Misery and Justice

Sometimes when I’m alone, I open my well-loved The Book of American Negro Spirituals (edited and harmonized by James Weldon Johnson, a poet I grew up loving, and J. Rosamond Johnson, his brother); and I sing. The composers of these songs could not count on any right to their own bodies, having a spouse, or seeing their children grow up. They had no due process and no protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Though their enslavers attempted to justify enslaving other people using the Bible, these musicians heard their own story in the Bible, and sang the stories that spoke to their condition.

I understand wishing for the strict justice of these songs. The song “Didn’t Old Pharaoh Get Lost?” begins with Isaac on the altar, Moses cast into the Nile, Joseph sold by his brothers, Samuel hearing from God that Eli’s children would fall, and then dives into the story of Israel in Egypt. One verse describes “raging Pharaoh” and his host drowning in the Red Sea.  And the chorus rejoices after every verse, “Didn’t old Pharaoh get lost in the Red Sea?” “Go Down, Moses” recounts the misery of Israel: “oppressed so hard they could not stand.” In it, God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh to let the people go, and, “if not, I’ll smite your first-born dead.”  

In his Second Inaugural Address delivered during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln spoke about justice: 

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-men’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”

Lincoln may well have had in mind the words of God to Cain, “Your brother’s blood calls to me from the ground.” What if, indeed, in the long view, we (or our children) do repay the earth drop for drop for the blood of our human family we have been responsible for spilling on it? 

When those who are terrorized or abused or tortured for being different from their oppressors cry out for justice and express anger and desperation, I want my response to be mercy rather than judgment, even if I am implicated in causing their suffering, even if their expression makes me uncomfortable or perhaps even a little miserable. 

I think it would help if we really tried to inhabit another’s misery, even to the point of calling on our own painful memories to elicit our empathy. While I have endured abuse, loneliness, and misery, and I have called on God for justice, I haven’t experienced what a civilian in Yemen feels, what a child in Syria dreads, how an Black person in the U.S. thinks about traffic stops, how dangerous it is to be transgender. But I can believe them when they tell me of their terror. People of privilege don’t really understand the profound misery of abuse, slavery, or war, or starvation, or terror (until, in some disastrous event, they do).

Theodore Parker, writing before the Civil War, said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.” Martin Luther King, Jr., picked this up and made it a hopeful and oft-quoted refrain: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I trust that God will in fact be just, even when it seems to take forever, and I know that God calls me—calls us—to be just, to do justice, to make things as right and righteous as we can. It is hard and uncomfortable work, and that’s all the more reason to try.

Sharing the Wealth of Beauty

 Pied Beauty

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889

Glory be to God for dappled things—

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

      And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                    Praise Him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins had a personal, appreciative, and sometimes confrontational relationship with God. This poem reflects joy in natural beauty, and his gratitude to God.  The point of the poem is that God, whose character of love is undivided and unchanging, has created a world full of change and difference. This is something Hopkins celebrates. 

He is also an experimenter with language, so I’ll walk through this and then I ask you to read it again aloud. For me, that causes a resonance that no amount of silent reading can achieve. 

Perhaps our most accessible reference for pied is the Pied Piper, so-called because of his multi-colored clothing. Dappled brings horses with shades of gray to mind. Brinded is shorthand for brindled, the shades of color seen in cows and dogs. Those who fish can attest to the rose-moles (pink spots) that stipple, or dot, trout. When chestnuts fall and their spiky green casing breaks, the inner glossy brown nut reminds Hopkins of fire coals. He sees the variation of color on finches. And the farmland around has plots of land resembling the pieces of a quilt, including patches where sheep are enclosed, fields lying fallow, and fields recently plowed. And then he thinks of the humans and all the ways they work (their trades) and the equipment they use in each trade.

Counter has in it the idea of opposition, original contains the idea of uniqueness. Spare includes opposing ideas of extra and minimal. So even in this word, Hopkins incorporates difference. He obviously likes the sound of fickle and freckled side by side. Fickle brings in the idea of unwelcome change. Freckled brings in again the ideas of pied and dappled and brinded—a single surface with variations. Hopkins broadens the idea of  freckled to include speed, taste, and light. 

The creation exists in beauty, for which we praise God. Change and variation, even contrast and opposition, are all the product of God’s creativity. And in this poem, they are also partly the result of human activity in nature. 

Time and space fail me to talk about the beauty of the sounds in this poem—the alliteration of glory-God, couple-color-cow, fresh-fire-falls-finches-fold-fallow, plotted-pieced-plough; the assonance (vowel sounds) of couple-colour, for-rose-moles, fresh-chestnut; and the different-similar sounds of who knows how. As a sometime poet myself, I know this takes effort to achieve, and I appreciate the music. (I omit explanation of where the poem speeds up and slows down by means of its sounds. Just let it guide you as you read it.)

I want to share this poem because it praises God for how things are different from each other, and this congregation intends to welcome and affirm people who are not all alike. We know that more voices makes possible more variation in perspective, and that this is something to celebrate.

Now read the poem aloud just for the joy of it.

 If you want to know more about Hopkins, here is the Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

Our Father Who Art in Heaven

I’m writing this on April 23, St. George’s Day, which also happens to be the day my father, George, died. I felt when he died that some of the light and love had gone out of the universe. I’ve been sorrowing over losing him today, even though if he were still alive, he’d be 102 and not that happy about it. Perhaps my heart is softer this year because I’ve been listening to Morning Prayer from Canterbury Cathedral since Easter, and it always ends with “Our Father,” the prayer our Lord taught us (Matthew 6).

I know my local congregation has worked to avoid giving God a particular gender, so we’ve avoided “father”-language. We avoid calling God “Father” because too many fathers have acted like they were God or like their authority, however they use it, is approved by God.

But I realized, after several weeks of saying “Our Father, who art in heaven” that my congregation’s commitment also incorporates a loss as well. One of the amazing things Jesus taught us in this prayer was that we have an intimate family relationship with God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth.

This changes everything for people whose main access to God is through priests or pastors. This involves God personally in our lives as a parent is inextricably involved in a child’s life.

St. Paul in Ephesians 3 says, “I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the whole family on heaven and earth is named…that he would grant you to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” He emphasizes inclusiveness and love and being filled up with God, rooting it in God’s fatherhood. We are all family because we have the same father.

The story of the prodigal son paints a father who sets his child free to explore the world and who welcomes his child home from failure with a party. This is the kind of father God is. (Luke 15)

Dad was a good person and a loving father. Because I projected him onto my
understanding of God, I trusted that I could explore ideas and ask questions without fear. Dad always liked a good discussion and seemed curious about a lot of things and willing to entertain odd ideas. At the same time, he was flawed. Some of those flaws hurt me and made it hard for me to trust God’s love for me. I thought I could embarrass God by my behavior, I thought God would send me away if I was too much trouble, and I thought God would not be with me when I was most needy.

George MacDonald, nineteenth-century Scottish writer and preacher, encouraged his readers to believe that God was better than they could imagine—to imagine the best father ever and then believe that God was better than that. When I pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” that’s who I am praying to: The God who is Father to all, with none of my dad’s flaws and with all his good qualities and more, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus our Mother

 Many years ago in the 1970s, I wrote the following poem, which is a Good Friday poem. So I titled it, “Nativity” and included this epigram: “John 19:34.” I may have overestimated my readers’ desire to dig out the Gospel of John, so I’ll include that verse here.  

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear,

And at once there came out blood and water.

Here’s the poem.

Nativity

John 19:34

and there poured forth water

the breaking of the amniotic sac

--approaching birth

and there poured forth blood

the placental afterbirth

--completing birth

and there sounded a shout

the pain of labor and the victory of delivery

and the kingdom of God lifted up its infant voice

and wept.

It meant a lot to me to consider that in the crucifixion of Jesus was a moment that was essentially maternal. I thought at the time that my insight was original, and it was to me, but it was not in the life of the Church Universal.

First of all, Jesus described himself as a mother in this passage, Matthew 26:37:  “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you kill the prophets and stone them which are sent to you: how often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not.”  This maternal imagery is in line with imagery from the Old Testament which refers to taking refuge under God’s wings, a maternal metaphor. 

Second, I discovered the following prayer from the 11^th century, which set my heart ablaze.

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you:
You are gentle with us as a mother with her children;

Often you weep over our sins and our pride:
  tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
  in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life:
  by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness:
 through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead:
  your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us:
  in your love and tenderness remake us.

In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness:
  for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

1033-1109 Anselm of Canterbury (Benedictine) (Common Worship: Daily Prayer © The Archbishops' Council 2005 and published by Church House Publishing.)

And I came to Anselm’s lovely prayer from preparing to teach about Julian of Norwich, who wrote the following in her Revelation of Love (translated by John Skinner). 

Our own true Mother Jesus, he who is all love, bears us to joy and endless living. . . . He is compelled to feed us, for the precious love of his motherhood makes him a debtor to us.  The mother may suckle her children with her own milk, but our precious Mother Jesus, he may feed us with himself.  . . . The mother may lay the child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus, he may lead us homely into his blessed breast by his sweet open side and show within in part the Godhead and the joys of heaven, with spiritual certainty of endless bliss. . . . The property of true motherhood is kind [natural] love, wisdom, and knowing, and it is good. . . . And even though some earthly mother might allow a child of hers to perish, our heavenly Mother, Jesus, may never suffer us to be lost, for we are his children. . . . 

 . . . 

The blessed wound of our Saviour is open and rejoices to heal us; the sweet gracious hands of our Mother reach out ready and diligent about us.  For in all this working he uses the skills of a kind nurse who cares for nothing but the salvation of her child.  His task is to save us, a duty he delights to fulfill.  And he would have us know it; for he wants us to love him sweetly and trust in him meekly and mightily. . . . 
. . .
Thus our life is grounded in our true Mother Jesus in the foreseeing wisdom that he has from without beginning, with the might of the Father and the high sovereign goodness of the Holy Spirit.  For in taking our humankind he brings us life, in his blessed dying upon the cross he bore us to endless life.  And from that time until now, and even until Doomsday, he feeds us and helps us, according to the high sovereign kindness of his Motherhood that answers our kindly needs of childhood. (New York: Doubleday, 1997.)

It is so meaningful to me to have the Motherhood of God affirmed from the Old Testament on through the Gospels, and to have Jesus specifically named in the prayers and revelations of saints of the Church as our Mother in his work of redemption and restoration. If you, like me, have a need for a compassionate Mother in the heart of God, the Church has room for you.

Jesus Hums a Little Tune for Me

On a Tuesday evening about a year ago, I saw a plume of smoke on the mountain directly above my house, about two miles away. I checked local information on the internet to discover reports of a vegetation fire. The conditions were "red alert" for wildfires--hot, dry, very windy. I let my neighbors know, and then I watched the smoke off and on for about an hour. It grew. When I saw a train of cars coming down the road from the mountain top, I knew it was time to leave. I said goodbye to my things, took my favorite shoes and some documents and electronic devices and a few articles of clothing and my three dogs and left the house.  My husband came a bit later in our pickup. We stayed at our daughter's house in town for over a week, while firefighters on the mountain held the line at a road less than a quarter mile from my house.

My emotions were a mixture of numb on the surface and panic way down deep, and they stayed that way all night and the following day. I watched the smoke during the day, the flames during the night, and the online posts, which fueled my anxiety. I took the dogs out several times a day, and that first day walked over six anxiety miles.  

As I was walking one day, a song from the distant past hummed its way into my memory. The Christian singer Evie sang this in the 1970s: 

    When I think I'm going under, part the waters, Lord.
    When I feel the waves around me, calm the sea.
    When I cry for help, O hear me, Lord, and hold out your hand.
    Touch my life, heal the raging storm in me.

As my skittish dogs dodged windblown objects and bushes and skirted manholes and storm drains, I tried to remember the rest of the song. "Knowing you love helps me face another day," I hummed, but couldn't get the rest until I got to my computer and looked it up.

    Knowing you love me through the burdens I must bear,
    Hearing your footsteps lets me know I'm in your care,
    And in the night of my life, you bring the promise of day.
    Here is my hand, show me the way.

    Knowing you love me helps me face another day,
    Hearing your footsteps drives the clouds and fears away,
    And in the tears of my life, I see the sorrow you bore.
    Here is my pain, heal it once more.

What I find meaningful and true here is that the songwriter, Charles F. Brown, does not pretend that knowing Jesus loves us takes away all the burdens and pain. Instead, knowing Jesus helps us bear them and gives us hope. And one of the reasons knowing Jesus helps us is that we remember that Jesus also bore sorrow and pain; as Isaiah wrote, "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."

Jacques Ellul wrote that though Jesus carries our suffering, he does not put an end to it, and we do not emerge from it unscathed. (Ellul was a leader in the French Resistance to the Nazis during World War II.) But, he wrote, when we believe, we can know and "even feel that we are no longer alone in this suffering. Someone else is suffering along with me, like me, next to me....I have a true companion in suffering, a companion who bears and shares this horror, this pain, this grief, this desertion. All I need to do is turn to him and find once again my communion with him; the opening occurs; and I then am accompanied in truth. Thus I suffer less because I am not alone" (If You Are the Son of God: The Suffering and Temptations of Jesus, retrieved from Google Books, pp 17-18).

It is helpful to me to remember that knowing Jesus helped Jacques Ellul through the horrors of war and its consequences. It is also helpful to me to remember that Jesus has been truly human, and my human experience of weakness is not unfamiliar to him And I appreciate his humming Evie's old tune into my heart and head when I needed to hear it.

https://books.google.com/books?id=0nENBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA17&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false