Living in coronavirusworld 52: liminal time

5/13

From Temple Israel to Mt.Olivet Baptist

As our Wednesday morning group begin to gather, I share my experience of having watched the final game of the 1979 World Series last night and my pill box style Pirates' hat with the three stripes and two Stargell stars.

1979 Pirates

And how Willie, Pops to his teammates, awarded starts to them after every game.  Some had stars all around their hats, even on top. No one's ever done that since. (Except for a cameo in the 2013 National League Wild Card game…)

Someone mentions that now instead of a Times Square national debt ticker there’s now. A Times Square national death ticker. 

Our group has recently been joined by Biblical scholar Norm Gottwald, author of the groundbreaking The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.C.E. Published well, in 1979. His basic argument is that in this late Bronze, not quite Iron Age, local Canaanite peasants banded together to overthrow the Egyptian overlords who controlled the costal plane and then retreated to the Judean hills where they worked out a society based on covenantal relationship, not hierarchical authority. Here the peasants, known as ha’piru, became the Hebrews, and with their shared faith in a god named Yahweh became Israel. 

This was a liminal time , a space between time. There were two major city states, Ugarit and Mycena, that had once been cities of extensive trade . They were now in decline. Sea people, Philistines (Palestinians) were invading from the  water. The ha’piru were free floating, marginal people, nomads and workers. Israel arises out of chaos, born to freedom from Egypt. Led by Moses who more than likely had been a bureaucrat working for Egypt who decided to help free these people.  This history became mythologized in an origins story constructed o help establish a collate identity. 

No empire controlled the levantine coast for 3-4 centuries leaving Israel to develop on its own. The Torah is the record of the development of that covenant people, the record of what it takes to live together. Without someone telling you what to do, To be a covenant people, leaders had to serve the covenant people. Of al the neighboring peoples, Israel was the only one to survive. And Yahweh the only god. 

Steve P says that when people tell a story, they create a people.

Christianity emerged out of a similar liminal time. The Temple had fallen.  They still considered themselves to be Jews. They worshipped regularly in the Temple (see Acts 2) and celebrated eucharist in the homes. Thee always comes a point whee the ways diverge, and the path become separate.  It took several centuries for Jesus to become Christ. 

One of the issues  of being a covenant community is  always having to  resist the desire for a king. The different  competing stores and strands of the Bible reflect this struggle, What Wes Howard -Brook sees as the  record of the tension between the covenant religion and the religion of empire  in scripture. 

The US now find itself in a liminal space. We’ve lost the capacity to believe that all people are created equal.

The power of liberation is the capacity to tell on\e's own story for yourself. The task becomes as Freire put it, that one can become the subject of one’s history. 

God’s response to  being asked his name, I will be what I will be, is the God is not about God's story, but your story.  In telling our story of God story, we experience what Ward-Lev called the Living Presence. Where truth can be the opposite of fact. 

Steve H says we need to be able to write the  history of the  future and that in Buddhism , the apocalypse is a function of collective karma. 

Norm has been exploring performance criticism, an emerging form of criticism that focuses on the orality of scripture. I recall how performing a passage instead of reading it deepens, perhaps seven changes the meaning. 

Joel talks about in acting, learning  the scene, not the lines. How where you’ve gone wrong can reveal where what could be right. 

Steve P quotes  Myrti about that all thought  is old. That truth is revealed in events and only events can be called true,   

Andre speaks of the exclusive nature of American stories. Stories that many people cannot see themselves in,

I’m remembering seeing the UK’s National Theatre perform Antony and Cleopatra. How many of the actors are people of color from the empire’s colonies.  Shakespeaere's story now becomes theirs as well. And how does it change in the process?

In this liminal time, where do we turn? Steve P references a quote from a NewYorker article about how Greenwich, Connecticut became Trump country. “ We have no concern for the moral question here.”  And calls us back to “All people are created equal” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”   That is where we must return.

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When Russ asks again. What’s our job? Clyde responds, the Poor Peoples Campaign and Dr. Barber are there always. It’s a call for a moral revival. What to do? Join..

What is clear is that there’s no going back. That road is closed off.  It’s an opportunity, but no guarantee how it will turn out.

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The Jewish stars on the Roman columns of Mt.Olivet Baptist tell the story of the short but grand life of Temple Israel when Harlem was going tone the new promised land. Two waves of African-American  immigrants brought that  dream to an end. We can only only see traces. And now a new Jewish Community Center on 118th announces yet a better wave in the ebbed flip 

I see the Atlah signs are back again, in all their strident animosity.

you may b e

Order has been restored.  

Atlah signs once again