Living in coronavirusworld 262: Second Week in Easter

 4/14

Harlem Meer

Second week of Easter. I wear a Brooklyn shirt and hat in honor of the 74th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the Major League Baseball color barrier. Last night in the Inspired Word  Showcase and Open Mic I sang a song reflecting on spring and our tentatively easing our way back into the open again as vaccines and testing take hold. In Canada, a new curfew has been imposed. My family in Germany  reports that   trying to live up to the European Union’s collective decision related to vaccine purchase has left them behind as the other countries made their own  deals. Fears about Astrazeneca and clotting have taken it off the market even though the percentages are minuscule.  And now Johnson and Johnson too. And a new shut down is announced. Here in the US we seem to be relatively well off. 

Ducks on the pond

tribute

tulips

Tulips are in bloom. Ducks returning to Morningside  Park. Votive candles mark where a body was found.

I can actually visit meet my mother in her assisted care facility now. Carefully checked and monitored of course.   At our Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association meeting, Doug  from Minneapolis reports a tense city as yet another police shooting dearth of a Black man has occurred and a verdict in the George Floyd murder trial awaits.  Another in the   never ending skein of school shootings has taken place. The Major League All Star baseball game ha been moved out of Atlanta due ti Georgia's efforts to suppress Black votes. Some 35000 asylum approved immigrants wait on the other side of the border for President Biden to sign an order raising the cap and the Republicans and FOX want is to believe we’ve lost control of the border and Tucker Carlson has all but said white people are in danger of being replaced. That’s where we are.

Our gospel readings have bene filled with traumatized disciples demanding proof of this risen Jesus. And even in his resurrected passing through walls form, his body still bears the marks of his crucifixion.  And by this they know him. 

He meets some on a journey to Emmaus. Others journey to Jerusalem. And the will go even farther. We are on journey of our own. And to where? 

What is gone is gone  and won't come again

What will be is not yet seen,

We are living somewhere in between. 

It’s been year.

And we’re still here.

We are here. 

On this journey there will be false starts. Wrong turns. The GPS will say recalculating. Cul de sacs and dead ends, interstates, blue highways and stuck in traffic. But we are going, 

Fredrick Büechner has said If you want to know who you really are as distinct from who you think you are, keep an eye on where your feet take you.

We are going, 

(Thanks to Roger Gench for some of these ideas and images…) 

Living in cornavirusworld 225: Connections. Relationships. Converations.

 12/8

Deep fall in Central Park

Participate in my friend Dre’s “Twenty Human Questions” project. He’s ultimately trying to find places where real conversation might take place. Some examples are: Three most important issues? Climate change and caring  for creation. Income inequality. Systemic racism. We also talk about the necessity of respecting each person’s dignity. And that failure  to do so is often at the root of violence. I wondered what kind of answers he might get at a bar in Staten Island. Dre has picked up one of the basic building blocks of organizing,  namely intentional conversation. 

Central Park foliage

schoolyard sculpture

tiny plastic houses

Take a walk through Central Park. Notice the deep fall look to the foliage. On 111th I notice for the first time a strange set of sculptures in the school yard. Small plastic houses are starting to appear in front of restaurant around the neighborhood. Like each table will have its own tiny house. 

I join my friend Russ in a ZOOM conversation called “Drinking Religiously.” It’s normally held at the 4 Saints Brewery in Asheboro, North Carolina. Started  and hosted by the duo who do the podcast entitled “A Jew and a Christian walk into a Bar….Mitzvah.” A fascinating show which explores theology and detailed reviews of cigars. I met them at the annual Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina in the Smokies.  Said to be a combination of Burning Man and church camp. Thanks to ZOOM their virtual table can extend from Carolina all the way to California. In light of new Covid spikes, we’re talking a lot about breath. And God breathing into our lives. And how we can’t take breath for granted. One of the simplest things I’ve begun to become very aware of as I deal with late onset asthma. Every breath we take has the presence of the Holy Spirit. For which we must be thankful. (https://charlesandchris.net/)

I’m back at Moe Geffner’s “Inspired Word” virtual open mic after my failure last week. I had to come back and try again. I start with “You’ve got to  hide your love away,” sounds a little like my take on Dylan doing Lennon doing Dylan. In recognition of the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination. One of the two or three artists who most affected my life. (

                                                                       "....Hide Your Love Away..."
 

then follow with my own song that I blanked on last week. And I do it. Redemption. 

                                                                        " Get Over You" 

12/9

Day starts off bad as I oversleep and miss the weekly Undergound ZOOM. And nothing goes well the rest of the day. Including lost items and falling into a health insurance rabbit hole. At some point I just have to accept it as one of those days when you just fall out of sync with the cosmos. And I realize that the cumulative effect of three deaths in three weeks is getting to me. And the depression, the sense of hopelessness takes over. So much harder to keep at bay in this never ending coronaviruswolrd. Thankfully I can accept this for myself and come back tomorrow.

Our Presbyterian Health Education and  Welfare Association continues its work of reconstructing itself. In the last month, we’ve seen three long time progressive groups go under. Part of this is generational….we who create these groups are getting older. Hell, we’re senior citizens. PHEWA is one of the few still standing and challenged by the need to pass the torch on. The fact that so may of us are on various front lines and deeply impacted by the virus keeps us going. And needed. W need to invite friends from those networks that have ended to feel welcome under our tent. Connections Relationships.Conversations.  That’s the bottomline. 

Living in cornavirusworld 189: Siblings all....

 10/14

.....as you love your neighbor

Today I’m wearing my VOTE shirt and a Brooklyn Cyclones “Dead” hat….

Vote...

Someone suggests that to understand the conflict going on in the gospels, the Pharisees were the Democrats, the Sadducees the Republicans and Jesus AOC. (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)

Our main topic of discussion is Fratelli tutti, which is not as Clyde joked a pasta dish but Pope Francis’ latest encyclical. Its topic is active brotherhood.(sic) That we are all siblings and need to live that out. Through action. And celebration.

Steve H talks about the issue of passing the peace in socially distanced worship services When we’re wearing masks. The importance of eye contact. Instead of handshakes or embraces, everyone looking into the eyes of everyone else round the circle. In the midst of the lock down, I remember my nurse organizer friend Tracy recognizing me by my eyes at the health workers demonstration at Harlem Hospital. You can see smiles, even when wearing a mask.

The pandemic has brought to light the basic conflict Francis explores, between individualism and community, a theme we have been exploring for some time. Institutions, by their very nature seem to run counter to the witness of Jesus. Institutions are of necessity focused on long term survival while the mission of Jesus is to live the day. The pandemic has revealed greater emphasis and expressions of people committed to both individualism and community. They each make their own demands and we live in the midst of that conflict.

We reflected on Fratelli’s treatment of war. Nationalism as a highest value seems to lead inevitably to war. Joe points out the since the time of Augustine, Christianity has lived with an ethic of just war. But in our time, the consequences of war are so devastating, especially for the innocent, so generally destructive, that the conditions, the limits of a just war are simply no longer possible. Thus the statement is of historic significance.

It leads to a discussion of what constitutes violence in defense of the innocent or even public order. Especially when confronted by someone who is severely disturbed. Violently disturbed. I remembered when a crazy person took over our worship service and began approaching me as I preached. Rafael, an Occupy Wall Street security person, approached him and offered a hug. When the person hugged him, Rafael wrapped his arms around him and simply carried him outside and remained with him until the ambulance arrived. Andre, who had been afraid the situation would trigger another brain aneurism, said it was the most loving use of physical restraint he had ever seen. Is any use of physical force inherently violent?   A lot of edges too that conversation. 

We talked about compassion, sympathy and empathy. Feeling with, feeling for, and feeling into, a sifters another’s feelings were one’s own. Empathy means you have the same feelings. Sympathy mean you can feel for. Understand the feelings. Compassion means you feel with and take action. Small groups can be capable of this. We can sit shiva (mourning ) with each other. We can gather for 8 day of novenas. 

Our feelings are clearly with Norm, famed Biblical scholar, currently in residence at the Community of Living Faith at Stony Point. At 92 and with doctors in New York, he’s got to think about returning to Berkeley either now or March. Institutional lack of vision. 

The discussion of Fratelli Tutti will continue next week. 

The Presbyterian Health Educational and Welfare Association board is filled with anxiety on the Supreme Court appointment hearings. Especially our  Reproductive Options network. And even more so the election that looms ever closer. As Covid not only doesn’t go away but is spiking in many states, networks like HIV and Disabilities and Domestic Violence feel ever more pressure. 

We are nowhere near the end.....

Living in coronavirusworld 132: Play ball

8/5

beauty along the way

the Crawfords

Today’s history  lesson for the Underground starts with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Negro Baseball Leagues. Today I wear a shirt and hat from the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and tell the story of Gus Greenlee. Gus made his money in the numbers “racket,” but within the black community, known as one who paid scholarships to send students to colleges and provided money for people to buy homes when denied by banks. He became the owner of the Crawford Grill, Pittsburgh’s equivalent of the Lennox Lounge where the best in black entertainers like Billie Holiday and Louie Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald would perform. (In later years, Martin Luther King,Jr would stop by when he was in town.) Negro league ballplayers would stop by the Crawford as well. Greenlee was incensed to learn that while the famous Homestead Grays could play their games at the Pirates’ Forbes Field, they were not permitted to use the showers. So Greenlee decided to build his own stadium….and his own team. Greenlee Field was the first black built stadium.  It even had lights.  He quickly gathered the best players like Josh Gibson (the Black Babe Ruth), the only man to ever hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium, arguably better than Ruth, the great pitcher Satchel Paige…Soon between the Grays and Crawfords, Pittsburgh was home to the best in baseball of any color. After seven years, a major hit in the numbers business took Greenlee out of baseball.

But there was one more chapter…1n 1954 Branch Rickey took Greenlee on as a partner to create the United Staes Baseball League, essentially a fiction to get a contract with Jackie Robinson and keep him away from anyone else until Rickey could get him into the Dodgers. Greenlee assumed the partnership  would continue after Robinson went to Brooklyn. It did not. For Greenlee, it was back to the Crawford Grill.   Gus Greenlee was but one example of the entrepreneurs who created the Negro League.  People like Effa Manley, first woman to own and direct a team, the Newark Eagles “as important to black Newark as the Dodgers are Brooklyn” she said. Newark would be the team of Larry Doby, the first Black player in the American League.  As baseball integrated, it meant the end of the Negro Leagues and the dynamic business people who created them.  The best Black ball players would become part of Major League Baseball. But those who built and kept a dynamic and exciting  league together would be lost to baseball.  Integration brought with it loss as well as gain. 

115th street 

We spend some time stalking about conspiracy  theories and how they’re growing on the left as wells right. They seem to be a way to manage a world of pain. 

And we talk about HOPE. Which is truly only HOPE f unseen. I share the Jim Wallis (Sojourners) definition:Hope is continuing to have faith in spite of the evidence and working to make the evidence change. 

A woman is quoted a saying “I would die for Jesus but I would not give up my house!”

after the storm

We also talk about how we are not required to find the solution, but only find that one thing we can do. We talk of mental illness.  Of how “melancholia” was more accepted in the day of Lincoln than depression now. How it was seeing slavery as a call not a political problem that enabled Lincoln to move beyond depression. How Freud said the definite of a good life is non-neurotic love and work.  And we talk of the importance of agency, over transaction. As Freire said, that we might become the subjects of our own history.

The New York City General Assembly commissioners finally meet. I realize how unique my experience of being actively engaged was among us. The rest felt isolated and unsure how to connect. No time to absorb or think.”Just one more ZOOM meeting."We plan our report to Presbytery and continue to recommitted to working on the reconvening of Assembly.

Our Presbyterian Health Educational and Welfare Association will be reaching out to the Black Women and Girls Task Force to seek collaboration. Our Disabilities Concerns network feels that experience of BWaG in the world of disability has not yet  been attended to. We decide to extend an invitation to a new Mental Health Network to join . New stream lined by laws are on their way as the continued rebirth of PHEWA takes place. In the current pandemic and social crisis, the work  has taken on renewed relevance and urgency. It feels good to be part of it, to having helped bring it about. 

Living in coronavirusworld 112: Love one another

7/15

Add caption

Asheville "Hippies"

This is the week we could have been at the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina. So today I open with a “visit” to Asheville. After my trips to the Goose, I would stop in Asheville. Famous for craft beer. And music. I've played couple of spots in Asheville, actually got to play my “Carolina” song in Carolina. And there’s a baseball team, the Asheville Tourists. The play at McCormick Field, carved out of the side of a mountain. Built in 1924, only hallowed Fenway and Wrigley are older. Golf carts scamper around to bring fans up the hill form downtown. Elsewhere in North Carolina, they talk about Asheville as a locale for “hippies.” So as touch of irony, the Tourists take a weekend each  year to play as “the Hippies,” tie dye jerseys and all. Even a tie dye “A” logo. (What is it about mountains and hippies?) So that’s my hat and shirt for the morning. 

As usual, the Underground surfaces some themes. One is centering, how we center ourselves i the midst of all of this. Steve H talks about his use of prayer. Simple prayer. While breathing in and out. What, if any, is the difference  between a Jesus chant and Nam myoho renge Kyo? For some the Lord’s prayer has been a ritual. I recalled how my elementary school day began with the (Protestant) Lord’s prayer, some Bible verses and the pledge to the flag. A Roman Catholic priest friend said that when he was growing up in Pittsburgh  they called the public schools “protestant” schools. 

Joel speaks of growing up an “evangementalist.” The “toxic dualism” of the mind/body split. Dre speaks of the influence of Alan Watts on his life. We agree that we are not our thoughts and that you can’t meditate wrong. 

The meat of our conversation focuses on Isabelle Wilkerson’s excerpt from her book Caste in the Sunday Times. Her comparing of India and the US as siblings of the British Empire is exciting in that it opens up an area of thought I hadn’t considered before. She sees our two countries as the only still caste bound cultures left with caste having power and influence long after laws change. Caste systems predate the construct of racism. She relates how when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr went to India, he was mainly interested in learning about his hero, Gandhi. But he was pushed to meet and understand the Dalits, the untouchables, and learn he was an untouchable too and to begin to study Ambedkar, the Dalit organizer. As he thought about it, King realized that in the US, Blacks were still untouchable. A always, understanding a new angle on the problem doesn't necessarily lead to knowing what to do about it. Our obsession with supremacy is a sign of our fragility. 

Not only is Santa Claus not real for adults, his workshop is a Bangladeshi sweat shop. 

Mother Theresa called us to three gifts….prayer, leading to love, and love leading to service. 

We know we’ve got to learn how to step out of our comfort zones in ways that invite people in. In quiet, not front-page ways. As Gil Scott Heron once said, the Revolution will not be televised. 

fallun gong was here

On a hot afternoon, Central Park is filled  with people again. Mostly unmasked. The Falun Gong are back again. 

Our Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare board meets to plan our next steps in exploring the unique experiences of Black Women and Girls as they relate to our work in HIV, Domestic Violence and Reproductive options. Our PARO people point out that the states with soaring Covid rates are the ones that are led by “pro-life” governors. Apparently the pro-life commitment doesn’t extend to citizens whose lives are threatened by irresponsible behavior in the time of Covid 19. They’d rather kill off   thousands of citizens than “hurt the economy” or “give up freedom.”  Our soaring Covid rates are beyond any other western nation. And the President is taking the Covid data out of the hands of the Center for Diseaese Controil and brings it to Washington first. If we don’t know about it, it’s not real. And so infections, and deaths, will continue. 

Living in coronavirusworld 100: You can't be both Micah and Isaiah

7/1

Mornningside

patriotic front

critical analysis

As the underground meets this week, I’m wearing  two items for this week’s July 4th celebration. My hat is last year’s Pittsburgh Pirates July 4th weekend hat. Most significant is that the logo “P” It's from 1903 hat, the first“real” World Series where the Pirates defeated the Red Sox.  My shirt come from the Uni Watch blog. From the front its a great parody of the typical “patriotic” jersey but instead  a name on back is  the word “pandering”and the number 4 indicating what blog creator  Paul Lukas believes to be the reality…these so-called patriotic shout outs are actually jingoistic pandering. 

Clyde brings us a virtual background and I wonder if we will ever meet there again. 

For the first time our roots are being seriously examined. 

As always, there is much to talk about. We talk about Jefferson’s “All men are created equal.” Which never  really meant what it sounded like until Lincoln used it and even then..it lay there until Dr.King brought it out as an unfulfilled promise. The cognitive dissonance of the American truth claim, texts never equaling truth . 

Steve H brings out the  idea of “convergence”and wonders about  the role of the preacher in “convergence.” How it’s the job of the  preacher to pull people out of their comfort zone while  keeping it safe.  (But not too safe...)

(A side discussion:  why did John’s gospel story reference 153 fish? Steve P maintains very little of John is about history. Story, yes, history no. Perhaps there were just 153 members of the community he was writing for…)

We note that the President’s disapproval raring as now reached 58%. 

                                                       'Free fallin'" Tom Petty

Of course the conversation continues about the phrase “new normal”…which I continue to reject because it may be new but it is certainly not normal. Neither should we accept it as such. Certainly part of what’s been going is  what we have, like a people under occupation, come to accept.  Perhaps we are now in a state of free falling and need to  get comfortable with the fact that that is where we are. 

Sam sees it as a time of pregnancy. Breaking us out of out of our smugness and complacency. That maybe Trump had to come to bring this moment for us to see ourselves as we truly are. In a time of the Black Madonna we need to see and ultimately  embrace our dark side. (See Jung? Robert  Bly?) So after today, what do we do tomorrow? After hurt comes  creativity. 

We talk about the loaves and fishes. How it was a miracle of distribution, not  production. The smallest have the power to meet the chaos. How do we create a system that honors the least?

Sam argues for the need of a change of heart. I argue for the power of law to change how we act and as a  result, ultimately how we think. And feel. Maybe starts at both ends and works towards the middle. 

One thing is clear…we must do everything we can to get people to vote. We note that some generals have declared the President a traitor. But it is clear… we must stop looking  for a stare of comfort and peace. 

Later in the day our Presbytrian Health Education and Welfare board meets to review the PC (USA) General Assembly. Clearly there is much work to be done. One friend tells us of the struggle of putting up a Black Lives Matter sign at their  church . We talk about what happens to our friends when they join the bureaucracy. One remembers our old friend of blessed memory, Bill Thomas, who spent his life and ministry  in Pittsburgh’s steel country of the Mon (ongahela) Valley. Bill said you can’t be both Micah and Isaiah.The rough hewn working class prophet vs. the court prophet. (I’ve always believed Isaiah copped Micah’s best line about swords into plowshares…) To hear Bill's name mentioned fills me with warm memories and heart ache...one of the true saints.

I'm noticing friends my age and older are very wary of venturing out, even as life loosens.

Sunset on the Hudson

I meet my friend Beppe in a grassy noll in Riverside Park. He's brought lawn chairs. And cold drinks. In the cool of the evening, as the sun touches the water, life feels almost perfect. For the moment.

The dice shooters are back. The nightly fireworks show continues.  

Living in coronavirusworld 97: Pride Sunday

6/28

Pride

.Pride Sunday

Pride Sunday.  Different than any other I’ve  experienced.    

I go to the West Park Sunday shrive and a very happy to see a banner proclaiming Pride Sunday.  The Gospel lesson is  Matthew 10: 40-42, ends with these words

42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” …Dan, the preacher, tells a beautiful story of meeting a young man  in a park in  Pittsburgh who had been rejected by his family after he came out  and then  reconnecting him with a friend whose family took him in. During the prayers, I recount how the wife of the former pastor of West Park had started a  water table during the Pride march to  give a “cup of cold water” in Jesus’ name to hot and tired marchers. It’s good to see my old church worshipping again. 

I meet my family  for our weekly ZOOM get together, some in the Catskills, some in Berlin and me in Harlem. It’s interesting to hear my oldest son, probably the furthest left in the family, speak against “cancel culture.”  I had mentioned that as a young Boy Scout, our troop had done a minstrel show. My son laughed and said, “I hope no one took pictures”,  which led to a conversation about the necessity of grace in people’s lives leading to change and redirecting ones’ life, the total life being what counts. US Grant may have owned one slave, but could not bring himself to order him to work and granted him his freedom at a cost  of $1000 at a time he was without funds. As a General he defeated the South, defied President Johnson in pursuing reconstruction, led military operations against the Ku Klux Klan. What exactly is the message in tearing down his statue? I remember my friend Osagyefo Sekou’s criticism of the so-called Black Bloc white anarchists who with no sense of historic anarchism would  wreak havoc which  always  resulted in Black heads getting cracked. Still the same.  Tear down all the statues. Fire people for dumb mistakes. It's all virtue signaling.  The system remains intact. 

One last General Assembly related event. My friends in the HIV network hold a webinar featuring people working with HIV in Baltimore, where we were supposed to have met. Workers from the Hope Springs project. In Baltimore, the face of HIV is Black. One out of 41 over age 13 will contract HIV. One out of 20 in predominately Black zip codes. One half of Black trans will have HIV and one half of Black men who have sex with men. (MSMs, they say, not gay.) Baltimore is number  5 in the US in total HIV cases. People who have been abandoned by the church. Already marginalized people further marginalized. These are my friends, on the front line. I bring a word on behalf of the Presbyterian Health Educational Welfare Association. Thankful for their work.

Rock stars and prophets

I’m wearing, not seen, my tshirt from the Rock Stars and Prophets event where That All May Freely Serve called together all those who  for decades had fought the fight for full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people in the Presbyterian Church, as a reminder to me of that struggle that began in 1978 and finally ended in May 2011. I do this in honor of Pride. 

My friends in Composers Concordance hold another Social Distance Concert. Their  new classic music reflecting the months of quarantine and lockdown. Again I envy them and wish I were there.

double rainbow

I meet a fiend for dinner, wanting to celebrate the new opening. The line at the Tavern is 25 minutes long. The Jamaican seafood restaurant only has uncovered seating. It’s starting to rain. We settle for middle eastern under an awning, beef kebabs and laban yogurt. Before the sun goes down, there’s a double rainbow.