Living in coronavirus world 197: We don't roll that way

 

10/28

Keep on voting

Pittsburgh strong

Today is a day for Pittsburgh. The hat is a Steeler hat, perhaps the most widely held Pittsburgh icon. The logo originally was from the Iron and Steel Institute. The three hypocycloids (curved diamond shapes— alternative name, asteroids— I love that). One for coal, another for ore and the third for scrap steel. Th elements of industrial steel. Adopted by the Steelers in 1964 at the urging of Republic Steel. (Ironically from Cleveland!) The black and gold also represents coal and ore. As well as the colors of William Pitt, for whom the city is named.) Pittsburgh is the only city where all the teams…baseball football, hockey and soccer…all wear the same colors. Black and gold is Pittsburgh. A Chilean soccer team, los Arcereros de Huachipato /Talacahuano, inspired by the Steelers, have borrowed the same logo. 

los arcereros

Romemu

The real reason though is that the symbol was repurposed in  response to the Tree of Life shootings two years ago where a white nationalist opened fire in the synagogue killing 11 and wounding another 7. The adapted symbol became the image for the city’s resistance to hatred. I remain somewhat annoyed that an Upper West Side synagogue, Romemu, has borrowed the symbol for its own messaging. Taken apart form its Pittsburgh context, it loses its poignancy, and in fact, meaning. 

Russ is wearing a hat from Table Mountain, Johannesburg, South Africa. Steve H who lived there’s says the legend is that is where God and the devil sat down to play cards to decide the country’s fate.

Sam tells a story of being inspired by Stephen P’s story in the Yale Divinity School’s Reflection magazine about hope. About being willing to step into the darkness. And embrace it. How she got trapped driving at night when she can’t see and found her way home by following the tail lights of the car right tin front. Hope beyond our power is prayer. 

I quote form the Dead, (New Speedway Boogie)

Now I don't know, but I been told

If the horse don't pull you got to carry the load

I don't know whose back's that strong

Maybe find out before too long

One way or another, one way or another

One way or another, this darkness got to give

We follow the lights in front of us…

We talk about Marilynne Robinson’s New York Time’s op ed on what it means to love a country, especially in our current context. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opinion/sunday/america-patriotism.html) It’s a clarion call to not give up on America. To see ourselves as a family. And have the courage to see the importance of not failing   democracy. 

I see her as perhaps the most articulate interpreter of  Calvinist thought writing  today. Beauty and grace in our inevitable imperfection.

Dre suggest that in our confusion, perhaps the best thing to do is to just set a direction and go. Define a problem and get to work. Knowing we are allowed to question and allowed to explore.

I recall how my mentor Philip Newell, describing his work as a church bureaucrat, said that if God wants something to be done in the world, it is already being done. It is our work to find it, support it and connect others with the same vision. Steve P reminds us that the root of the word organization has to do with bringing together different organs, like Paul’s analogy of the body. (1 Corinthians 12: 1-31.)

And Dre opens  up forgiveness again. And we talk about the difference between shame and guilt, As I’ve been learning, guilt is acknowledgment of something you did, shame is a state of being, I consider it harmful, although Stephen P speaks of the danger of having a shameless President and a shameless Republican Party. How in this country, we began with the concept of correctional facilities, where someone be might be corrected. Penitentiaries  where they might  be reflective and repent, penitent.  Reform schools for troubled children. To be reformed. They all were based on a concept of penitence, remorse, compassion and restoration.  Instead what we have is a system of punishment and social control. 

And in countries, like South Africa with its truth and reconciliation  committees. Peoples’ stories being told is absolutely essential in healing a country. In places like Chile and Argentina where amnesty was declared, the wounds remain unhealed and open years later.

It begins in your family. As my boys said, the way we as parents would say, “We don’t do that in our family.” And by extension, the power of churches that can say, “We don’t do that in our church.”

As I said in my song:

We don’t roll that way.

Chi sis not what we believe, not the way we were raised.

I feel like it’s dar and getting dark every day

All I can say is 

We don’t roll that way.

bienvenidos al barrio

Timmy plays the trombone

saints

I walk to East Harlem to get a free taco. ( A World Series based Taco Bell promotion.) I consider the irony of a Taco Bell in an el Barrio filled with real Mexican restaurants and food trucks. As I reenter my part of Harlem, I see the political street signs. And in anticipation of All Saints Day,  portraits of John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And as I near home Timmy is playing the trombone to welcome me back. 

10/28

A wet and cold rainy day. The  early voting continues. People are so anxious to have it count.  There is another Peoples Music Network "song swap,"  primarily North Americans but two UK friends join us. I share my song "Listen" and it's well received.

...and all the people of the earth will hear the birds sing again..

This darkness has to give. 

Sunday reflection 1: Maybe to be saved is to be freed from shame

10/26

Sunday morning.  Makes me happy to see Amanda and Amelia and Jen come into the service. As we work our way through the scriptures, Stephen will help me with Stand By Me…

We start with Joel 2: 23-32. What stands out in this apocalyptic passage is the sense of role reversal.

2:28 your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.

Normally, we’d expect the reverse, young ones having dreams, old ones having visions. Maybe we need the visions of the ones  younger than us. Maybe we need the older ones to still be free enough to have dreams. (Am I preaching to myself here?  Walking back into this building too the courage to dream dreams we thought we’d never have again. To not settle for what conventional wisdom said was true..and we are still fighting that fight…)

The word that really jumps out at us is the word shame.

27 my people shall never again be put to shame.

Glen wants to hold out for the importance of feeling shame in order to know what we need to change. But most are feeling the heaviness and the damage of shame.  For the prophet Joel, a people dragged into exile, conquered by others is a people brought to shame.

We spend a lot of time talking about the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt a feeling that is internal. Shame something that is imposed from outside. We remember the vie from the Palestine film series, Paradise Now, that took us inside the story of a suicide bomber. We see the daily humiliations, denials of self, imposition of shame  by the occupation. Shame seems to imply humiliation. A diminution of self-respect.  And sometimes the only way to affirm oneself is to strike back, violently as necessary. As in Frantz Fanon and The Wretched of the Earth.  Many of our people have experienced shame imposed by one means or another. One thing I always tried to do was to never impose shame on my children. To never say, you should be be shamed of yourself, or shame on you. I most often want to say that to adults.

My church tribe the most.

Maybe that is what it means to be saved, to not be shamed, to not feel shame again.

I’m impressed by how at home Amanda’s daughter Amelia feels. How free she feels to participate in the discussion, Share her own views. How self-possessed she is, how at home in the world. Amanda has done a good job.

Several, including Jen, from an evangelical background, speak of  a culture of judgment and shame. And it is Amelia who speaks against judging others and for accepting one another. And most  of all, offering acceptance and love to one another. Yes, Amanda has done a good job.

During the offering, Amelia joins Amanda in singing the old Quaker song, Teach me where peace is found…

It has been a good morning.

After our  too long and too anxious session meeting, I stay for what will be the last official service of Sanctuary NYC. After two years, they will be reconfiguring into a new reality. Worshipping in a raw space gallery in Harlem. I try to find the words to than them for all they brought. The creativity, the spirit the hope. Inside, I grieve the missed opportunities, the failures to follow through, the what might have beens. And yet, there was much in what was.  And I thank them for all they have given.

And mostly I am thankful for Jane. Who has bee a colleague. And friend. I wish I could go back to the beginning. Where she sought me out. Became part of our community while she tried to figure out what Sacred Center was then sought to birth Sanctuary. Do it over. But you can’t.  The friendship will remain. We will see what else.

We finish with a creative visual art project that symbolizes our interconnectedness. I almost get lost in the center several times, but find my way out. Admiring what we have created.  A young Dominican man is beside me. He keeps asking, What kind of church is this? Is it Christian? What religion is this?

Interconnected

There is no real answer. It is in the being of it that it is known. In its practice. Jane and I, similar roots, we live in similar space. We get each other.

Thankful for what was. What is. Letting go of what might have been. Looking to what might be…