Drenching rain, freezing cold

11/17

Steady drenching, chilling rain.

The Revcoms are hard at work cleaning up. Before they go everything will be spic’n’span. Cleaner than when they arrived. Like the Scouts. They worked very hard and succeeded in drawing betweenn1500-1900 people to Riverside Church as well as the sponsorship of notable people like Don Shriver, former President of Union Seminary. There is clearly a hunger and thirst for something better out there. I will save a critical analysis of the dialogue itself for another time. For now, the volunteer workers deserve serious props for getting people out and creating a spotlight moment.

Someone comes into my office, tells me there’s a man in a wheel chair outside. Sean.  He tells me he’s hooked up with housing again It will happen tomorrow. Stuff going out, too. I hope so. I hope he follows through on accepting housing. Tells me they’ll give him a single again.

Jeremy comes in, ready to rehearse with Hindi popsinger Purnash. Our itinerant and eclectic global resident musician Jeremy has yet another gig that stretches boundaries.  He tells me his friend Stephanie, a church conscientious objector, told him being here Sunday was her most positive church experience in 20 years.

As I get ready to leave the church, on my way to an event with the Andrew Goodman Foundation,

I find Alex at the Beckstein, a broad smile on her face as she explores the keys and begins to test her rich voice. Happy to see her.

The Goodmans are bringing to a close the 50^th anniversary year of Freedom Summer and the murder of Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner. Proud we could be part of it last June. (http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2014/06/freedom-summer-next-generation-not-about.html) And be partners in their ongoing work.  It will be a reunion of old Civil Rights hands. But more important, a vehicle to keep the work going with a younger generation.

11/18

Freezing cold.

Working in the chapel, I hear the sounds of Hindi pop and Purnash making their way down through the thin floor.

Midafternoon, Chris comes in and tells me Sean’s social worker and ready it take him on. I show her his stuff in the corner of the sanctuary. Oh, I didn’t know about that. We’ll have to come back later. Looking again, you know there’ s very limited storage.

Anna reports Sonny has died. Pancreatic cancer. I remember him asking Danielle to record him singing so they’d have something to remember his voice by. A year ago, he sang in church the same day as Bread and Puppet. 

Off to Presbytery. Way out in Jamaica , Queens. Freezing cold.

Deborah: a reflection on redemptive violence

11/16

I’m surprised to find a young man inside a refrigerator box asleep on the steps. That hasn’t happened in awhile. And behind him I see crutches. Sorry, but you’re going to have to leave…services coming up…

Uh, it’ll take a few minutes, OK?

Uh, yeah, sure. I ask Stephen S to see if he needs help getting it together.

Jeremy’s first Sunday back. He’s warming up and getting ready. Russ is first to arrive after our adventures yesterday passing out fliers for West-Park at the Avakian-West dialogue.

Our first hymn is Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee, aka Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, to which Jeremy adds a little Eric Burdon and the Animals We Gotta Get Out of this Place. (….It actually does work, though we sing it straight…and a nod to Eddie and the Otters for that idea, though that’s another story…https://www.facebook.com/eddieandtheotters)

Jeremy has worked out a sung response to our Psalm 123: To you O Lord we lift our eyes.

Our reflection scripture is Judges 4: 1-7. Just a teaser on the story of Deborah. One of those places where the lectionary cops out. So I have us do a readers’ theatre of the rest of the story.

I was originally going to stick with Matthew, but when I heard about their discussion last week about the difference in perspective between men and women, I knew I had to use a rare story that was driven by a woman’s agency.

This was the time of the Judges. The confederation of tribes had leaders who were both adjudicators and military leaders. She wants to take on (and take out) Jabin, King of the Canaanites. (Who were indigenous to the land, by the way…) Her commander Barak is hesitant to go without Deborah, so she agrees to go, only she warns Barak that Sisera, Jabin’s general, will fall to a woman.

Sisera’s army is routed. He flees to the tent of Jael, whose people are allied with Sisera. After calming him and giving him milk to relax, when he falls asleep, she drives a tent peg through his head. And when Barak arrives, she shows him what she did.

This is clearly an FX/HBO style story. Mature audiences…Language, violence, sexual situations…shifting alliances like the houses in Game of Thrones, or the gangs in Sons of Anarchy. As Marsha reminds us in community organizing, there are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies…

Russ  raises the issue that what we’re dealing with here is the myth of redemptive violence, biblically based. Our American culture is saturated with it. (See above). Even in the dialogue between Avakian and West, neither spoke definitively on the violence issue. And the tu quoque argument about the violence of the empire gets us nowhere.  

Marsha likes that Jael’s action is direct and to the point. John R says, That’s reality…God is not the kindly grandfather, God is just God, the Bible is what it is.

And for Jeremy, that’s why he chooses not to rely on the Bible. And Russ speaks to how these stories become the mythic narrative that supports what is.

There are a number of points to make.

1.   We all have a hermeneutic, an interpretive key by which we interpret everything else. What Cornell West said yesterday for him, IE, God is love,that goes for me too. Anything doesn’t make sense through that lens has to be witnessed against. As former Riverside pastor Brad Braxton once said, sometimes we are called on to preach against the text. We are called to witness against, create an alternative to a culture of redemptive violence.

2.   The time of judges was a time pre-monarchy. In a time of covenant based confederacy, the emergence of a woman’s leadership is much easier than in a hierarchical monarchy.

3.   Which is why historically, women’s leadership would emerge in horizontally based church structures while vertical hierarchies have been more resistant to change.

4.   We need to be about the work of creating communities of covenant relationship, committed to love that is effective, not sentimental and resist the culture of redemptive violence. Our own embodiments of the beloved community to which we are called.

Our final song of the day is Soon and very Soon…While we are singing, Pastor Kadisha has entered the sanctuary with his daughter. He joins us for our final circle of blessing, with little Xavier joyfully singing Amen.

Jeremy rocks out with one more Beethoven/Burdon riff…

Pastor Kadisha will have his first service here this afternoon.

The Revcoms are upstairs celebrating yesterday's turn out, over 1500 at Riverside Church.

La lucha sigue

11/8

Robert Brashear, Juan Gonzalez, Lupe Ramsey, Ann Garvin

Different schedules make for a two shift meeting with session members. After Stephen W and Pat, we’ve got a good agenda for next week. But after a meeting with Don, I feel very discouraged. Aware of all that hasn’t been done, needs to be done. Especially with the building. 

Going tonight to see Noche Flamenca at the Joyce. The first chance I’ll have to see scenes from the flamenco Antigone I’ve been watching them develop for months.

11/10

Don has brought a stage manager to check out the gym for a potential rental. Unfortunately, there’s too much echo in the gym for that to work out.

Work hard on a to do list for Leila and Charles for the week.  Concrete ways to move forward, deal with the lingering issues so well articulated by Don, including a dangerously insecure window on the north mezzanine.

The Rev Coms are everywhere hard at work on reaching out and building turnout for Saturday’s Avakian/West dialogue. They’ve made a very big investment in  labor in seeking a public legitimation of their leader and his analysis of our current time. I remain puzzled and intrigued by the Cornell West connection. Anxious to see what will come out.

Tonight is the Dos Pueblos fall gathering. The Upper West Side group that started as a Nicaragua solidarity group in the ‘80’s and has stayed faithful ever since as a sister city group. Most recently, they’ve been successful in connecting Upper West Side youth with their peers in Tipi Tapa. Many from the Lab School, where my son Nate went.

The guest for the evening is Juan Gonzalez, a founder of the Young Lords,(http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/Young_Lords_platform.html a journalist  with the Daily News and co host with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now on WBAI. http://www.democracynow.org/?gclid=Cj0KEQiAypGjBRCPme6jmqu3gZsBEiQA8NAiIGJkO2CtvH4TRC-YXKIBz1t6oT6sw17xKwmFUXNP0CkaAoXB8P8HAQ&utm_campaign=brand&utm_medium=ppc&utm_source=google&utm_term=democracy+now) His most recent book is Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HBnMlIt-UF0-QVOlkjiBwLv86x86XtNsH3htc2r8f80/edit) Before the formal presentation begins, Juan spends time in focused and intense dialogue with the young students.That’s where the attention should go, much more than with us aging progressives. 

Juan Gonzalez with students

During his presentation,. Juan made the following points:

1.     The three pillars of news and information are the commercial press, the dissident press and the ethnic/minority press. All three are needed to understand and be informed as to what is going on.  

2.     For last 50 years, the United States  has wrestled with what to do with Latinos

3.     Since World War II, the Third World has come to the First World. The colonies have come to the empire.

4.     In 2006 march/April saw the largest demonstrations in  US history. Immigration, largely ignored by mainstream press.

5.     The real issue for most immigrants is not citizenship but the right to work in peace . Most want to return to their own countries.

6.     Latin America right now is a shining light in the world. True peoples’ movements are actually have won and are winning.

In the question and answer period, Juan spoke of the new canal being built by China in Nicaragua.But Hugo had a very different perspective. An example of danielismo, not sandinismo.

Juan Gonzalez and Hugo

The night winds down with food and dancing. Good to feel connected to Nicaragua and Nicaraguans again. And even met a Nica woman named Indiana who runs a bookstore, the unoppressive non-imperialist bargain bookstore. (http://unoppressivebooks.blogspot.com/

Indiana and Arcadia

La lucha sigue.

Count the votes. Always.

10/28

Tom Bo comes in. Working together on  a concert/worship experience for December  based on a strong poem written from the perspective of someone living inside a refrigerator box.  We also talk about other ways we can respond to or interpret Matthew 25, the least of these. …..

And then he takes the time  to work with me on a piece I wrote a long time ago but could never put together. It’s way outside of  my normal genres of country/folk styles. It feels really good to be working in this way.

Phil F of the Revolutionary Communists comes in  to negotiate the last details of an agreement for them to move into our place and use it as a command center for their upcoming big event dialogue between Chairman Avakian to be held at Riverside Church. They are, shall we say, pulling out all stops. And Phil, in their typical dedicated and details fashion, wants every base covered and no stone left unturned.

Out on 86^th street, my old friend Philip N is passing slowly past the church. He smiles when he sees me, Long time mentor and friend. He performed our marriage. Preceded me at West-Park. (As interim) And recruited me for the job. One of my favorite quotes of his is  the problem with liberals is they don’t count the vote….     

That comes to mind often for me. Easier said that done. But when we did that hard work, in  Presbytery last November, we won. That’s just the beginning of what I learned from him. In his 80’s now, the quiet gentleness that was always there is more immediate. His smile,warmth comes easily. I catch  him up on West-Park and he starts back up the street. Slowly.,

10/29

The Aussie filmmaker has been here since 6 AM. He’s finally finished. Almost. Reshoots based on what happened his last day shooting here when one of his actresses backed out on him. So it goes. Small indie guys just have to deal.

Gregory again. I wish he didn’t bother me so much. Or that I could be kinder. I remind him it’s not the church’s money, it’s my personal money. And he tells me that he knows that and that there’ no one else he would hit up the  way he does me. He says this as if it’s a compliment. This bears some reflection.

10/30

Sean has decided to accept the help from BRC. Again. Start back in the shelter. Work his way back up. Again. And try to avoid those situations where he’ most vulnerable. Like the shower.  Promises to remove his stuff by the weekend. We'll see. 

Stephen W and Pat O in for a conference call and strategy session for our meeting tomorrow with the Department of Buildings.Manhattan Borough President Brewer got this meeting set up. We have to take it. Just have to be on  he same page as to how to deal with it. It’s always a sensitive issue with the bureaucracy.

The Con Ed meter reader has been working hard to get someone to notice that he’s there and help get down to the basement to read his meter.

Trish stops by as she’s clearing out her stuff from her open rehearsal/workshop of The Divinity of Hell: the handkerchief sequence in Shakespeare’s Othello. My friend John H, the Shakespeare scholar, friend and Center board member comes to see it with me. Shares my appreciation for the good solid work visible so far. Immersive use of the sanctuary, the Chapel and Mc Alpin. A natural ease with the Elizabethan iambic pentameter. A judicious cut of the play.  Focus on one sequence, according to John, perhaps the most important and laden with religious allegory. And a cast that was uniformly strong but unique in a Bianca who becomes here more than a plot device but a storing growing character of her own. I love watching these kind of efforts blossom. Trish is overjoyed. So a real production awaits in February.

The Revolutionary Communists are moving in like an orderly occupation. They’ll be living with us for almost a month. They continue to fascinate and intrigue me. I will watch this carefully.

They moved in when Othello moved out. I figure Robeson would like that.