“Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world. Let us not tire of preaching love. Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love, love must win out; it is the only thing that can.” Oscar Romero, Sept. 27, 1977
Author: swithrowking
Education Is the Bane of Resistance among Jesus-followers, Too.
Holy moly. Every human person in the U.S. should read this. My own kid starts kindergarten next week. How can I ensure that he doesn’t learn to conform, but to transform?
confession
Yesterday, I choked up watching Antoinette Tuff describe how she had anchored herself in Christ and reached out to a heavily armed and deeply depressed young man who had walked into an elementary school and made it clear that he wasn’t playing around. The gunman felt he didn’t have anything to live for and was prepared to die that day, but Tuff’s love (Tuff love, ha) saved his life and most likely countless others, as well.
Here’s my confession. While I listened to Antoinette tell her amazing story, I pictured the events unfold. And those events featured the perpetrator as a young, black, man. I don’t recall hearing any physical descriptions of the suspect. I didn’t know his name and hadn’t seen a mugshot. I was focused on Tuff’s actions, but my underlying, unconscious assumption was that she was describing interactions with a fellow African American.
When I read follow-up stories of the event this morning and saw that Michael Brandon Hill looks like me and not like Antoinette, I realized what I had done. I realized how deeply embedded my assumptions were, so deep that they hadn’t even registered as conscious casting choices, and I was utterly shamed by my racism. I am still deeply ashamed, but grateful that I recognized and confronted this sin head-on.
I accept full responsibility for my racist assumption, but I can’t help but wonder…if Michael Brandon Hill had dark skin, would his picture have been at the top of all of the news articles the last few days? Would I have been faced with more images of him if he had fit the description of my preconceived notions? Worse, was his picture there all along, but I ignored it, passed it over, because that’s not the face I was looking for?
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.
The Past is the Present
Eduardo Galeano’s reminder to my younger self in Open Veins of Latin America is difficult: “Slave ships no longer ply the ocean. Today the slavers operate from the ministries of labor. African wages, European prices.” (279) It is true that I cannot change the past. What I can try to do is give my raced-as-white-euro-american-blond-haired-green-eyed son a lens through which to look at the world that acknowledges the depressing realities of the past and the hope for a reconciled future that we are offered when we join with others to follow Jesus.
Experiment in Being Human
Trying this thing where I leave my phone at home when I leave the house. Hypothesis: Anticipate it will make me a better friend/spouse/mom. Results: TBD. Discussion: Not sure it does anyone any good for my face to be buried in an iPhone all damn day and night.
oh ffs, are you serious with this?
oh for ffs, are you serious with this?
In the aftermath of the Cheerios hubbub. Giehl and I are considering getting a divorce so we can each marry and spawn with people of color and speed the much-needed downfall of whiteness. Who’s in?
Out of the mouths of babes….
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
Mother’s Day
Since Hallmark tells me that it is “Mother’s Day,” I started to think about Mercy Oduyoye’s definition of mothering as “an obligation for all in any community whether then are women or men. It is doing to others what God does to, with, and for us out of God’s compassion” (Introducing African Women’s Theology, 38).
Think about this: how are mothers idealized? Giving much, taking more; creating and nurturing welcoming spaces; divine Marys, listening and responding in trust to the voice of God; showing divine love in a broken world, capable of enduring the pain of seeing the child of your womb nailed to a cross. This description of motherhood reflects Oduyoye’s overall vision of humanity as reciprocity, hospitality, response to God, and reflection of the divine. We expect this of mothers, but what would happen if we did not require women to bear this impossible, Messianic burden? What if little boys and little girls were both raised as nurturers and protectors? Perhaps humanity is so very broken in part because we have created a deep chasm between culturally gendered people. If we put our love and little pink dollies and EZ-Bake ovens and G.I. Joe toys and baseballs and bicycles into that chasm, maybe we can meet one another in the middle and create new expectations of human engagement with one another.
Mars
I read earlier this year that more than 78,000 people have applied to take a one-way trip to Mars. The nonprofit organization financing the expedition expects to get 500,000 applicants by the time the application window closes at the end of the summer. Individuals selected will travel to Mars for the purpose of colonizing it. They will not be able to return to earth because of the physiological changes that will take place in their bodies.
New Martians will spend their days building greenhouses and infrastructure, along with studying the atmospheric and geologic history of the planet. When I was a teenager, my parents gave me access to new territory, like staying out past midnight, only after I had proven that they could trust me within the existing bounds. We really think that because we have the will and might to go somewhere, it is ours for the taking.
Is it really possible that after thousands of years of wanton destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants by those with power, influence, and money, we think we are ready to start over again on a new planet? The arrogance is so astonishing, it must be a set-up for some catastrophic and karmaic event. If I believed in hell, I would be tempted to believe that we were living in it now, repeating an endless cycle of insane exploitation species by species, person by person, planet by planet, millennium after millennium. So I have to remember that in this puppy-riddled deluge, the jobs of reconciliation are not all mine. Jesus leads me into communities of disciples, and through the Spirit, we discren with them where and how I serve.
Balance
The word “balance” keeps coming to mind as I review and reflect. Balance. I have to find balance in my own way of being in the world – the precarious point of stability managing work, school, community, home, family, self, and spirit. Since balancing those things is usually an impossible task, I tackle them one by one. Knock ’em down like linebackers on a blitz, bulldozing in just that order, instead of caring for my spirit, self, and family first. This all-or-nothing outlook also influences why I initially read The Liberating Mission of Jesus with confusion. Of course when you see a person in need, you should stop to help them without wasting an enormous amount of time on analysis.
And here is where I have a little “aha” moment, which subsequently makes me feel a little silly for not seeing it at first, it is sooooooo obvious. Remember the story about seeing puppies drowning in a stream? You see a drowning puppy (if you’re a cat person, you can change it to drowning kittens)…You see a drowning puppy and you wade in to save her. Just as you get back to shore, you see another puppy, so you go back to get that one. This happens again and again. You cannot leave your post, or puppies will drown, but if you do not venture up the path, you will not find the psychopath throwing puppies off a bridge. So you enlist help. If you are a good swimmer, you keep pulling the puppies out of the stream and you recruit someone from the community who is good at navigating the backwoods to go figure out what is happening. You cannot do both. I can’t do both. In fact, you and I can probably do one better than the other. And expanding the circle of people who are helping solve this puppy-drowning problem not only means a happier end for the puppies, but allows the people recruited to use their skills for an other.
Cooperation builds community bound by a common mission and allows the members of that community to do what they can, when they can, knowing that they do not have to solve the whole world’s problems (by themselves) at once.
sarah withrow king 