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)

Sins as Scarlet

 I sometimes wonder if we will ever be able to transcend our history and become the thing our flawed yet visionary founders imagined.  The legacy that slavery has left on our society has been much talked about of late, but there is another legacy that is deep as well.  It is that peculiar form of religious and social fundamentalism we called Puritanism at the time.  On one level the Puritans are heroes of the colonial age, the bold settlers of New England who forged a new world where they could practice their deeply pietistic faith apart from the political intrigues of European religions.  On another level, they are the witch trial people.  As a student of Christian history I know that Puritans are actually rather more complex than either of the stereotypes we apply to them.  Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his fictional post mortem, The Scarlet Letter, on Puritan culture in 1850, about events that would be 200 years in the past at the time.

Cliff Notes version: Hester Prynne is an unwed mother and her baby is the child of the local minister Arthur Dimmesdale.  The townsfolk judge Prynne guilty, beyond a doubt, of adultery and impose a sentence of cultural isolation and the wearing of a large red A on her chest.  Prynne does not name the father, even though doing so would marginally improve her situation.  Dimmesdale falls ill due to his unadmitted guilt.  Anyone who read this classic work of literature in seventh grade has the sense that the real sinners in the story are not in fact Prynne and Dimmesdale, but the townsfolk who are so severe and hypocritical.  I daresay Hawthorne, along with the actual event of the Salem Witch Trials, are the primary reasons why if you call someone a Puritan or describe something as Puritanical, you are not being complimentary.

But the Puritan instinct runs deep within our DNA.  Anyone who has ever dabbled around in foreign cinema, or even watched TV commercials in Europe, knows that Americans have some more prudish attitudes about certain things than much of the developed world.  Beyond our inordinate tendency to be offended by naked human bodies, the puritan legacy has manifested itself in modern American Evangelicalism.  The high white collars and severe black clothing have been replaced by polo shirts and khakis, but the judgmental attitudes remain strong.  It is with this in mind that I almost feel bad for Jerry Falwell Jr. with emphasis on the almost.  I stop short of full sympathy for his plight because he is not a powerless victim of misguided justice like Hester Prynne.  He is a man who has used the language and the loyalty of Christianity to great and cynical advantage over the course of his life.

Background: Jerry Falwell senior was one of the primary architects of the "religious right" that profoundly aided the rise and rule of both Ronald Reagan and the Bush clan.  He was the pastor of a large and wealthy church and parlayed that along with his political influence into an empire of sorts.  To Jerry Jr. he left the reins of Liberty University, an explicitly evangelical Christian university.  We Presbyterians have been founding schools for centuries so why not?  To his other son he left the pastorate of the large congregation.  Even though the younger son is quite successful as a pastor, you probably don't know who he is (his name is Jonathan).  But you know Jerry Jr. don't you? Why?  Do you know any other President of a midsized university by name?  It's because Jerry Jr. has taken up his father's penchant for media whoredom.  He has become especially visible as an early and vocal supporter of one Caesar J Trump.  Despite not being a theologian, or a pastor, or a spiritual leader of any sort, Falwell has become one of the faces of American Evangelicalism.

Recently, Falwell posted and then promptly deleted a picture of himself with a young woman (not his wife) on a yacht, holding drinks, with their pants unbuttoned and their bellies exposed.  Far from being scandalous in the age of celebrity sex tapes, it seemed pretty mild to the casual observer and probably meant as a joke.  Assuming the audience had a sense of humor.  Assuming the audience has a sense of humor would be a mistake in the case of dealing with the likes of people who gave Hester Prynne the Scarlet Letter A.  The board of directors has asked Falwell, who for all his faults has made Liberty solvent and successful over his tenure, to step down temporarily, but one gets the sense that the temporary nature of it is only a formality.

I find this curious (and a little amusing in a schadenfreude sort of way).  First, this is the straw that broke the camel's back?  Really?  Not the pompous preening for the political crowd?  Not the obsequious behavior towards an immoral and illiberal leader?  Not the endorsement of anti-Christ behavior bent on violence and power (like brandishing a gun at a student assembly and daring any "muslims" to come get some).  Not the endorsement of policies that oppress the poor and the immigrant while rolling in mountains of personal cash and inherited wealth and status?  A picture that shows his tummy?  That's the thing huh?

An article in the Atlantic explains the dynamic at work pretty well and in some detail, but the long and short of is that the powers that be were tired of his nonsense and used this as an excuse to get rid of a burr under the saddle.  As someone who cares very little about what happens at Liberty University, I am much more interested in what this says about the state of American Christianity.  As one who appreciates Jonathan Edwards as a preacher and a theologian, I know what can be gained from the Puritans at their best. But I also know what has become of them at their worst, and I know they did not vanish from our society, they just changed their clothes.

They have always had a tendency to go hard at Hester Prynne, and let Dimmesdale languish and fester unannounced.  Falwell has been a Dimmesdale sort for years, playing the part of a righteous Pharisee and champion of well, Liberty.  He has expressed outrage of all sorts at those who would degrade our noble Christendom-like America.  All the while you sort of expect that a man who was handed so much by his father might make a mess of things.  All the while you might have expected the same sort of ribald vulgarity that engulfed Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart to lurk in the Falwell closet, or on a yacht.  Don't get me wrong, I'll take his word that it's just a joke, I'm not accusing him of adultery or even being lewd, just not funny.  So whatever sympathy I might have had is replaced by a sense that justice can be served even by imperfect mechanisms.  If it can cause the modern day puritans to stop handing our scarlet letters to every Hester Prynne that comes along, maybe it's for the good.

Unfortunately, Jerry Jr. is probably just another scapegoat for the disease that our puritanical roots have grown.  Interesting that "cancel culture" seems to operate just fine at places other than liberal bastions like Berkeley huh?

Post Script: 14 days later a story broke about a love triangle between the Jerry and Becki Falwell and a 20 year old pool boy, that's going to be harder to play off as a harmless prank. I'm not Hindu, but the whole Karma thing really does seem to be a real force of nature.  Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone," that was to protect the stone throwers as much as the target I think.

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.