Searching for God # 81

 The issue of humanity as seen from the perspective of an ideology continues to haunt. Any ideology is another form and name that ‘fails to capture’ who I am or who anyone else is. Similarly, with psychic diagnoses, always only a partial discernment, assessment, and forever a labelling, and a concomitant reduction.

I recall, from a past life, a high school guidance counsellor commenting on a troubled and failing junior and dismissing him with these words, “He is one of those (insert family name) and what can we expect?” She had been at the school for decades and obviously had previous encounters with another member of the same family. The conflation amounted to professional negligence, and yet, under the teachers’ ‘union’ rules, unless I was prepared to write a document describing the incident, and present it to her and follow up with the predictable and inevitable ‘hearing,’ I bit my lip, tongue and turned away from the moment of the encounter.

I also recall, (and have recorded the moment previously in this space) a supervisor who, in a first or very early meeting, exclaimed, “You are just far too intense for me!” And my cheeky, somewhat risky and completely unbridled retort, “Well, I am also far too bald so deal with it!”

Another similar incident came from a supervising bishop while I attended theology school. In a book-lined parlor, alone with him, after asking if I would like a coffee, ( I declined), “You know, John, people can’t stand too much reality!”  Recalling T.S. Eliot’s identical warning, I thought then, and have wondered multiple times since, both what I had said that prompted the remark, and what implications he was intending me to consider. Whatever his intent, I recoiled with surprise and dismay, especially in the context of what I was then engaged in, the process of preparation for active ministry in the church. Why, especially in that context, would such a cautionary statement be either necessary or appropriate.

As for its necessity, I had a previous trail of public editorial comments that both opposed and occasionally supported various political actors, and the bishop might have been envisioning a similar and critical approach within the church. On that score, his wisdom and insight, on that day, were both lost on me. Thirty years later, however, there is no doubt about his wisdom, especially given the degree of political correctness that prevails over the ecclesial culture. Criticism of a political decision, and the politician who made it, from my experience, is highly disavowed and disapproved of among at least one congregation of upper-middle class Anglicans in Ontario. The merits of the criticism, criticizing the defunding of transportation for the disadvantaged, were of no interest in their disdain for the observation, considered either or both from a political or theological perspective. “We can’t have the clergy criticizing the premier we just elected!” was the form of the disavowal and the disdain. Their political allegiance essentially took precedence over their perspective of the harm the decision was going to cause among the seriously disadvantaged. Looked at from their perspective, were they concerned that the criticism might (and likely would) generate negative criticism among their friends and neighbours and political allies? Were they shocked to hear any specific criticism of a provincial politician in the context of a Sunday morning homily?  Had they, as might readily be inferred, cognitively and emotionally and psychically ‘filed’ their politics and their theology in different files, and preferred to keep them separate? Identifying as a member of a specific denomination, of a specific faith community is one public ‘face’ of one’s identity. And in a world where one’s politics and one’s religious affiliation could impact one’s business, social and even career opportunities, keeping them locked in separate, and private vaults, might seem like a reasonable and self-caring option.

Clearly, that congregation’s support for the disadvantaged paled in the face of their determination to keep their hands out of provincial politics. “Not part of my responsibility” might well have been the silent and yet determined position of the majority of that congregation..and not part of the homilies I prefer to listen to in this congregation. ‘I am comfortable having abstract, and peripherally challenging discussions, behind closed doors about whether the church might ‘welcome’ gays and lesbians’ (this was in the mid-90’s) where my opinion will never see the light of day outside the church hall,’ might well describe their comfort level with church ‘issues’ and how they are to be addressed.

Another scenario, in another church in another country, (also previously addressed in this space)….in a Bible study small group, I asked the question, “What would you do if, at a party, you had listened to a joke that showed disdain for blacks?” Surprisingly immediately, I heard this response, “Well, I would leave the group without saying anything about what I had heard and go on with the party!” To which I almost instantly responded, “So, then, your protection of your reputation was more important to you than the reputation of those blacks who were being racially put down, is that about right?”…Long pause of silence, after which I heard a sheepish, ‘Gee, when you put it that way, I guess I did put my own reputation in that social group ahead of the opportunity to come to the defense of those being abused.”

Another scenario, after recently arriving in a new assignment, I was invited to dinner by a church warden, a female lawyer, who cautioned, ‘I will provide dinner, if you agree to do the dishes afterwards.’ As I found myself in a new situation, and considered this ‘bargain’ to be part of how things operated in that small town culture, I agreed. Instantly upon my arrival, I heard these words, ‘Well, don’t get comfortable in the chair; the dishes are waiting for you in the kitchen sink!’ Surprised, to say the least, (the dishes were there from the previous week,) I removed my jacket, rolled up my sleeves, and began to run the water, wash the dishes and dry them for putting away. The host continued over the stove. When I recounted my first experience with this warden to another member of the church, I heard these words, ‘Oh, she really has no social graces!’ to which I retorted, emphatically and somewhat derisively, ‘It is not social graces she lacks; she is determined to have and maintain total and absolute control. Let’s call a spade a shovel and not sugar-coat her control needs.’

Truth-telling, whether in diplomatic-speak, or in what might be termed, ‘street-speak’ is a matter of many layers of human relationships. And the discernment of when and where various levels of language is highly charged. It is charged even in family situations when a spouse says to another spouse, ‘You have no idea how to do small talk, and you embarrass me with the way you talk with others!’ When I first heard those words, I was both shocked and embarrassed. I was unconscious of my ‘failure to engage in ‘small-talk’ and had no idea that my failure to ‘perform’ in an acceptable manner, with my conversational speech, was or even could be such a significant matter in my marriage.

All of these various scenarios bear directly and indirectly upon the question of whether, how, when and why to interject a concept of ‘Liberation Theology’ into the current, turbulent and highly charged political ethos of the West, and certainly of North America. Recognizing the degree and prevalence of political abuse that is being meted out by official government ‘gestapo-type’ police, based as it clearly is on racism, bigotry and outright contempt for black and brown faces, irrespective of their age, legal status or economic conditions, it seems words that ‘describe the abuse’ do little to bring it to an end.

 Indeed, there is a legitimate case to be made that criticism of the specific lies, misrepresentations, and distortions by the government on the public media only emboldens those forces of hate and racism and their abusive tactics and strategies. They ‘double-down’ on their hatred. And, even the protests that fill the streets of many urban centres, while they make great television and screen-shots, merely jack-up the motivation of hate that drives the government forces. Considering the cauldron in which we are living to be an exclusively political, oligarchy-versus-democracy issue, is both myopic and ineffectual. Essentially, the approach is self-emasculating of the traditional institutional agencies and of democracy itself. The political cliché, applied often to discussions about Republican ‘warfare’ and Democratic warfare, ‘the democrats bring a knife to a political fight while the Republicans bring AR-15 rifles.’ While the David and Goliath archetype holds, it depends on a highly creative and insightful and courageous David’s out-thinking his opponent, and strategically striking from a distance, rather than in close hand-to-hand combat.

Big and hard power will not always or inevitably win the day. And right now, the political forces of the republic need all of the support they can muster. And while increasingly clerics, pastors, priest and bishops are lining the streets in public protest, and letters of support for the people of Minnesota are emerging from, for example, all Episcopal Bishops in the United States, this level of support, while significant and relevant, pales in comparison to the guile, bile, determination and hatred that drives the government forces.

Abuse, without conscience, lies displayed on the streets, and in the prisons of many U.S. cities, while public threats to take over election machinery rain on the screens like a silent tornado of political bravado, and tariff threats impale the inboxes of government officials in many previously allied nations of America. And this deluge of lies, betrayals and armed threats by the terrorist-inspired American government is shaking not only individual families within the U.S. borders; it is also shaking the sense of security and stability and safety and trust in every nation on earth. Sugar-coating this evil is a risk of such proportion as to be beyond consideration for engaged, sentient and especially committed Christian men and women.

As the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire reminds his priests, ‘statements may no longer be enough, we may have to put our bodies on the line’….and when, where, how and for how long his injunction may be relevant, cogent and compelling remains unknown.

It seems that we have to go backward into the interior pathways of the minds and hearts of men and women whose convictions run deeper than activism in street protests with whistles and cell phone/cameras.

The depth and range of these coagulated and combustible threats demand an elevation of the engagement of the opposition from ‘words’ and statements to actions beyond how to organize street protests, letters to the editor and neighbourhood watches.

Learning about hate, propaganda, and the converse of hope and liberation, not only at the political level but also on the spiritual level, seems more appropriate to the degree of the danger, the risk and the long-term devastation this regime will leave.

It is not the establishment of a Christian form of Sharia law that is needed. Nor is is it an ideological face to Christianity (as some would and have considered Marxism, when critiquing Liberation Theology in the past). The enemies we face far outweigh political ideology. They also outweigh nationalism, and Christian nationalism, itself another face of the threat we all face. Nihilism, incarnate evil, is both monstrous and cancerous to a degree that only infrequently have we encountered anything nearing its venality.

The face, voices, determination and perversity of EVIL, all caps, requires a considered, determined, creative, non-violent and ‘bodies-on-the-line’ as well as minds-committed to learning about the theological/spiritual/psychic potential in this moment. I was once asked, back in the late 1960’s by a grade ten male student, ‘Would you go to Vietnan to fight?” to which I responded, ‘I would only go to engage  in teaching, as I am doing here.’

The question resurfaces today, only I ask myself a different question, “If I were an American cleric, what would I do to engage in this battle for the minds, hearts and souls of America?’

And, while my answer has to be considered hypothetical, and thereby less then ‘incarnating’ my own convictions, I would begin to explore the writing of Gustavo, Boff, Sobrino, as well as Ghandi, Mandela, Tolstoy, King, and I would begin to organize in small discussion groups in living rooms, and in kitchens. And I would also declare, up front, that I was following in the footsteps of giants, named above, whose religious faith, conviction, and determination, under God, was what both inspired and motivated these men, some to write, and some to become highly active politically, in a cause equal to, if not less compelling than the cause of the freedom of not only immigrants and refugees, blacks and Latinos, the poor and homeless, the starving and the diseased who have no health care.

The capacity to divide ‘enemy targets’ has to be removed from the current government. There is no single ‘target’ now, as we can all witness. We are all potentially in the cross-hairs of their machinery of hate.

And, we have to summon every fibre of our being in response. One of the little voices in my head about my own theology is that, if it is to have any relevance and significance in my life, my faith does and will support and encourage and sustain both creative thought and physical engagement beyond what I would do if I were not acting from that faith premise and perspective. Faith enhances whatever potential I might have to emulate T.S. Eliot’s injunction:

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.