9/23
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| Bears on Columbus |
“Boil the frog”
Joel tells us that’s the song he’s working on. Referring of course to the old story about how if you turn up the heat a degree at time, the frog won’t jump out of the water until it’s too late. And it feels like that’s where we’re headed.
We're talking today about James Cone and Cornell West. We remember the many Wednesdays we met at Tom’s restaurant and James Cone would be in the back booth waiting for Cornell West and Dr. West would stop on the way back to talk with us awhile. For both of them, blackness is a concept bigger than skin color. Dr. West talks for example about “..brown and white sisters and brothers discovering their inner blackness.” I remember teaching Dr. Cone’s Black Theology to my theology students in Newark and how hard it was for many white and even some Black students to come to terms with a “Black Jesus.”
Dr. Cone was one of the first to challenge the idea there was anything like a pure theology. What we were taught was a theology that was always a culture informed Western European white theology. I worked hard to teach students that all theology is contextual and that they need to be able to identify and understand their own culture (in the broadest sense) and context to be able to create their own theology. We see theology through our lens of American individualism. The Old Testament prophets, on the other hand, critiqued the religion of seeing God only within their own group. In scripture, there is alway a tension between the individual and the group.
Joel grew up with what he referred to as “trickle down theology,” that is if you save individual souls, they’ll do the right thing and all society will benefit. A spiritual version of Reaganomics. Steve P reminds us of Jesus’ blood trickling down. And then reminds us of Erich Fromm’s concept of social narcissism where the self disappears into the mob which it sees as its greater self. For Dr. Cone, blackness is a mentality. A way of living in an oppressive society. And the essence of Black theology is to allow the brokenness of the body of the Black Jesus to be our inspiration. Brokenness can be the pathway to healing for both individual and society.
(As to what is seen, Archbishop Tutu reportedly said “if you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”)
There seems to be a sense that self-hatred plays a role in the attraction of the mob, or authoritarian leaders. How will we behave under dictatorship? Clyde recalls Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia and theatre. I think of the role of the church in East Germany during the DDR days.
(How do you sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? Rehearse.)
Joel likes the wheat and tares parable.That we are all both. And that relationship means valuing the relationship over being right.
Steve P reminds us that the two great commandments go together. Love your neighbor as your self. And that only those who love themselves can truly love their neighbor. People who love themselves don’t join mobs or follow dictators. We speak of Martha and Mary and Jesus saying that Mary had chosen the better part when Martha complained. Steve P argues that Martha should have come to sit and study as a student as well. I agree, but Jesus should have said, Let's all do the dishes so Martha can join us. (All tautologies are useless. By definition, he says.) Then repeats that we need hope, and that if hope has an object, it is not absolute. He sees the story of the father and son in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyoyic speculative fiction novel The Road as dramatic example of the kind of hope he is talking about.
As the water gets ever hotter, our weekly conversations nurture the hope within us.
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| open fridge |
As I walk the Upper West Side, I see another Open Fridge for free food.
Joel and Carrie’s weekly Wednesday night Gluey Zoomy Show in its own whimsical way brings its own rays of hope as it reminds us that we are the glue that keeps each other together through these times.
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