What Christmas Means to Me: An Historical-Familial Perspective....

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

- Alexander Smith

Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it.  And blessings and tidings of great joy to those of you who do not.  If you'll both indulge me for a moment, I'd like to reflect on what Christmas means to me, in both the historical and metaphorical senses.  Along the way, I hope that I can share something that brings you a sense of hope and joy, which I think are the true 'reasons for the season'....

I am a Christian both by upbringing and, now as an adult, by choice.  Hence, in my youth, mine was a typical Christian Christmas experience: we celebrated the birth of our Savior by being rewarded by Santa Claus.  Now, having developed into a bit of an idiosyncratic Christian(-Buddhist-Taoist), my experience of Christmas is, well, anything but typical, I suspect.  But I digress....

As a child, Christmas was my favorite day of the year ... and I loved the holiday season, too.  It always began with a joyful celebration of Thanksgiving with my father's side of the family, the Bookers (and usually somewhere in or around the family seat in West Medford, Massachusetts).  The Bookers were a typical (African-)American family in many respects - for example, most clung tightly to the lower rungs of the middle class in largely well-paying and often union blue collar jobs - and were also in many ways, I came to learn, quite unique: for one thing, they were extraordinarily close and though this proximity usually leads to friction from time to time, there were few if any conflicts and they were unfailingly genuinely loving toward one another.

(By contrast, in my mother's more prosperous, largely white collar side of the family, though they did love each other, there was typically a feud going on - usually between two or three of my great aunts - and my mother had to play the role of peacemaker because she was seemingly the one relative to whom everyone spoke irrespective of whatever calumny was then extant.  From them, I learned that the Shivers clan loved each other very much but often couldn't get along.  Mostly that made me sad for my relatives who chose to isolate themselves from each other but it also made me appreciate the Bookers that much more.)

After Thanksgiving came my birthday a couple of weeks later and, for the most part, I avoided the dreaded pitfall that affects many of us with December birthdays: the exasperating 'two-fer' gift - you know, where a well-meaning but misguided (or just plain cheap) relative or friend sends you a gift that arrives by your birthday but carries with it an admonition to wait until Christmas to open it.  And an understanding of a universal rule about such two-fers was soon visited upon me: the ones that you have to wait for invariably suck ... I mean, are disappointing (read = really, really suck).  :-) 

About two weeks after my birthday, Christmas would arrive.  When I was quite young - say, in the single digit years - we celebrated Christmas Day far more than its Eve.  As I aged, Christmas Eve became a more meaningful occasion, including because my beloved mother would cook a new dish and/or cuisine for dinner.  She was such a good cook that I can only remember two of these meals: most were so good as to be unremarkable - she was always such a skilled and joyful cook that great meals were the norm - but two were not.  The first such misadventure involved Red Snapper that was prepared while my father was off skiing that day.  I haven't eaten that particular type of fish since (though at this point in my life I could easily become a pescatarian ... as long as sushi counts, too)  :-).  The other unfortunate foray was Cioppino - effectively an Italian variation of Bouillabaisse - from a recipe that she'd discovered on a plane flight back from visiting her parents earlier that year.  For months she savored the Christmas Eve feast to come - and paid an inordinate share of our household budget to acquire the very best/freshest of its numerous seafood components - for what turned out to be a real dud.  Even she thought so, though my father and I had been too kind to say anything as we sat there forcing it down.  When she finally suggested that we stop - she was truly a humanitarian - we were all relieved and the colossal failure entered the annals of family lore.  Until she died, at Christmas we would rarely fail to share a laugh about the "Great Cioppino Disaster of '78" (though, truthfully, I don't remember the year exactly, nor does this matter...).

Christmas was especially wonderful in my single digits because I was an only child.  There are few feelings as purely joyful as entering the living room, observing Santa's beneficence and screaming to yourself that "It's all mine!"  (Of course I couldn't express this verbally 'cause my mother raised me better than that.)  :-)  Though I never wished for a brother and sister - after all, I had one of each in Paul "Bobby" Thompson and Maria Woodruff, who are a cousin and family friend, respectively, who were so close when we were growing up that we still consider each other siblings to this day though we are technically only children - I was especially thankful for not having them when harvesting Santa's bounty.  This embarrasses me now - my mother raised me not to covet also - but I can say that it's one of the most indelible experiences of pure joy that I've ever had in life.  In fact, I wish that everyone could have that feeling ... and then get even more joy from giving a bounty to loved ones as I do now....

As I grew older and - Spoiler Alert! - discovered that my parents were Santa Claus - which I began to suspect at age 6 when I noticed that Santa's thank you note to me in appreciation for the milk and cookies was written in handwriting that looked quite similar to my Dad's :-) - our celebratory focus shifted to Christmas Eve over its following day.  Truth be told, this saddened me - no "It's all mine!" epiphany to come - including because Santa's 'passing' took some of the magic out of how I understood Christmas then.  It was just us, my parents and me ... and as a teenager, even though I loved and appreciated my parents, I always wanted something more - truthfully to recapture that youthful 'receiving epiphany' experience.  Now that both have long since left me physically, of course, I would give anything to have it be 'just us' again ... which is further proof that youth is wasted on the young and that wisdom comes at a meaningful - and often painful - cost.  But I digress....

The rest of the Christmas day ritual stayed the same for the dozen years or so from ages five to seventeen: after reveling in the fruits of having been an especially good boy during the preceding year, and after Christmas brunch with my parents, I would head down to my best friend Michael Coble's house and we would compare our bounties while trying to avoid his older brothers who were generally nice guys but loved messing with us.  Many joyful hours were spent playing with our new Hot Wheels sets and/or our electric race car sets and/or the latest board game or, when I was thirteen, my new air hockey table ... or imagining how much fun it would be when the Michigan winter passed so that we could ride our new bikes, etc.

After this purely playful and joyful interlude, it would be time to get cleaned up and go to some relative's house for Christmas dinner with my mother's side of the family, most of whom also lived in Detroit.  Truth be told, in my double digit years, my mother hosted a disproportionate share of these joyful gatherings because she was such as good cook, as did my (and her) cousin Paul Thompson (Jr., Bobby's father) and her best friend Vera (Champion) Woodruff.  Paul was a gourmand and fantastic chef, so gatherings in his home were about some adventurous twist on a Christmas meal staple and his wife's/my cousin Sandy's bubbly hostessing.  No one left the Thompsons without the -itis and a bellyache from laughing.  Dinner at Ms. Woodruff's was also a joyful celebration, though it tended to start a little more formally - she favored Handel's Messiah over the Thompsons' non-seasonal predilection for The Fifth Dimension - and usually ended with some fantastic dessert in addition to all of the tasty staples that one would normally expect.  Even now, my heart warms as I think of sitting alone in her living room listening to Handel's majestic music (and occasionally some Wagner) as the women of the family cooked in the kitchen and the men told stories 'n' lies - OK, if you prefer, very tall tales - in the den nearby.

The decade before, the hosts of these feasts had been members of the previous generation, and most often the matriarch of the family, my maternal grandmother's eldest sister, Bertha.  Aunt Bert was something: warm and loving ... and alternatively scary, especially when she was shooing you away from her fresh-out-of-the-oven rolls.  Ah, Aunt Bert's rolls ... they are truly one of the Top 5 food experiences of my life.  So much so, in fact, that one of my few regrets in life is that I couldn't duplicate them for my own children as they were growing up.  I have tried her ancient recipe a few times, but, honestly, other than my sister Maria, no one in my generation has her baking gift.  To conclude this memory, I will simply share an analogy: Aunt Bert's rolls are indelibly recorded in my soul because, I would come to realize, they were my greatest childhood food orgasm.  They were so light, so fluffy, so wonderfully tasty in their buttery deliciousness that we would literally squeal with delight as we devoured them and repeatedly and graciously thanked the elderly lady who feigned being scary but would always cook an extra tray of rolls just so she could sit back with a wide smile on her face and watch us kids could go crazy gorging ourselves on Christmas....

And then I went to college, so Christmas meant one of the four or so annual trips home to visit with my parents, who, I noticed, began to age after I moved away as well as to be less celebratory of holidays in general.  Christmas Eve was always a nice, quiet dinner with the three of us, though after that Cioppino debacle my mother rarely ventured from the classics for this special meal.  We'd exchange gifts, go to bed and then I would awake early like that wide-eyed five-year-old but have no bounty to survey and explore.  I decided then that Christmas as an adult was decidedly less fun though I have to admit that my lucrative post-college professional career afforded me an inkling of what was to come: in my 20s, Christmas became an opportunity for me to return the favor and spoil my parents for one day a year.  Even though I missed the more robust celebrations of my youth, I can say that watching the delight in their eyes as they opened the handful of gifts that they each received made my long, stressful hours at work totally worth it.  In my Top 10 pantheon of the gifts that I've given, being able to buy my mother a fur jacket from Jacobsen's with my very first bonus check ranks up there.  She was positively giddy and wore that jacket proudly until her death a decade later.

(It's funny, but after he retired while I was in college, my father began to recede from life and atrophy, so it became a real challenge to figure out a meaningful gift to give him.  What I remember most about our last decade - from when I went to college until my late 20s - is that we would sit together and talk.   Well, not talk actually - he wasn't that kind of guy, really - but we would listen to the tapes of my college radio show that I had sent him.  It always made me chuckle that this was so meaningful to him, so I would sit there and listen as he supplied the play-by-play and color commentary for each show - to which it was clear that he had listened many, many times - as if I weren't familiar with them.  Truthfully, it makes me a bit wistful now: my father and I had a difficult relationship for most of my young adult life - truth be told because he was a difficult man, haunted by his demons but too forceful in his approach to me in the attempt to protect me from what he feared would be my downfall, too - but listening to those tapes of my radio show were some of the sweetest moments that we ever shared....)

In my 20s, I didn't come home every year because I got married for the first time.  Suffice it to say that this initial union only lasted a couple of years, so there were few happy memories for me, but the Christmas celebrations were one of these.  (And also taught me an important lesson: don't ever sit in the front row at a comedy show with your in-laws, unless you want to be compared to the cast of the movie Cocoon.  For those of you who are too young to remember this flick, let's just say that the implication was that we were a bunch of old-looking fogies.)

In my 30s and early 40s, I had remarried and had children, so Christmas focused around playing Santa and delighting my children.  My favorite memory of this time involves a playhouse that was so large that it had to be brought into our living room in the box and assembled - over the course of more than four challenging hours long past midnight - in which the kids played for about 10 minutes on Christmas morning.  A few weeks later, the playhouse had to be disassembled to get it out of the (double doors of our) living room and was then reassembled in their play area in the basement (which only took three hours this time) ... whereupon they literally never played in it for a single minute ever again (and, a half-dozen year later when we were divorcing, the disassembly and donation of the playhouse became a point of contention in the contention-filled proceedings).  After that, assembling the go kart was easy, though I remember being thoroughly put out by being informed at 3 or 4 in the morning on Christmas about a drum set that needed to be assembled and about which I concluded that I was purposely kept in the dark until zero hour.  Those damn drums led to my first - and only - Christmas all-nighter ... and then the appalling hours of joyful, atonal banging that they provided my children have only salved this wound a bit....

And during this time, Christmas dinners were usually spent with my then-in-laws and the kids, so I remember them less as mini-reunions and more as in-group gatherings that, while joyful, were also familiar in a less than fulfilling way.  To put it differently (and perhaps to clarify the point a bit), I began to miss the larger family gatherings of my youth and realized that one of the 'costs' of our mainstream success was that we were geographically separated from our relatives that relegated the whole-family holiday gatherings of old to history....

And so, a decade since, Christmas has ironically become an even more joyful celebration for me, though, truth be told, it's also become a more difficult one.  One of the unavoidable outcomes of divorce is 'kid-sharing,' so holidays become split: one year you're with your kids on Christmas Eve and the next on Christmas Day, which inevitably means that one of these occasions is a bit lonely.  And if you have a 'Brady Bunch' family as my new wife and I now do, it gets even harder: you have to coordinate these on-off alternations so that you can have all of the kids together for at least one of these celebrations ... which means that inevitably one or the other is cut short as the stepsiblings have to be shuttled off to their other parents.  This is certainly a bummer, but it also forces me to savor the few undisturbed moments with our children that we do have.

Christmas will never be a 'double holiday' again - our respective divorces insured that they will be forever split - so this makes it all the more imperative that we celebrate as fully and joyfully as we can in whatever time we have with our children during the holidays.  This year is a perfect example: thanks to the never-ending struggle with my ex-, I saw my sons for only four hours on Christmas Eve ... and my youngest stepdaughter was able to share this with us but was then picked up on Christmas Day.  Now we have our eldest with us, a twenty-something (understandably) primarily focused on catching up with her longtime friends, but the reality is that, our joint celebration now concluded, she's in and out of the house at her whim.  Guess my Beloved and I will have to focus on an impromptu Christmas Date Night....

So what does Christmas mean to me now?  From a familial perspective, it means that I have to cherish the few(er) moments that I have with my children on either its Eve or its Day and also  that any celebrating I get to do with my extended family happens on other holidays.  (At least the Bookers still gather on Thanksgiving....)

It means that I may only get a few hours to revel in the shared memories that are such an important part of the familial bond, whether those be historical ones that we share with a newly expanded 'nuclear' family or new ones that we create through various new traditions like our annual family pajama unveiling.  Many years from now, I'm sure that our grandchildren will be regaled with tales of how their father/uncle Max always complained about having to get into costume, so to speak, whether the design was cool - the Elf costume of 2014 (with matching Elf movie hat, of course!) was such a hit that several folks attending the Knicks game were photographed in theirs (sans the hats but nonetheless to Max's grudging approval) - and this year's imitation of the ubiquitous Ugly Christmas Sweater - complete with FaLaLa-themed pants - are proving quite comfy and may even be worn again, out in public and not on Christmas Day....  :-)

It means that Christmas is more internal now because it is abbreviated.  Accordingly, I'm forced to savor the memories and carry them with me as I no longer have the luxury of time in which to create them.

And it means that, as I/we age, another stage approaches: for now our children are all single and childless, so we're still hosting Christmas ... but that era approaches when we'll be present-bearing guests more often than hosts, so we have to prepare for this.  It'll be a bittersweet joy, I suspect: while we'll be enjoying our revenge as we watch our own children deal with the chaotic wonderment that their children will inevitably produce - especially as we bear sugar-laden gifts that encourage, er, activity :-) - we'll also have to hold back the wistful memories of long ago when they were driving us crazy and we were loving every minute of it.

What Christmas means to me now is simple: it's a few hours and possibly a day to let go, love wastefully and revel in every moment with those whom we treasure most.  But I can't help wondering why every day can't be Christmas Day ... or at least be approached in this same expansive way....

Christmas, my child, is love in action.

Every time we love, every time we give,

it's Christmas.

- Dale Evans

(It's Not About Islam...) It's About Extremism, Stupid....

"Suffering is a gift.  In it is hidden mercy."

- Sufi poet Rumi

Some years ago, a mantra was associated with Bill Clinton's initial campaign for the presidency: It's the economy, Stupid!  As I've reflected on this latest round of man's inhumanity to man - in Paris (which most fascinates and focuses the Western word), in Beirut, in Kenya, etc. - this saying has come back to me in an altered form: It's not about Islam (as so many seem to want to make it to be), it's about extremism, Stupid.  Here's why I think so:

(Mistakenly, it turns out...)  Many in the Western world believe that the word "Islam" means "peace."  And most of its more than a billion adherents at present practice it that way, as a peaceful pursuit of the path to God (or, in Islamic terms, Allah).  Yet, particularly in this century, we are more aware of a fringe element of Muslims whose theory and praxis of this religion looks nothing at all like the vast majority's approach.

In other words, relatively recently, we in the Western world have become much more aware of (though not particularly learned about) Islamic Extremism.  Of course, there are many variants thereof - including perhaps the best-known, Wahhabism, that is primarily Saudi Arabian in provenance - but there are plenty of other lesser known ones, too.  At present, the most significant of these lesser known variants is ISIL/ISIS and thanks to its virulent and violent practices, we are hearing about ISIL/ISIS a lot more lately (though seemingly not learning much about it).  This being said, whether its that 'old foe,' al-Qaeda, or the new one, ISIL/ISIS, the net result is the same: we are struggling to comprehend the terrorism that claims Islam as its basis.

Some are quick to point out that the Qur'an has many passages that incite violence - including in its holy war version of jihad - and that this therefore makes the terrorism al-Qaeda and ISIL/ISIS practice emblematic of Islam as a violent religion.  Without getting into it too deeply here, I would suggest that those who've done so (or are tempted to do so) re-read (or read) the Bible.  Suffice it to say that few books contain that much violence, however righteous its proponents may claim it to be.  (And for good measure, do some additional research and learn of what scholars of both texts have concluded: that the Bible is actually more violent than the Qur'an.)

Others bemoan the lack of a response from 'institutional' Islam condemning such fringe atrocity.  Fair enough ... except many (if not most) of them don't realize that Islam is a far more decentralized/distributed religion than, say, Christianity.  Hence, there's no equivalent of the Catholic pope in Islam to serve as a spokesperson (and lightning rod) for the religion.  In fact, Islam is not monolithic, but 'splintered' - like Christianity - with two major sects, the Sunni and the Shia (the former comprising between 80%-90% of all adherents) and smaller variants like the mystical Sufis, too.   Continuing to dig a little deeper, one will find condemnations from highly influential Muslim leaders of its various sects (and, for good measure, a few 'atta-boys' from some of its more extreme leaders, as it true of all groups/religions).

But the point is that the lethality and violence that is committed in the name of Islam today is no more authentically - or, perhaps, more correctly put, representatively - Muslim than the modern insanity of the Westboro Church is representatively Christian.  Most Christians abhor Westboro and can't for the life of them recognize any semblance of Christianity in their behavior - though a few misguided pseudo-Christian 'leaders' encourage their insanity, of course - and would not want the entire religion judged on the misguided and extreme views of this fringe group.  So, too, with the majority of Muslims relative to their extremist 'relatives'....

The reality is that Extremism works: the terror committed by the very few affects the great many, which is why it occurs.  It also tends to provoke a violent response, which is then used by the original terrorists as proof of its foes' hatred and justification for more of its own cravenness.  There is power in this inviting provocation to enter a doom loop: terrorists kill and then we respond violently which justifies - in their minds only - their continued 'right' to kill.  The logic is perverse and wrong, of course, because that's what Extremism is, the severely wrong-headed perversion of some doctrine/set of beliefs/etc.

(In the colloquial, there's a more succinct and yet totally appropriate term that describes the nature of this aberration perfectly: crazy.  What we're really fighting against is various strains of crazy in its most virulent [and pseudo-religious] forms.)

And Extremism is about power: by all estimates, there are fewer than 250,000 ISIL/ISIS fighters - though the estimates range from 15,000 on the low end to 250,000 or so on the high end, evidencing just how little we know about this adversary  - but their influence is exponentially outsized: though they represent less than four hundred-thousandths (or four thousandths of a percent) of the world's population - <.000004 - everyone in the world is focused on them right now.  Yes, Extremism works....

So, then, how do we deal with Extremism and, ostensibly, stop its threat to human life?  The answer is as simple to suggest as it is difficult to effect: we must learn as much as possible about our self-declared adversaries and then respond as specifically as possible to them.  In other words, in the present case of Islamic extremism, we can't condemn Muslims generally or their religion, but we can and should respond forcefully to the various fringe groups that claim Islam, each in its own specific way.

For example, whereas "al Qaeda has always portrayed itself more as a militant group comprised of highly trained operational masterminds whose successful attacks on America and Europe would ultimately gain them enough key followers to form a global movement of Muslims and detain the onslaught of the West," by contrast, ISIL/ISIS seeks the creation of a (local/regional) Muslim state now: "The Islamic State — also known as ISIS, ISIL and, to the group's disdain, "daesh" — has adopted virtually the opposite approach (to al-Qaeda) to consolidating power across the Middle East and beyond." (Bertrand, Business Insider, 5/21/15) (In fact, if ISIL/ISIS does prove to be behind the attacks in Paris, this would represent a major change in strategy for them, as their focus until now has been to try to create an Islamic state in the Middle East by conquering territory there.)

So, the approach to al-Qaeda will of necessity be very different than that to ISIL/ISIS (unless the latter does in fact switch and/or broaden its strategy to include 'foreign' terrorism).  And that's the point: this isn't about Islam in general, it's about two (and, actually, more) identifiably different fringe groups who claim it (and yet whose practice of it contrasts virtually completely with that of the majority of its adherents) and the very specific/targeted/customized responses that are likely to be most effective against them.

Thus, it behooves us to remember that just like Westboro's not like the vast majority of Christianity, ISIL/ISIS isn't like the vast majority of Islam.  So our response isn't to condemn the latter generally, but to address the former specifically.  And if we can do this, we can bring our Muslim brothers and sisters - let us not forget that before they are religious adherents they are first fellow Children of God/human beings  - closer to us in this present effort - to eradicate murderous extremism - and to an even more meaningful one - to live peacefully on this planet irrespective of how we see God (or don't).

"People see God every day.  They just don't recognize him."

- Pearl Bailey

Between the World and Me....

I love America more than any other country

in this world, and, exactly for this reason,

I insist on the right to criticize her

perpetually.

- James Baldwin, Collected Essays

Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me is an modern classic, a distillation of a singular African-American life relayed in breathtaking prose and indelible images ... and (too often for my taste) just f--cking depressing.  In part it's depressing because of its author's seemingly relentless chronicling of the impact of race on his life.  (As in, it's true that he's a Black Man in Modern America but it seems that his life has been almost exclusively defined by this and that the times when this was not the primary shaper of his experience were few at best and clearly far between.)  And it's depressing in part because it's so true, so real, so pathetically profound and so absolutely and outrageously unknown to far too many of our fellow citizens, especially those who "think that they are" or "consider themselves white."  (In a very beneficial way, perhaps this book's status as a New York Times best seller will address this latter reality.)

And, whether he likes it or not, he is very much a spiritual successor to Baldwin (if not the one...).  Both use the English language so beautifully and provocatively that, at times, the reader is breathless and disoriented.  I found myself re-reading whole passages because I couldn't believe how exquisitely Coates had turned a phrase or captured a feeling or moment, just as I often did with Mr. Baldwin's writing when I delved into it seriously a decade ago or more.  I'm still healing from finishing this book two weeks ago - and I know that a number of its most powerful images and/or passages will never leave me - but I am thankful for this legacy: despite the pain, the experience was exquisite, if for no other reason than I was reminded of how powerful and beautiful the written word could be ... even as I was reminded of how harrowing life can be as a Black Man in Modern America....

With greater detail and consideration, I've written a review on Goodreads.com
(https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1340424520), so I won't recap that here.  I'd rather explore a few of the lessons that I've learned as a result of this book, albeit briefly....

The first thing that I would say is that I've been more fortunate, apparently, than Mr. Coates because, even as a fellow Black Man in Modern America, I've enjoyed the luxury of having less of my life experience affected - and, seemingly, proscribed and defined - by race.  In other words, it seems that I've had more meaningful experiences and moments in life in which I was simply another human being transfixed by the transcendence of life.  To wit, though I nod knowingly at virtually all of the 'bitter fruit' experiences Coates relates - as in I, too, have experienced Driving While Black police stops with guns drawn (for absolutely no reason, of course) and the bewilderingly paternalistic racism both of those who have meant well and those who have not, etc. - I have not allowed them to dominate my worldview as they seemingly do his.  Oh, yes, I know that I'm Black - senior corporate executive though I may have been for most of my adult life, none of my white colleagues have ever been asked to be served by a guest at a function that they're hosting or been told ni--er jokes over the phone by a business associate (who had yet to meet me in person), or been asked to take their golf clubs to the first tee, etc. - it's just that this is not all that I am, or, alternatively stated, this informs but does not rule my world as much as it seems to do for Mr. Coates.

And I am thankful for this, truly, truly thankful ... 'cause bein' a Black Man in Modern America is a burden to be sure, whether one suffers its afflictions as a victim of the pre-school-to-prison pipeline or the less life-threatening assaults of being "the only one in the room" for most of one's adult life (as I have been).  And I was prepared for this life by my parents, especially my forward-looking teacher-mother, who worked overtime to pay for my private school tuition and exposed me to 'non-traditional' (read = mainstream white American) activities like skiing and the orchestra and the theater and....

In fact, I have spent my adult life swimming in the (upper) American Mainstream, valuing my Blackness because it both made me special and because it never let me forget that I was different and thus get too comfortable and 'forget my place.'  Because of this, it has not defined me as often, so it has been less of a burden for me than for all but a few.  And therein lies the huge value of Mr. Coates' book: it doesn't let any of us - African-Americans or our white counterparts - forget this difference, either.  Even though it has defined my life less than his, I have still been Black my entire life and everywhere that I've gone, Persian-carpeted though those places may have been of late.  And there have always been subtle reminders for and to me lest I be tempted to forget (which is something that I have rarely done).  This is the Black Burden that Mr. Coates chronicles so movingly ... and its absence is the White Privilege that so many of its beneficiaries dispute and/or deny....

I am further thankful that when I have written letters to my children over the years, while they have been necessarily parentally prescriptive, they have not been overly dominated by race.  My children, too, have grown up in the (upper) American Mainstream, so their experience of race is both different than mine (having grown up in the African-American enclave of inner-city Detroit in the '60s and '70s) and, truth be told, less than mine.  So, too, with Mr. Coates' son (to whom this book is ostensibly addressed).  His son's experience is not of growing up in Black inner-city Baltimore in the '80s, but in cosmopolitan New York City, which, though it's still a dangerous place, is much less so than the Charm City of his father's youth.  So my letters to my children don't read as depressingly as Mr. Coates' ... and I'm thankful for that, too.

Not that I haven't had to have 'The Talk' with my two African-American teenage sons (numerous times), imploring them to exercise extra (and, truthfully, deserved but unearned) caution when dealing with members of law enforcement, or had to explain to my eldest what his (white) classmate (whose father worked at Goldman Sachs) meant by using the word "ni--er" when he was in first grade, or....  But the good news is that these incidents, unfortunate though they may be, have been the exception and not the rule, a privilege that I have been sure to illuminate repeatedly and at length for them especially since so few members of their peer group enjoy it.

So while I appreciate Mr. Coates for calling out his true experience of being a Black Man in Modern America, I hope that we can appreciate that his is a representative though not defining one.  If I may critique the book at all, this is one of its few faults in my view: that despite a brief acknowledgement that his son's experience of being Black will be different than his own, he lapses back into being that 'lecturing geezer' whom we all waved off when we were young.  Not that what the elder said didn't make sense - it did, even then - just that we were too busy living our better, freer lives to be constrained (and, conceptually, informed) by his worse, warped one.

I wish that Mr. Coates could have spent a little more time 'doing the translation' in the sense of helping his son (and us other readers) understand how to apply his lessons in this slowly and irregularly improving world in which we all live and in which our own children are growing up.  My sons have grown up in Montclair, New Jersey, not inner-city Detroit when it was known as the "Murder Capital of the World."  Accordingly, my lessons to them are informed by my experience as a youth of their age, but focused on the world in which they live.  Were they not framed in this way, I doubt that they would be heeded as much as they are - which, I'll admit, is not as much as I'd like - and, I fear, lacking this, too many young people who read Mr. Coates' fine book may not heed his wisdom and warnings either.

Further, given that Mr. Coates is now an esteemed member of the mainstream intelligentsia, it's likely that his son's experience will reflect this, too.  Should this prove to be the case, while it is a triumphant gift to chronicle the past, wouldn't it be even better to encourage his son to envision a different - and ostensibly better - future?  Instead, Mr. Coates cautions against the very hope that his own life and experience represent.  While it's true that his son will have to continue The Struggle - given the realities of our world, it's unlikely that racism (or any of our other -isms) will disappear any time soon (or, at least, in his son's lifetime) - it's also true that he will likely be less defined by it, both by inclination and by experience.  I suspect that Mr. Coates values his success in some meaningful part precisely because it affords his son a different and likely better experience, so his prescription against hope strikes me as unnecessarily nihilistic.

This being said, I accept that we are all to some extent prisoners of our own experiences and pasts.  I will forever be more conscious of my Blackness than my sons are or will be because it has been a much larger part - and, earlier in my life, a more defining part - of my experience.  I'm happy that my struggles and (modest) contributions to The Struggle have helped it to be so, at least in the sense that Blackness is less of a burden for more of us, the fortunate few.  And The Struggle now mostly revolves around making this the case for the majority of us.

And Mr. Coates' book will help greatly to educate those who read it, especially those who are not African-American, and thus to help them understand the realities of the (structural) inequity that remains.  No, they won't find innovative policy prescriptions in its pages - it's a memoir after all - but they will find an undeniable recounting of the reality of being a Black Man in Modern America ... which is actually the story of one of the few and most fortunate of them.  Simply put, if it's this hard for one of the fortunate few like Mr. Coates, imagine how hard it is for an average (likely inner-city) African-American....

And yet, in an unexpected way, the book gives me hope, that thing against which its author counsels.  The greatest source thereof is in the writing, as it is truly a tour de force and a work of art.  Few I've read have moved me as much as Mr. Coates, as his gift for and use of the English language are often breathtaking in their effect and, for this reason, inspiring.  After reading Mr. Coates, it's hard not to be inspired by his soaring prose, damning though it may be in content.

For example, in commemorating and mourning his slain college friend he observes,

There are people whom we do not fully know, and yet they live

in a warm place within us, and when they are plundered, when they

lose their bodies and the dark energy disperses, that place become a wound.

Further reflecting on his friend's loved ones' grief, he continues,

Prince Jones was the superlative of all of my fears.  And if he, good

Christian, scion of the striving class, patron saint of the twice as good,

could be forever bound,who then could not?  And the plunder was not just

of Prince alone.  Think of all the love poured into him. ...

And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and

all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to earth.

And then he both personalizes and universalizes the insight:

Black people love their children with a kind of obsession.

You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.

I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you

killed by the streets that America made.  That is a philosophy of

the disembodied, of a people who control nothing,

who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the

criminals among them but the police who lord over them

with all the moral authority of a protection racket.

It was only after you that I understood this love,

that I understood the grip of my mother's hand.

She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that

all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy

spilled upon the curb like bum wine.  And no one would be

brought to account for this destruction, because my death

would not be the fault of any human but the fault of some

unfortunate but immutable fact of "race," imposed upon an

innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods. ...

This entire episode took me from fear to a rage that burned

in me then, animates me now, and will likely leave me on fire

for the rest of my days.  I still had journalism.

My response was, in this moment, to write.

And write he has....

His guidance to his teenage son rings true, even to us suburban African-American dads:

The price of error is higher for you than it is for your

countrymen. and so that America might justify itself,

the story of a black body's destruction must always

begin with his or her error, real or imagined. ...

History is not solely in our hands.  And still you are

called to struggle, not because it assures you victory

but because it assures you an honorable and sane life.

That this comes in response to his re-consideration of his own behavior in a situation in which his young son was pushed by a (white) adult adds to the pathos.  One can't help but feel for both father and son ... and, if you're African-American, understand that this could happen to you, too....

And we are also moved by his shared realization that,

You are going into consciousness, and my wish for you

is that you feel no need to constrict yourself

to make other people comfortable. ...

I would have you be a conscious citizen

of this terrible and beautiful world.

We all want our children to become who they truly are, to find what makes them unique in all the world and live this truth and the life that it engenders to their fullest.  And, as African-American fathers, we want our young men to be aware, aware that they are different, aware that, though some of them have been sheltered from many if not most risks, this protective cocoon can evaporate in a heartbeat ... as it did for Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis and so/too many others.

Truth be told, my white friends will never quite understand the 'extra anguish' that African-American parents feel every time our young people leave the house for the evening to hang out with friends or go to a party.  All parents share a fear of the tragic vagaries of fate like a car accident or some other most unfortunate event.  Those of us of the darker hue have an added anxiety for our children, especially our young men: an interaction - no matter how innocently engendered - with the police.  "Why?" my white friends may be tempted to ask, in their earnest lack of awareness or temporary amnesia.  And then when the names of Trayvon and Jordan and Eric and Walter and... are cited, they fall into a knowing, empathetic and sad silence....

This, too, is part of the still vibrant and potentially lethal burden of being Black in Modern America: that our children are not safe, either from the mean streets of our largely abandoned and crumbling major cities or from the random risks of supposedly safer climes.  To be a Black parent today is to hope more than your counterparts because you have to....

My parents have been gone for years now, but I never told them of my worst experience with The Burden because I didn't want them to worry thereafter.  As too many of these potential tragedies do, it all started innocently: back in the early 1980s, my summer roommates and I rented a car to drive from New York City to Long Island to attend a cookout hosted by friends from college.  Just a few blocks from our rented apartment, the four of us drove under an elevated train pass and soon thereafter saw the flash of lights and heard a blaring siren and a stern command to "Stop the car!"  Of course, we pulled over right away and waited for the officers to approach us and explain why they had done so.  A minute later, one of them walked to the driver's side window and began to question us with an air of officious seriousness.  So far, we were calm and, anticipating the fun to be had at the cookout, jovial.

This all changed fifteen seconds later when the second officer got out of the squad car and approached our vehicle.  One of my friends turned his head and noticed something that he whispered immediately and softly yet forcefully enough for us to comprehend: the second officer had his gun drawn and was pointing it at us!?!  Suddenly, a routine traffic stop had turned potentially lethal.  Our good humor turned to adrenaline, dread and the early pangs of fear.  Why on earth would were we being detained at gunpoint?!?

To make a long and harrowing story short, we were eventually released by the officers after we were given a ticket for running a red light.  (To this day, I'll tell you that this wasn't true - the light, though partially obscured by the overpass, was indeed green - but, of course, this fact meant precious little in the moment or now.)  Yet three things have never left me since:

First, I will never forget the arrogance with which the first officer treated us.  He was the very stereotype of a white NYC cop drunk on his power.  To say that he was dismissive would be too kind; he was a true jackass and a purposely menacing and threatening one at that.  If he were convinced that we had actually run a red light, why were we threatened with arrest, with the search and seizure of the car "because you probably have drugs on you," etc.?  Because he held the power and we were just four scared Black dudes pulled over on an almost empty block in Harlem, that's why....

Second, I will never forget the youth and fear of the second officer, the one pointing the gun at us.  After the situation was diffused, we studied him carefully: he was probably our age or, possibly, a year or two our junior.  Further, it's hard to believe that he felt threatened enough to draw and aim his gun without permission and/or direction from his partner.  And, we concluded, he appeared to be Hispanic, a cruel irony that we processed angrily thereafter.  We could very well have been his cousins or friends or classmates from high school....

Third, I will never forget how very randomly Black I felt at that moment.  I was just one of four "Black youths" in a car in Spanish Harlem, I could hear the news reports saying.  Never mind that we were four Ivy Leaguers, the least educated of whom - a Harvard junior - was me: one of my friends had just graduated from Yale and would receive both his MBA and law degrees from Harvard a few years thereafter before becoming a successful private equity investor (and whose early-career mentor was Michael Bloomberg ... yes, that Michael Bloomberg); another of our number had also just graduated from Yale and was entering Howard University's dental school en route to a distinguished career as an orthodontist; and the driver was a rising senior at Harvard who would go on to win a Rhodes scholarship later that academic year and study at Oxford before going on to graduate from Boalt Law School and enjoy a distinguished career in business and the law.  Between us, we would eventually earn seven Ivy League degrees ... but that evening we were just four potential suspects on the side of the road (or, to put it more bluntly and accurately as one of our group did, "four ni--ers chosen at random who fit the profile").

Suffice it to say that we were shaken by our brush with fate (and, possibly, death), so much so that we rehashed the incomprehensible incident over and over and over again as we drove to our cookout, at which we arrived sufficiently subdued to elicit a hearty "What the hell's wrong with you guys?" from our as yet unsuspecting host (who spent the rest of the evening consoling us and assuring us that this wouldn't recur).

Though everyone now sees me as a pillar and leader of the community and a successful executive and family man, I've been that ni--er by the side of the road ... and I pray every time that my sons go out for the evening that they never will be....

This is The (continuing) Burden.  This is the (continuing) reason for The Struggle.  This is the reality of being a Black Man in Modern America.  This is Ta-Nehisi Coates' fear for his son (as it was James Baldwin's for his nephew a half-century before) ... and it is also mine.  This is what is Between the World and Me, too....

This must seem strange to you.  We live in a "goal-

oriented" era.  Our media vocabulary is full of hot

takes, big ideas, and grand theories of everything.

But some time ago I rejected magic in all of its forms.

This rejection was a gift from your grandparents, who

never tried to console me with ideas of an afterlife and

were skeptical of preordained American glory.  In

accepting both the chaos of history and the fact of my

total end, I was freed to truly consider how I wish to

live - specifically, how do I live free in this black body?

It is a profound question because America understands

itself as God's handiwork, but the black body is the

clearest evidence that America is the work of men.

Staying Christian....

The last thing we discover in composing a work

is what to put down first.

 

- Blaise Pascal

So much has happened since I last wrote ... and I'm still not quite sure why I haven't written.  The topics were fertile ground, ranging from the weird and yet significant (Rachel Dolezal) to the truly historic (the SCOTUS decision on marriage equality) to the heartrending (Emanuel AME) to the inspiring (the demise of the Confederate flag at the South Carolina State Capitol) ... and yet I still haven't written.  Along the way my eldest graduated from high school, a joyous occasion if there ever was one ... and yet I didn't write.  Hmmm....

Some of this not writing, I suspect, has to do with fatigue: I've been working exceedingly hard at my new job for over a month now, which has taught me, among other things, that I'm human: apparently I no longer have endless supplies of energy and focus.  (Is it true that crossing the half-century mark really changes things or am I just out of practice relative to driving so hard for so long that it'll come back to me, kinda like riding a bicycle?  BTW, for those of you who haven't ridden a bicycle in a while, a warning: it doesn't just come back to you and you could really hurt yourself....)

And I've had a full complement of kids - actually, mostly, young adults - around, so this, too, can inspire observations and assessments ... and yet, no prose....

I suspect, too, that some of my not writing has to do with being more circumspect, wanting to experience and live life fully without the need to reflect upon it or record it ... but this runs counter to the reality that in the recording the living is appreciated anew....

So why haven't I written?

Because writing is hard sometimes, just like life.  Because getting it just right in print is a sometimes arduous and seemingly impossible though loving task.  Because I'm often so emotionally and spiritually drained by the sickness in our world that I don't want to deal with it anymore, especially by having to assess it closely, peer beyond it and try to make sense of it so that I can keep going forward.  Because I know what I want to say but often find myself without the energy to say it (as distraught as I often am at the mess that we've made of our world and as partially restored as I am in those moments of serendipitous, eternal beauty that heal and steel the soul and beckon me forward...).

Because, because, because....

And yet life enjoins me again (and again and again and....) ... so I write....

 

Since I began that last sentence, my computer decided to do a forced reboot and I had my 'not writing but trying to write' vibe disturbed.  ("Thanks, HP!", I say completely facetiously.)  And yet perhaps this involuntary interlude is a blessing.  During this interim, I picked up the tome that my reading group - The Spiritual Explorers Book Club - is enjoying this month, the excellent, powerful and provocative The Politics of Jesus by the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks and began to appreciate it anew.  And so now I've found my topic: the Lord/the Universe/Life truly does work in mysterious ways, doesn't He/She/It?

 

It so happens that I'm early in the book - re-reading it for a fourth time, as it's one of my all-time favorites - when Professor Hendricks is elucidating the Hebrew people's adherence to the principle of malkuth shamayim, or the "sole sovereignty of God," to explain their desire during the period of the judges for temporary rather than permanent leadership (i.e., judges vs. a king).  Centuries later, as we know, under increased pressure from powerful external enemies, the Jewish people asked for a king, and the results thereafter were mixed (to put it kindly).  What struck me, though, were three realities that Professor Hendricks illumines: first, that the original leadership ethos of we Christians' founding belief system was egalitarian rather than hierarchical; second, that the term messiah, meaning "anointed leader" really referred more to an earthly ruler than a spiritual one; and third, that, as Rev. Dr. Hendricks puts it,

 

The Gospels portray malkuth shamayim, rendered in its Greek forms basileia ton ournanon ("kingdom of heaven") and basileia tou Theou ("kingdom of God"), as Jesus' central proclamation. ... In fact, the vast majority of Jesus' pronouncements in the Gospels characterize the kingdom of God as an entirely earthly reality.

 

Taking on the first of these insights, it strikes me how far we're strayed from our roots, so to speak.  True, we don't have kings anymore - at least, in effect, in the western world - but we do have an unnerving reverence for imbuing our leaders with messianic responsibilities (especially, in this country, if they're white and male).  In essence, we seem to want them to save us from ourselves, so we look to them to project an invincibility that belies our declining state (both within our society and with respect to our standing in the world at large) and we urge them to draw the lines clearly between 'us' and 'them' and to 'protect' us from them (as if other fellow human beings are not worthy of becoming/being 'real Americans').

 

Religiously, many Protestant Christians, particularly those of the fundamentalist and/or evangelical stripe, seem abjectly opposed to the principle of "radical egalitarianism" noted by Professor Hendricks.  They seem dedicated to a support of the powerful and a vilification of the oppressed/the dispossessed/the Other/etc. (which stands in clear contradiction to their ostensible Patron's example).  How else can one explain the rampant and defiant opposition to the recent SCOTUS ruling on marriage equality being disproportionately resonant in supposedly Christian communities of faith?

 

With respect to the term 'messiah,' Professor Hendricks' trenchant observations brought home a startling reality that is, it seems, widely underappreciated in modern Christianity: Jesus was a disappointment as a messiah (or, perhaps more correctly put, as the Messiah).  The Jews expected and had long hoped for a King David-like ruler, a powerful military, et. al., leader who would raise them from their subjugation.  Jesus, by contrast, was meek and seemingly unconcerned with formal titles, roles and rules.  Jesus didn't seek to start an overt rebellion against temporal (Roman and Jewish religious) authority - even though He was crucified for just this crime - but to help His followers learn to live differently in the here and now so that they could find liberation within the structures of that oppression, so that they could find God's still-myriad blessings amidst their challenging circumstances, so that they could experience life eternal amidst the crushing temporal.

 

And after He died, the Jews were still subjugated, still the dispossessed of their time, still suffering ... though a few of them and a bunch of Gentiles continued to explore "the Way" and adhere to the spiritual messiah that they believe that they had found in the Nazarene.  So, Jesus didn't liberate the Jews or the Christ-followers physically as they had hoped the Messiah would ... or, for that matter, as the Book of Revelations claims that he would (or will) some day.  Instead, He did so spiritually, as He taught them how to live differently, more abundantly, in a more timeless way during their time-bound lives ... and that lesson seemed largely lost on them then and seems especially lost on us today....

 

As for the third of Rev. Dr. Hendricks' piercing insights - that Jesus' pronouncements suggest that He conceived of the Kingdom of God as a present rather than future reality - as a way to be/live rather than a place to go (i.e., heaven) - this lesson is all but lost in modern Christianity, and to our collective detriment.

 

Were we to try to be Followers of Jesus (to use Professor Hendricks' term) and emulate His example, we would live in a radically different way: we would be collective in focus vs. individually so; we would be loving, kind and generous with others vs. wary, standoffish and selfish; we would be peaceful vs. militaristic; we would be socialistic vs. capitalistic; we would be focused on our higher selves and supporting others in accessing theirs vs. gripped tightly to who we think we are and what we think we want and therefore to who and how others should be and what they should want; etc.  In other words, were we to become true Followers of Jesus, we wouldn't be Christians in the sense that so many understand the term - especially with its fundamental and evangelical overtones - today.

 

And we wouldn't be waiting - patiently or impatiently - for a better next world, but would be advocating fiercely (and yet peacefully and lovingly) for a more abundant, equitable and inclusive one right now.  If Jesus really did conceive of the Kingdom as a present reality, this would have to change our focus and behavior dramatically ... because the world that we live in now is unjust, too, but too many so-called Christians are fighting to perpetuate this inequity and injustice rather than to ameliorate it.

 

In sum, following Professor Hendricks' insights, I'd say that too many Christians have their religion wrong, both in terms of how they conceive it (i.e., focused primarily on heaven and less on this earth) and how they live it (i.e., focused primarily on the individual versus on the communal).  So perhaps Jesus isn't the best patron to follow because His values don't align with those of (too) many who claim to be His followers.  Or perhaps we need to change radically and become true Followers of Jesus ... which, frankly, is so(/too) hard that I suspect that we'll just stay Christians....

 

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor,

either we have to pretend that Jesus was as selfish as we are,

or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us

to love the poor and serve the needy without condition

and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

 

- Stephen Colbert 





 

Well Done, Grasshopper....

To thine own self be true,

and it must follow, as the night the day,

thou canst not then be false to any man.

 

- Polonius, in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare

 



In the past two days, I've experienced quite a bit of the timeless sacred in the midst of the temporal secular.  Specifically, I've attended the Ordination and first Mass of the (now) Rev. Gerard "Jerry" Racioppi at my church, St. Luke's Episcopal in Montclair.  More profound and important than this, however, is that I've seen (read = experienced) the presence of God in a most humbling and yet elevating way.

 

Jerry Racioppi has served as Seminarian and Deacon - effectively, Priest-in-Training - at St. Luke's for a while now and, in his own understated but effective way has contributed much to the life of our diverse, rambunctious and growing faith community.  (And he followed in the footsteps of another legend, the Rev. Diana Wilcox, who, just a few years ago in our midst, went from Seminarian to Deacon to Priest and Assistant to the Rector before being called to her own parish, Christ Episcopal, just a few miles down the road.)  And now, having been ordained and, today, leading his first official service as a priest, Jerry, too, moves on.  In his case, this means to the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit just over the hill in his hometown of Verona, where he actually started as Rector just shy of a month ago.

 

So what was so special about these fairly common but meaningful church experiences, that of an ordination and that of a first Mass?  Well, the first clue was at the Ordination: we expected perhaps 125 to 150 people to join us to celebrate Jerry's eternal calling to the priesthood.  300+ attended the ceremony and raucously joyful reception thereafter.  And the Mass?  We had forty people at our 8 o'clock a.m. service - where there are normally half as many on an early summer Sunday - to share the experience of Jerry's inaugural turn as fully official Celebrant and to hear his first sermon.

 

So what was so special about an unexpectedly large consecration ceremony and a well-attended early morning mass?  In a word, the Spirit.  The vibe at both events was truly transformative and blessed.  The Presence and Grace of God were in the room, so to speak.  To say that the events were joyful is a gross understatement.  The buzz at the ordination service was palpable and electric.  Similarly, after Jerry completed his sermon at the mass, there was a spontaneous desire to burst out in applause - scuttled by a collective sense of unease as we all tried to figure out if sermon-induced applause was allowed in (our or any) church - that was finally sated by a hearty round of applause after the service concluded.  When was the last time you were moved to clap during/at a church service?

 

When Jerry smiled, which he does often - or, really, constantly - he lit up the room figuratively and spiritually speaking.  It was not only our shared pride in witnessing the maturation of one of us, his blooming and coming into his own before our very eyes, it was that, just like his mentor and friend the Rev. John A. Mennell (our esteemed Rector and another applause-inducing priest), he demonstrated that he truly has a gift for  reaching, touching and elevating people's spirits.  (Which, if you think about it, is an extremely important - if not the most important - skill for a priest to have, no?)  It was not only that Jerry was good - great, even - in these transitional moments that he made transcendent, but that he was a conduit for the healing, inspiring and elevating Presence of God, an experience all too rare in this too often nightmare of a world in which we live.

 

So this is what I'll remember as Jerry's legacy and gift to me and my fellow parishioners at St. Luke's - the gift of God's Spirit, lovingly and transformatively relayed.  Who knew he had it in him?  Jerry's such a mild-mannered, unassuming guy....  God knew ... and reminded us yesterday and today.

 

And Jerry knew ... because he's chosen a life in which, not only this weekend and with us, he'll show all he meets just what God can do when He/She/It works through us.  Well done, Grasshopper....

 

 

Grace, as it extends to more and more people, brings thanksgiving.

 

- The Rev. Jerry Racioppi

American Exceptionalism? Perhaps....

You think that your pain and your heartbreak

are unprecedented in the history of the world,

but then you read.  It was books that taught me

that the things that tormented me most were the

very things that connected me with all the people

who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

 

- James Baldwin, from the film

James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket

I find myself in pain and at a loss so/too often of late.  I struggle to comprehend what we've made of this great country of ours, even as I appreciate its remaining - and, hopefully, eternal - abundance of blessings and the reality that so much of what we know of the world is not new so much as new to us.  This world has long been a place of pain and torment for too many, as has this country been; it's just that modern media has brought to us so much of what was already there but unknown to us before that we cannot evade this painful (self-)knowledge (although some clearly go to great lengths of delusion to do so).

 

What's been weighing on me lately is a sad and tawdry mélange of issues and scandals and other instances of inhumanity that trouble me precisely because they don't (sufficiently) trouble so/too many of my fellows.  Because of this I've come to agree with the definition of privilege floating around social media of late: its existence is proven when something that affects others but doesn't affect you directly also doesn't move you to consider it a problem because of the reality that it doesn't affect you.  When your empathy and compassion fail, you are indeed in a privileged position, the one of not caring or having to.

 

And what is it that so/too many are too privileged to care about?  What's in this mélange of troubling reality that gnaws at me at the moment and, seemingly, always?

 

Certainly race: that it's rearing its ugly head in new riots a half-century after the ones of my early childhood is a profoundly disturbing reality.  Yes, we've made progress in this time ... but too many of us apparently feel that enough progress has been made so that we shouldn't have to deal with the rest of the work that we have left to do.  I'll let you guess who's mostly in this camp.  If you say the 'winners' - that is, those whom racism benefits rather than disadvantages - give yourself a gold star.

 

Yet we have so far left to go and no Dreamer to lead us there.  Not to be trite, but I really do suspect that candidate Obama was right: we are the change that we've been waiting for.  Now the question is do we have the courage and conviction to do the work.  And not just some of us, but all of us; racism winners and losers alike.  It seems to me that if we really want this to be a land where all men and women - indeed, all humans - are created equal and are able to live in this way, then we have to address and eliminate racism and all of the other -isms that demean and diminish the lives of too many of our fellows.

 

And certainly, too, I am troubled by religion, especially when it intertwines with our politics in life-diminishing ways:  I am constantly dismayed that so much of what is claimed in the name of Christianity today is actually the antithesis of our Patron's example.  The institution of the Christian church has been aligned with the powers that be since the fourth century, so one could expect some 'drift.'  Yet today's religious right is, to be kind, far too often similar to or worse than those who persecuted Jews like Jesus back in the day.  We demonize the poor, the different and the Other ... when the man in whose name we do it did the exact opposite, reaching out to the disaffected, the downtrodden and the Other of His day.  And we wonder why the fastest growing segment of our population is the religiously unaffiliated?  When the ugliness that is too much a part of modern Christianity is reflected upon, is it any wonder that fewer and fewer people - and especially the young - want to be associated with it?

 

(By contrast, I have a belief that if we were to become/be true "Followers of Jesus" - to borrow Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks' term - who are committed to emulating His example, this trend would reverse in a powerfully positive and life-affirming way.)

 

And, of course, on the world stage, it's not just Christianity.  Adherents of many religions seem to vie fiercely to prove who among them wins the metaphorical inhumanity prize.  It's true of too many believers that their behavior in the name of God is so, well, ungodly.  This leads some to conclude that big-R Religion is the culprit, but to them I say not so fast: there is much beauty being shared with the world in the name of religion, too; it's just that the ugliness seems to outweigh this too greatly and too often (and certainly gets more media coverage).  It seems to me that if we really want to worship God, that ultimate Source of Life, then we must judge ourselves by how life-affirming our behavior is, not by the often false piety that we speak or the judgment that we project in God's name.

 

And I'm also bothered by the seemingly increasing level of hypocrisy ... though this, too, is subject to the evaluative question whether it's actually increasing or whether our awareness of it is what's increasing.  The current 'scandal' in this vein involves a member of the reality-celebrity Duggar family who, while until recently shilling for a 'family values' organization, turns out to have been molesting young women and girls, including his own sisters (with, of course, some in his family dutifully covering it up).  On the one hand, the cynical me isn't surprised and hardly considers it news anymore when one of the moral grandstanders in our society is exposed; hate to admit it, but now I assume that all of them are false prophets but we just haven't found them out yet.

 

On the other hand, I shake my head in world-weariness and sadness that sexual abuse is so common in our society - one source says that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually molested before the age of 16 (yes, you read that right - a quarter of our daughters, nieces, etc., and a sixth of our sons, nephews, etc., will be victims of predators, in many cases who are known to them) - and yet we seem not all that outraged about it.  If you ask anyone, of course they'll proclaim their ire at and disapproval of such conduct.  So who's doing the molesting?  And, even worse, who knows about it and isn't doing anything about it and/or covering it up?  If we want to be as good as we too often think we are, these percentages must go down ... a lot.

 

And I am troubled by economic inequality in our society (and world) and our in-justice system and our bought-and-paid-for politics and our willful environmental blindness and our stunning ignorance of other people and cultures of the world and our decrepit and decaying system of public education and our focus on winning at all costs that has led to widespread shortcutting and cheating in our schools, in our sports and in our society and our seemingly endless bloodlust and incessant warmongering and....

 

The list could go on and on ... which is the point: in so many ways we have literally lost our way as a society and our ego-salving claim to American Exceptionalism rings ever more hollow over time.  In fact, I might go so far as to say it exacerbates the problem: when you can retreat into the fantasy that you're the best, you feel no pressure to acknowledge the reality that you're not and address it.

 

But, try as we might, we are not leaving our children a better world than we inherited in many, many meaningful ways.  And this we own.  The world has become a better place in my lifetime, but not nearly enough progress has been made to stem the tide of our own inhumanity.  Ultimately, this may be the test of our Exceptionalism: in that we have chosen to ignore so much of what diminishes the lives of so many of our fellow citizens and human beings - especially now that we're so much better informed about so much of it (and, in fairness, so much more aware than previous generations could have been) - perhaps we are different.  Perhaps we're exceptional in that we know how bad things are and have just chosen not to care....

 



Americans suffer from an ignorance that is

not only colossal but sacred.

 

- Attributed to James Baldwin

 

God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign....

One must say Yes to life,

and embrace it wherever it is found -

and it is found in terrible places....

- James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time

 

I've lost my James Baldwin (collection of books) - or, at least, cannot locate him/them at the moment and feel that periodic intense need to do so - and I find myself in one of those 'terrible places' as the author and artist suggested.  Being without Baldwin for those of us who've discovered him is very much like the delirium tremens experience of an addict.  It seems that every year or two I feel an intense need to rediscover his brilliance and salve the wounds inflicted on my soul by this weary and wearisome world.  And now I cannot find him....

 

The antecedent cause of this latest Baldwin jones is the excellent American Masters documentary on his life.  Two truths be told, I've read a fair amount of Baldwin and not while I was in school and had both the time and the environment to do so deeply, and yet much of what was shared during this moving biograhical documentary was new to me.  It seems that I've only known the man through his writings and have now been exposed more fully to his life (and the particular contexts from which his writings spring), so I am greatly enriched for the experience ... which is the same sensation I experience when reading his (mainly non-fiction/essay) work.  And to think that he's been gone more than a quarter-century and my admiration for him continues to grow.

 

In part this is because so much of what he wrote about has yet to become timebound.  James Baldwin was described not as bitter but as angry by no less than the late great Maya Angelou ... and the causes of his anger - injustice, racism, heterosexism, classism, etc. - continue to this day only slightly abated.  Yes, there has been progress, but not as much as one would think in the half-century since the publication of his seminal work The Fire Next Time.  We are still talking about the institutional racism in our society, still decrying the oppression and exploitation of the poor by the rich and still amazed and dismayed by the strikingly inhumane practice of religion - especially the Christian religion - by many of its supposed adherents, among the many causes of our dis-ease and distress.

 

Oh how I wish his writings would fade from timely to dated, from open, raw and painful to uncomfortable and embarrassing reminders of days gone by.  Oh how I wish that James Baldwin weren't just as relevant today as during his lifetime ... and perhaps even more so now.

 

Where are our modern Jimmy Baldwins?  The eloquent, articulate and elevating capturers and communicators of our hurt, our pain, our weariness ... as well as our desire for love and life?  Who speaks as movingly as he did to the mass of Americans - mostly white then as now - to help them understand what it feels like to be labeled and limited against one's will?  Or to be transported by those you love, whomever they turn out to be?

 

[This being said, one has to wonder if they would listen.  The ferment of the '60s seemed to compel their attention ... but does the modern age call forth such a response, such openness and willingness to listen (even if, then as now, for a very brief time)?  Some, it seems, revel in the reality of their refusal to listen....]

 

And yet Baldwin isn't just great to help frame and address society (and its inevitable and durable ills).  He's also a profound and generous guide to life.  His meditations on love, spirituality and other aspects of the human experience touch and inspire as well.  For example, I continue to be transported by his observation that

 

Love takes off the masks that we fear

we cannot live without

and know we cannot live within.

 

I'm still staggered and guided by his piercing perspective on the Divine, that

 

If the concept of God has any validity or use,

it can only be to make us larger, freer and more loving.

If God cannot do this,

then it is time we got rid of Him.

 

And I finally have matured enough to understand how profound an observation it is that

 

To be sensual, I think,

is to respect and rejoice in the force of life,

of life itself,

and to be present in all one does,

from the effort of loving to the making of bread.

 

So much of what I value in my life now revolves around the gift of loving and being loved and around the breaking of bread with those with whom I share this gift....

 

And maybe as I sit here writing - his cardinal gift - and appreciating his influence - even if felt initially in absence, in temporarily lost access - I am more aware of him deep within my soul than I realize.  James Baldwin still haunts me, and I hunger for his wisdom, so that I can live life more fully, more perceptively and more lovingly as well as be prepared for the inevitable, for the fire next time....

 

There is never time in the future

in which we will work out our salvation.

The challenge is in the moment;

the time is always now.

 



Listening To That Inner Voice....

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky.

I believe that what people call God is something in all of us.

I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha

and all the rest said was right.

It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

- John Lennon

It's been a week since Easter and I've been in a reflective mood: the days that have followed the holiest one of the Christian year have been challenging for me, to put it mildly.  So I've been trying to get in a more spiritual frame of mind and to regain my equilibrium by accessing and drawing on the depth of my faith.  I sit quietly and wait for that inner voice, the one that is my own and seems to stream from my very depths, the one in which I feel the touch of God and am moved to ponder His Infinite Mystery.  And merely in this reflection and contemplation I begin to heal and steel myself for what is to come (while, hopefully, leaving the past behind except for the wisdom with which it's gifted me).

 

Yet as I listen to my inner voice, I come to know two things clearly:  First, too often of late, in it I hear anguish, a hurting more for the world than for myself, but a hurting nonetheless.  And, second, I know that it is my voice, not God's, and this helps me: while I feel His Grace and Touch as I heal, I realize the thoughts are my own, my truth, not His Truth, limited as they are by my human perspective.

 

God doesn't talk to me directly, and that's good: I had too much religious schooling when I was young, so the prospect of speaking directly to God is still a frightening one ... and, in my adulthood, I've come to be wary of those who claim to be a human - meaning finite and flawed - vessel for the Infinite.  And yet I feel His/Her/Its Presence regularly.  Not that He/She/It isn't always there, but just that I'm more aware at some times more than others.

 

And that's the point: God is, however we limited, flawed and finite humans perceive this in any given moment and choose to describe this Ultimate Reality.  To me, among other things, this means that all human conceptions of God are as limited, flawed and finite as we are.  We can't know God as He/She/It is, we can only sense the Divine and try to craft a description in limited, human terms.

 

For example, though I started this piece using the traditional male pronoun to refer to God - capitalized, as I was taught, of course - He is not a male ... and we only describe God this way because men have been the most dominant gender of our species for millennia and thus have decided to refer to and conceptualize God in this (limited) image and language.  He is not human, so He has no gender.  As much as it's more familiar to refer to God as Father, He isn't: God is the Source of our (human) life, to be sure, but He isn't a he, and our Father image is a reflection of our projection of something familiar onto God rather than His/Her/Its revelation of a particular gender.  It seems to me that choosing to see God in such limiting terms creates all sorts of problems, including the tendency to project and fetishize.

 

If you disagree with this last hypothesis, ask yourself the following question:  Why is it that the most popular and ubiquitous picture of Jesus portrays Him as a straight-dirty-blond-haired Caucasian (in Warner Sallman's classic 1940 painting)?  Would all of us - especially (American) Caucasians (particularly of the fundamentalist/conservative stripe) - continue to pray to Him if He were portrayed more realistically, as the swarthy, light brown-skinned Palestinian Jew with curly dark hair that He likely was?  I seriously doubt this.  It seems likely to me that the key to the popularity of the picture in the last 85 years is that it reflects an American ideal more than a 2000-year old historical reality.  And if you don't believe me, just ask Megyn Kelly of Fox News....

 

So, if God's not a he, what is He/She/It?

 

Great question!  And here's where modern theology comes in and, for many, doesn't help that much.  Many question the viability of Theism, the concept of the personal (and most often anthropomorphic) God who acts in human history.  There are many suggestions as to more accurate depictions.

 

For example, one of the many such 'new' conceptions was offered in the late 1940s and early 1950s by theologian Paul Tillich (in his classic compendium of sermons The Shaking of the Foundations, among others), when he suggested that God be thought of as the Ground of Being, or even as Being itself.  For many  this doesn't work as a meaningful God conception because, among other reasons, it seems impersonal and distant.  Well, of course it does: it's a complete contrast to the external, theistic God that we've all been taught for most (if not all) of our lives.  It's intangible and intellectual, not emotional and tangible like we project the theistic God to be.  And yet just because we may believe the latter/what we've been taught doesn't make it true.

 

And that's another point on which I'm becoming clearer: just because we as fellow believers or citizens or whatever classifications believe something doesn't make it true.  We want it to be true, and many may feel that they need it to be true (especially for control and/or security reasons), but, again, this doesn't make it true.

 

Just like 'believing' (or, in reality, claiming) that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God.  It isn't.  That's not my opinion, that's fact, verified by a legion of biblical scholars (who, conceptually, are God's children).  For starters, on its face we know that it's not inerrant: there are hundreds of internal disagreements and/or contradictions, including the two different birth stories in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke or even the two different creation stories in the first two chapters of the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, to name a few.  And the lack of thematic continuity in literally hundreds of places throughout the Good Book attests to its having been edited and enhanced many, many times in antiquity by all too human hands.  So the fact that many who choose to describe themselves as Christians claim that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God doesn't make it so.  And the fact that this can be disproven but is believed anyway is one of the reasons that blind faith is questioned so vehemently (and appropriately) today.

 

I could list other 'new' conceptions of God like those of Bonhoeffer and Bultmann, et. al., but by now I think that I've established the point that there is no one true way to see - and/or experience - God.  The fact that there are literally hundreds of human religions proves this.  And lest some 'true believer' of whatever sect claim that his/hers is the only true religion, let's just ask for the proof.  There is none, beyond belief ... and, as we know, just because we believe something doesn't make it so.

 

And yet one of the most virulent expressions of human religion today is the deplorable and immoral level killing that is perpetrated in God's name.  Here's another thing on which I've become clear in recent years: if you kill, hurt or in any way diminish another's humanity in the name of God, you're doing God wrong.  God is not tribal, but universal ... meaning that God is not a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, or an adherent of any of the other myriad belief systems and sects that we humans have created to express our awareness of the Ultimate Reality.  A popular FaceBook meme captures this nicely:





 

God was not a Buddhist.

Jesus was not a Christian.

Muhammed was not a Muslim.

 

They were teachers who taught Love.

 

Love was their Religion.

 

Now we can debate how much each of them taught and practiced Love, but, again, this is a human debate and has nothing to do with who or what God is even though each of them is considered to offer a pathway to Him/Her/It.  Slyly, the meme establishes a great point: each of these sages saw and/or described the Ultimate Reality differently and yet we acknowledge the depth and meaning of their insights into the Divine by choosing to use them as the portals to a more spiritual life ... even though they didn't and don't agree on the 'right' path thereto, unless you believe that they were aligned in that they each espoused Love.  But this digression is itself an artifice to reinforce the larger point that irrespective of what each of us chooses to believe - be that the tenets of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Baha'i, etc. - God is ... and the choice of path is ours alone however we feel about another's path or others' paths.

 

In other words, just because we believe a certain way doesn't make it so and God is, whatever we believe.

 

Which brings me back to the anguish that I too often feel as I reflect on the abuse of religion in our world.  Simply put, we get God wrong way too much and to our collective detriment.  That we kill in the name of the Source of Life is proof both that we don't get God and that we are too flawed to comprehend fully the Infinite and Ultimate Reality.  That we are too often religiocentrists - believing that our view of God is the 'right,' true and the only one - just reinforces the point.  What kind of Divine would favor a few of His/Her/Its children over others?  Not one worthy of our devotion and belief, for sure....

 

And, in my humble view, only in the acknowledgment of the limitations of our humanity, especially our inability to know God fully, will we find our salvation.  Only when we accept that the one thing that we have in common is that we are indeed all Children of God - however we choose to see Him/Her/It - can we begin to honor God by emulating Him/Her/It.  As far as I can tell, this means that we treat each other in life-affirming ways, which, now that I think about it, means in a loving way.  Hey, maybe FaceBook is right: God is Love after all....

 

The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple

of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence

before every human being and see God in him -

that moment I am free from bondage,

everything that binds vanishes,

and I am free.

- Swami Vivekananda