"RAMBLINGS ABOUT C-V"

“RAMBLINGS ABOUT C-V”

            Wow, the numbers that Dr. Anthony Fauci shared on Sunday are staggering – 100,000-200,000 possibly dead in USA alone.  It makes c-v rival the Great Influenza of 1917-18, and it is difficult to imagine what such numbers would do to us as a country and as a society.  I have little ability to comprehend at this point, so I am just going to share some ramblings.  Before I begin those, I want to thank all the health care workers and first responders who have striven so hard to serve so many of us, striven so hard under such adverse conditions – may their model be our guide in the difficult days ahead, and may we serve them as well.

            First, I have read that some feel that c-v is God’s punishment for our acceptance of the humanity of people who are attracted to other people of the same gender.  I’ve also read that it is God’s judgment on our rampant consumerism.  I have no patience with the first interpretation, but I am considering the second.  I am certain that God will get many attributes in these days.  It may also be nature’s way of rebelling against our pummeling of the earth – pollution counts have dropped dramatically.

            Second, this looks to endure a lot longer than I thought that it would.  I was so hoping that Trump would be right (for a change), but I should have known better,  And speaking of Trump, I will be surprised if he does not move soon to consolidate national power.  I don’t know if he is smart enough to consider that, but I know that some of his advisers are.

            Third, it is eerie out there.  I went to the post office on Saturday to drop off a letter in the mail box (no contact with humans, gloves on to drop the letter in the box), and it felt like Christmas Day out there – nothing open; no one was out and about.  It wasn’t totally deserted, but it was weird.  And, on the whole, that weirdness is a good thing.   Most people in my area seem to be obeying the “shelter in place” order.

            Fourth, I talked with my friend Inez on Friday to see how she was doing.  She said that she was staying in place, but that she was noticing that people classified as “white” were freaking out.  She reminded me that people classified as “black” live in this kind of fear all the time, and that she hoped that some white folk would comprehend that.  She added a sobering reminder, though, that one of the ways black people dealt with such fear and oppression was to gather in community to uplift and celebrate one another.  Now, that survival mechanism has been taken away from them.  Wouldn’t that be a surprising outcome, that white folk would viscerally connect our current fear and anxiety with the power of racism?  Our white fear and dread for the future is what many black folks experience all the time in
American life.  Such connections rarely happen much in American history, but this seems to be an event with few parallels and with such great danger, that I am hoping for a little good news.

            Fifth, as the NYT put it in an article yesterday, it should be no surprise that the class divide exhibits itself in this pandemic.  Rich folks who could, fled NYC to second homes; middle class folk sheltered and are trying to survive;  lower class folks are doing the work to keep whatever is going; poor folk are consigned to the scrap heaps of life – no shelter from the storm.  Our huge prison population (the largest in the world) may be the next huge breakout place – no medical care, no separate shelter, no hiding place. 

            I’m hoping that some of the boundaries will hold – others may need to go.  That will be sorted out by the pandemic and by us.  For all those delivering food to those in need, for all those checking on the welfare of others, for all those staying in place except for “essentials,” thank you.  May we all help one another through this difficult journey.

"WE'VE ALL COME TO LOOK FOR AMERICA"

“WE’VE ALL COME TO LOOK FOR AMERICA”

            I recently heard from my friend and colleague, Collin ‘Cornell, who did such a great job of editing my 2017 book of sermons: “Deeper Waters: Sermons for a New Vision.”  He began his e-mail this way:  “What a strange and potentially transformative season we are in. I am not sure yet if this pandemic will be the final blow to capitalism and the incentive to move towards a more human welfare state---or if this will precipitate our national slide into fascism.” 

His succinct summation of our current situation reminded me that in this fearful time, we have a crisis that presents us with great danger as well as great opportunities.  It gives us fresh opportunities to re-shape the idea of America.  This crisis has already provoked fundamental changes in our way of living, and I will be stunned (but grateful) if we avoid something akin to the Great Depression.   The health and economic costs will be devastating, yet in this terrible time, there are opportunities to look for America, to paraphrase Paul Simon’s great song “America.”  Let us all go looking for America in these perilous times.

            The changes are already upon us, but they have only just begun.  Our healthcare system, which already rationed health care in a terrible way, will likely sink even further into ruination.  I’m not economically astute enough to predict what will happen to the economy, but I do know that many small businesses will not make it back.   Our national leadership has been awful – indeed, Caroline has taken to calling it the Trumpdemic.  Even though he looks overwhelmed, I do believe that the president is already scheming to prevent the 2020 presidential elections, as well as giving serious thought to suspending constitutional rights, if things get bad enough, allowing him to assume the kingly role that he so obviously wants.

            This is a nightmare scenario, but even here, there are opportunities to develop a new vision of America, to have all of us look for America.  We have a powerful idea at our core – the idea of equality, the idea that we were all created with equal dignity.  Trump’s base wants to take us back to a time when it was seen and acknowledged that white men were supreme, that all others were lesser beings.  This crisis has the danger of allowing even more erosion of the idea of equality, but it also gives us the opportunity to recalibrate the idea of America.  Congress will likely act this week to do what the Trump base would call “socialism,” and the more aid for “ordinary” people and not giant corporations, the better.  There will likely be a time limit to this “democratic socialism,” but let us gather our minds and our hearts to help develop this vision so that it becomes permanent rather than temporary:  health care for all, guaranteed annual income, care for the planet, use of jails and prisons for only those who cannot live in society rather than a prison-industrial complex. 

            As I wrote last week, I am hoping that Trump is right, that the coronavirus pandemic is subsiding and will disappear quickly.  Yet, to say such is to believe that the world is flat.  All empirical evidence points otherwise, and I am grateful to the health professionals, the health care workers and the public health leaders who are seeking to get us through this crisis without a total breakdown of our systems.  I am grateful for those political leaders who are taking the pandemic seriously, and who are seeking ways to help us ease the pain and deaths.  And, I am grateful for all of us who are sheltering in place, who are helping others in our isolation, and who are longing for a different kind of America.  Only a few prescient ones of us know what will happen in the long term to America.

 In our days of isolation, let us be thinking about and envisioning a new way of being America.  Let us not turn out to be the self-centered and mean regime that we now are experiencing.  Let us live that just and equitable vision that is one of our places of origin.  Let us all go to look for America, as individuals and as a community.  While we are away from one another physically, let us be the dreamers and visionaries that will enable us to live up to that great ideal that is part of our heart as a country:  “we hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all {people} are created equal.”  

CORONAVIRUS"

“CORONAVIRUS”

            It is pretty amazing at the speed at which public and private institutions have

closed down in response to the spread of coronavirus or COVID 19 – fear will do that to us, especially in the age of social media. The most similar time that I recall was the polio anxiety of the 1950’s of my childhood.  The source of polio was not known, and because of that we were all scared.  I never knew anyone personally in an iron lung, but Caroline did in Chattanooga.  It was as if there were an Evil One lurking out there, waiting to get us.  I can remember the great relief when Drs. Jonas Salk and others developed the vaccine that has virtually eliminated polio from life in the US.  I also remember lining up in the 5^th or 6^th grade to get the polio shot.  I did not want to get the shot, but my mother insisted: “If you don’t get the shot, you won’t have to worry about polio killing you – I will do it instead.”

            The other part of the coronavirus pandemic is that it brought to mind John Barry’s fine 2005 book “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” about the pandemic in 1917-18 that killed over 600,000 people in the U.S., more than 10 times American soldiers killed in World War I.   In this powerful study, he concluded that this epidemic likely began in an army camp in Kansas.  And, here the political collided with the medical. Though he had been advised against it by doctors, President Woodrow Wilson decided to send the infected troops to Europe to fight in the war that the USA had just entered – they spread the plague from there.  Here is a chilling sentence that Barry uses to describe Wilson, in words that sound eerily familiar today: "He was one of those rare men who believed almost to the point of mental illness in his own righteousness." 

Barry concludes his book with these words about the modern relevance of his study: 

“So, the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet the one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate members of society.  A society that takes as its motto ‘every {man} for himself’ is no longer a civilized society.  Those in authority must retain the public’s trust.  The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.”

And that brings us to our time and our dilemma.  As we have all noticed, President Trump has provided the same kind of leadership of political denial that President Wilson used.  Though I do not know the inner workings of the Trump administration on this, if their history is to be used as a guide, there is a battle there between the medical/scientific and the political.  From Trump’s expressed desire to keep the numbers of reported cases down, to his sense that this virus would pass quickly, to the appalling lack of test kits – there seems to be a belief that the primary issue with coronavirus is its political implications, not its health implications. 

I don’t really know how deeply this virus will affect us all, but I do know that there are models out there predicting dire consequences.  I am glad that we learned many lessons from the pandemic of 1917-18.  I’m hoping that the dire models are wrong, and in a weird way, I hope that Trump is right, that this viral pandemic will pass quickly and easily.   I don’t believe that, and the stock market does not seem to believe it either, and that is sobering and scary.  As noted by Matt Phillips in Saturday’s NYT, when Trump started speaking on Friday, the stock market started falling.  When the doctors and business people started speaking, it surged.  Either way, it marks a turning point towards November.  If things are as grim as they seem today, we may still be in a national emergency when the elections come around.  Though it is only Congress who can postpone national elections, I am guessing that some of Trump’s team is looking now at the options.  I don’t see how the economy can recover quickly as the recession looms, and that further weakens Trump’s position. 

So, here I am, torn between a sense that Trump’s position is eroding, and the only reason is that there is great disaster hitting us.  As he has demonstrated so often, he is simply not up to the job, but it is taking a national disaster to reveal that for all to see.  I don’t wish that on any of us, but like President Wilson, he put politics over national health, and in this case, we all will pay the price.  Most pandemics in human history have also produced a diminishing of compassion – may we break that cycle in this one. 

"ALICE PAUL AND THE 19TH AMENDMENT"

“ALICE PAUL AND THE 19^TH AMENDMENT”

            In 2018 Caroline, Susan and I toured the Belmont-Paul National Women’s Historical Monument in D.C.   It is located behind the U.S. Capitol, and since 1929, it has been the headquarters of the National Women’s Party, which was one of the driving forces behind the passage of the 19^th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.  It is a powerful exhibition of the history of the work to add the right to vote for women to the Constitution, work begun officially at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.  It was at the Belmont Paul House that I first encountered the great quote “You can’t spell ‘formidable without Ida B.”  The house is named after Alva Belmont, who funded much of the work in the 20^th century for the passage of the 19^th Amendment, and after Alice Paul, who was one of the leaders in the work for passage of that Amendment.

            Alice Paul was born in 1885 in New Jersey to Quaker parents.  They taught her that she had equal human dignity to men, and this idea of equality took hold in her heart.   She went to Swarthmore College and did work as a graduate student in England.  There she met Lucy Burns, an American involved in the women’s suffrage movement in England.   Her mentors in England were Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel.  They both were arrested in the movement, and Alice Paul joined the others in a hunger strike against imprisonment.  Like the other leaders, she was force fed in a brutal manner, which gave her digestive problems for the remainder of her life.

            When they returned to the States, she and Lucy both joined in the movement for women’s rights.  They proposed the radical step of seeking to get Congress to pass a constitutional amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote.  Leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott had passed from the scene, so the proposal was seen as radical and impossible.  Paul and Burns believed in it, however, and they set out to work.  They started the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and focused its energies on winning the right to vote state by state.  Alice Paul soon became disenchanted with this gradual approach and pushed the NAWSA to adopt a national approach and seek to get Congress to pass the proposed amendment first.

            Paul then pulled out of the NAWSA and formed the National Woman’s Party, whose goal was getting Congress to pass the amendment, which meant that all the states would then be impelled to act on it.  Having learned from the Pankhurst family in her time in England, she felt that direct demonstrations would move the political dial towards equality.  She chose the day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson as President in 1913 to have the first major march, knowing that many folk would already be in D.C. for the inauguration.  She called for women and men from all over the country to come to D.C. for the demonstration, and thousands arrived.  It was led by the Beyonce of that day, a stunning woman named Inez Mulholland, who rode on horseback carrying the banner for equality for women.  The march was controversial in many ways.  Paul and other white leaders made the black women march in the back of the parade, fearing that white Southern women would be offended by any display of black equality.  Ida Wells famously defied this order and stepped in to march with her Illinois delegation.  The march was disrupted by white men, deeply angered and threatened by the idea of equality for women.  Yet, Paul had made her point – it made national headlines and got the conversation going.

            Paul was not through.  She kept working, and in 1917, she organized the “Silent Sentinels,” a group of women who demonstrated daily at the gates of the White House, imploring President Wilson to support the proposed amendment.  It was the first time that such demonstrations had been held regularly at the White House.  The women were harassed, arrested, jailed and eventually went on a hunger strike.  Many of them were force fed, and those women led a groundswell of the movement to pass the 19^th Amendment.  President Woodrow Wilson finally supported it, and in 1919, both the Senate and the Congress took it up, passed it and sent it on to the states for consideration.  It passed by one vote in August, 1920, in the ratifying state of Tennessee, with Harry Burns casting the deciding vote, mainly because his mom put a note in his pocket, urging him to vote for the amendment.  We give thanks for those who worked so hard for this 19^th Amendment, especially Alice Paul.

"WOMEN'S HISTORY - FINDING A DIFFERENT PATH THROUGH LENT"

“WOMEN’S HISTORY - FINDING A DIFFERENT PATH IN LENT”

            The season of Lent is ancient, though it cannot be traced back to the Bible.  It actually comes from an old English word for “lengthen,” indicating that the season usually encompasses the Western world’s experience of the stretching out of the daylight as spring begins to arrive.  I grew up with Lent being a time of denial and fasting, with an emphasis on long faces and sadness.  A few years ago, I was in the post office in Lent, whistling a tune of praise written by St. Francis of Assisi.  A woman admonished me that I should not be whistling a tune of praise because it was Lent.  My immediate reaction was that I was impressed that she even knew that it was Lent and that she cared enough about it to engage me on it.  I didn’t yield, however, telling her that in every season we are supposed to praise God. I was also reminded of this struggle in a FaceBook post on Saturday by our friend Deb Miller and her Mennonite roots. It was from the DailyBonnet, and it indicated that some Mennonites were having trouble finding their path in Lent, because everything fun was already forbidden anyway!

            The meaning of Lent is that it is a journey to the Cross with Jesus.  The purpose of the season is not to beat ourselves up but rather to take time to remember that we are still crucifying Jesus, to seek to discern the current captivities that make us nail Jesus to the Cross.  The season of Lent usually overlaps with most of Black History Month.  In American culture that seems to be a natural overlap, because racism is the original American sin that is ongoing and powerful.   But, this year Easter comes somewhat late (April 12), and although Lent began in Black History Month (February 26), this year it overlaps with Women’s History Month.  While racism is the original American sin, sexism and patriarchy are the original human sins, in every culture and in every time:  there is always the belief that males are superior, and that females are inferior – the purpose of women is to belong to and to serve men.  So, during this month, I’ll be looking at the liberating counter narrative to that captivity.  We’ll be exploring Women’s History Month and some of its meaning in our lives. 

            This year is the 100^th anniversary of the passage of the 19^th Amendment, which gave white women the right to vote in elections in America.  Though women of color, especially black women, were not specifically ruled out of the Amendment, the prevalent feeling was that it was meant primarily for women who were classified as “white.”  It would be 45 more years before black women were given the vote in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  That act would join the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to end neo-slavery in the South but also act as the beginning of the Counter-Revolution, winding through Nixon and Reagan and Bush and Trump, where we are in a pitched battle to see if these changes in the American fabric will hold or not.  The revival of the Equal Rights Amendment, thanks to Illinois and Nevada and Virginia, is part of this struggle.

            The power of Women’s History Month is that it reminds us of the fundamental fact that women are human beings who are created with equal dignity in the eyes of God, by whatever name one calls the Supreme Being.  It also reminds us of the deep and almost primal captivity that all of us have to patriarchy, to the idea that men are superior to women.  Whatever our gender status – female, male, trans – we are all captured by this idea and have internalized it.  And, third, Women’s History Month reminds us that there have always been witnesses to a different road, the road that proclaims justice and equity for all people, but most especially those captured by patriarchy. 

            The gift of equality, the captivity of inequality, the witnesses to a path of liberation – I’ll be looking at those this month.  Though the struggle began long before the church, we can see it clearly in the Biblical witness about Jesus.   Women seem to be coming from everywhere to follow the liberating message of Jesus – the Gospels record no women who reject the message of Jesus.  They are being witnesses, starting churches, preaching – fired up on the message of liberation, a message that tells them that their primary definition is daughter of God, not property of men. Yet, Paul (and those who write in his name) wrestles with this idea of women’s liberation and women’s leadership.  Can the church survive the liberation of women?  Sadly, the leaders decide that it can’t, and still the largest Christian body in the world deny leadership to women.  Yet, still the witnesses come, still the liberation continues to be born.  Let us walk that path in Lent – the first step is recognizing International Women’s Day on March 8.