I will be speaking on
“Generosity in Three Movements” during the 11 a.m. worship of Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church this Sunday, Nov. 2, and leading a free workshop
on The
Cloud of Unknowing immediately following the
service. (Pizza will be served, and remember that Daylight Savings Time ends at
2 a.m. that morning, so we “fall back” an hour.)
As
All Hallows’ Eve approaches, I recommend a book that makes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol feel likes romps through
a garden.
I
am presently reading, or trying to read, or avoiding reading Laurel Dykstra’s
book, Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus. It is the scariest book I’ve
ever read.
“Rather
than claiming that Christians are subject to a higher authority than others, I
suggest that we in the radical discipleship movement admit that we are subject
to lower authorities, the dubious and
multiple authorities of the most oppressed speaking on their own behalf,” this
member of Tacoma’s Catholic Worker Community and Episcopal Divinity School
graduate writes in her introduction. In the margin beside this quote, I wrote,
“Off to a good start!”
But
halfway through the book, I feel like I’m reading The Grinch Who Stole Exodus.
I
have always taken heart in the Exodus story, that of Israelites escaping the
bondage and oppression of Egypt, as a model for the Civil Rights Movement,
Liberation Theology, and for others seeking freedom, including my own LGBTQ
community, in which both Dykstra and I identify. Rather than negate this, she
suggests yet another way of reading the story.
More
than once I heard biblical scholar Jim Sanders say, “When reading a biblical
story, if you’ve identified with the good guys, you’re probably not ‘getting’
it. Read it again and identify with the bad guys,” he would say.
After
all, we think WE would never crucify Jesus, but today it would be the U.S.A.
and the privileged First World, the Presbyterians and Methodists and Baptists,
for example, who might find his so-called “gospel” intolerable.
In
other readings I have had inklings that WE are Egypt: that we live well at the
cost of others’ deprivation and suffering and exclusion. But in no book I have
read has the message been so unrelenting and clear that developed nations and
multinational corporations are the new Pharaohs with hardened heart.
I
cringe when even liberal U.S. presidents declare our foreign policy should be
based on OUR national interests, rather than the interests of the whole world.
As this book implies, our neocolonialism smacks of the same paternalism as its
predecessor.
This
is not just about the very rich, the fraction of the one per cent who benefit
the most from the way things are. Those of us in the middle class and those of
us in the church are also complicit with this power structure that continues a
new “middle passage” and “trail of tears” of the downwardly mobile because we too
benefit from their impoverishment and enslavement and do little to prevent it. “For
most of us trying to get along, finding a bargain does not seem like an act of
violence,” Dykstra observes.
I’ve
been reading Set Them Free in my
morning prayers and have wondered if I should rather read it later in the day.
This morning I felt so debilitated by what I read that I didn’t feel worthy of
being in God’s presence. I felt downright shame. I tried to pray, but all I
could do was ask forgiveness. My concerns that I might have otherwise eagerly
lifted felt parochial and self-absorbed.
Blessedly
for writing this reflection, Dykstra quotes Phyllis Trible saying “reflections
themselves neither mandate nor manufacture change; yet by enabling insight,
they may inspire repentance.”
And
Dykstra quotes and paraphrases the Pan African Healing Foundation:
They raise the question, “Are people of privilege capable of change?” There is an old African American proverb that says “it is easier to get the people out of Egypt than to get Egypt out of the people.” It refers to the responsibilities of freedom. But for people of privilege, for whom Egypt and empire have offered not only security and comfort but everything we have known, leaving Egypt and ridding ourselves of egyptian (sic) ways and habits will be slow and hard. Acknowledging our role in empire is a first step in the long, slow journey out of it.
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