The 2016 general election was devastating. I do remember the surge of joy I felt stepping out of Old Saint Mary’s on Michigan Avenue, having just cast my ballot for a woman for president. (I wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Hillary, but I was ready for her, and there was no way I was voting for a rape-y, racist reality star whose whole reality was a house of cards.) Finally, in this country, that thinks itself so progressive, so powerful, so much at the forefront of the world. And I remember the gut-wrenching grief, the hours of sobbing, the sense of profound betrayal I felt at the outcome. I had dared to hope. In the aftermath of that election, I felt certain that electing a person who was so clearly not up to the job would result in many of us on the margins, with less money, power, or agency being sacrificed, abused, maligned, and further marginalized under such miserable, patently selfish, autocratic leadership.
The last four years have been worse than I thought in that regard.
Now I’m braced for an equally devastating turnout. I am not hopeful. There is no bottom to which we are not willing to sink. I am only planning on what it means to survive more of the worst I have known in my lifetime.
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“I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
I want to write to you about all the things you can do to stay healthy, the way to keep caring for yourself in the midst of a difficult time, with sunshine and hope of what the future will be. But I can’t. I’m angry. Yesterday in my practice I was doing sun salutations and composing language—sermons?—about the dissonance between what we say Christianity is, and how we practice it. What does it mean when we refuse to feed, clothe, and shelter the least of us? What exactly do we think we’re doing? How flawed is our walk with Christ if we believe following his teaching asks us to ruin families, to bully, demean, and assault folks, to kill people? In what have we placed our faith? How can we possibly see the love of Christ in actions of violence, division, and destruction? Is it the commandment to love what undergirds our faith practice or is it white supremacy? I think often about my friend, Daniel Hill and the work he is doing to dismantle white supremacy in the (white) Christian church, and the heat he is catching from other white folks about it. He inspires me. And I look at his ministry and think, white people, he came out of you. He comes to his own, and many of y’all don’t receive him. If you can’t hear what he has to say, then humbly, whatever I could have to say to you, however we might connect, I am already lost to you.
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Out for a run the other day, I was imagining what my future might look like, in five or ten years: might I have a career as a chaplain, might I be writing and teaching about embodied theology as anti-racism, might I be working in a whiteish community as a member of a pastoral staff, might I be brought into covenant with a church who says it wants and seems like it wants a black woman in leadership; and what will happen to us all when that desire encounters the reality of confronting white supremacy and the ways it has been left fallow, reinforced, or deliberately sown, and how I will work against it. What might it mean to preach to a community of red-hat-wearing, Harris County, get-off-my-property folk who cannot see me as created in the image of God because when they look at me all they see is the curse of Ham? Will I be safe to go jogging through that community, or will I be shot and killed for running while black? Will that church be willing to put a BLM sign and a rainbow flag beside the church’s marquee (because of course we’ll need to, I don’t believe anything can change that fast), or will it get a brick through the sanctuary window, or something more destructive?
My fear of encountering violence based in racism and sexism while in ministry is real. It is present to me even now. But what troubles me even more is my own lack of ability to see Christ when I draw up the faces of these folks in my imagination: the octogenarian I visit in the hospital who is unwilling to pray the Our Father with me because he’s never had a nigra pastor before and he ain’t about to start now; the head of the ladies’ auxiliary who feels sure that my book group about white supremacy and intersectional feminism would be more popular if I were just a bit nicer, and didn’t talk about race so much; the community members who curse me and vandalize my property, who send unsigned letters of violence and mutter epithets when they pass my husband and me on the street. I look into these faces in my imagination, and all I see is hate and fear and violence. I’ve never met these folks, but I know them. And so do you. How do I find the love of Christ for these people, who feel so thoroughly threatened by my freedom, my joy, my capacity and my intensity—who feel threatened by my very existence? How do I treat them the way I am inviting them to treat others?
My friend Cassie Montenegro read one of her poems in class today, and (I’m going to bungle it, Cassie, I’m sorry!) one of her lines was, “what if what we needed to keep us afloat in the moment isn’t what we will need tomorrow?” It had a brilliant resonance of her family, and when she read it, I heard the Divine say, that’s it, Jess. Everyone is afraid of something. Remember what Uncle Jimmy wrote? Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature… Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don’t be afraid. Remember that? Everyone is afraid of something. These white folks are so afraid of losing their comfort, their privilege, their money and influence, their understanding of their place in the world, they are so afraid of looking at their own pain and anguish, at the violence done by their own hands and the blood that still stains it, that they will vote for an ignorant, stupid, racist, violent, sick, misogynist, morally bankrupt, fascist narcissist in need of genuine mental help because he will help them uphold their perception of themselves. They are afraid of confronting their need to grow, and this f-ing dude isn’t going to ask them to grow at all. But they don’t have to be afraid anymore. Maybe this choice that they made yesterday isn’t what they will need tomorrow.
I guess we’ll see. In a day or two. In a week or two. Whatever the case, The wind blows where it pleases, the spirit will move me somewhere, and I will have to put myself into spaces to do the work and meet whatever is there with courage, with tenderness, and with truth.
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The results won’t be in for a while. The work goes on, even if fascism takes a firmer, more established root in our government, in fact, if this is the outcome, then my work needs to level up. This morning in practice, I was paging through the Book of Common Prayer, and came across a Collect, #17, For the Nation. (Sounds ominous and serious and weighty right? This text came out of the English split from the Catholic church, and was crafted as a tool for the order of worship by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Thanks, Wikipedia!) In pursuit of understanding the practice of public prayer, like a writer, and because I was curious, I rewrote it:
Creator of the Universe, Source of Dissolution and Nothingness, you have breathed life into us, shaped us from the dust of your creation and invited us to live lives as expressions of our gratitude to you, colored by freedom and in peace with one another: Observe the artificial boundary we have placed around ourselves and called ‘country’, what a silly thing, carving up your creation, we know it’s silly because it’s ruined our capacity to see what is right and to pursue and practice it diligently. Detoxify us. Whet our appetites for justice, strengthen our capacity for struggle and growth, so that we can use our discomfort and privilege to manifest more of your will in this time and in this place. Thank you for the model of love and sacrifice, of courage and humanity, that you shared with us through the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, and the mystery of the Holy Spirit whose voice we can hear in the wind, in the tear, in the , if only we are still and humble enough to Let Her Speak and to listen. Amen.