered criminal by the government.  Most of them would rather save their righteous rage for things like racism and sexism rather than tax plans and fighting over the scraps left to us by the robber barons of big corporations.  They want to save that natural world that they love so much thanks to you.  The science you taught them in schools says that the ecosystem is in danger, and they're not buying all the old white guys with options in oil companies who tell them it's not.

You taught your children things about honesty and integrity, good job.  The trouble is, now they expect you to live up to those lessons.  When they see you vote for "the lesser of two evils," rather than really engage and expect leadership out of our government, they feel that you're betraying your own values.  They see hypocrisy, even in the most utilitarian sense, as a betrayal of the sort of honest straight-shooting ideals that are the best of you.  You can tell yourself it's all about jobs, lattes and avocado toast if you want, but these are your children, you know them better than that.

They won't and maybe can't tell you these things in so many words, but that's what is really going on.  I know because I talked to them and I've heard the other side of the sappy facebook posts about how great country life is.  I've heard them say they need to get out, for reasons that they can't always put into words, but I can hear it, and I have felt it, it's the desperate feeling that they don't really belong there anymore.  They want to stay for the comforts of home and family and clean air, but they can't.  And a job is usually just the excuse to get out of dodge.

I love you Rural America, but you have toxic stuff seeping out of your souls like acid mine drainage.  Your young folks know, even if they can't quite name it.  So they leave and hope they don't get cancer down the line. You don't need to be like the city folk, you don't need to adopt every lefty idea that comes down the pike, you should just actually be the people you honestly want to be.  Many of you are Christian, and if you actually listen to what Jesus said and follow him for real, you'll be on the right track.  But even for those of you who aren't particularly religious, just be honest and live with integrity.  Some practical advice would be to stop watching so much TV news and read more.  Spend less time trolling facebook and read an actual book.

But most important think about the people your children are becoming and be the home that they can be proud of, rather than the place they just want to escape.

When someone shows you who they are...

 Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you tithe mint, dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.  It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. 

You blind guides! You strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel!

-Jesus of Nazareth (The Gospel according to Matthew 23: 23-24)

I have to tell you that I was rooting for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to hold out in her battle against pancreatic cancer as strongly as I have rooted for just about anything in recent memory.  I am not at all surprised that the Republican Party is now engaged in one of the most shocking acts of hypocrisy in recent memory (and we have had some good ones).  What does surprise me is that they didn't even wait 24 hours to do it.  I saw the headlines that RBG had passed and the headlines that Yertle the Turtle had vowed to hold confirmation hearings for Trump's nominee almost simultaneously.  I am not at all surprised that the same man who solemnly defended the franchise of the voters to deny Merrick Garland even a hearing, is now flip flopping.  I just sort of thought he might wait a day or two to proclaim his galling cynicism.

I have found myself reading and re-reading Matthew 23 quite a bit over the last several years, because of Jesus' repeated use of the formula: "Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"  There are not many charges that indict our current political system with as unavoidable a stain as that of hypocrisy.  The fact that our highest court full of people we actually call "justices" will now have two people who are there because of a miscarriage of justice in the form of a blatant and cynical political maneuver (Gorsuch who should be Garland, and whoever this might be), two people (Kavannaugh and Thomas) who were credibly accused of misconduct (at least in Thomas' case the matter was fully prosecuted rather than summarily dismissed), is a rather dire summation of where we are as a culture vis a vis actual justice being done.

I understand that the skillful practice of law sometimes involves pulling the strings in the books and finding the loopholes.  I get that justice might be somehow served in convicting Al Capone of tax evasion rather than any of the myriad acts of violence he undoubtedly had on his hands.  I get that winning a not guilty verdict based on procedural missteps by police and prosecutors may put the guilty back on the street.  I know that the practice of law can be messy, but when it comes to things like the Supreme Court of the United States, the symbolism and the perception really matter much more than they do at the Charles County Circuit court.  There is a certain austerity to the proceedings of the SCOTUS that stands us all in good stead, unless of course it becomes tainted by political machinations, which it already is and which will, unavoidably, be worse however this turns out.

If we could go back in time and stop the Borking of Robert Bork, would it help?  Maybe, but ones suspects there were many off ramps on the road to this place we currently stand.  Unless a Delorean pulls up with a pair of flaming tire tracks, or a blue police box materializes, I guess we can't really know.  The fact of the matter is that right now we have yet another case where the majority of the country is hoping that four Republicans will have the spine to stand up to Yertle the Turtle King as he barks orders from the top of his stack of turtles, which is imminently in danger of collapsing and tossing him into the mud.  Our founding fathers, as white, landowning males, feared the tyranny of the majority, they did not actually want the uneducated masses who worked their plantations and dug in their mines to actually set the agenda for their nation.  However, they had this high-minded idea of democracy, which was an untested experiment in 1776, which drew them to create institutions that might rule without a tyrant, and which might stand a chance of providing liberty and justice for all.

Even if we take their flaws into account, you have to admit we're letting them down right now, when we tolerate this sort of behavior from any of our elected leaders.  Without engaging in false equivalence I can say that if I ever see a Democrat displaying the level of hypocrisy that is going on in the Republican Senate right now, I will not vote for them, not because I would necessarily disagree with the action, but because integrity matters, consistency and constancy matter.  If they could be this cynical and hypocritical, they are not trustworthy to hold power.  The poet Maya Angelou said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."

I do, and I will not forget this.  However, I am also conscious of the fact that my anger in this moment is prone to lead me down the path of hatred, and that I will not forget either.  I will mock Yertle the Turtle, but I will not hate him.  He makes my blood boil, but I will not let him poison my soul.  I will root for his fall into the mud as much as I rooted for RBG to prolong her earthly sojourn.  I have some degree of confidence that it will come, because pride and arrogance have a way of biting their practitioners.

"Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation." (Mt 23: 36)