Living in coronavirusworld 9: Go with the flow

4/1

...always  at home...

April Fools’ Day.  Well maybe not this year. No one's, like, there…

Our Wednesday morning reflection group meets. Some notes:

*Father Clyde has made the painful decision to end the Sunday afternoon services of Ecclesia for the homeless people in the park.  Each congregant was given a morning and evening prayer book prepared by Clyde and a pocket testament and Psalms. He is part of a coalition asking that 25000 hotel rooms be made available for the homeless population as church and other shelters shut down. The city shelters are, in his word, “petri dishes.” Some meals to go services are still in operation, like Broadway Presbyterian. 

*Psalms help get us through, and prayers at particular times of day.

* We’re looking for the prophetic stream, the Holy Spirit flowing through each of us.

* We are not a state, just a large collection of individuals who somehow make it.

*True freedom is obedience to justice and righteousness. Since justice flows like water and righteousness like an everlasting stream, we need to go with the flow, God’s flow. And learn to swim. 

* The didache is a good resource. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didache)

* This (moment in time) is a different rhythm.

* It’s like in Acts 12: 13-19 when Peter is liberated from prison and Rhoda the servant girl goes to tell the others and they tell her she must be out of her mind. 

* We know what to do. We all know “Love your neighbor like yourself” but respond, ‘Yeah, I know, but I don’t feel like it…”

* Is there a plan? Dr. William Barber II says that before CoVid 19, 700 poor people were dying a day. A major action is being planned for June 20th. 

* Thirty refrigerator trucks have been ordered for storage of dead bodies

*Read  The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry, an essay on racism and the damage it does to us…

* We cannot let this moment pass. We have to learn the lessons. But what lessons?

* Sam says we need to create an alternative reality

* That the other is as valuable as you are (although love of neighbor is held back by the extent of self-hatred)

*  Conservatives are more fearful. True leaders are less fearful.

* Is this moment encouraging idolatry of personal safety?

* We agree to read together the Camus’ The Plague. 

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Through an interesting set of circumstances, I am a guest of two high school senior religion classes from the GANN Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts. I’m talking on Presbyterianism. I enjoy talking about the best of our tradition:

* The priesthood of all believers, rule by elders. (Presbuteroi)

* How I am a teaching elder, not a priest, a facilitator, not a mediator (therefore similar to a rabbi) How I do nothing magical. 

* In communion, the people are transformed, not the elements

*Marriage is a covenant, not a sacrament, made by two fallible human beings. 

* In reformation, Calvin broke with Luther over governance, communion and nature of the world. 

* In governance, Luther maintained episcopacy with bishops. Presbyterians have a corporate bishop, the elected presbytery, equal parts clergy and lay. Horizontal, not vertical. 

` * In communion, for Presbyterians, Christ is present in the sharing of bread and cup but not in the elements.

* All creation is under God’s dominion and God present in creation. For Luther, there is the kingdom above ruled by God and the kingdom below ruled by satan.

* Since we are under God’s dominion, we are stewards of creation. For Calvin, the highest calling is to be a civil magistrate. Presbyterians are disproportionately represented in congress because of a sense of the sacredness of politics. 

* Our representative  republican form of governance highly influenced the  creation of the American system. We are supposed to elect representatives who will be wise, not ideological. No one party or candidate can ever be the full expression of  the full mind of God, all will fall short, all held accountable.

*Salvation is fully a function of God’s freedom and God’s grace. We cannot gain salvation through our own actions neither can we ever judge another. 

* Marilynne Robinson in the Death of Adam argues that Calvinsim’s concept of the equality of all humans led to the emergence of humanism and the enlightenment. 

The  students were sharp and asked good questions. Like do we really believe in predeterminsim? And I said it was actually predestination, which is best understood by what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  meant when he said the arc of history is long but bends towards justice. Likewise, what about free will? We are always free to accept or reject the grace that God offers, but even that capacity is a function of grace.  Very heavy conversation about God and the Holocaust. I said we had to see it as human, not demonic in order to prevent similar events. (They do, sadly, continue) God was/is present in the suffering, like in Eli Wiesel’s Night, and in those who saved others, as in Le Chambon sur Lignon and others. This was good remote learning. 

The  last question was about the Trinity. My less than adequate answer was that I was a son, a husband and a father simultaneously but still just me. Yeah, inadequate.....

                                                                                                       

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I talk to a friend from Beverley Church in Brooklyn. She tells me about the refrigerator trucks for dead bodies. And that families are not allowed to take their dead. And that people are then and cremated.