Handwringing versus joy and expectation; talking versus serving

The most recent issue of Comment (fall 2019) carries an editorial by the journal's editor, Anne Snyder, which I've been thinking about since first reading it a couple weeks ago. You can read it here at this link, and I encourage you to do so.

Snyder contrasts two approaches to societal concerns based on and expanding from her observations of two groups within a single weekend. One approach was full of handwringing, while the other was full of joy and expectation. The first emerged primarily from the elite while the second primarily from those who were "indigenous, immigrant, Asian, Latin, and African American." The first featured panels and debates while the second featured actual service in churches, social agencies, schools, and counselling centers within home neighborhoods."

She suggests the first group has much to learn from the second group. The churches associated with the first group tend to focus on preaching and teaching, whereas the churches associated with the second group often tend to function as the "field hospitals Pope Francis speaks about—welcoming everyone, regardless of sin or circumstance, and caring for the needs of the whole person, not just the soul." They often offer job banks and homeless shelters to their community in addition to the preaching and teaching.

"This realism," writes Snyder, "grants these local churches moral authority—not only in their home community, but in the world at large. And they offer an important lesson: If you want entrée to a hurting if skeptical world, care for it, don’t try to rule it."

And here’s one more thing she wrote in this editorial, "There’s a growing awareness that love can never be abstracted—we’re touched by incarnational living and doing, less prescription from on high."

So much is abstract these days with our social media tweets and Instagram shots, our disagreements about the evening news; I write this as a challenge to myself as much as to anyone. I do hope you’ll read her full editorial and consider what she wrote.

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Interesting coincidence: when writing this post I found that the link in the above editorial by Anne Synder went to the same article featuring Pope Francis, which I had first read 6 years ago, that I had linked to in the prior post. Of all the pieces that have been written about Pope Francis what are the odds that my two little posts, whose origins are years apart, link to the same one? I believe there is something significant in coincidence, that a message of "pay attention" is being given even if I don't understand why. Maybe it is saying something to you? I wrote a bit more about this in my newsletter.

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[Photo: taken of stars in the windows of the American Swedish Institute.]

About the new documentary I Am Not Your Negro

A couple weeks ago I saw the new documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, which is based on an unfinished manuscript about race in America by James Baldwin. If you haven't heard of it or seen it yet, you can read more about it at PBS. Or you can watch it on Amazon, iTunes, or through some other online vendor, and I strongly encourage that you do. I saw the film at a church here in Minneapolis that is starting a monthly series about important films.

Close to one hundred people watched the film together and then broke into groups to discuss it. One of the lines from Baldwin that we focused much on was, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." That line alone can generate lots of interesting discussion, particularly when you're a small group representing four different racial groups and ages across a 40-year time span.

Only two of us in the small group, myself included, were old enough to have lived during and remember some of the events from the 60s featured in the film, for example the Watts riots in LA in 1965 and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968. It struck me then how important it is to talk about these kinds of events among different age groups, including those who remember these critical events in American history and those who have only read about them or heard about them, or maybe not even that. To talk about them about different races and people groups.

Another quote from the film that really hit me, but which we didn't discuss in our group, was this:

"We are cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possible become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty...."

Hmm...let's all take out a blank piece of paper and think with a pen about that for while.

I can sometimes delude myself that I have an understanding of racial issues owing to the fact that I spent a substantial part of my growing up years in the south during a period of racial "progress" and turbulence. I went to junior high in the first year of enforced busing in what was a very segregated community, was a high school senior the first year a black girl was crowned homecoming queen at my school–such a small but significant cultural event–and saw that not everyone around me clapped for her, and lots in between. In school we read Black Like Me and To Kill a Mockingbird; I saw the movies starring Sidney Poitier. Years earlier I had seen my (male) teacher cry the day Martin Luther King Jr was shot. But I really know so little.

Watch the documentary, and if you're white, find out what you really know, how much there is to know.

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[Photo: Taken of a sidewalk in Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY]

The power of a letter

An editorial in this past Sunday's New York Times by David Kamp (Guess Who's Coming to 'Peanuts'), a contributing editor for Vanity Fair who is currently writing a book about children's culture in the 1960s and 1970s, told the story of how the Peanuts cartoon strip came to be racially integrated, by the introduction of Franklin, just a little over 3 months after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

It's the story of Harriet Glickman ("mother of three and a deeply concerned and active citizen") writing a letter to Charles Schulz, the strip's creator, 11 days after King was killed. She pitched the idea of adding "Negro children" to the regular Schulz cast of characters. Schulz wrote back to her within two weeks, declining with a considered reason. She wrote back and he wrote back again and then she shared his correspondence, with his permission, with a friend, Kenneth C. Kelly ("a black father of two"), who came up with the idea that became the character of Franklin. While this addition may seem small and unnoticeable today, it was a very big deal in 1968.

How great is this story! First, that a regular person had an idea of something that could help a very bad situation. Second, that she pitched her idea in a letter. Not a tweet or a post or an email. Of course, those weren't available in 1968, but something tells me this wouldn't have ended the way it did had the communication been electronic. Third, the famous person answered with something more than a generic form response. Fourth, a conversation developed. Fifth, the input of two regular people guided the action of a famous creative individual. Sixth, the famous creative individual *allowed* himself to be guided by regular people.

Ideas. Actual correspondence. Respect. Humility. Ongoing conversation. More respect. More humility. Action. The world changes, for good.

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Last Sunday, I sent out a new issue of my newsletter, Dear Reader. If you subscribe to that, which is different than this blog, and didn't receive, please look in your spam folder (or your "promotions" folder if using gmail). You may need to add it to your address book or change an email rule for where your email goes.

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[Photo: taken of an apple pancake my son made for us over the holiday.]

Turbulence and beauty

Last week I took some vacation days and off we went to a cabin on a lake. I made a reasonable effort at staying unplugged, but logging into Facebook on that Thursday brought news of the Philando Castile shooting the night before in the Twin Cities, where I live. Instant inner turbulence. The weather had already been turbulent. Earlier in the week, we had spent about 30 minutes in the basement riding out the peak of a severe storm. As my photograph shows, more turbulent weather was on the way, but how beautiful this moment.

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[Photo: taken pre-storm, between storms (unfiltered)]

Orlando on my mind

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. O Thou. Thou who didst call us this morning out of sleep and death. I come, we all of us come, down through the litter and the letters of the day. On broken legs. Sweet Christ, forgive and mend. Of thy finally unspeakable grace, grant to each in his own dark room valor and an unnatural virtue. Amen."

–Frederick Buechner, from An Alphabet of Grace  

         
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[Photo: another taken on a Memorial Day hike.]

687. David Brooks on Charlie Rose: good sense pressed down and running over

Earlier this week New York Times columnist David Brooks was on Charlie Rose for the show's full hour. It was excellent. He talked about what's on everyone's mind these days - the election - but he talked about so much more. He talked about things that resonate with posts on this blog and my other writing (think: Finding Livelihood), including the need for contemplative leisure as per Josef Pieper and Sabbath ("a palace in time") as per Abraham Heschel, the importance of love in the workplace, and his style of writing by arranging piles of material on the floor. He also talked about the need to make commitments and then to structure your life to create the discipline to keep those commitments, the importance of parental love (interestingly, the special importance of mother love for sons), the gift of aging and better learning to be yourself, and so much more. My husband and I watched it together and talked about it long afterward; then a friend and I had a lengthy text conversation about it. I keep going over in my mind the things he said. So much to think about!

The entire episode is now posted on CharlieRose.com. Now that it's posted, I'm going to watch it again and urge you do watch it also. Skip reading some posts on this blog, even the links in the preceding paragraph, and instead jump over to this interview. I think most of you will feel encouraged and uplifted, like you've been given a substantial dose of calm good sense, even hope.

Here's the link to watch the interview.

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[Photo: taken of a walkway – ie, the way in which to walk – that caught my eye.]

Looking back on that week Katrina came ashore

Ten years ago at this time we were bringing our youngest son to college out east, emptying the nest, just as Hurricane Katrina was coming ashore down south. In honor of the 10th anniversary of Katrina, here's a blog post I wrote then from a motel in Ohio on the drive home from that trip.

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A Tale of Two Realities (posted September 4, 2005)

Writing from Ohio, on our way back home from the east coast. Said a tearful goodbye to my son (my tears, not his) and we all now begin a new journey.

The week has been almost surreal in its contrasts. Every day we were on a beautiful campus, sparkling clean and prepared for the arrival of new students and their parents. Every evening we went back to our hotel room and turned on the television and watched the devastation of Louisiana and Mississippi.

During the day we were part of a well-planned community that was opening its arms to a new student class and the families of the new class. “Community” was a word we heard frequently in the orientation sessions and it appeared they tried to live it out, even in the hospitable movement of the one thousand people gathered for these sessions from one venue to the next (“we want to move in community,” said the hosts). During our hotel time we watched people moving – or not moving – in chaos.

The sessions at the college focused heavily on the behavior standards set for their students and the goal they had for each of them to strive for excellence and live in service to others during their time at the school and in their lives thereafter. The coverage on the television dwelt on the failures of responsible parties, the consequences of poor planning, the lawless behavior of some.

In the dorms, parents were busy carrying in bags from Target, K-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond, and IKEA, filled with the necessities their sons and daughters would need living away from home. Some lucky students were carrying in televisions and DVD players, luxuries for their home away from home. Video coverage on CNN in the evening showed a woman covering her face as she ran out of a store with her stolen feminine hygiene products and a man without covered face running from a store with a brand new television.

In the dining hall we were fed wonderful meals, with all the water we needed – even coffee, tea, lemonade, iced tea. In the evening we were reminded that people south of us had no food or water.

On the last day of orientation, the auditorium was filled with students who would make up the class of 2009. The room was electric with joy, promise, potential, and hope. Scenes from New Orleans that evening spoke only of despair.

I cried when I said goodbye to my son but they were the tears of a good parting, a blessing on him as he begins to construct this next adult phase of his life. The tears of Katrina were tears of total loss, final goodbyes.

My husband and I have been quieter on the drive back home than we thought we’d be. Our world, and the world, is different than it was even one week ago. Lots to think about.

~~~

[Photo: On that college campus, the eagle flying against a gray wet sky.]