Living in coronavirusworld 176: A day with no relief

 9/26

Make America Care Again: Live and let live

An over six hour Presbytery meeting on ZOOM can leave you feeling drained and exhausted .  I got to deliver my report on being a commissioner, a representative of New York City Presbytery to the first virtual assembly last June. I spoke of the good, the bad and the ugly. The good being how the grass roots had fought and organized to open up what was to have been an hermetically sealed Assembly dealing only with necessary and essential institutional issues.  Thanks to many of hours of hard work, we were able to produce a decent statement in support of Black Lives Matter and repenting of systemic racism,  and a statement on Covid 19 as well. The bad was the Assembly’s refusal to listen to the voices from the Black Women and Girls Task Force on the unique disparities of their experience. And the ugly was the commissioner who held up a preborn lives matter sign during an 8:40  memorial fro George Floyd.  My colleagues also reported. One spoke of learning the need to listen. Another of the possibility of reconvening Assembly and how she had already spoken to represntatiess of Eastern Korean Presbytery for their support. 

The moderator of that Task Force,  the Rev. Keri Allen, gave us an in depth overview of the report. Speaking of both the invisibility and hypervisibility of Black women and girls. (As per Brionna Taylor.) Adultification and sexualization of young Black girls. The experience of institutional and interpersonal violence. Rooted in toxic theology. The need for gender equity, to move from pro-choice to reproductive justice. And how the Assembly could not bring itself to explicitly name this exploitation. Rev. Allen also named the Presbyterian Church as having been the “most prolific” of slave holding churches, its colleges, universities and seminaries built on the backs of exploited  Black women and girls. Capital stolen from Back girls’ wombs. The highest murder rate of Black trans women. The overpolicing of Black bodies. Once again I was reminded of the breadth and power of that devastating report. 

The meeting itself descended into polity chaos as approving the minutes provided the opening for a two hour fight. At root were institutional issues clearly impacted by systemic racism. It was painful to see members of the Black community attacking  each other.  It becomes increasingly clear to me that an institution that is historically and intrinsically white in culture and structure, even when bringing BIPOC persons into leadership positions, will remain captive to white domination until there is a conscious an intentional project of deconstruction of the whiteness of that culture and structure. In fact, white privilege and power will be strengthened because now it will be legitimated by the presence of BIPOC persons. Still worse, these representatives will have been made accomplices in  their own oppression. I say that with  people I care for and respect in both sides of very emotional arguments. Some of would be  very upset to read this. But that’s how insidious white privilege is. 

Happy birthday

When it’s over, I need a walk to clear my head. I see its someone’s birthday. 

Ready for the vigil

I go to the Lucerne where the One Heart Upper West Side has decorated the scaffolding pipes in preparation for a vigil to protest the mayor’s removal of the residents. 

I finish at the Gate with two musician friends. The conversation is filled  with anxiety over continued lack of work and income and the upcoming election. 

It's a day with no relief. 

Living in coronavirusworld 143: the fruit of the prayer is not in the prayer

8/19

...and it does.....

Our Underground group gathers from New York City, the Berkshires, Catskills, Maine and the Jersey Coast.  Any of us who can be away are away. Typical New York August stretched out over months. 

A lot of time is spent today talking about contemplation and….like say action. How the depths of contemplation can lead to action. 

We talk about prayer. How true prayer is more listening than speaking.  How Jesus learned things through listening. To others. And to God. That the fruit of the prayer is not in the prayer. We talked about Thomas Merton. How through prayer we find ourselves, love ourselves. How he said the one who begins in contemplation will end in revolution.  And that prayer unleashes our power. Compassion and empathy as the fruits of prayer.

We talked about the difference between chanters and shouters. 

We talked about hope. How it is not objective, it has no object, it just is. And it is, as the Bible says, not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) 

Joel says we are living in a time of cold civil war. I describe my emotional state as quiet anxiety, not helped by our current system,  our crazy electoral system in which a voter on Wyoming has 4 times the voting power as one voter in California.  Hold onto hope.

We speak of the difference between meditation, emptying of all thought,  and contemplation, single minded reflection.  And what each leads to . And commit to following up on this conversation, deeper,  next week.

a reminder

trees

Walking through Central Park, there’s a new set of banners affirming the Park’s role in  our lives.

The Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association continues to explore the potential collaboration between our Disabilities Network and the Black Women and Girls working  group.  Our Reproductive Options group also sees collaboration as helping to move us past pro-choice, to reproductive justice, a perspective that explores the social economic and bias pressures that push abortion rates in communities of color. 

Tonight at the Democratic Convention is Kamala Harris’ night.  Fine points of ideology and change theory aside, her story is a quintessentially American story.  Immigrant parents from Jamaica and South Asia. Meeting in a march for justice. An extended family of various colors, cultures snd spices. An American story. Our story. That alone counts for something.  As does a Presidential candidate's wife who is a teacher and believes in public education, not ending it. People who know us. Yes, that counts. 

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 cornonavirusworld 120: the perfection of creation

7/24

the squirrel

New York City Presbytery’s discussion group on the Black Women and Girls report meets. Tellingly, only one of our Black women leaders is in attendance. One of the members of the Justice Committee invites us to the (virtual) unveiling of a women’s leaders statue in Central Park on August 26th, It will include Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and SusanB.Anthony. Our commsioners share their frustration with General Assmebly and its failure to deal with the Black Women’s report. New York City Presbytery had been one of four Presbytery’s to be selected  for work on a previous Assembly action regarding Black Men, Freedom Rising.  The question was raised as to why it was restricted to men only. Was this another case of miscogeny? Actually no. This was an historic moment when the attack on Black men felt particularly acute. With bitterness and irony, African American men were spoken of as an “endangered species.” Black women commissioners supported an effort specifically for men. With no funding and no staff, the Freedom Rising initiative is fading away.

Our lone representative from the community of Black women, says  that frankly they are tired of telling their story…over and over with personal cost and seeing nothing gained. There can only be conversation with intentionality. And there must be action. As we begin to think of possible grant possibilities and potential scholarship programs, the mood changes, With the possibility of concrete action, perhaps conversation can begin again.

Conversation continues about a documentary on the Radical Monarchs, a social justice based alternative to the Girl  Scouts developed inOakland, California especially to speak to the issues faced by black and brown girls. (https://wearetheradicalmonarchsmovie.com/).  And so we will continue. Can it be different this time? 

The heat continues. On the edge of the park, I see a squirrel perched on a garbage barrel. He’s eating pizza. When he drops a piece, he’ll look around then dive back into the barrel and  emerge with another morsel. Never before corona would I have watched a squirrel for 20 minutes. In this coronavirus world, I have become ever more aware of other living beings. And ever more convinced that most creatures in creation are perfect for what  they are supposed to be. That our similarities are so much more than differences. Even dinosaurs had recognizable skeletons, eyes, brains, teeth, stomachs, penises. All eat, excrete and reproduce. An amazing intricate design in which we are only a part. I watch the squirrel finish its pizza. And continue my walk.

ready for the game

I had intended to spend my night watching my home town Pirates play  their  first ball game of the season but wind up having to host the West Park Open Mic. At first its just Malcolm and me. Swapping songs. I put the ball game on my Ipad and watch while I host. Soon Kosi  joins  from Baltimore  and then Dion joins us. One by one players join us. And then her friend Chris comes in from Erie, Pennsylvania and makes the night. He's part of what I'm learning is a burgeoning indie scene in the northwest corner of the state.  And a friend of Matt Boland who lit up our Beggar's Banquet recreation with his rendition of Prodigal Son. I feel up to sharing my Covid Song "Social distance" for the first time. Chris compliments it as a 30 year old Dylan response to the Virus. I'll take that. And throws in a reference to Owen Meany (John Irving) which makes the night for me.

Before the end, the Pirates fight back but still fall short in a predictable loss. I end the night pleasantly  surprised at what can  happen when  you least suspect it in the strange word of connection that ZOOM makes possible. 

So strange watching baseball with no fans and recorded crowd noise. Ultimate irony...they are using  a soundtrack from a video game for real games. This is not ending soon.

Living in cornavirusworld 117: privilege is our expertise

7/21

the birds seek shade

Central Park jazz combo

Back in the day, I used ti be a member of the New York Road Runners and a frequent race participant. I even ran 10 marathons in my time. Hard to believe.  But since a major back surgery in 2011, my running career came to a stop. This coronavirustime has meant time to reclaim lost, forgotten or ignored parts of ourselves. Like cooking for example. And this... I discovered an emerging world of ‘Virtual Road races” designed to be run individually wherever and whenever you want. I decided to reenter that world with a 5k in June, with a long hot stretch down Riverside Park to the Pier. Today, in 90 + degree weather, I create another 5k course from my Harlem apartment building down the West Drive of Central Park to Columbus Circle. I realize how many years it has been since I completed at least one whole side of the Park. Each particular part, the extended ups and downs you generally don’t think about, the different mini-worlds of the park pass underway feet in the heat. There’s a jazz combo in the Gazebo by the lake. Finally at Columbus Circle, I leave the Park. Time for an iced coffee in the shadow of the monument to victims of the Maine battleship explosion, cause celebre for the Spanish-American war. Remember the Maine now mainly forgotten. Birds are perched on the shade side trying to keep cool.

from Portland, where else?

Beekeepers

A beekeeper truck from Portland seems to have escaped the incursion of federales into their city and made its way to Fredrick Douglass Boulevard. 

The New York City Presbytery General Cabinet meets. Our moderator shares her own pain as a result of General Assembly. Reminds us that for white people, privilege is our expertise. We are experts about racism having lived with its benefits throughout our lives. Our Executive challenges his with the words of J.Philip Newell of the Iona Community with three questions:

* What can you leave behind?

* Can you imagine what is to be?

* What are you willing to commit to doing today? Tomorrow?…and forward?

We continue to live with the effects of this virus. Our loss of so many, including Grace Bowen, an urban ministry mentor whose life was the very definition of her name. Income last year for Presbytery at the end of June was $186000. This year only $99000. We will only be down $55000 thanks to a small business loan, otherwise we’d be down $!55000. Small churches are unable to pay their insurance. Churches need to reopen to reopen income streams, but only large churches can afford to do all the things listed on our checklist. We are entering into a new day for churches as money runs out.

Presbytery remains committed to engaging the engagement with  systemic racism. Several people point out all that is already been done. The Black Women and Girls conversation. Efforts around bail bonds. And Rikers.  Living wage. Homelessness. I point out that all those are issues, are symptoms of the deeper problem and we have to look not just outside but inside. Even as the most diverse Presbytery in the PC(USA), if we simply insert diversity into a system that by culture, structure and ethos is intrinsically white, all you do is strengthen the white privilege and worse, cause people of color to be complicit in their own disempowerment. We have to go deep. 

Living in coronavirusworld: the work is hard.....

6/30

125th Street

Another day spent with the after effects of the Presbyterian General Assembly and the depth of pain experienced by people of color, especially Black women at our Assembly. Wrestling with my own defensiveness and guilt. How I could work for two months before and in strenuous writing and strategizing within Assembly and still wind up hurting people. As I listen to my excuses, I realize how white I feel. As I wind up actually reading the report of the Black women and girls task force, I understand  why they  feel so aggrieved.  They had worked for two years and developed a stunning report which the Assembly refused to bring forward. It is filled with a rich history and analysis and strong awareness of intersectionality especially as it relates to the Black Queer and Trans communities. Black women being the marginalized of the marginalized. I checked my own emotional  reactions. I realized I had wanted to be seen as a “hero.” And objectively, much was accomplished.  But for many, especially younger people, all that mattered was that we had failed to hear and recognize and honor this voice.  

It also caused me to reflect on my history in urban ministry. My heroes who inspired me to enter into this work. And they were indeed heroes. They risked their families, their jobs and sometime even their lives to fight for justice in  the inner city.  This was real. But also real is that they were all white men. White cis, straight men going into the ghetto to save the day. At the end of the day, an unescapable ethos of  white saviorism that has been an undercurrent through these many years …yes, even through this  Assembly. 

As  a strategist, I also learned that if I  wanted to keep abreast of what was going on on the Assembly,I needed to keep an eye on Twitter where the  real grass roots commentary was going on.

I have written my younger friends cautioning  them against lingering too long in white guilt, as satisfying as that might be. For liberals, guilt is its own reward in that it allows us to  remain in our privilege because after all , we’re liberals and we feel guilty so it’s okay. What’s needed is the move beyond guilt to responsibility, accountability. What then are we  to do? Honestly, it is frustrating. If we move ahead, we can be criticized for not consulting. If we ask for guidance, we’re told it’s our job to figure it out.  So deal….

I have spoken with my own Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Associaton to have each of our networks examine how their particular ministry…HIV, domestic violence, reproductive options, disabilities…connects with the unique experience of Black Women and Girls. I have asked the Peace Fellowship to convene a webinar. And if need be, we who were commissioners to understand what it would take to  reconvene the Assembly. This is not easy work.

the barbershop

before

after

I get my first hair cut in three months. And a shave! There are only maybe two sensory experiences better than a barbershop shave.

I need a walk. A Philip Randolph park is open again. I see a Latino man face down in the park. Surrounded by police in masks and blue rubber gloves. And a core of black men with their phone cameras turned on to video. There is no public trust anymore. None. They try to help him up, he goes down again.Now its a job for an ambulance and EMTs. As I watch the ambulance arrive, I knew I can go. 

ATLAH

ATLAH

I head to 125th street.  All the widows have been unboarded except for the Burlington Coat Factory outlet.  The ATLAH church is back at again against LGBTQ gentrifiers. The street cops game done shooters are back out. The domino players are back out. 

It’s time for Taco Tuesdays at my neighborhood cantina. 

Living in coronavirusworld 96: Final day GA

6/27

The Final day of the  Presbyterian Church (USA) 224th General Assembly. The first item of business of the day was the (re) election of the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert  Nelson for his second term as Stated Clerk of the PC(USA), our denomination’s highest elected position. Following calls as a congregational pastor and as director of the denomination’s Washington., D.C. office,  he has brought a consistently passionate and resolute commitment to social justice to his call,  bringing a preacher’s approach to what could be a primarily bureaucratic job.

Our Central America work group had one more hoop to get through to be extended until 2022. Unfortunately, the empowering action called for no expenditure of funds and no in person meetings.  I made an amendment to essentially allow for self-funded meetings, but our chair was never able to reagin the floor and we went down in the Assembly’s (til then) closest vote. The work will continue.

The status of  San Francisco Theological Seminary, now part of the University of Redlands remained a sticking point throughout the Assembly, popping up every time a theological institution related issue arose. 

Then we launched into the long slog through budgets.

The last moment of drama had to do with an effort to make specific mention of  Black women and girls, their report put off until 2022.  Rev. Denise Anderson, chair of that committee,  had passionately protested the omission on the floor during debate of our Black lives matter statement.  I learned a new word, noirsogeny(?) the hatred of black women. Our Young Adult Advisory Delegates were particularly aware of this and worked diligently to develop a strategy to get her words on the record. But the moment to introduce new business passed and a late effort “reconsider” the action failed …barely…to reach the 2/3 majority necessary to  reopen the agenda. People were too tired to do any more work. Sigh.  A sense of hurt and sadness remained.  Later during an 8:46 time of silence in memory of George Floyd, a delegate was seen in his ZOOM box holding a sign that said “pre-born lives matter.”  Sigh. 

And so the Assembly came to an end.  In the  need, it’s important to remember that this was slated to be an “essential business only” assembly. It took the pressure of groups like my PHEWA and others, and responsible journalism of the Presbyterian Outlook,  to push that door open and commissioners working long hours cooperatively and creatively to make this, in the end, a real Assembly.  And credit does go to the GA staff tag somehow made a ZOOM meeting with over 500 delegates work somehow.  There were stretches of time that I had to remind myself there was to a real convention hall somewhere.  When I spoke, I felt like I was in a great hall. So all things considered, they did reasonably well.  And commissioners went home having been true to their historic call. 

I was glad to have been part of an historic event. 

And to have actually worked with a minimum of three screens at any moment. Lap top, iPad and phone. Seriously. And I should have had one on Twitter. 

...I tried....

The Voices of Justice were throwing  a virtual dance throughout the event to rep the traditional “Witherspoon Dance.” I never could figure out how it worked. But I left a “calling card” image. 

Exhausted, I went for a walk to unwind.  Came home to join the Peace Fellowship’s closing vigil. There was palpable sadness about where we had fallen short. It is important to remember where we were at the beginning of the Assembly and where we were at the end. Recognizing how far we came but what we missed and how far we have go. 

Exhausted. A hungry. Time to order a wet burrito from Encanto de Lola.