Living in coronavirusworld 248: impeachmnets, demons, vaccinations and and polar bears

 2/13

"Mommy what's a carbon footprint?"

The week of the impeachment trial. Watching the videos of the invasion of the capital are a stunning reminder of just how serious that was. Republicans with all their efforts at false equivalence seem to forget that the Black Lives protests did not try to disrupt our political process or overthrow the government. Nor seek to “hang” or kidnap politicians. And there is the matter of seven ;ives lost.With or without Trump we are in a very perilous place. 

Wednesday

Our Underground group is wrestling with how much of what’s going on right now is connected to Christianity.  There’s no denying that a major component of current right wing activity is Christian Nationalism. Our Old Testament scholar believe the problem is that many self-proclaimed Christians don’t know their Bible. Our friend Steve P says they know it says “love your neighbor” but they have decided that don’t want to. And we agree that sadly, nobody is reasoning their way to their moral conclusions. 

We debate to what extent this is an inherent theological problem of Christianity. I say that only Christianity makes an exclusive claim for “salvation” or right living. Steve P argues that Muslim shave ben just as bad. 

It’s an argument worth continued exploration. I need to do more research to compare to the crusades, the age and doctrine of discovery and so much more….continue out have a major impact on current policies.

Thursday

Our Thursday morning group conversation group, organized by Palestinian theology center Sabeel,  is struggling with the meaning  of casting out demons in the context of Palestine. It is brought up that if we cast out demons, we must not demonize   the people who have been possessed. And that we have to look inside of ourselves and our own communities, internal as well as external.   We have to get Jesus onto our agenda. Another friend says that casting out demons  is casting out excuses and that Palestinians have been haunted by excuses.  

                                           ****

polar bears

puppy

For two days I have been following my artist friend Heide’s  project to sculpt polar bears out of snow. Both to inspire joy but also to raise concerns about global warming. I’m impressed by how the neighborhood has respected he sculptures and just let them be….   Last night the added a puppy as well. 

                                         ****           

My time for my second vaccination shot. At first I”m feeling all right but then by night I’m shover with chills and a sick headache and aching again. A predictable but un welcome out come for someone who has previously had Covid. I literally spend all of  Friday in bed.  Only emerging for open mic. But….now that’s over.      

and a real live dog as well....

                                       

Living in coronavirusworld 221: Incident, reflections on racism

 

12/2

on the street

Incident

Leaving Morningside Park, I hear shouts through a bull horn. I want to  know what’s going on. I see a crowd walking up Manhattan Avenue. Go across to see. My glasses steam up as I walk so I take off my mask. The crowd is now in front of Mamie’s Spoonbread restaurant. The theme is “Support Black business everyday, not just Black Friday.” The owner is coming out to a round of applause. I want to take a picture but two young white women on bikes have cut in front of me, blocking me off. “We’d really like you to put a mask on,” they say. I apologize and pull up my mask. Just then a young athletic looking Black man pulls up on a bike right in front of me. “What’s your problem?” he says. “What?” I say. “What’s your  problem with what’s going on here? Don’t you support what’s going on here?” “Jesus Christ,” I say, “of course I do. I live here. This is my neighborhood.” He looks me over again. “Well, okay then. ...When you show up somewhere, introduce your self, ask some questions, you know?” As he bikes off, I hear one of the women say into her cell phone, “False alarm…” ???!!!! The crowd begins to move down the street.  I see a whole posse of motorcycle police circling the intersection, waiting, The crowd is in the street, “whose streets? Our streets…” One of the bike women comes over to me, “Look, I’m sorry. You had a look on your face like you didn’t like what we were doing. You can’t be too sure..” I say, “I was just trying to figure out what’s going on. I live here. This is my home..” ‘Well, anyways, sorry…” and she bikes off. 

I remember seeing the man passing out campaign literature during the election wearing his "Unfuck the world" sweatshirt. We so need to do that...

I continue up Fredrick Douglass with such a mix of emotions. Upset that I lost my cool, wishing I could have been total zen about the whole thing. Had a deeper, more meaningful conversation. Upset that two young white women thought I was a racist and the man assumed I was before I said a word. That I actually felt something like fear for a moment. Something I have never felt in living in Harlem. Keeps running through my head. I think about posting about it. Like an open letter saying, “Look I get it, but what if I was just some ordinary person? What would I think or feel? Is that what you want?” But I decide that would be uncool and play into the reactionary critique of the movement. I still want to say to those young women, “I was arrested for protest before you were born…” It’s hard to let go of it.

I bring it up at our weekly family ZOOM. “Ah, you were profiled!”says my oldest. ‘Think about it,” he says, “old white man, no mask, mustache and goatee, only thing missing is a MAGA hat.” My younger son talks about the kind of harassment Black Lives Matter marchers have experienced. And at times they are violent, "Assumptions?” they say, “Black people put up with that every day of their lives.” Which of course I know. Regarding the police, all agree that after taking the summer off as a kind of “Work stoppage/job action” protest against the mayor,  the police are back with a vengeance. There were almost as many cops on bikes as marchers.

I also bring the conversation to my Underground group. After agreeing that sometimes when intently trying ti figure something out, my face takes in a certain gorgoyle-like aspect, the conversation turns serious. They recalled Jesus’ two parallel and contradictory quotes, Matt. 12:30 “Who is not for me is against me” and Luke 9:50 “Who is not against you is for you..”  And all the way back to Moses and the “uncertified”prophets, Numbers 11:29 “ Would that all God’s people were prophets.”   We are so clearly not one people. Not even with the faith community. 

Russ recalls not understanding the difference between a Bishop in a Black denomination and those in white hierarchical denominations with Episcopal governance. And getting called out on it.

Steve P quotes Ibrahim X. Kendy as saying “People aren’t racists, action and policies are.” This leads to a conversation about racism.  I had grown to accept a difference between  prejudice and racism with racism being prejudice plus power, with power being definitive. Therefore,  Black people due to lack of power, could not be racist by definition. And an expression like “reverse racism” would be a non-sequitur. Steve P says Kendy would disagree with that. And that racism and prejudice are inseparable. (But indistinguishable?)

We talk about guilt vs, responsibility, In Jewish- Christian dialogue, when we studied the Christian roots of anti-semitism, defensive Christians  would always respond, “Well, the people who did that weren’t real Christians.”  Sorry, Once we’re under the tent with the same banner, we are not guilty, but we are responsible.  Likewise, even though we personally did not own slaves, we bear responsibility for our community and its life. To live in a community by definition requires us to be responsible for correcting the past. As Rick Ufford- Chase says, there is no legitimate Church mission without serious attention to repararations. 

Dre is fascinated by the way  white people talk about racism. He doesn't think about it, he experiences it. And encourages us to think about actions more than thoughts. How love pushes us beyond right and wrong. 

The book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson comes  up again, with the idea that caste is the bone and racism the muscle.

Steve H says it’s like a house with a hole in the roof. Doesn’t matter whose fault the hole is, we’ve got to stop arguing and fix it. And our collective house has a gaping hole in its roof. 

In that direction, Steve P talks about the work of Don Shriver, the 13th President of Union Theological Seminary recently celebrated in a new book, Christian Ethics in Conversation. (https://wipfandstock.com/christian-ethics-in-conversation.html) A Southerner, Shriver brought an unshakeable commitment to the work of reparation to all that he did, especially in bringing scholars like James Cone and Cornell West to Union. 

That’s a long journey from my street corner incident. But a good one.

                                                                                                        ****

Israeli knockoff

Today I wore my same Steeler hat because the game originally scheduled for Thursday night got changed to Sunday to Monday night then Tuesday night then Wednesday afternoon as Covid positives rose in Baltimore. Reaching 20 players…including the quarterback. The Broncos had all 4 quarterbacks out and had to start a rookie wide receiver who hadn’t played quarterback since freshman year of college. And Santa Clara has told the 49ers they cannot play or practice there forcing them to move their operations to Phoenix. Such is big time sports in coronavirusworld. 

My t-shirt is one of my favorites. My son brought it from Israel. I love the missing “H” in ‘pittsburg,” the Hebrew letters, the misunderstood color scheme of logo and graphics. Quirky. And beautiful. The game finally was played.

Living in coronavirusworld 201 : the day after

 

11/4

Count the votes\\\\\\

                                               

As our underground gathers, there is a consistent sense of shock that so many of our fellow Americans, one out of two, actually want four more years of this. It’s very hard to fathom. Or accept. But no matter the final outcome, this much  is already true.

On the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon said that it’s like waking up with a hangover and realizing you still in the bar. 

anything to help Michigan and Pennsylvania

I have no idea what hat and shirt to wear for today’s gathering. So decide to go with something to add support for Michigan and Pennsylvania to go for Biden. My shirt is from my visit to Tiger Stadium in 2014 in Detroit. It was Polish night, so I got a Polski Tiger fan t-shirt. The hat spins off of that. It’s a 1947 Pittsburgh Pirate hat. Only worn that year. That was the year Hank Greenberg, the Hebrew Hammer, after spending his entire career in Detroit, came to Pittsburgh. They moved the left field fence in 30 feet ostensibly to give Hank a shot at beating Babe Ruth’s record 60 home tuns. Then called it the Greenberg Gardens.  A year later, when Ralph Kiner took over for Hank, they called it Kiner’s Corner, which would ultimately become the  name of Kiner’s radio show as a New York Mets announcer. My neighbor Barney Greengrass would laws take his iconic sturgeon out to Yankee Stadium for Hank when the Tigers were  town. Because Hank was a landsman, and because he hated the Yankees. Giants fan all thew way. The now San Francisco Giants still visit Barney’s after World Series victories. Anyways, we use what we can to up the mojo.

Steve H..and more of us, confessing to feeling helpless. Last Sunday a Trump caravan of trucks with blaring loudspeakers disrupted his service. Sam speaks of, and most of us agree, a feeling of shame. To be an American. Some even want to disassociate, saying it  always this way from the start with a constitution designed to protect slavery. (And thus the electoral college which hamstrings us today) But I can’t go there. Our constitution, like a work of art, has ideas more powerful  than the weakness of the men that created it. Martin Luther King, Jr always spoke to the cognitive dissonance between the words and the  reality. And I recall Abraham Joshua Heschel’s thought  that a prophet comes from a people and speaks to that people. With the strongest motivation of love. We are of this people and  share in the collective guilt and responsibility. By disassociation, we lose the capacity to speak prophetically to the people. 

And we need to know whee our ultimate loyalty is. As someone said, If I am not his, I am not. 

Russ wants to go immediately to what’s our job. Sam speaks of the importance of community organizing. We all agree, either Trump or Biden will win, but our deepest problems remain. Dre calls us to focus on what is possible. 

We know this as well: the virus is not going away. That will continue to be our context. 

Trump has announced that he is no longer a Presbyterian. He Is now a non-denominational Christian. (More votes there)

There are many ideas as to what we need or do. We need to recall God’s contingent promise to Abraham under the requirement to be a blessing to all people. To have purpose gives us forward movement. We need to talk less about rights and more about responsibilities. To challenge the question what’s in it for me? To create a community that acts in support of individuals and itself. 

My friend Jeremy relates how his parents debated waiting until after the revolution to have a cool so that  would grow up in batter world. They grew tired of waiting. 

Joel  cautions us to not leap into action too quickly. We need to live  with this. Grieve at what has been lost. Allow ourselves to reflect on it. And allow the path to emerge.

Joel talks abut how Trump has debased meaning itself. Words do not even mean the same thing  to the two sides. How do we even talk to one another?

Who are we as a people? How do we connect with our people? 

This is hard.  

Russ quotes fro the song, O Happy Day: He taught me how to watch, fight and pray, fight and pray, And live…

                                                  Oh Happy Day

I meet my rabbi friend for coffee.  It’s a beautiful sunny day. And we are both dealing with the shocking truth of our country. We are forgetting appointments. He takes a break to teach.  I finally realize it’s my granddaughter’s birthday and join in the ZOOM. I remember being there in Berlin  when she was born,. Over a year since I’ve seen her.  They can’t come here. We aren’t allowed there. 

on Lennox

ATLAH

I walk. Take in the leftover signs of Black Lives Matter protests. See the sign at the ATLAH  (All the land anointed holy)church. This Black Nationalist homophobic entity declaring Obama and Kamala to not be black, in fact be “covert white supremacists. What strange bedfellows for Trump, whose support froth black community actually grew this election.

I stay up late again. Unable to sleep. And we still don’t know. 

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. 

Living in Coronaviruswolrd 183: The heart will harden

 

10/6

....always..

 Maxwell's 111th Street and 5th

Walking through Central Park, there’s a fashion  shoot going on. And a rap video.  A feeling of fall….

Covid has led to a backlog of appointments at the Apple store Genius Desk. I wind with a reservation for 10:45 PM. Long serpentine waiting lines and multiple health security check before I make it in. And masks on everyone,

                                                                         ****

New York Black Yankees

Today I’m repping the New York Black Yankees, circa 1935 with a cap and repro utility shirt. They were founded by the entertainer dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.  Played their first games at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum grounds. From its founding in the mid 19th Century until 1919, they took in over 13,500 orphans. Many, however, were “half orphans,” children of single mothers with no support. The 1915 Child Welfare Act brought aid to widows with children and reduced the need for homes for “half orphans.” When the Black Yankees signed the pitcher extraordinaire Satchel Paige, they were finally welcomed to Yankee Stadium. One historic footnote…the Yankees wanted the HOA campus on Amsterdam to build a stadium to compete with the Giants at the Polo Grounds at 155th and the Harlem River. They offered the HOA Bronx property.  But everybody  stayed were they were, Yankee Stadium arose in the Bronx and HOA became part of the campus of the City College of New York, the Harvard of the working class. The Black Yankees also played at Hinchcliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey, one of the last remaining Negro League Stadiums in the US. Here the Black Yankees once threw a no-hitter against the House of David, a renowned barnstorming team which forbade shaving or haircuts for religious reasons. 

We are continuing our conversation on Erich Fromm.  In his view, there are three basic continuums in human behavior and communities. One, form archaic to progressive, Two, from neurotic to productive. And three, from animal to human. Our life is determined by a combination of forces. The choices we make create consequences with diminishing opportunities for choice.  There is also a tension between reason and emotion.  An emotion that causes suffering ceases to control once we gain a clear understanding of it. 

(Clyde recalls the  volunteer who  made reflexology consultations available to homeless persons and they were as popular as the food lines. )

As our choices calcify into patterns, we step by step lose our freedom to choose. We tend to see freedom of choice in the last step, but From argues inevitability has set in many steps previous.  Our freedom is tied to our capacity to reason. 

In our choices that are harmful to others, we don’t become an animal, who has not reflected on their choices. But we can become inhuman, even demonic. Steve P tells the story of a conversation with an Attica State Prison inmate who argued that he had "done what he had to do.” Steve challenged that, And later the man began their next conversation with “I’ve been thinking…” and that he had begun to consider other possibilities.. 

Maxwell's on 111th 

When Russ raises his usual question what is our job, today it seems one of them is to help each other to have critical awareness of our decisions. To strengthen awareness of the rational. To understand real possibilities. Awareness of consequences. The will to make the right choices and the ability to accept the pain that may accompany  those choices. 

Fromm, thinking of the Pharaoh in Exodus, the more bad choices we make, the more the heart hardens. 

God is good....

The sky is dark the wind picking up. I walk north to 125th where a favorite street vendor was killed yesterday by a shop lifter. Checking out the signs of witness along the street. Make the circle and retie to my neighborhood spot. I choose to sit outside for my drink before the weekly “Gluey Zoomy” show. 

The night ends with the Vive Presidential debate. After the debacle of the last debate, it seems, on the surface, almost normal. Pence makes himself, by comparison, almost decent. Although he too, interrupts. And now this staunch moralist has become a genteel liar, which in some ways, is even more scary than Trump. As if this reactionary yet resolute conservative has been corrupted by his relationship with Trump. In Fromm's words, archaic. At the least. And with.a hardened heart,