Living in coronavirusworld 68: Is it just me or are things getting crazier out there?

5/31

Black lives (still) matter

“Black lives matter. I can’t breathe.” Working at my dining room table, sun streaming in on a beautiful day, I heard the chants from the streets. I went outside but the marchers had already passed my block on Adam Clayton Powell. It was the first of the day's actions in the neighborhood.  Later before  our walk I got her text that a large group of marchers were heading  down 125th street.  By the time I got the messages, we had already met in Morningside and so decided to walk to Central Park.  I learned that both my sons in  Brooklyn would be heading out to demonstrations. Here in midst of the still continuing pandemic, a new crisis is taking place while all over the nation people react to this latest trilogy of murders of black people by police. The protest is spreading as fast as a virus.

Our walk is not so long today.  As we cross 110th, there’s whole string of flashing light  police cars. Speeding past.  After a short time in the Park, we’re done. Maybe it’s the added weight of tension, of sadness. The ongoing sense of unraveling even as we stumble towards reopening.

Some musician friends of mine gather in a private residence and live stream a "social bubble"concert.  Must be at least 6 musicians. I love the music, but with mixed feelings them. I envied them enjoying each other and a place I know.  Ad is it okay? I mean  they all wore masks, except when playing a horn or singing.  I feel confused. Like I feel we've left the "don't   go out unless it is absolutely necessary" phase.  A friend meets her partner for rehearsals,. Another friend gathers 4-5 others to record a church service . Could I meet someone  for a performance? For recording? Are we all making up our own rules?

The next  shock comes by  reports from Minnesota, for the governor and mayors of St Paul and Minneapolis, that most of those arrested are white people from out of the state, many with cars without license plates or other identification. What???? Seem to be right wing groups trying to foment more intense conflict. Accelerationists, they are called. 

Late in the day, more police cars. 

...and again...

A buzz on the street .  Seems they’ve come to enforce social distancing. Broke up the line between the deli and the liquor store. I’ve been expecting that. But that  wasn’t enough. 

on the street 

They say the liquor store was closed and that they and laid a $5K citation on the deli. Unnecessary. It’s almost as if when they count do decent crowd control elsewhere, soothes come to Harlem to push people around until they have agency again. They cold do this all afternoon Central Park if thy wanted.  The mood on the street  is not good.Somewhere between anger and resignation.  I feel like I’m lost my grip on things. 

Is it just me or are things getting crazier out there?

The Joker

Living in coronavirusworld 68: Of black lives. Central America. Shavout. (#wewillgetby #wewillsurvive)

5/29

                                                             We will get by.  We will survive.

It feels like we’re in another open season on black lives.   First the jogger, Ahmand Arbery, and then with a chilling sense of deja vu, Floyd George dies gasping the words, I can’t breathe. This in a context where black and brown people are dying at a rate twice that of the general population in  coronavirusworld. And predictably, the explosion of rage at a reality that alway comes back. These stories are so familiar, we struggle to remember the names and keep them order. Each one seems definitive as if they should be the last, but there they are again. And with the explosion of rage, the clucking of tongues and wagging of fingers saying this is not the way. Until a president says Where there is looting, there will be shooting…. One can be by principle against violence and at the same time understand that in the face of this rage, silence is the most appropriate response. As long as there is no owning of the problem of continued white privilege, no confession of its deadly oppression, no acts of amends let alone reparations, no engaged commitment to deconstruct the institutional architecture of white privilege, we have nothing to say. Absolutely nothing. 

                                                                         ****

Our Presbyterian national work group on Central America meets to discuss what next. We worked for two years on a report to be made at this summer’s General Assembly and now that report …as well as all other social justice  actions…are put off until 2022.  At one level, we’re okay with this. Our report was BC, before corona. The tendencies, dynamics, social trends have been  exacerbated and brought to painful new levels in the pandemic. In similar, but also unique ways in each setting. Where do we stand today?

* Honduras has had approaching 5000 cases and 250 deaths. They have had lockdown.  Increasing authoritarianism on the part of the government.

* Guatemala. The government has declared total weekend lockdowns. The first time they did this with only 3 hours notice. Some had no time to get home. Most badly hurt are those working in the informal market of food and goods. Believing the the virus in Guatemala was largely fueled by infected persons deported back to Guatemala from the US, there are no longer flights to or from the US with the exception of continuing deportation flights. Communities are so frightened of returning persons that there are  “literally lynchings”.  The country that so honored migrants and the importance of their remisas that statue was erected in Salcalja in the highlands now violently rejects the returnees.

el migrante

The US embassy arranges ways for US citizens to get out. And Guatemalans with papers  are stranded in the US. 

* El Salvador is a mixed bag of increased authoritarian control, “for the good of the people.”  Numbers and data seem accurate and transparent but the government wields greater control.

* Costa Rica had a spike last week, but has had only 1000 cases, 10 deaths and 12 hospitalized. The biggest issue is being a neighbor to an out of control Nicaragua. A ban has been placed on transportistas, trucks going through the country with goods from or to Nicaragua, There are also several hundred Nicaraguans stranded in Costa Rica. The government has worked very hard to quell anti-nicaraguan emotions on the part of the public and Nicas organized a Gracias demonstration.  Costa Rica has also detained Salvadorans. Working very hard to control its borders. Honduras too has closed  its border to Nicaragua making it a pariah country. 

* Our workers from Nicaragua say that it is too painful to talk about. No protocols in place. In cities like Masaya, the public hospitals are a disaster. Two Baptist pastors have died. Numbers are non-existent. Death certificates do not identify cover casualties. Nothing in place. The well off are sequestered and people try to improvise, but there is simply no real response. Long time Moravian pastor and activist Norman Bent has died. 

W e struggle to understand Ortega’s behavior. His closest ally Cuba has engaged strenuously in treatment, prevention and research. Even Venezuela has a plan in place.  It seems historically bizarre that Ortega’s closest models seem to be Brazil’s Bolsonaro and Donald Trump.  The newly born again Christian Daniel’s wife and co-President Rosario at first proclaimed “God will protect us.” Some believe she actually believed that. Then there was the claim that because Nicaragua was a young country and covid19 affected the old, there was nothing to worry about. Then the economic argument that Ortega’s base worked in the informal economy and could not afford to be quarantined.  Then claim Golpistas set the virus loose. And some believe there is a cynical plan here to “cull” the population of weak and vulnerable people who only drain society. (Ortega's base?) There has been a recent papel blanco claiming that they are pursuing a Swedish model seeking herd immunity. So all over the map. And bodies continue to pile up, removed in the middle of the night, taken to mass graves. Not yet like Guayaquil, where corpses filled the streets, but getting there. 

Our friend Dennis gives us a quick overview of South America. Brazil is a total “shitstorm.” Sao Paolo has 500 deaths a day. Twenty thousand now dead. Chile is spinning out of control because of the complete private nature of the health care system. In Peru, people are fleeing Lima and heading back to el campo bringing the virus with them.

Meanwhile, due to falling income, the PCUSA is cutting its budget by 20% and the future of mission partners is uncertain. 

                                                                          ****

My friend Steve asked me to preach for his Shavout service. Here’s what I had to say:

It’s exciting to be with you on Shavuos. This weekend the Christian community celebrates Pentecost. Shavuos is 50 days after Passover. Pentecost is 50 days after Easter.  (That’s what the Greek word means …counting 50…)Shavous celebrates the receiving of the 10 Commandments.  Pentecost celebrates the receiving of the Holy Spirit. I always have got to remind my folks that the Holy Spirit didn't just show up fo sth first time 50 days after Easter. That it had been there since day one when the breath of God, ruah, blew across the waters and separated the dry from the seas. And when the breath of God blew into clay and made earth man, Adam. It’s always been there. But the point is, whoever wrote the Pentecost story in the Christian scriptures clearly believe there was a direct connecton between the 10 commandments and the Holy Spirit. 

Now about those 10 commandments.  What I would give for leaders who took them as principles  to live by. Not a list of things to do. They are lo, that is no, don’t. Not do….And here’s the thing. I have come to think that the first commandment - no other gods- is central. Definitive.That every other commandment is a variation of, illustration of the first.   They are all about making something else, something not God, into an idol the takes our attention and takes us off the path. Coveting, envy, adultery lying, theft, even murder….are putting something else above God. Making  something else your God. Maybe keeping focus on these basic principles becomes all the more important during a time like this where we are truly responsible  for one another. So happy Shavuot, And shabbat Shalom.

                                                                                       ****

The day ends with West Park Open Mic. I confess a month into this, I still find ZOOM a bit elusive. (They did just add an update…). I sing I shall be released to honor Dylan's 79th birthday and Ripple for the Grateful Dead . I’m wearing a Grateful Dead Steal Your Face t-shirt with a mask on the skull. The legend reads # wewillgetby.  #wewillsurvive.

Living in coronavorusworld 67: We all need a strategy to the other side

5/29

Upper West Side gargoyle

I was very happy that on this week’s Gluey Zoomy Show, (https://www.facebook.com/events/everywhere/gluey-zoomy-show-live/) my friends Joel and Carrie (Hot Glue e& the Gun) read my letter and glued  my angelito from outsider artist Angel Romano to their art wall. (http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2013/04/angelitos.html ).

there's the angelito

  Their special music guest was a uniquely gifted Lauren Maul. (http://www.laurenmaul.org/)     And Chef Midnight offers us a recipe for ceviche and some guacamole as a bonus. 

My longtime friend David hit all the categories. Well into his 80’s, long time smoker, living in an assisted living facility….when he got diagnosed with Covid19 and sent to the hospital, it was easy to imagine he would not return.  Much to our surprise, he made it through to the other side. Miracles do happen even in coronavirusworld. 

Conversations with Presbyterians and Communists. We all need a strategy get to the other side. I get an invitation to preach my first sermon from quarantine this Sunday. 

Finish the final episode of  Mrs.America. The only problem was, I didn’t want it to end. (https://www.hulu.com/series/mrs-america-96f330fe-878d-412e-949f-fd8b69b3adf2?&cmp=11988&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=BM%20SEM%20Originals%20Suppression&utm_term=mrs%20america&gclid=CjwKCAjw5cL2BRASEiwAENqAPoKBBwHrZX3QuIEeCW_WvTFnpULCaN_GxyCMDdIS_LFZjm57oA1fChoCI-IQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds). It’s a very valuable  look at an important moment in American history, probably the peak of power for US women. It’s good to be reminded that the women’s movement was once bipartisan with active Republican participants like Jill Ruckelshaus and support of elected officials themselves.  Even Reagan himself felt he couldn’t afford to be explicitly anti-ERA.   We get to learn more of the individual personalities and differing  opinions of heroic leaders like Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem.  It’s also close look at the complex and paradoxical character of Phyllis Schlafly. As leader of the anti-ERA movement, she was every bit the “working girl” that any of her feminist opponents were. It’s also important to see the path from Schlfafly’s movement to the takeover of the Republican Party by the extreme right and the coalescence of right wing forces that produced Trump. It helps us gain perspective on how we came to be  here. And also to know that in the last two years, the remaining states necessary to pass the ERA have come through.  The House has passed a resolution to rescind the deadline. Which of course, the Senate refuses to bring to action. 

I take a long walk to visit my friend RL. Hope to get strong enough to venture outside. Looking forward to it. Steady stream of bars  and restaurants reopening, Even a shoe repair shop.  But not our favorite St. James Gate. 

Add caption

Finally Muslim Comedian Ramy Youseff  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramy_Youssef).  Takes us into the world of a modern American religious Muslim. A world we don’t often get to see. And we get to see ourselves from his perspective. He describes a date with a woman in a very short dress and high heels struggling across  street in winter, her carefully done hair blown about. How can they make them go out like that? He asks. (Irony noted.) Most controversally, he describes the effects of  the US response to 9-11. The prejudice in the US which caused many secular Muslims to seek out their faith community and strengthen their roots  as they felt othered by their long time communities and neighbors.  How the US’s interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq stenghtened  dislike (hatred) of US in the Arab  and Muslim 

worlds. So…did 9-11... work? He asks in his special’s most disturbing moment. 

Even with the talk of stronger together, we’ve never been more divided  since the  Civl War. 

Living in coronavirusworld 66: Weird Christianity

5/27

The Meer

 Today I am repping not a place or event but food.  Most specifically, Pittsburgh food. I’m wearing a PIEROGI shirt.

Pierogi

This all came from a Sunday conversation with my son in Berlin. I told him that to feel a connection with my roots I had made a casserole of kielbasa, sauerkraut and egg noodles. He smiled and said What kielbasa? I said, Polish. He says, It just means sausage in Polish.. So we look it up an discover that what we’ve been calling kielbasa is actually kielbasa krakowska, or Polish sausage, Krakow style.                                                                                                                                                            We spend our gathering time talking about  the current perceived conflict between liberty and equality. The conflict expressed by people angrily demanding their  right to go around without  masks, as if any impingement on liberty outweighs concerns for the common   good. And how my behavior affects you has  no relevance to me. This is the  context in which we discuss the recent New York Times  Op Ed on Weird Christianity, by Tara Burton. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/opinion/sunday/weird-christians.html)   And a critique by Daniel Jose Camacho. (https://sojo.net/articles/racial-aesthetics-burtons-weird-christians)

In essence, Ms. Burton argues that  an emerging new generation is moving away from modernism towards a return to traditional forms and practices, like the Latin Mass. And that this back  to basics is a religious form of punk. Camacho, on the other hand, suggests that Burton has missed the inherent elitist posture of at least some of Ms. Burton’s weird Christians, with its accompanying imperial and colonialist attitudes.

We agree that the return to tradition is more  than finding ancient practices to have a really cool aesthetic. I point out the there is validity in her argument. That, for example, I experienced in almost  universally secular Denmark, that a growing number of young people are attracted to the quiet candle lit chanted Taize services. The Reformation movement of Luther  and Calvin replaced  what they perceived to be a practice marked by superstition and imposed ignorance with an emphasis on  the work of the mind. But in the process, something was lost.

Neotraditionalism also brings with it the sense that there is an ideal defined by certain culture norms and expressions. As if something could  be pure.

Our friend Leo lifts up the centrality of Living life under the cross that the neotradtionalists miss. 

I personally had to struggle to move beyond the material and rational bounds of the Reformed Protestant  faith I grew up in. I recalled a seminary class mate, after a class, lost in wonder. Flying buttresses, wow. He said.  A life of faith must have rook for awe. And my night at an after party for a Chronos Quartet concert where a choir of Serbian Orthodox monks passed bottles of their homemade rakia and sang the deep rich and other worldly liturgical music of their tradition. And wondered what the children of former colonial subjects now British citizens claiming the words of Shakespeare as their own means. 

Steve H says that he fullness of the  Kyrie eleison can only be felt when we hear it in  multiple languages. That true religion gets us out of and beyond our identity into the formation of a new identity. 

Steve P says that Christianity always holds two realities  in tension, that it is by nature conservative and anti-change and also subversive and future oriented at the same time. Both rejecting the world and openly embracing the world. 

And I say we need spaces to get lost. 

We affirm that diversity is the true icon of human experience. That there is a line from Origen to Howard Thurman to Thomas Merton in which contemplation takes one into the heart of suffering . That Merton had said who begins in contemplation ends in revolution. That as mystical as the Eucharist is, in the end it is the people who are the real presence. That the mystical exists between THE BODY and bodies. It is true that Breuggeman, for example, says that a preacher must ultimately be a poet.  (Or in the words of Rubem Alves, Poet, Prophet and Warrior). But reason too matters, as long as we understand it is not the only expression of truth. 

Our friend Leo reminds us that suffering must be at our center. An embrace of our own poverty and the poverty of others. To truly be the essence of punk, our Christianity  has to challenge the essence of empire.  Those of us who remain in the church have to be institutional Christians  for revolutionary purposes.  

We live in a world where reality has been I conquer, therefore I am . Where our lives are held in ransom to the market. Where the thief's  demand your money or your life  becomes your life for our money. We are called to be a subversive communtiy. One , where as Fredrick Buechner  said, our greatest gift meets the world's greatest need. 

Yes, another good Wednesday morning. 

There is a sense of calm and peace watching the geese on the Harlem Meer. 

Geese 

The helado carts have returned. 

helados

Living in coronavirusworld 65: Staring into the abyss

5/26

The Garden is ready...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

I like that the woman who runs the local laundromat calls me “joven”…Spanish for young one…even though I’m sure I’m older than her. I guess if you're the dona, and jefe, of la lavandaria local you can call anybody what you want. They've  been an essential business from the start.

In the park I saw a woman taking serious boxing lessons, a police car and a one armed man.

I finally stop to realize  that’s Washington and Lafayette hanging out near Morningside Park.

Washington and Lafayette hanging out in Harlem

A work by M.Bartholdi, famous for the Statue of Liberty,was commissioned by newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer.  The original is in Paris and in 1900, C.B.Rouss commissioned a copy for New York City. Now the two are all but forgotten and no one knows this little plot of land is Lafayette Square. We learn things like this in this coronavirusworld.  I feel they should be wearing masks.

Luigi’s Garden looks ready for visitors. 

What stories this guy could tell....

The Presbytery of New York City Cabinet meets to hear a lengthy report from its Emergency Response Team. They are responding to then Governor’s ok for meetings with 10 people or less and the President’s  demand that churches reopen. While public health and safety are the major concern, another driving force is insurance and liability. Presbytery is greatly concerned that if the churches are open and someone contracts the virus and perhaps even dies, Presbytery will be included in the lawsuit.  After reading the checklist, it becomes readily apparent that few if any churches could actually meet the stringent requirements any time soon. The committee reports on how many institutions have already determined there can be no public meetings until at least January.       

As that reality sinks in, we begin to look at other realities. Over half of our 100 churches do not have installed pastors.  Of the other 50, 32 can not even afford supply preachers. To make matters worse, we are not just talking worship services. We are talking opening the church for any reason, including rentals. Without income from renters, many churches that have been teetering on the brink will go over and under. All the talk about finding new ways to be church, and seeking mergers and regional churches, fine ideas in the long  term, do not help us deal  with the reality that many of our churches will not survive the virus. Cabinet members begin to share the conversation that are being  directed towards them. Anxious phone calls from anxious church reps, Pastors and elders.  The common theme is, if we can’t open up now, we are finished. We feel like we are on the edge of the cliff, staring                                                             into the abyss, wind in our faces.  The near future is painful to contemplate.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Living in Coronavirusworld 64: Of Memorial Day....and Ascension

5/25

In Morningside Park

Memorial Day. When I was a kid, my dad would go to Somerset to put flowers on his father’s grave. In later Pittsburgh years, there were always morning 5K races and parades and American flags everywhere. We’d go down for opening day at my mom’s pool then back to her house for a cookout on the back deck and dinner on the upstairs deck, the decks built to feel like an Outer Banks beach house deck. It still feel like that’s what I should do on Memorial Day.

It’s supposed to be a day to honor those who died in this country’s various wars. Somehow Major League Baseball got that confused with “honoring the troops” and  wearing camo as a tribute.

Yankee camo

Thankfully, most of our troops are still alive. Truly honor them? Forget  wearing camo. Just bring them home. Or make damn sure we know what we're doing before sending them somewhere we'll have to bring them back from in the first place.          

We meet in Morningside Park for our walk again.  The turtles  are out in mass again

turtles

She’s lookingg for bees tttttt.              to photograph and share with one of her kids.  As we walk through Central Park, in the Garden I realize that all the tulips are gone, the beds empty,  I wonder what will come next. And I realize that I have lived here for 25 years and never  before was aware of how the seasons  of flowers changed in the Conservatory Garden. And that we spent all of tulip season in quarantine.    

                                                                ****

Time for our West Park Bible Study. Tonight we’re looking at Acts 1:6-14, the story of Jesus’Ascension.  I get a laugh out of Marsha when I  refer to “fly up day” which is what it used to be called when you went from  Brownies to  Girl Scouts.  I remember my surprise when I was in modern secular Germany on this day and discovered it is still a public holiday. Everything closed. And some how merged with Father’s Day, which is  basically men going  out to drink with  other fathers. The word in German, Himmelfahrt, from Heaven Journey.

I talk about  the three portal, or gateway days in the liturgical year. Days we walk through like doors to go from one season to the next. Took me a lifetime  to “get this” but here we are. Ascencion takes us from Easter into Pentecost, Christ the King, the crown of the church year,  from Pentecost into Advent, Transfiguration Epiphany into Lent.. Jesus is preparing his disciples for his leaving earth.  He makes  three promises…the gift of the Holy Spirit, the purpose of the spirit to help us be witnesses to the ends of the earth and finally, his eventual return.

I hadn’t noticed before that Easter to Ascension is 40days. That umber again. Days of rain for Noah. Years in the wilderness for the people of Israel, days of temptation in the wilderness for Jesus. These two 40 day periods bookend the ministry of Jesus. The accounts in Luke and Acts are directed  to 'dear Theophilus”, which means Lover of God. Either an homage to one person or intended for any and all lovers of God.  Also essentially a repeat of Luke 24:44-53.  Only here do we hear this discussion of kingdom where they want to see Israel returned  to sovereignty and Rome driven out.  (In scripture, Kingdom of God usually refers to the reign of God on earth. ) The answer is, it's not for you to know. As Russ points out, a message that this doesn’t negate the desire or expectation of kingdom restored, only the power to predict.

Marsha, trained in community  organizing, is taken by the use of the word  power. That is the goal of organizing, to gain power. In organizing, power is a necessity, not a negative. In Spanish, it’s the word poder, the same exact word as can, i.e. to be able. That  is the challenge ahead. 

Power to do what? Well, to witness. To Judea (the home), Samaria (hostile territory of our closest neighbors, a faith so similar to ours, our closest other ) and to the ends of the earth.  Is that Paul’s trip to Rome? Is it the mission to  the gentiles?   And what does it mean to witness?

All this takes place in a “cloud.” Which usually represents the presence and activity of God. And again takes us back to Moses on Mt.Sinai, waiting for the Ten Commandments,. And again for how long was Moses up there? Well, of course, 40 days. There is also a cloud during the Transfiguration. (Luke 9:34) and in the prediction of his second coming. (Luke 21: 27  And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.)

Our attention is drawn to the two men in white who speak to them 10:   While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.  We can almost imagine them in white suits with a long white limo ready to take Jesus away. And although they are clearly angels, Luke does not say angels. While Luke speaks of angels several times and even very specifically of Gabriel once, (1:19) he only has two men in white twice. The other time being at the tomb. (Luke 24: 3-5) And both times they have questions as to why we are looking in the wrong direction:

Luke 24: 5.   “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; He has risen! … and 

Acts 1: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” In both cases, we’re looking to the past and Jesus has already moved on. And we’ve got work to do. The two men in white are brackets, the parentheses that contain the 40 days of the risen Christ's time on earth.

Finally, we see a glimpse of their life, spent in prayer.  There’s a list of the disciples, minus Judas Iscariot, of course.  And the mention of Mary. The last time her name appears in the New Testament.   We spend some time talking about the lack of information about her death. What was it like? Who was there? What was said? (Just as interesting to me is what was Joseph’s death like? What was the conversation like between Joseph and this adult man he had raised as his child, a boy he had not fathered? A story still to be written.)

So we are left. On our own. We are called to witness. And we are on own, but not alone. The Holy Spirit will sustain us. Not just comfort us, not just an arm around the shoulder, but the sustenance to keep us going. As Marsha says, it’s a pretty horizontal vision.  We sustain each other in the vision, in the witness. 

In the days ahead, following the virus, many churches will not be able to afford pastors and perhaps even preachers. It will be up to communities to

bear the witness in new (or perhaps very old) ways. And we will not be alone.