Quinceanera

If a Latina had been born on July 23, 2005 she would be celebrating what is called a quinceanera, her fifteenth birthday.  In Latin America and in Latinx culture this is a big deal.  Fancy dresses and a big old party are in order, except probably not right now.  Today my family "celebrates" the quinceanera of my brother Jonathan's death.  Like a lot the experience of many young Latinas this year, this is now primarily defined more by absence than by whatever used to be.  The reason a quinceanera is significant is that 15 is seen as the gateway to adulthood. As the father of a nearly 15 year old girl, I'm not cool with that, but let's roll with the thought.  The idea of my brother's absence in our lives has grown up now.  It's not new and raw anymore.  In fact, most of the time I can see some very constructive and perhaps even good things that have grown out of a field that is covered in the manure of grief.

Sort of like I cannot imagine a world without my daughter Cate, I also increasingly cannot imagine a world with my brother in it.  For a while I felt this sharp sting of absence when people would do things with their brother, or when I would consider the things I used to do with Jon.  Now I can't feel that unless I really try at it, and even picking at that sore spot seems a bit dishonest at this point.  I have no idea what an almost 40 year old Jon would be like.  I don't know if we would be close, I don't know if we would still get on each other's nerves, or if we would be all grown up about everything.

I guess that's how I know this absence has come of age.  I just don't really wonder that much about things like that anymore.  I suppose one aspect of maturity is that you learn to accept certain things as simple reality instead of whining about how unfair things are.  I've done my share of whining over the years, now I guess I'm just marking the spot where something significant and irrevocable happened.  Is it really just that simple, the balance of the only perfect statistic: one birth, one death, for everyone?

I think the thing about being truly and fully human is that you learn to mark significant things and both grieve and celebrate them.  Whether it's a happy thing like a little girl turning into a young woman or a sad thing like a young man turning into a memory, the way we hold these significant things is what makes us human.

The value of it is particularly salient this year, because today, at least, I can think about something other than a virus and the incompetent morons in charge of our government.  It's sort of like Ash Wednesday, a stark reminder that all of us are dust and to dust we shall return, but with everything that's been happening, it feels like a genuine reprieve to think of something else.

So happy resurrection quinceanera Jon, hope you're growing faster there.

Another Outrage

But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be 

(let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains;

-Mark 13: 14

There are lots of scriptures I could apply to the photo of El Presidente in front of St. Johns Episcopal Church up the road in DC.  But the one that came to mind was the rather cryptic verse from Mark chapter 13, about the desolating sacrilege.  Partly because people aren't exactly sure what Jesus was talking about.  Perhaps it was the pagan destruction and desecration of the temple that took place during the exile, maybe it was more of a prophecy about the coming destruction of the temple at the hands of the Romans (less likely).  But on a gut level it feels like it absolutely applies to anything that attempts to usurp the holy spaces with something profane.  We know that Jesus was outraged by the greed and falsity that had taken root in the Temple in Jerusalem, it was the thing that led him to his only real eruption of violent protest.  I'm not going to draw any connections between a specific church building and the Temple in Jerusalem.  Church building are ultimately just buildings, it doesn't make me angry when an old church is turned into a restaurant after the worshiping life of the people who made it sacred has ended.

No, it's not the building, it's not the Bible that Trump held up like some sort of bowling trophy, it's not any of the physical details of the moment that make it a desolating sacrilege.  It is rather the very notion of the moment and the details of its execution.  He had peaceful protesters, including one of the attending clergy at St. Johns tear gassed to clear the way for his little stroll across Lafayette square.  He did not pray, he did not read from that book he held up.  He had just made a very Caesar-like proclamation that all the state governors needed to get much tougher on the protesters, in case any of them really wanted to be more like Pontius Pilate.  As a Christian, I felt very violated by that picture, and I'm not a super sensitive sort when it comes to ritual sacredness.  I don't mind when the youth want to play hide and seek in the sanctuary of the church or when someone wants to hold a secular meeting in our building. My list of rules is pretty short when it comes to who can use the church facilities and for what.

A man who has done pretty much nothing in the past several months except foment division among the nation about a very serious health crisis and now about our old mortal sin of racism standing in front of a church waving a Bible is just a little too much to take.  I felt desolate, and I knew that this was really the meaning of sacrilege: a public display of absolutely empty pretense that is meant to seem like a statement of faith.  Did he do it to assure people that God was in control?  No, he did it to prove that he was in control, and didn't even manage to land that punch.  He doesn't look in control, he looks scared and small, which is what he is.  He is holding a book that he reportedly loves while everything that he says and does shows that he has absolutely no idea what is in it.  He is standing in front of a church that he thinks shows his point about how lawless and profane the protesters are because they vandalized it, when he has just tear gassed one of it's priests who was out working with the Black Lives Matter medical attendants.

Whatever Jesus was talking about when he told the people of 2000 years ago about the desolating sacrilege, I'm pretty sure he was also talking about what happened yesterday as well.

And Here We Are Again

The rich and the fortunate can well keep quiet,

nobody wants to know what they are.

But the destitute have to show themselves, 

have to say: I am blind

or: I am about to become so

or: nothing on earth works out for me

or: I have a sick child

or: right here I am being pieced together...

and perhaps even that won't suffice.

...

But God himself comes and stays a long time

whenever these maimed ones bother him.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, The Voices

I want to talk about George Floyd, but I can't bring myself to do it, so I will just say his name and let the injustice of his death speak for itself.  If you can watch that video and still equivocate, deny or somehow justify it, if you think, after all examples that have hit us in the face over the past decade are still just outliers and aberrations, there isn't anything I can say to you anyway.  I've been over this too many times in the course of writing this blog, the fountain is dry.

I would like to talk about the protests though, because there are things we need to mark very carefully in the midst of the chaos.  And there are judgments that are probably best left until we find out all the facts.  At a glance though there are honest protests taking place, there are moments of beauty where the police take off their helmets and shields and march with the people.  There are crowds that insist upon and enforce among themselves an ethic of peacefulness that seems practically superhuman in the face of such injustice.  There are instances of looting and vandalism, there are sinister implications that extremist groups may be infiltrating the protests and turning them into riots.  The left says it's the white supremacists, the right says it's Antifa, the scary thing is they very well could both be correct.  There is never a shortage of opportunists who would like nothing more than to increase the violence to serve their own ends.

We need to resist the bait we that is being dangled by those with an agenda other than the needed cry for justice.  But these protests need to happen, even if they get messy, because we cannot even pretend we have listened to the people whose blood has been running in the streets.  We are showing them, from Ferguson to Minneapolis that we will only pay attention when they shout and march in the streets. We will only take them seriously when it's time for tear gas and rubber bullets.  If they kneel in protest, we say it's inappropriate and our rich white man gangs (like the NFL owners) ban them or blackball them.

White America, we have left them no choice, but to do this.  To put more black bodies at risk, from riot police, from a COVID outbreak, maybe even from people in the crowd who are there to work evil instead of justice.  I believe that Christ is present in these protests, and I believe Christ will remain present much longer than the attention span of white Americans. I certainly acknowledge that Jesus himself was darker skinned than we generally imagine, but I know, right now, if Jesus were walking the streets of America, he would have a black face.

How followers of Jesus can remain ambivalent or even take the side of the oppressor is beyond me.  I'm out of things to say.  My outrage has been running in the red for too long, and I'm white. To try and feel what it must be like for black folk is to truly understand why you might just want to burn it all down.  Especially if it turns out that there are people, white people, in your very midst who are actually pushing you towards violence to discredit you or simply push the envelope of chaos.  I see your protest, I feel your anger, and I know it's justified.  In as much as you can keep it peaceful and be beautiful, I admire you more than I can say, but even if it goes sideways I absolutely know why you have to keep going.

When I can do something from my end, with my voice, with my vote, with my money, with my time, I will do it.  Even tasting your outrage through the filter of my empathy, I know it tastes like fire.  I pray that it is holy fire.  Christ be with you all.

The Cult of Ignorance

Just over a month ago, as Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the Democratic primary, I shared this quote from Isaac Asimov:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread, winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

That seems like a long time ago.  Over the past several days, and generally in the response to COVID-19, our commitment to ignorance has been on full display.  I'm not talking about honest ignorance either, not knowing something is no crime and all of us have had to address some things of which we were perhaps blissfully ignorant: like how to run a Zoom meeting or how to film a sermon and post it to Youtube.  Teachers have had to adapt to teaching remotely.  All of us have had to change our perceptions of things like social distancing and face masks in the grocery store.  There were so many things we were not aware of on the leading edge of this pandemic, but I'm not talking about that ignorance.
I'm talking about the kind of ignorance that is willful and stubborn, and refuses to become anything other than ignorance.  This is the ignorance of our President and his "Liberate (name of state with stay at home order and a democratic governor here)" tweets.  This is the ignorance of the people who violate the isolation policies with flags, swastikas (which they claim are "ironic") and openly carried weapons.  These people are taking their cues from the aggressive ignorance of our current chief executive.  They are the bullies who never learned that the smarter kids in the class might actually be of help to them in understanding their biology assignment and instead chose to shove him into a locker or throw her pile of books down the hall.
Trump is their hero, because that's who he is, the big blustery, let's not think too much sort, who tries to be the main man while the nerdy expert (Fauci) facepalms in the background.  It has been a temptation for me to simply ascribe evil motives to Trump and his cadre of sycophants, but this crisis reveals him to be nothing more than a particularly dangerous ignoramus with a narcissistic personality disorder, in other words, a garden variety bully.
He is not alone.  This morning I saw this picture of a nurse in scrubs blocking a vehicle protesting the stay at home orders:

That man is standing for his own life and the lives of his co-workers and his family. The people in the truck are out there for the sake of fear and greed and no small amount of anger, which masquerades as patriotism.  It occurred to me that the picture reminded me of something else:

The opponent in this picture was actual tyranny.  The "re-open America" protesters think they are this man, but they are nothing of the sort.  If the tyranny they think they're protesting was real, it would have been police in riot gear instead of a nurse in scrubs confronting their little shenanigan.
This comparison is both alarming and oddly hopeful though, because there is some evidence that the ignoramuses are losing their grip on our hearts and minds.  Trump's approval rating is low, even for him, and most of the people I know (even the ones who voted for him) are starting to tune him out. The loony hanging out of the pickup truck window is not being hailed as a patriot or a hero, and thankfully our government did not make her a martyr. 
If we learn anything from this I hope it is that our cult of ignorance is too dangerous to continue.  I have the distinct feeling that this pandemic will not be the last one we face.  We cannot continue into the future pretending it is not possible.  COVID-19, as the ignoramuses like to point out, is not too different from the flue or a common cold, a lot of people with it will survive.  What if there was a more catastrophic disease, like Ebola, that manifested similar contagion patterns and latency?
It is a possibility that we should not try and ignore, because doing so could lead to an extinction level event akin to the black plague or the what happened among Native American populations in the immediate aftermath of European contact with the New World.
We have a choice to persist in our cult of ignorance, or to learn from what this has to teach us.  I suggest the latter course, no matter what political tribe you belong to, we are all part of the human race.

Petrichor

For someone who does as much walking outside as I do, I very seldom find myself caught in the rain.  Maybe it's because I have access to several weather forecasting apps on my phone, or because I tend to pay attention to the rather obvious skies above Southern Maryland.  Today I had planned to go out kayaking on the lake, but the aforementioned weather forecasts contained a marine warning about possible thunderstorms and strong winds.  I had no desire to be out on the water in the event of such weather, so I did the sensible thing and just went for a walk.
About halfway around the lake, I felt the first drops and heard a distant roll of thunder.  Time to speed up the old dog.  It quickly became obvious that we were in for a bath.  Instead of getting in a hurry though, I actually took a moment to slow down as the rain began to intensify I got to experience that unique scent that has its own special word: petrichor.  The definition is that smell when rain starts to hit dry earth.  The woods are dry because the leaves aren't yet out and the warm sun bakes everything to a crisp much more quickly than it does in the summer when things are shaded.  I don't know exactly what causes petrichor to happen only at the beginning of a heavy rain, but as I gratefully soaked in that unique odor I felt that it might be perhaps more mystical than a scientific explanation about water mixing with minerals.  It seemed like the earth was breathing out, the way you might before inhaling a deep breath to dive to the bottom of a pool.
I had one of those nature moments, where paganism suddenly makes a lot of sense. In a world where everything seems alive and connected, of course there are spirits in the trees and gods in the soil. Things seem particularly alive, and if you let yourself, you feel connected to that life in a way that is deeply significant.  As the storm got a bit more intense the petrichor moment vanished and it was time to hurry again, it would be a real shame to do all this social distancing to avoid COVID-19 only to get zapped by lightning.
Back in the world of non-pagan spirituality I am thinking about what we're missing during this Holy Week spent in isolation. What would we be doing and thinking during this time absent the pandemic? This week is the petrichor moment, the breathing out of the last breath, but with a purpose that surely has life at its core.  Jesus often taught about the necessity of dying and laying things down in order for the new life of the Kingdom to take hold.  I think that's a pattern in nature as well: the breathing out of the dryness with an unmistakable moment of petrichor, ready to receive the water that brings life out of seemingly dead things.
On the cross, Jesus says, "tetelestai," it is finished and then surrenders his spirit, he breaths out his last, giving up what is destined to fade and go away, so that something new can inherit that space, so that new life can come. Death is a part of the cycle, as is dormancy; light is necessary, as is darkness.  That unique and beautiful petrichor is not something you encounter all the time, only after a period of dryness will the mere anticipation of water set it in motion.

From a Distance

I have been dealing with a lot of thoughts about how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic as a pastor.  There have been some difficult decisions to make for sure.  At the end of last week, I asked the Session to vote to suspend all "in person" activities of the Church.  They agreed unanimously, for this I was grateful, because as of that moment we were ahead of the curve on this issue.  Our Presbytery had given us a recommendation, but as of the end of last week government had not provided the leadership we really need in moments like this.
Over the weekend I kept feeling more strongly that our decision had been the right one.  Every time I saw a doctor or an epidemiologist say that this "social distancing" practice is the only way we currently have to prevent the pandemic from becoming an event of tragic proportions.  There is no cure, there is no treatment really, we don't even have adequate testing capability (again thanks to denial and an attempt to minimize this crisis by our almost unbelievably inept administration).  The only thing we can do is to bring everything to a screeching halt in the hopes of physically preventing the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
I often joke that my undergraduate education served only one function: to give me a piece of paper that was necessary for admission to Seminary.  However, in the past week the things I know about biology, and (Lord help me) statistics were pretty useful in analyzing what data we have available.  I know what an exponential growth curve looks like on paper, and in instances of contagion like this one, you get to see it in full horror-show mode.  The science of this thing was pretty clear a while ago, unfortunately we have made rather a habit of ignoring science when it comes to areas where we hold certain pathological "beliefs."  Our economic interest has been strangling our scientific response to climate change for 20 years.  COVID-19 just raised our temperature in a much more immediate and undeniable way than greenhouse gasses.
Even though it is not terribly scientific, it was the cancellation of the NCAA tournament that really snapped me out of the "keep calm and wash your hands" mentality.  It was the notion that something that stood to generate revenue in excess of one billion dollars would just be flat called off that made me think that maybe this wasn't just another chicken little moment.  I will admit that when it comes to weather events and other such impending doom I tend towards skepticism.  I was going down that road with this one too, but thankfully something told me to avoid that trap.
This virus has actually weaponized our own ability to keep calm and carry on against us.  It uses our greatest strength as a species: our social nature, as a tool to propagate itself as surely as the virus hijacks our cells to procreate.  Most of our strategies for survival involve banding together into communal structures and institutions that can give us the collective resources we need to surmount challenges.  This requires that as well, but somehow we must figure out how to do that from a distance.  So while in the face of wars and famines the church has often been a place of sanctuary and rallying together, in this crisis we have to tell people to stay away.  It seems wrong, but it's not.
The word pastor is derived from the pastoral role of a shepherd.  Everything in a shepherd's world would indicate that keeping the sheep together is the best way to keep them safe, except for in this case that's the opposite of the truth.  In the face of this, some new things are necessary, and maybe they have been necessary for a while.  We need to learn to use all the communications tools we have available, we need to consider what community really looks like in the face of a challenge like this, because something tells me this won't be the last time we face a problem like this.

And Then There Were Two

Elizabeth Warren just dropped out of the democratic primary.  We are down to Bernie and Biden, two almost eighty-year-old white guys.  I have been reserving my energy on this election cycle until it really matters, out of a need for sanity and spiritual survival.  But I have to say Liz dropping out makes me sort of sad, because I have felt like she was the smartest of the bunch for quite some time.  I feel like at least some of her inability to get traction in the primaries was a result of her unabashed intelligence.  There is a strong current in American culture that despises true intelligence. Isaac Asimov described it well:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread, winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

I have this sneaking suspicion that that tendency becomes even more vicious when it comes to women.  At this point, I'm sort of thinking that our first female president is going to have to come from the right, ala Margaret Thatcher, because she will have to be an "iron lady" that adheres to the take no prisoners sort of political tactics that the Republicans have mastered since Reagan.  We have already seen an inveterate politician (Clinton) and a brilliant and qualified organizer (Warren) fail because the American people couldn't find them "likable" enough.  Meanwhile male candidates can be deeply flawed, even dangerously so, as is the case with Trump, and still garner wildly irrational support.
Only time will tell if it was actually Warren's extensive "plans" that scared people off.  If they end up choosing Bernie Sanders, I think that will be proven false, because Bernie has even more "socialist" ideas with less clear details than Liz.  If they choose Biden, it will just be a case of the establishment going with the "safe" bet.  I get that impulse. I saw someone on Twitter say that the best campaign slogan for any of the Democrats would be, "If I'm elected president, you won't have to think about me every day."
Which is where I have been since this whole thing started.  I just want the Trump era to be over, it makes me feel sick to my stomach far too often.  I think that Liz Warren would have been a great president, she probably would have gotten maybe a quarter of her plans to see the light of day, even if she got eight years.  Most of the wildest dreams/nightmares like Medicare for all would have been DOA, but she would have made sure to put back some of the regulations that protect us from the most rapacious aspects of capitalism.  Unlike the current chief executive, she actually knows what those regulations he has been shredding like cheese were there to do.
I don't know, out of that whole raft of plans she had, which ones would have actually gotten implemented, but I do know that when our nation confronted a crisis she would have brought that intellect and that undeniable sanity to bear upon it, instead of just tweeting out of an irresponsible level of ignorance like you know who.
Maybe it's just the desire for some semblance of peace, but I think I'm coming down on Uncle Joe's team for right now, but I can't think of another single person that would make a better VP than Liz Warren.  I mean if Joe put her in charge of pretty much anything I would feel pretty good about that.  I mean a lot better than putting Mike "I don't believe in science" Pence in charge of a global pandemic response.
I guess I have always wondered if that isn't democracy's biggest flaw: we elect popular people.  It was true in School, it was never the brains that got elected class president, it was the kids that could schmooze the best.  I guess I always hoped that, like so many other things that change in adulthood, things would be different out here.  Sorry Liz, I wish I had the chance to vote for you.