A Letter from a Friend

A dear friend of mine just sent this to me. I offer it in part as the beginning of an answer to my blog-friend Aerin's gracious and largely rhetorical inquiry...

Hi Friends,

Today I was reading an article in US News & World Report about the historic significance of Barack Obama's election. In it, journalist Robert Schlesinger encourages all of us to focus on what this election truly means to our country. This election has changed the narrative of American history regardless of what happens once Obama and his family are comfortably ensconced in the White House and subsequently at battle with the current state of American politics.

I was not involved in any Obama campaigning and should probably admit that my cynicism about race in this country caused me to reserve a kernel of disbelief and mistrust in the system. When I was driving home and I heard that Obama was President-elect my kernel was shattered and cast away. I cried and celebrated and honked my horn with millions of people all over the world. And yet, what remains is a country, a world even, that still needs work.

I know that we must continue to work because right here in my adopted home state of Georgia dissatisfied citizens resorted to vandalism and fear simply because a black man has been elected president. As a black teacher in a private school located in a mostly affluent, white area of Atlanta I see the seeds of discontent and racism present in the uncomfortable faces of people I stand in line with at Starbucks. I feel pain when a co-worker tells me that her African-American son was ridiculed at school by white classmates who told him that Obama was a terrorist who will ruin this country. These types of summations are rooted in our deepest fears about race and its correlation to power. If race, read: being white, no longer signifies power and "rightness" then we have a great opportunity to do a lot of re-education and rebuilding across large swaths of this country.

I was reminded of this reality when I started to read the comments section of the Robert Schlesinger article:

* "As for a large majority of new voters I also believe, that the Black's voted mainly for race, without any understanding of any kind of politics in there country. Most NOT all were uneducated academically, most are high school drop outs, and voted strictly because they were of a black or mixed black race and thought that vote stood for more free stuff, because Obama did preach that he would fix many if not all of there ills including unemployment food stamps and help of all kinds. To them it was shall I say "Christmas"."

* "Not since that sex adict defiled the White House has there been such a disaser as Mohamed Obama's e;ection! Guess there will be boggying down the halls and shouts of " you dirty MF" resonating in the hallowed rooms of the White House! What joy,the bastardization of our country!!!!!!!!Send Obama and his family back to Kenya!! Bet his daughters won't go to a public school in DC,aka definitely colored! You residents of DC are good enough to vote for him but not good enough for his kids to associate with yours!!"

Let me not even begin to address the clear grammatical problems with these comments, which in my opinion does serve to negate them. ( Full Disclosure: I am an English teacher) What is at issue here is that while Obama has united sections of America previously divided we do have a large number of people who were pulled in the other direction, or rather chose to stay where they were and continue to embrace stereotypes, fear, and hatred. These people are America too. Even in our joy of what Obama's presidency means we must continue to be vigilant, vocal, and active in our schools, churches, and local politics. We must require each other to examine our language and ourselves and help facilitate change.

I, for one, am happy to continue to work for and facilitate change in my community when we have a President who is not afraid to at once decry bigotry and require accountability on the part of the people. We have some momentum in this country that we have never had before. It is time to focus not only on breaking barriers, but also on the painstaking process of healing. As Chicano activist Luis Rodriguez states: "Healing involves going to the wound, not recoiling from it. The wound, the damage, can be the mother of our rebirth, the reconciliation. If revolution isn't about this, it isn't about anything." Right now is the time for us to embark on that journey. Yes we can.

Signed,
Yaisha Caron Harding,
A black woman who finally gets to feel vindicated for having an "ethnic name"

Thanks for the Dialogue

Aerin, thanks for the dialogue. I wrote this last week about today...

The Day After

As the 2008 Presidential campaign draws to a close, I've become increasingly less concerned about the specific outcomes of election night and more concerned by what we will have positioned ourselves to accomplish the day after. What are our prospects for success in meeting the tremendous challenges we as a country now face, when we've painted our countrymen and neighbors out to be devils and villains? How do we commit ourselves to meaningful action for the good of all God's creation and not become immobilized in our bickering over who is most right? I'm almost afraid that too much damage has been done: the fear mongering and race-baiting and name-calling and prejudice rationalizing. How do we begin to engage one another and work together if indeed I am (by your definition or my own) a tree-hugging, homo-loving, abortion-permitting, other-embracing, terrorist-empathizing, socialist-leaning un-real black man, whom you've been socialized to resist at all costs?

As I write, a song invades my consciousness, refusing not to be heard. I believe it echoes a way forward through this mess we’ve made for ourselves. The song is "Belfast to Boston," by James Taylor (listen). It's been my prayer for peace for about two years now…

There are rifles buried in the countryside by the rising of the moon.
May they lie there long forgotten, 'til they rust away into the ground.

It's a song of grace: blood bought, divinely inspired, blessed assurance that as followers in the way of Jesus we are not condemned to give as good (or as poorly) as we get. We can give better. Yes…

Who will bend this ancient hatred: will the killing to an end?
Who will swallow long injustice: take the devil for a countryman?

We can. This is the grace that is ours. "Freely you have received; freely give," Jesus says.

continue reading on GP>>>

Free Association: Janet Jackson, High School, Coincidence, Theology & Friendship

I heard from a friend today
And she said you were in town
Suddenly the memories
Came back to me in my mind...
-Janet Jackson, "Again"

I've been on a real Janet Jackson fetish this week. I watched Poetic Justice late Monday night, and I've been intoxicated sense. Watching old and new videos on YouTube. Remembering my gratitude for her help in puberty. Lamenting her obvious shift in trajectory from Rhythm Nation to The Velvet Rope. Wondering about the trauma that might have precipitated such a dramatic detour.

How can I be strong I've asked myself
Time and time I've said
That I'll never fall in love with you again

My love affair with Janet was primarily middle and high school. So it only stands to reason that last night I should stumble into someone else online whom I've loved deeply since then. It's amazing how such coincidences occur.

This person too was instrumental in my emergence from childhood. She was one of my campus mothers/big sisters in high school. Campus kinship was tremendously important to my intensely relational personality, being away from home at such a formative time in life.

Well, life has led us down similar yet incongruent paths (to draw upon a HS algebra expression). We both live lives on terms other than those we were raised to define as "right". The difference is that she still affirms intellectually the rightness of the SDA message; I do not. More accurately, I no longer view "rightness" as a thing to be pursued.

A wounded heart you gave,
My soul you took away
Good intentions you had many,
I know you did

A conversation with this friend about 5 years ago at my buddies' ordination (curiously enough, back on our old HS campus) was one of the impeti that propelled me toward the Emergent conversation. One of the questions I was asking at the time was "What keeps people so intellectually loyal to a religious system that isn't compelling enough to keep them committed to the actual practice of it?" Such pseudo-fidelity is puzzling to me.

I come from a place that hurts,
and God knows how I've cried
And I never want to return
Never fall again

So she and I spoke last night...

So here we are alone again,
Didn't think it'd come to this

...and because the conversation natural went this direction, I was quite honest about all the theological questioning she had stirred in me (probably to a fault). I shared that since our conversation I had deconstructed much of what we had been raised to believe...

I've come too close to happiness,
To have it swept away

...(not that Adventism isn't a valid path, but it surely isn't the last or definitive word on things). I shared furthermore that I do not believe that her choices to live contrary to her stated doctrinal beliefs are solely indicative of some great moral deficit in her, though she freely expresses such self-indictment. She responded to me like I were the anti-Christ.

Don't think I could take the pain
Never fall again

Well, as fate might have it, this morning I awoke to an e-mail that linked me to this post by Peter Rollins which articulates so well what I was feeling last night:

People who label themselves as ‘backsliders’ [are of particular concern to me]. Here the individual, whether they have left the church or not, are still under the sway of that evangelical [or fundamentalist] worldview and thus any positive step forward is still thought of negatively.

The choice to leave is made within the confines of the evangelical system itself and is thus understood within that system. In this way the explicit rejection of it is implicitly an affirmation of it (I reject it not because it is wrong but because I am wrong). The result is that the majority of people who see themselves as ‘backsliders’ will either return to the group they left or continue to define themselves in opposition to it.

The real choice to be made is thus not between staying or going from a particular church. Rather it is a meta-choice concerning whether I continue to interact with the linguistic system that sustains the church or step into an unknown space outside that linguistic system.

I wish I knew what I might say that would free my friend from believing that it's just her...

Kinda late in the game
And my heart is in your hands

...and open her eyes to the fact that the sheer number of people like her (myself included) who wind up in the same place for very different reasons would suggest that its not just total depravity creating the disconnect. But Adventism does its denominationalism work well (the passing on of language, culture and judgement). I've found that even for former Adventists, some who even consider themselves atheist, its a struggle to comprehend or articulate the world in terms other than those given them by their fundamentalist upbringing. What a horrendous prison?

Don't you stand there and then tell me
You love me
Then leave again

This singular reality would foster great resentment in me, absent the grace and forgiveness I've learned in the way of Jesus. But with it, I think I'm okay, and hopefully resurrected enough to be a good friend.

'Cause I'm falling in love with you again

Breaking My Heart

One of the most troubling things happening in my life of late is that so many of my friends are either divorcing, cheating on one another or otherwise putting each other through hell. It's killing me. A friend of mine just had her indiscretions of a year ago put on blast. Now she's trying to deal with the fall out. It's a mess. Institutional religion all too often gives us only two categories in which to understand indiscretion and/or brokenness: victim or victimizer. Thus, when one's brokenness is discovered, everyone, including the principal players, seems to rush to take up sides against the category they despise the most. It's awful. In the meantime, little or no healing takes place, because we're not taught how to seek that for the good of each other. Instead, the principal players retreat into self-interest--"I have to protect... love... find healing for... provide for... myself (and my kids).

Many want to blame my friend for not coming clean from jump regarding her affair. I'm convinced that the reason there is no sacrament of confession in much institutional religion is because there is no sacrament of forgiveness. We just don't have the tools to embrace brokenness, and we're too inhibited by bad theology. We believe we have a divine obligation to hand out scarlet letters, though we know that's not love. We do it even when it makes no sense--even when everything inside us cries out for something better--even to ourselves. It's tragic.

One of the major obstacles to loving better, I believe, is what we rehearse when we gather together. We rehearse karma instead of grace, "righteous" indignation instead of forgiveness, doctrine instead of faith. Don't get me wrong. Karma is legitimate and probably the best human beings can hope to apprehend in their own strength. But the way of Jesus is predicated on the hope of living beyond one's own strength. Nonetheless, we don't rehearse such victory, only the pitifulness of being "a sinner in need of saving" week after week when it's time for the alter call.

The question that comes to my mind as I watch these tragedies take shape time and time again--or hear people defend the structures that facilitate them--is "How is that working for us?" Don't get me wrong. I don't have all the answers, but I know the reason why few are asking Christianity for its take on the matter. Whether we've been blessed with any answers or not, how we live in committed relationship isn't working any better than those who claim not our sense of accountability. And that breaks my heart, for I know the way of Jesus is better than that.

Freedom Haven

I published a new story on the Village Half-Wit blog, entitled "Freedom Haven". It is a retelling of the very first story I ever told. It was originally told at the Triana SDA Church just outside Huntsville, Alabama, when I was a ministerial student at Oakwood College. The pastor, I remember fondly, was Michael Faison, a professional actor and all around wonderful personality who really nurtured the theatrical intuitions in me. As close to a theatre arts professor as we had at OC, he allowed me to help him with a few of his shows, and he had invited me to share with his small, Southern, salt-of-the-earth congregation. (Man, that's 14 years ago--wow! I've got to find him. If I remember correctly he was from Bermuda. Great memories :-)

I told it again most recently at Faith Community Church of God in Snellville, GA, over the MLK, Jr. weekend at the invitation of my friend, Pas. Pat Hannon. Very different congregation, but equally embracing. I am grateful to both congregations for the roll they've played in my journey.

I pray the tale will hold meaning for you.