First day of Hannukah. Soon most of the day catching up with what I couldn’t get done yesterday. Meet my friend Rabbi Steve at the Double Dutch Coffee Shop. The weather has warmed up so we can sit outside. We get closer and closer to a transition in national leadership but the continued efforts of the President to overturn the results plus the continued support he receives from Republican elected officials gives one pause. Especially given the militant …and armed…support of his followers. Election officials in swing states have found themselves threatened. And millions of people will continue to believe the election was actually rigged somehow. Even the President’s superspreader Hanukah parties become opportunities to insist he is still the legitimate President. And we now begin to reap the Covid harvest sewn by all those who insisted on traveling and celebrating a “normal” Thanksgiving.There does seem to be real hope, however that vaccine distribution is imminent.
little plastic eating houses
more creative solutions
Little mini plastichouses continue to sprout all over Harlem. It’s like someone got an exclusive contract for the neighborhood. Big enough for one table only. Others create their own winter shelters.It remains to be seen how this will all work out.
As I walk, I see more and more businesses permanently shuttered. While congress remains deadlocked for a solution. I’m concerned because my neighborhood pub, Bean and Barley has bene coxed for three days. That can’t be good.
I consider traveling to Brooklyn to perform outside…"we’ve got heaters!”…but the hour plus subway ride is more than I want.
As the day comes to an end, I realize I have had completely ZOOMless day. A much needed break.
12/11
Another day catching up.
Chanukah shabbat
Late in the afternoon, I stop to meet friends at the Gate. RL, who has been homebound, is actually dancing...without his cane, as he is amazed to discover. My friends and I sit outside, enjoying the mild weather. So comfortable for December.We spend sometime hanging out with friends indoors. Almost normal, says my friend, except for no one allowed at the bar. All decorated up for Christmas. Last chance to enjoy the space before the indoor dining ban clams down again. Sigh.
Open Mic is slow to start due to uncooperative tech issues and that accursed spinning beach ball of death waiting for something to happen. The early part of our evening taken up with our friend Mark who died last week. Another Covid victim of societal negligence. Been trying to find where his music might be because it deserves to be heard. Despite his skills as writer and a singer, he’s left a small footprint on the platforms. Always close to making it. But not quite. I learn more and more about that all the time. How common that is. How many good people right on the periphery. While we are singing our songs, the new breaks that the Supreme Court has summarily rejected what the President had called “the big one” that was going to set aside the lector results.
This year we need those Hannukah lights shining through the darkness. W need to cleanse our temple and restore what has been most important to us. Our democracy, flawed as it is, needs restoration.
Monday comes the electoral college. A step at a time.
Everything that happens today is in the context of the looming American election.
As the International Sanctuary Group meets, we learn that for asylum seekers stranded on the Mexican side of the US border, counter to international law; and people fighting detention in Tucson, there is one strategy…wait for a new administration.
A whirlwind tour of the world:
In Canada, the court ruling that the US is not a safe country to send people to is now under appeal. Canadians are considering starting a civil initiative to bring testimony in support of the unsafe classification. In Hamburg, a court ruled that two rescue ships must be released. Brexit is creating a whole host of border issues with the United Kingdom in a rush to deport people (mainly to Frankfort) in conjunction with Brexit. Fewer refugees are being stranded at the US-Canada border as news of the shut down spreads. In Austria, 90% of requests for asylum are being denied. In Cleveland, there is movement to get Greyhound to cancel its contract with ICE. There’s also campaign to empty the detention centers, “Free Them All,”as centers have reported as high as 100% Covid positive. There have been two raids on places offerings shelter to refugees in Northern Ohio. One of our members, from Algeria, speaks to us from a refugee camp in the Western Sahara. We see sun baked sand and tents in a desert landscape.
where we are
Still unseasonably cool on my afternoon walk. I see sidewalk art that turns out to relate to relationships, but it can sum up how a lot of us feel....maybe some of us haven't even started to heal...maybe tomorrow can be a beginning...
Tonight’s Bible Study is Matthew 25: 1-13, the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, or bridesmaids. They are waiting for the bridegroom to show up. He is very late. They all fall asleep. Finally he shows around midnight. Some have forgotten to bring oil. And no one is about to loan them any. They’re told to go out and buy some, yet when they get back, the door is shut. It’s another one of those get ready for the judgment day stories. (Or the parousia, I.e., coming…)Marsha sees connection with the parable of the bad tenants. (Matthew 21: 33-46.) And I point her towards the other banquet parable we studied recently, Matthew 22: 1-14, where the poor guy gets thrown out for not having a robe,
I confess to not being especially drawn to this parable. Like the guy with the robe, what’s wrong with sharing? Why not share? Didn’t everybody fall sleep? What’s the groom doingshowing up at midnight? What stores are going to be open for buying oil at that hour? Marsha wants to know where the bride is? Leila wants to know if he gets to pick one of the virgins? (Marsha also saw connections with the virgins in paradise a muslim martyr meets. If Jesus is the groom, is a martyr, then….) Is those like the Bachelor?There always seems to be a judgmental unfairness about it all.
Then we remember that Matthew wrote this to a community that’d just lost it all. Temple, resistance struggle, any autonomy, now gone. Rome is in compere control.The message is clear: the time is now to decide. About your ultimate loyalty. As Bob Dylan said, You gotta serve somebody.
We talk about time. How all time belongs to God. And all people gathered up in it. In the past, present and future God is and God acts. We talk about how disjointed our sense of time is now. How March seem like yesterday and last week a year ago. Unmoored. Yet even, so we are not our own. We are living in and on borrowed time. In life and death, we belong to God. The creator works on all things for the new creation, even coronavirusworld.
We talk about the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom. How we can see it every day in the thousand graces we extend to one another just to get by. The way neighbors and passers by join in to respond to those troubled souls who are out in, and even on. the street. (Like my mentor said, if God wants soothing to be done in the world, it s already being done.Go and find it….) We need to be ready. Awake. In the moment. To see it.(Even woke?)
We talk about oil. How oil is needed to bring light to the darkness. What oil do we need to bring light to this darkness? What oil do we have within ourselves, that can not be borrowed, that we have to bring ourselves? We talk about what gifts we each have. Connecting people. Raising questions Art. Making beauty. Persistence. All oil to help make light in the darkness.
Maybe Jesus is the groom, the world the bride and we the bridesmaids, If God so loves the world, then we need tot too. NO telling when the bridegroom comes. We’ve got top be in this for the long haul.
I share Bob Franke's 'Great Storm is Over," especially for the last verse..
Hush little baby, let go of your fear, The lord loves his own and your mother is here, The child fell asleep as the lantern did burn, The mother sang on 'til her bridegroom's return.
The great storm is over...
Thisafternoon, people saw shop windows being boarded up downtown and in Times Square and Harlem. There is widespread fear of chaos breaking out, Someone says “…its not supposed to be….” and someone else says “It’s a too long a season of not supposed to be’s…” And someone else says, “…its too much not to be a disaster..” No matter wrath happens tomorrow, we’re in it for the long haul.
