Living in coronavirusworld 234: almost here

 12/23

Central Park Harlem Meer

ready for Christmas

As our underground gathers, I’m taken by the fact that our friend Norm, venerated and erstwhile Old Testament scholar,  is wearing what is classically known as an ugly Sweater, complete with Christmas lights, at least a few of which still do light. I’m wearing a red and green Yankees hat, the only time I will ever wear a baseball cap that has not been part of an on-field game hat. (Well, about 90-95% true.) And a Uni Watch (The Obsessive Study of Athletic Aesthetics) ugly sweater sweatshirt. (Uni-watch.com)

Norm starts with a tribute to his friend John (Jack)  Elliott, who just died. Another cofounder with Norm of the Center and Library for the Study of  Bible and Social Justice at Stony Point Center. (CLPJ.org) Jack’s groundbreaking work was the study of 1Peter, argues that the community of scattered  “Stangers, pilgrims…” was in fact the 1st Century Christian Community of Asia Minor pushed to the margins of society in his book “Home for the Homeless.” Part of our work is organizing strangers. Jack by the way, led the efforts to organize the faculty at San Franciso University. 

Russ is talking about the one true Christmas Miracle, the Christmas Truce of 1914, as celebrated in the film Joyeux Noel and John McCutchen’s song, “Christmas in the Trenches.” When soldiers from both sides met in no-man’s land and refused to fight for one day, played soccer and shared songs and candy, brandy and tobacco. Of course those who participated were punished by their superiors. More disturbingly, SteveP talks about how it only took one more world war for white people to agree they weren’t going to kill each other anymore. And indeed, the wars of battle lines with their codes and rituals are no more. Most of recent wars have been  those of imperial powers against colored peoples of the  colonized world. Christmas truces can’t happen in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. It’s different.

Norm asks us to consider first violence as opposed to second violence., As drawn as we are to pacifism and non-violence, who do we deal with the challenge of Franz Fanon and his arguments in “the  Wretched of the earth” that violence may be necessary to restore dignity. Norm talks of the Haitian Revolution of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the first successful anti-colonial revolution of Black people. And how Haiti has suffered since. Even evangelical Haitians say that God punished Haiti for selling its soul to the devil.

We talk about Dre’s difficulties in getting people to join him in his “ Patterson Beautiful” project. And we talk of the issue of getting acceptance of the importance  of the vaccine in Black neighborhoods, given the horrendous history of Black Americans and the medical research  establishment with its horrendous imposed scientific experiments , etc. There is every reason to be suspicious. And yet this community disproportionately suffers from the virus. Someone says we need a “supply line of love.”

Lastly we talk about where songs from. Both Joel and I agree that they tend to organically appear. But then there’s the issue of writing as craft, and how hard that is for me. Until Steve P reminds me that as pastors, we wrote a song a week called sermons, And I realize he’s right. And how it’s only when you have put in hours of hard work that the  Holy Spirit can enter and take you to surprising new places. Sometime you don’t find them until  3am the night before your 11 am service. And we talk about boredom. And dead ends, And what to do with this dead end of a year. We’ve done a lot of hard work. Time for the Holy Spirit to step in. 

Christmas is almost here.

Living in coronavirusworld 28: Love your mother

4/19

"Love your mother"

I spend the morning on a quest to find a Sunday Times. Six days week I read it online but one day a week, I want an actual paper newspaper to sit down and spread out with while I drink my coffee. And I need the magazine to do the Sunday crossword puzzle. I make 4 trips to the corner deli where I usually buy my Times and it hasn't been  deliverd.  Truth be told, the Times performance record in Harlem is sketchy even in normal times. When I had a Sunday subscription, only about half the time or less d d I actually receive both sections of the Sunday  Times. So I subway up to 125th to look for a newsstand and when  I get there,  it’s shut down.  72nd street is next. On the train, an aggressive homeless person is getting  in people’s  faces asking for money. An action that is usually met with annoyance or disinterst in coronavirusworld strikes terror and/or rage. He leans towards me and I motion him away, emphatically. It's not a good market for panhandling.   I exit at 72nd and find the newsstand shut down. As I ponder my next move, I spy another one block south. So I buy my Times. Persistence pays off. 

I decide to bus home. Times under my arm, I cross the street and discover that Papaya King has closed. For several weeks they bravely soldiered on, this quirky  iconic New York emporium of hot dogs and "nature’s health potion”  and their Recession special.  Now even Papaya King has given up the struggle. 

This is the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing. Committed by Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh and accomplices on the anniversary of the government attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. I68 dead, 680 wounded. McVeigh, white, army vet, and anti-government militia supporter. Typical of the kind of people Trump likes to stir up. We don’t talk much about Oklahoma City because it doesn’t fit our terrorist narrative. 

In Upper West Side nursing homes, 20 dead at Amsterdam Houses and 21 at the Jewish Home.

Our family gathers on ZOOM, Micah joining  us from Berlin. We talk mainly about the virus and cooking. Dan sees us screwed for at least 4 more year if not more, because Biden is ,in his estimation, no better. Neoliberal economics tied to, beholden to big business. Surprisingly, the  usually cynical Nate patiently outlines the importance  of  getting Trump out, if only because  of Supreme (and) other court nominees and the damage they can do, for a generation. I bring up that Sanders has enough clout delegatewise to have a significant impact on the party platform. Micah, the furthest left in the family, actually sees hope in the fact that we are at an unprecedented moment. As many as 40 million unemployed in the US and a global economy in free fall. The isolated rich totally dependent on working people to keep them supplied with their basic needs. What if they just stop? Micah asks. We all know we are in for a logn haul. Who knows what’s on the other side? Even before the virus, even conservative economic analysts have said that the current level of income equity, the worst since the”golden age”of the 1920’s, is  unsustainable. Maybe as people rise up, something new can emerge Nate sees no evidence in his lifetime that this could happen. And Micah reminds him, nothing like this has happened in your lifetime.  I think either we find a new way of doing things or it will eventually collapse. Andrea points out that only Alexandria Ocasio  -Cortez has called out the stimulus plan for what it is, another money siphon to the already rich, 

Micah describes  how Germany is testing for antibodies, teams going out to test. The carefully staged reopening. Meanwhile, in the US, chaos reigns as every governor has to figure out for themselves what they will do. There are regional consortiums coming together . We are divided like nothing we’ve seen since the Civil War.  Micah has never been so glad for the sake of his family, to not live in the US. We live in essentially a failed state. If we make it through, it won’t be because of a carefully thought out strategic plan, but because of dumb luck, the persistence of thousand of courageous workers risking their lives and the grace of God.  It’s a sobering discussion, but good to be together. 

On the edge of Morningside Park , I see another memorial. Votive candles, ribbons, pictures…  

memorial

With people essentially banned from funerals, only one person allowed to go to cemeteries, these popular memorials are one way of expressing grief, I see a ribbon that says, “Love your mother..” I think of my mother, confined to her room at her assisted living facility. I think of mothers I know who have died in the last couple of weeks. Love  you mother. 

A mother is flying a kite with her child. I love the way it reaches up, seeking the sky.  I remember the day of 100 kites at the protests at Plaza Italia in Santiago, Chile last October.  We reach from where we are…

flying a kite

Our Sunday night Songwriters Open Mic  gathers hosted by CC Eve in Montreal. She too, lucky to be in an organized country. W ear our songs with one another. I’ve got a new version of my song, “Don’t roll that way” with coronavirus words added:

Don’t Roll that Way

We live in a country that separates parents from their kids

Puts children into cages and tries to keep it all hid

Even take rosary beads from detainees and send them on their way

All I can say is I don’t roll that way

The impeachment hoax was just a waste of time

You looked for quid pro quo and you never could find

If the President does it, it’s not illegal. You’re not the first to say

All I can say is I don’t roll that way..

I don’t roll the way

This is not what I believe

Not the way I was raised

I feel like its late an getting darker every day

All I can say is I don’t roll that way.

This Corona virus has us all inside

We can run, we can run but we sure as hell can’t hide

‘Hey everybody cine on out and play” I heard the President say.

AllI can say is, I don’t roll that way.

I don’t…….

Hey Governors, do what you want, s all okay

Every one for themselves, that’s the American way.

And I’m not responsible, I heard the President say

All I can say is I don’t roll  that way

I don’t……

Harlem gargoyle...sometimes it feels like that

We need to talk as much as we need to sing.  How long can we make it? When can we perform again to live audiences? Will any clubs survive? How will life be different? It’s good being with one another. Even though it’s hard to be cheerful. As artists, what can we do? We’re each trying to create  our own platforms for performance. Every act of creation, creativity, an act of resistance.  

Maybe only we can take our wounds and use them to create a new reality.

1/10

Alexis comes in for a visit. She hasn’t been here since we came back. I met her first when she and her husband came to talk about  interfaith marriage. He later died of male breast cancer. I admire how she has taken her grief and used it for life, for organizing for education and action around male breast cancer. How she has grown as a woman and a mother. How she has reclaimed and recreated a life using her eye as a designer, her artist’s heart. We talk about wounds, how we have to claim them as having made us who we are,part of our identity yet not defining us.How we transform them into something new.  I am thankful to have been a part of her journey. 

She noticed cardboard and other things on the steps. I hadn’t looked yet. I feel somewhat embarrassed. She remembers when the doors were always closed and people camped out here all day. I tell her it’s not like that now. That we’ve taken the steps back and our doors are open. And as she leaves, I put on gloves, pick up all the refuse. And sweep the steps. 

I only see Martin for a minute. There is much to talk about, but Noche is in the middle of a long rehearsal before heading out on tour. They’ll be in Arizona tomorrow. 

A man is in the sanctuary looking around. I come and ask him if I can help. He says he’s been here before. I don’t suppose the organ still works? he asks. And I explain that I don’t know.That the man who used to play it died and we haven’t bee able to turn it on. Thaat it’s an Austin hybrid. That there’s an article about it online. (http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/WestParkPres.html ) My visitor tells me he was the former organist at St. John the Divine Cathedral. No longer there but still an organist. I tell him I’d love to find out if it can still work. We’ve seen the bellows. I would like to know too, he says. 

I’ve got meetings to race to. The Interfaith Assembly on Housing and Homelessness. And the Presbytery’s Council on Witness to Society and the World. (CWSW). And then I will return. My friend Beppe will stop by.We’ll head to the B. He’s coming to believe that it is creativity that sets us apart as a species. And I agree. That creation makes us partners with the creator. He sees his call as helping people access and activate their creativity. And I’m trying to create a place where that can happen. 

Maybe only we can take our wounds and use them to create a new reality. 

Trinity Sunday: Creation as resistance

6/19

Amanda meets me at church and we open up together. Prepare the sanctuary for worship. The first to arrive are at least six visitors, several drawn by the concert series. But where are my folks? Amy has taken the day off, Andre not coming until nght. Of course there’s James, Hope, Rachel...but I feel the anxiety, uncertainty.

Amanda comes to the piano, plays. A prelude. Time for me to start. Amanda reminds me to connect with the people, and when its passing of the peace time, she looks at me and says, Be real, reverend..

It’s Trinity Sunday. One of the only liturgical days of tbe year celebrating a theological concept, not an event. And today I have little interest in pursuing vagaries of theological concepts.

The lectionary passages of the day leave us with three places to go...holy...what does it mean? what is holy to you? can you even be holy? Or that great phrase....some doubted....and explore our doubt together....or creation....as in the beginning...that’s where I want to go today.

I ask people wnatthe passage makes them think of. Amanda talks about how its poetry. I agree, poetry, not science. Hope doesn’t believe it, that is the whole seven day thing. And James responds that to God a thousand years is as a day.

There’s been a lot of creating going on this week...every night....women singer-songwriters, tangeros, jazz...and tonight Andre and his eclectic friends...right in the traditon of what we have always been...
Creation. Creativity. Why is it so important? I recall our night at Ground Zero. The still smoldering seventeen acres. The falling ash. The smell of burnt plastic, jet fuel, human bodies. And the dead looksof the faces of the workers as they passwd through all night long, shift after shift, blank, staring faces. How I felt the power of de-struction, of death, negation. And how I realized in that context that creation, any creative act, is an act of resistance, an act of defiance of those powers. And a partnership with God in the ongoing work of creation.

How creation is about separation. Necessary for individiation, to know who we are. Yet there is pain in that separation. How the rain is the waters above longing for reunion with the waters below. How the whole arc of the biblical narrative is back towards ultimate unity.

And how in between places are places of beauty as well. Bayous and swamps, seashores, those beautiful times at sunset or sunrise when one reality is becoming another. How I love to sit with a cold drink and watch the sunset over the Hudson.

Trinity Sunday. The creator. The breath of the Spirit bringing things to life. Pneuma, ruach. Inspiration, respiration, and my favorite, conspiracy, breathing together...But it is we, we humanity together who are the third person,the human one, the child...we together make the third person...people of differing faiths, people of no faith....

All I have to do is sit (or stand) in a subway car (and why in summer do I always get the car without airconditioning?) and look up and down at the faces...and see all humanity and say it is good...
To be here is to choose to be part of a process that is still beginning, a process of re-creation, of creation...that is our invitation, we welcome anyone who wants to join in....I feel good about what I have said. Not sure if anyone who has visited will ever come back or not....but this was good....

Amanda plays her version of Amazing Grace...we gather in our circle....the service is over....