Let's Give Up Despair for Lent!

Cross at a construction site in our neighborhood today.

My imperative title is not intended to apply to those enduring clinical despair or depression that require professional help and/or medication. I’m thinking of those of us suffering “ordinary” despair from the political situations in which we find ourselves: demagoguery, racism, nativism, extreme partisanship, polarization, disinformation, manipulation, corruption, and so on.

Rarely do I write a post the day before I put it on my blog, but here I am, doing just that. If you only read the title you know what I’ve been thinking about for weeks as we begin this holy season of Lent today, Ash Wednesday. Lent reminds us of the interval of our lifetimes from cosmic dust to dust, our own “brief but spectacular” moments to shine in this universe. (Thanks to PBS for that phrase.)

Context is important. I’ve been watching a series on Netflix called The Universe that reminds me how fabulous and fantastic, fearful and far-flung the universe is as well as how opportune it is for these short-lived bits of human flesh (me and you) to wonder in amazement and awe and gratitude to even be a tiny part of it!

In preparation for a contemplative retreat I’ll be co-leading (to which you are welcome) I’ve been rereading Kathleen Norris’s book The Cloister Walk, looking forward to conversations about its many spiritual subjects. Synchronicity would have it that today she writes about despair, though in a different way than I expected.

Norris quotes early Christian spirituality historian Benedicta Ward, “For all sins, there is forgiveness. What really lies outside the ascetic life is despair, the proud attitude which denies the possibility of forgiveness.” Norris elucidates:

As for designating despair as an aspect of the sin or “bad thought” of pride, I find it enormously helpful. Among other things, it defeats my perfectionism, my tendency to give up when I can’t do things “just right.” But if I accept the burden of my despair, in the monastic sense, then I also receive the tools to defeat it. I have a hope that no modern therapeutic approach can give me (p 129).

Quoting another scholar, Douglas Burton-Christie, Norris explains that the first Christian monks believed scripture “possessed the power to deliver them from evil. They believed that the Word of God has the power to effect what it says.”

So, in our political morass, we are not defenseless. But we do need to consider and confront our all-or-nothing perfectionism which we apply not only to ourselves, but to our political candidates and parties. I was astounded to learn recently that in the last U.S. presidential election, tens of thousands of Bernie Sanders’ supporters voted for Donald Trump when the Democratic party chose another nominee. (See New York Times columnist David Brooks’ February 6, 2020 column, “How Trump Wins Again.”)

Whomever you support, don’t despair! Please volunteer and/or donate to campaigns you believe in, not forgetting that “down ballot” choices are also vital. Or, if politics is not your thing, please volunteer and/or donate to programs, centers, and causes near and dear to your heart.

Despair is a luxury we cannot afford in these troubled times!

I was invited to be among the contributors to Ashes to Rainbows: A Queer Lenten Devotional that includes meditations for Ash Wednesday, the Sundays of Lent, and the days of Holy Week. Go to: https://justiceunbound.org/queerlent/

You may support this blog by clicking here. Please scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

I will again be co-leading “Beside Still Waters: A Contemplative Retreat” with Debra Weir April 27-May 1, 2020 at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama. It is open to the public, and some limited scholarships are available. Three readable texts are recommended to prepare but are not required to have been read by opening day.  Here's the link: 

https://app.certain.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x3039640abcd

Woke and Awakening

My well-worn copy.

I love that “woke” is related to “awakening.” “Woke” as an adjective is from African American vernacular, and, as employed by Black Lives Matter, entails social awareness, especially of racism and social injustice. It is now used ubiquitously to suggest someone who is politically aware.

In spirituality, “awakening” suggests spiritual awareness. An early twentieth century authority on mysticism, Evelyn Underhill, describes “awakening” as the first stage of a mystic’s lifelong process. She described five stages of a mystic: awakening, purgation, illumination, dark night, and union.

What brings this to mind for me are two recent articles evaluating Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird. One article reviews a book that offers a disconcerting analysis of Lee’s novel as a defense of upper class educated Southern whites distancing themselves from racist “white trash,” as if the latter were entirely responsible for racial barriers, while excusing themselves with the actual economic, political and social power to end segregation.

Jarring as this is for me as a fan of the novel, this appears to be true, and, I hate to admit, could also be said of those who insist President Trump was elected by that infamous “basket of deplorables” rather than by educated, middle and upper class white voters.

The other article, reviewing another related book, explains the writer’s disdain of the novel as insufficiently aware of the African American experience. Only Scout’s character is fully developed, she writes, not that of Tom Robinson or even of Atticus Finch.

I wanted to counter that this is because the book is not about Tom Robinson or Atticus Finch: the book is about Scout and her transformation in the light of her personal experience of events and characters in the narrative. The most authentic representation of African American experience would most likely be found in the writings of African American authors themselves.

The novel’s film was released a month after Alabama Governor George Wallace’s infamous “Segregation Forever” inaugural speech. Though the sterling character of a small-town Alabama lawyer like Atticus Finch might have been a stretch, given the times, as one writer suggests, he serves as a counter to the prevailing ethos of racial prejudice. He gives white readers someone to emulate, something lacking in Lee’s original version, Go Set a Watchman. Thanks be to God for a good editor who advised her to revisit and reshape the story!

All this is to say, as I’ve written in my books and on this blog, To Kill a Mockingbird

served as a “woke” experience for this 12-year-old boy from California who had never even visited the South. That, coupled with the Civil Rights Movement and good teachers and preachers, began for me a lifelong journey toward a better understanding of racism and social injustice.

The books of African American authors furthered my growth: Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Stephen Carter, Eldridge Cleaver, James Cone, Frederick Douglass, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr., Alice Walker, and Cornel West. Articles, reporting, firsthand encounters and presentations by numerous others also contributed to my “woke” process.

Just as “awakening” is only the beginning of a mystic’s lifelong path, maybe we might consider “wokeness” as only the start of political awareness. Maybe we could speak of a “woke-consciousness” that allows further development as well as application to other social issues of our times.

I was struck by the spiritual parallels as I completed reading this past Sunday Howard Rice’s book, Reformed Spirituality. He quotes Flora Slosson Wuellner’s description of spiritual growth in her book, On the Road to Spiritual Wholeness:

As we are healed and pulled together into wholeness, we are shown many things that we had not seen before. We are shown feelings we have had, but which have been repressed. We are shown things we have done, judgments we have made during our days of blindness and insensitivity. We are shown relationships in a new light, and facts to which we had not awakened. And as we wake and see, decisions about what we see begin to rise in freshness and power.

I posted this on July 11, 2018, and post it today in observance of Black History Month in the U.S.

You may support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Black Lives Matter

This week marks the ninth anniversary of the beginning of this blog!

“Black lives matter” is not just wisdom for protesting “issues” of law enforcement. It should be a mantra for all of life.

Black lives matter when there is equal access to prenatal and postnatal care, preschool, decent housing and nutrition, education, healthcare, employment, promotions, advancement, economic opportunities, voting rights, justice in the courts, representation on school boards, law enforcement agencies, city councils, state legislatures, congress, corporate boards, and executive positions in business and government—to name some of the things routinely denied.

Black lives matter when the disproportionate detention and incarceration rate of African-Americans on mere suspicion, manufactured evidence, mandatory minimum sentencing, or low-level drug offenses is reduced dramatically or eliminated altogether.

A pet peeve of mine has been to see black people cast in incidental roles in movies and TV programs (how many black judges can there be?) rather than seeing their characters integrally woven into an ensemble cast, though this has been changing in recent years.

I once worked with a progressive but all-white group who would have agreed that all of the above are examples of institutional racism, and whose members said they wanted to do something about it. But a colleague who had worked with the group far longer than I told me privately, “They all want to address the issue of racism politically, but few, if any, actually have black friends.”

The person observed that institutional racism will only be dismantled as we take racism personally, when black lives matter in our own friendships, families, congregations, work places, working relationships, and social networks.

A white police officer testifying in the O.J. Simpson trial was asked if he was a racist, and he said “no.” I was astounded. I don’t know how any white person in the United States can say they have avoided being taught prejudice to some degree. And we all benefit from white privilege, just as our white ancestors (and not just slaveholders) benefited from black slavery.

I believe our society survives partly because it is graced with the fortitude and forgiveness and sometimes generational forgetfulness of the minorities it has wronged. And most amazing to me are the descendants of slaves who were “owned,” brutalized, raped, and lynched. How can they stand our uppity white domination? How can they stand the undue influence of angry and mean folk trying to undo what progress has been made in redressing past sins?

Those who forgave the deadly, racist shooter in the Charleston church were as Christ to me. Their grace exposed the racism of those who held onto the confederate flag as a way of life. Their grace transformed parts of the country that seemed irredeemable.

Black lives matter.

I posted this on August 19, 2015, and post it today in observance of Black History Month in the U.S.

Related posts:

Stand Your Ground: Ferguson, Washington, Jerusalem

Where Have All the Black Men Gone?

  

Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

You may support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you! 

Black Museums Matter

Reading of the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. reminded me of the most difficult thing I saw when visiting the Holocaust Museum last May.

There are so many heartbreaking things to witness in that archive of brutality and inhumanity, what I will describe may seem less consequential, but for me it summed up everything, from the piles of shoes of concentration camp martyrs, to the railroad car used for their transport, to the various devices used to end their lives, not to mention the multiple ways intended to dehumanize them before their incarceration.

These things brought tears to my eyes, but what made me want to cry uncontrollably  was seeing a youth—maybe 15—sitting quietly on a bench in a side pocket room intended for rest and reflection. He looked so disheartened, so disillusioned, so overwhelmed by what he saw, I felt for him.

This is what our various histories do to young people: histories of anti-Semitism, racism, ethnic hatred, sexism, classism, heterosexism, mistreatment of those with disabilities, religious intolerance, and so on and so on—this is what we do to the innocent, not only of times past but of the present day.

“Woe to anyone who causes one of these little ones to stumble…” Jesus admonished.

Yet frankly, my own disillusionment as a youth, learning of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, lynching, racial hatred, bigotry, and prejudice made me a better citizen. My own disillusionment in American foreign policy around Vietnam and Latin America made me a better patriot. My disappointment at the inequality and mistreatment of women made me a better person. (I say disappointment rather than disillusionment in this case because I never had the illusion that women were treated fairly.)

And the disillusionment that led to my involvement in the reformation of the church around LGBT inclusion made me a better Christian.

I’m glad to learn that there will be a room in the new museum in which to reflect and recover after visiting the exhibit devoted to Emmett Till, a black youth brutalized and lynched after being accused of whistling at a white woman.

Whenever I am able to visit that museum, I expect that I will see another youth sitting in that room with the same downcast and forlorn expression that I saw last May.

I posted this on October 5, 2016, and post it today in observance of Black History Month in the U.S.

You may support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.