"FROM TALIBAN TO TEXAS: THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES BACK"

 “FROM TALIBAN TO TEXAS:  THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES BACK”

        Caroline is recovering slowly but surely from her major back surgery two weeks ago on August 30.  Thanks to all of you who have prayed and called and written and e-mailed and provided food and respite care!  We’ll keep you posted – her next scheduled doc appointment is October 6 via telemed, and we hope that her progress remains steady enough that she will not need anything else.  After being blessed to have not been in the hospital overnight since 1982, we both have learned a lot in this process.

The headlines move fast in the 24 hour news cycle, so I am a little bit behind in this blog.  Yet this phenomenon of the patriarchy striking back never seems to go away or seem dated.  There are many examples of it in our world, but nowhere more clearly seen than in the events in Afghanistan and Texas, where the same kind of political mindsets seem to have won the day through violence and seizure of political power.  The Taliban truly are scary in their approach to women and to political dissent.  One can admire their staying power – at least 30 years of Soviet and American occupation, and yet here they are, back in power.  Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” seems appropriate reading for these days in Afghanistan, as it is for all days.

The fiasco in Texas over women’s rights and the need for safe and healthy abortions are another sign of the patriarchy striking back.  The refusal of SCOTUS to intervene in the Texas law that allows only 6 weeks for legal access to abortion is a portent of more bad things to come for all of us, especially women.  As many people have pointed out, many women do not even know that they are pregnant by six weeks into the pregnancy, so this is clearly designed to end legal access to abortion in Texas.  It is still hard for me to believe that the political party that preaches  individual rights and local governments is now preaching about total control over women and their bodies.  Texas has also picked up a Soviet style manner of enforcement – neighbors telling on (and suing) neighbors.  

One other disturbing aspect of SCOTUS’ refusal to intervene in the Texas law is that such a refusal basically endorses the idea of “nullification,” the doctrine that John C. Calhoun of South Carolina tried to use in order to preserve slavery.  Calhoun  called it out in the 1830’s in response to a federal taxation act, but everyone knew that lying underneath this argument was the struggle over the legality of slavery.  Calhoun claimed that states had the constitutional right to “nullify” federal laws that the state felt were unconstitutional, looking towards a time when the federal government might outlaw slavery.  President Andrew Jackson came down hard on Calhoun and this approach, but Jackson knew that this was no political foil for power.  The antipathy was so deep that Jackson prepared federal troops to enter South Carolina and defend the law if necessary.  Calhoun and his followers backed down on this one, but it prepared the groundwork for the next generation in South Carolina to start the Civil War 25 years later.

Texas used the doctrine of nullification to develop its law on making abortions illegal, and SCOTUS has seemed to endorse the doctrine in its response last week.  As awful as this law is for women’s rights, let none of us think that it will stop there.  In this approach, states can seek to “nullify” federal laws and federal rights in many areas, especially voting rights, as we see happening all around the country.  In striking back, the patriarchy has moved not only to nullify women and their rights but the rights of all of us.  The redistricting battles and decisions of this fall will tell us a lot about where we all will come out in this struggle, but whatever those decisions, voter turnout in 2022 will be crucial.  And, however the patriarchy and Soviet-style politicians choose to strike back next, let us find those Jedi warriors in ourselves and together so that we may find ways to assert the fundamental humanity and equal dignity of all human beings.

"SURGERY LOOMING - OPPORTUNITY AND ANXIETY"

 “SURGERY LOOMING – OPPORTUNITY AND ANXIETY”

Neither Caroline or I have had an overnight stay in the hospital since our daughter Susan was born in the early 80’s.  We are so grateful and blessed that our health has taken us this far without hospitalization.  We have both had outpatient surgeries that did not require an overnight stay, and we are grateful for the surgeons, nurses, support staff, and technology which enabled that.  

Caroline has been experiencing major back, leg, and hip pains since early last fall.  She has been consulting with Emory nurses and physicians and has received spinal steroid injections, which have provided temporary relief but have worn off quickly.  Her pain level has consistently remained at a 7 or 8 level for a long time, and with the advice of the surgeon, she is now scheduled to have major back surgery this Thursday, August 26 at the Emory Spine Hospital.  It had been scheduled for tomorrow, but we learned late this past week that a major surgical X-ray machine had broken down, so the surgery was moved to Thursday – we want the equipment to be working!  We’re hoping that the surge in Covid cases does not postpone the surgery again.  We should find out at her  pre-op this Tuesday.  If it is a go, we will give thanks and get ready for surgery, for the 2-3 day stay in the hospital, and the long recuperation at home.  As pastors, we have seen many people in the hospital, but this will be our first time in almost 40 years as a patient.

In this sense, we are turning a corner in our journey.  Caroline is longing for relief from the pain, so while she is dreading the surgery and recovery, she sees this as an opportunity for new possibilities with much less pain.  Since I am not experiencing the pain directly (though certainly indirectly) and given our different personalities, I am seeing this corner turn with anxiety.  Will she make it OK through the surgery?  Can I be an adequate caretaker for her over the six week recuperation period?  Please be lifting us both up in this turning the corner, especially Caroline who will be experiencing the roughest part of this turn.  We are grateful to many friends who will be assisting, and to North Decatur Presbyterian Church, which has set up a mealtrain for us.

We just had a great visit with both of our children, Susan and David (and granddaughter Zoe as a bonus!)  They were both reminding us of how grateful they are that the surgeons and surgical techniques are available for the procedure, which seems very likely to provide major pain relief for Caroline.  At this kind of corner turning, I am glad that in our rationed health care system, we are one of those who are given the care.  It reinforces our continued commitment to working for this kind of health care for everyone in our society.   

From my point of view, it is also turning a corner to acknowledge fully our aging and the limitations that come with that.  That is a hard awakening, but it is upon us. I am grateful to so many of you who have made that transition so well and who have  modeled it so well – with determination, with commitment to your own humanity and that of others, and with humor!  I am reminded of the closing lines of the Tennyson poem “Ulysses” that I learned in high school:  

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

I don’t know that Caroline and I moved earth and heaven, but we have been trailblazers in many ways.  And, though my heart doesn’t often feel heroic in these days, I do resonate with the poet’s image of continuing to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.   Please be lifting us up in this next big step in our journey.  I know that many of you have come through major surgery well, and your work and recovery and strength are inspiring to us.  In the days  of recovery, I’m not sure when my next weekly blog will be, but I will be posting updates on Caroline.  We give thanks for you and for your friendship and support and prayers.

"WORDS FROM GERMANY"

 “WORDS FROM GERMANY”

At the end of May, the Rev. Andreas Holzbauer asked me to lead one of his seminars for college students in Germany at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.  The class was on “White Christianity,” with an emphasis on the rise of white supremacy in USA under the guise of Christianity.  Due to the time change, I had to be ready to talk on Zoom and lead about 30 students at 7 AM EDT.  I was honored to be asked to do it, so I jumped right in!  Andreas had asked me to share my story for the first part of the seminar.

I shared the usual parts of my background.  I had been raised by a loving, single mother in the racist South in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I learned and accepted racism and patriarchy and homophobia and militarism and other demonic forces.  I had been taught these forces by people who loved me and whom I loved, and because of that, I believed that they were true.

I also shared some of the leverage points where I had begun to change my mind and my heart on these forces.  One was my mother – though captured by these forces herself, she worked in subtle ways to shape me in another view, ways such as not allowing me to say the “N-word” or call Black people by their first names.  I recalled hearing MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and thinking that there were other realities out there, realities that I had not yet allowed myself to encounter.  I lifted up my college experiences, and I talked about the most powerful experience that changed me:  working for a summer at a church in Brooklyn, where for the first time in my life I experienced Black people as human beings like me.  I also shared how my time as pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church had challenged my continuing captivity to racism, and how it had deepened my understanding of myself and others and of how demonic forces like white supremacy can take us over.

I concluded by discussing the rising tide of white supremacy in the Obama and Trump years, and how such forces seem to be a permanent part of our life together.  When I opened up the seminar for questions, I noticed that all of those who asked questions (about half the students) spoke fluently in English, and I remembered my own provincialism – I speak only English.  The first question threw me for a loop – “Do you think that there will be a civil war in the United States again soon?”

That question had been hanging around the corners of my mind ever since the January 6 insurrection and the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.  It had persisted because Trump promoted the “Big Lie,” and so many people seemed to believe it.  Still, I was taken aback by the question from a German student, until I remembered that Germans have such a better memory than we do on how democracy is undermined.  I had started re-reading David Potter’s excellent book on the prelude to the Civil War called “Impending Crisis 1848-1861,” published in 1976.  In it he names many steps that led to the Civil War, and he emphasized 4 main ones:  the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the horrible SCOTUS decision of 1857 when Dred and Harriet Scott were deemed not to be human beings because of their racial classification, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

As I pondered the German student’s question, I tried to run through what similar steps might be in our time.  I came up with my four, and I invite you to think of your four.  My four steps are the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008 (triggering a huge surge in racism), the horrible SCOTUS decision in 2013 Shelby v. Holder which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, and the January 6 insurrection connected to the continuing “Big Lie.”  Added to these four steps is the Covid crisis which has put everyone on edge.

We live in crucial times – will there be a civil war in our time?  At this point, I do not think so, but we seem so divided and so volatile.  The US Census data released last week shows a drop in population for those classified as “white” for the first time since the census began in 1790.  That is not news, but it still gave me pause in these times.  Rather than celebrating this glorious vision of democracy and diversity in USA, I am afraid that my “white” siblings will see this as a time to act in order to preserve the “white” nature of the USA.  

Words from Germany are provocative at this time, and they leave me wondering. Yet they also make me more determined to work for justice and equity for all of us counted in the 2020 Census, while at the same time giving a loud “YES” to this growing, sprawling democracy, even as the forces of repression and oppression growl more loudly.  

"A MAN NAMED MOSES"

 “A MAN NAMED MOSES”

Amzie Moore was an African-American WWII veteran, living in Cleveland, Mississippi, in the late 1950’s.  After fighting for democracy in Europe, when he returned to his native Mississippi, he owned a gas station, but he was determined to work for democracy in his home state.  He began to work on getting African-Americans to vote, and it was a heavy slog.  He asked his friend, Ella Baker, part of SNCC, to find someone to send to him to help him work for voting rights in Mississippi.

In August, 1960, Ella Baker’s emissary knocked on Amzie Moore’s door.  Moore was astonished at the physical presence of the emissary, a young man named Bob Moses.  Moore later recalled that Moses was frail, wore glasses, and was soft-spoken.  Is this the man that Ella Baker sent?  How could he stand against the Pharoahs of Mississippi, with their armies of sheriffs and police and state patrols and white mobs?  Moore was not the first, nor the last, to be surprised by Bob Moses.  He and Moses would work together with others to change Mississippi and national history.

Bob Moses died last month at age 86, and though he had never sought it, he had reached legendary status as a civil rights organizer and later as the founder of the Algebra Project, which was designed to ensure that “minority” kids received the math skills and thinking that they needed.  He was born in Harlem in 1935, whose parents were a janitor and a domestic worker.  He was a brilliant student and got a scholarship in 1952 to almost-all-white Hamilton College.  There he was attracted to philosophy, math, and the Quaker philosophy of non-violence.  He later stated that he was convicted and inspired by the Black student sit-ins in 1960.  He was inspired that they were no longer being passive in an oppressive and racist system.  He decided to go into the belly of the beast to help secure human rights and voting rights.  And, as Nina Simone once sang, “Everybody knows bout Mississippi.”

He arrived there and began to organize people to seek to throw off the idea of the internalized oppression from the system of race, an oppression that told them that they were inferior and deserved inferior status.  He began organizing in McComb and was beaten up and shot at, because of these efforts.  He was also attracted to Sunflower County, where the poverty and fear were so great.  He organized there, and he ended up taking eighteen people to register to vote in the county seat of Ruleville.  One of those eighteen people was Fannie Lou Hamer.  They were not successful, but the fires were being lit.

After months of frustrating and dangerous activity, Moses made a fundamental decision, which would change the course of history and eventually end neo-slavery in the South.  Black friends had been beaten up and even killed for their efforts, with very little coverage from the media and no support from the federal government.  Moses decided to organize Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, with the express purpose of getting “white” young adults to come and work for justice.  He made the calculated decision that if white people (especially from the North) were beaten up in Mississippi, there would be a lot more coverage and attention paid to the Mississippi movement.  

In 1964, hundreds of white and Black volunteers streamed into Mississippi. And, tragically but not surprisingly, some were killed.  Two whites, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and one Black man, James Chaney were killed together in Neshoba County.  During the search for the bodies of these three men, many other Black bodies were discovered.  Moses’ non-violent, costly strategy had worked.  One year later, the Voting Rights Act would be enacted into law – it would end neo-slavery in the South.

Moses was also a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War.  He applied for conscientious objector status.  One of the most non-violent men of all, his application was denied – I still can’t believe that I was granted a CO, but he was not.  He moved to Canada and later to Africa, returning to the USA after President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty  in 1977 to those who had left the country in opposition to the war.  

Then, he began his next monumental work:  the Algebra Project, designed to make certain that poor kids, especially poor kids of color, would get the math skills and critical thinking that they needed.  He began the project in 1982 with a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, and it is still going today.  Moses was a giant in so many ways, a non-violent but definitely not passive genius and organizer.  There is so much more to his life and witness, so if you don’t know his story, please look him up.  Like the Moses of the Hebrew Scriptures, he has shown us paths in the wilderness to find our home.

"FINDING EYES TO SEE"

 “FINDING EYES TO SEE” 

I wrote last week about the metaphor of “having eyes to see” and what a gift it is to be able to see realities and patterns that often are blocked from our vision.  As I think of this, the story of Saul (who became Paul) on the road to Damascus comes to my mind (and sight) in Acts 8.  As he goes to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus (yes, he still has not been able to “see” the risen Jesus), the Lord’s Spirit strikes him, and he loses his literal (and spiritual) vision.   He is taken to Damascus, and there a trembling follower of  the risen Jesus comes to him (as instructed by the Spirit).  Ananias tells Paul who he is, then touches him, and the “scales fall from Paul’s eyes.”  He then becomes the most famous follower of the risen Jesus.

I always wonder about the Biblical metaphors of sight – not using it, losing it, and regaining it.  The Biblical approach is that most of us do not “have eyes to see,” that our perceptual apparatus is captured by the systems of domination and power that make us see others as less than human.  I certainly have been (and continue to be) captured by those systems, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, materialism, and many others.  But, I do have my eyes opened on occasion, and I am grateful for the intervention of God’s Spirit when that happens.  

As we think about how we begin to “have eyes to see,” it is important to remember a couple of points.  First, it is helpful to put ourselves into new places and people who can challenge us and widen our views of others and of ourselves.  In saying this, I am not speaking of the idea of everybody’s opinion being the same, that all truths are relative.  Rather I am speaking of being open to hearing a new and different story, a story that will likely widen our vision, but if it is truthful, it will be a story that challenges our point of view.  The acclaimed author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made a famous Ted Talk on this – here is the link to it, if you have not seen it

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Caroline any my kids will tell you that I am notoriously conservative in my approach to life.  Early on in our marriage, Caroline developed the “Three Day Rule,” especially in our ministry together.  When she would bring new ideas to me, I would almost always say “No”.  So, she told me one day that we were adopting the “Three Day Rule” in our marriage – when she brought a new idea or project for discussion, I could not say “No” for three days.  After I had thought about it for three days, then we could discuss it!  And, it largely worked.

The second point about finding eyes to see is the importance of seeking to be open to new voices.  My long tenure as pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian taught me that -  the multicultural nature of the church kept calling me out of my provincial self with a single story.  That community asked me to see different worlds, different realities – and to see myself in a new way, to have eyes to see.  The community becomes such an important part of helping each of us and all of us to find eyes to see.  Without Ananias coming to Saul to heal him, we would not likely have the New Testament in the form that we have it, and it would have taken a long time for the “country” gospel of Jesus of Nazareth to make it to the cities.  Paul found eyes to see, and the urban church was born.  Let us all pray and be open to those kinds of interventions, so that we, too, may “have eyes to see.”

"HAVING EYES TO SEE"

“HAVING EYES TO SEE”

When David and Susan were young children, they loved to hunt for Easter eggs.  We had a HUGE egg hunt at Oakhurst after worship on Easter, and when we got home, we would again hide the eggs for the kids to try to find.  This process of hiding and finding could go on for two weeks after Easter (we learned quickly not to use hard-boiled eggs for this lengthy process).  One of the more memorable parts of this game was to hide the eggs “in plain sight,” where they were both visible and invisible.  Our favorite quote for this part of the game was: “You have to have eyes to see,” meaning that the egg was sort of visible in its hiddenness, but the seeker had to see it in just the right way in order to “see” it and find it.

I was reminded of this saying during the journey of my first cataract surgery this week.   I give thanks that it seems to have gone well, but I am even more aware now of what a gift is sight, both literal and figurative sight.  A day after the surgery, as the cloudiness in my right eye began to clear, I reminded myself of how much I have taken “seeing” for granted, even though I have worn glasses for almost 60 years.  I still have blurriness in reading, and that is frustrating, but I know that can be corrected.  Yet, still, having eyes to see is such a gift.

When I have been resting my eyes this week, I have listened to some cassette tapes (yes, I still have those and the player that accompanies them).  I recorded these tapes in the fall, 2003, when I read to my mother, who was staying with us while she underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer.  She had macular degeneration and could no longer see well enough to read. She loved to read, and this loss of sight was a terrible affliction for her.   She was a big fan of the writing of Marcus Borg, and his latest book on the Bible had just been published.  So, I got the book and read it to her.  As usual, she interrupted me often to ask questions and make comments.  And, I’m so glad that she did, because I can still hear her voice, 17 years after her death.  

    The Bible frequently uses this image of having eyes to see, usually in a negative sense, meaning that those of us captured by the powers and principalities have eyes but cannot see.  In his book, Borg uses this image of “having eyes to see,” meaning having (or being given) the ability to “see” things or structures that had previously been hidden from us.  Mother and I talked about my having observed Black people as a boy, but I had never “seen” them as human beings until my eyes had been opened through several conversion experiences.  She also noted that she had never really seen LGBTQ+ people as people until she discovered that one of our beloved family relatives was gay.  Then her eyes were opened.  We noted in our discussion that this is the dynamic that Jesus and the prophets used when they talked of people who are “stubborn” and refuse to see, even though they have eyes to see.  I’ve thought of this discussion often in these days of Covid denial and anti-vaxxers, as something that seems so simple has become so complicated and so deadly.

As I think about this metaphor of “seeing” this week, I am noting that it is both literal and figurative.  My literal, physical vision has been altered this week by my cataract surgery, and in just this small way, I give thanks for the gift of sight.  I also think of people like my mother and many others who lost most or all of their sight.  A terrible, terrible thing to experience.  Yet, I’m also reminded of the many people who have survived and even thrived with limited or no ability to physically see.  

Listening to the tapes of Mother and me this week recalled the stories of Jesus’ healing many blind people, both literally and figuratively.  Indeed, in Luke 4, in his first sermon at his home synagogue in Nazareth he told of his mission, which included “bringing sight to the blind.”  Those stories are reminders of the depth of our captivity to many powers which seek to blind us and to bind out hearts to death and domination.  They also remind us that conversions, including cataract surgeries, are available, if “we have eyes to see.”  And, of course, that is the major question for our time, and for every time:  “How do we find eyes to see?”  More on that question next time.

 

"IDA WELLS IS IN THE HOUSE!!!"

 “IDA WELLS IS IN THE HOUSE!”

This has been quite a time for Ida B. Wells.  Catherine Meeks and I wrote a book on her in 2019 “Passionate for Justice,” which the Georgia Center for the Book named as one of ten books that all Georgians should read.  Last year Ida Wells was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for her pioneering work in investigative journalism.  Michelle Duster, her great-granddaughter, published a fine book on her entitled “Ida B: The Queen.”  On June 30, a monument, sculpted by Richard Hunt, was dedicated to her in her adopted hometown of Chicago.  The powerful Nikole-Hannah Jones spoke at that occasion, along with the mayor of Chicago and Michelle and her brother Donald, who were the driving forces in getting the funds for the monument.

Wells’ 159th birthday is this Thursday, July 16, and on that occasion, a park and monument will be dedicated in her honor in Memphis, Tennessee, the town which ran her out in the early 1890's.  Wells had just completed and published a long and definitive study of the avalanche of lynchings that were happening all over USA, but mainly in the South.  In her study she noted that the cause of this racial terror was not the sexual predation of Black men on white women, as was usually stated by the White people who were doing the killings.  The real reason, Wells concluded, was the White desire to control Black people and to return them to slavery as much as possible.  The white response was to firebomb her newspaper offices in Memphis and to threaten to lynch her if she returned to Memphis.  She was an exile first in New York and then in Chicago.  She would not return South until 31 years later in 1921 to investigate the massacre of more than 230 Black people in my home county, Phillips County, Arkansas.

She came down to Arkansas in disguise in order to investigate the Phillips County killings that had occurred in 1919.  Black men had defended themselves and their families and their neighbors, killing some white marauders in their efforts.  Twelve Black men had been convicted of these killings and were given the death penalty.  Wells helped the NAACP pick up the case, and a superhero African-American lawyer named Scipio Jones took their case.  The twelve men were waiting on death row to be executed when Wells came to see them, posing as an aunt of one of the men.  She found them dispirited and forlorn, and she decided to speak prophetic words to them in her approach to comforting them in the midst of this huge injustice that had been visited upon them.

Here’s what she said to them:  “I have been listening to you for nearly two hours.  You have talked and sung and prayed about dying, forgiving your enemies, and of feeling sure that you are going to be received in the New Jerusalem because your God knows that you are innocent of the offense for which you expect to be electrocuted.  But why don’t you pray to live and ask to be freed?  The God you serve is the God of Paul and Silas who opened their prison gates, and if you have all the faith you say you have, you ought to believe that he {sic} will open your prison doors too.  If you do believe that, let all of your songs and prayers hereafter be songs of faith and hope that God will set you free; that the judges who have to pass on your cases will be given the wisdom and courage to decide in your behalf.  That’s all I’ve got to say.”

As usual, Wells did more than talk about such freedom.  She worked with Attorney Jones and the NAACP to publicize the cases and to make sure that their case was heard on the Supreme Court level.  Those efforts paid off in 1923 when SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in Moore v. Dempsey that the twelve Black men had not been given a fair trial.  Their convictions were overturned, and eventually all twelve were freed from prison.  Wells had been a lever for another mighty work, using her courage and skill and tenacity to help pull these men out of the jaws of the racist death penalty.

Wells did her work during horrible years in American history, when white Southerners were using all their powers of legislation and violence to move Black people back into neo-slavery.  She fought a powerful battle against the tidal wave of racism that swept across the country.  Her life is an example to all of us of how to do this and of the focus that is needed for such a battle.  Though we are not in the 1890’s when neo-slavery was established, we are in a time when the forces of white supremacy are re-gathering their strength.  It is up to us to respond to this rising force with a sense of equality and strength and vision, as Ida Wells did.

Few of us are Ida B. Wells, but as my colleague and friend Catherine Meeks always says about Wells:  “She was a human being just like the rest of us.  She was an ordinary person who accomplished extraordinary things.  She was able to do this because she  decided to try to be brave, and through that bravery and her tenacity, she was a powerful witness.”  As we think about her birthday this week, let us give thanks for her ordinariness.  Let us give thanks that she decided to be just a little braver one day, and in so doing, she became a light for the rest of us who were coming and who are coming.  As she noted so well, we are the ones we have been waiting for.