Recently my daughter Rocky wrote a piece for her Patreon that helped me to name something that was firing up my anxiety. She wrote, “I think one of the reasons that this year was so frustrating was because we all felt so terribly out of control. It largely felt as if we were all at the mercy of Whomever Is Controlling All This and they were just having a bad day and decided to unleash a series of plagues upon us all.”

The truth is every day since we began COVID-19 related restrictions in the US, I would get up in the morning and, through tears, check the news and health authorities to get the latest numbers on how many people had contracted the virus; and how many succumbed. I would deduce from the numbers of confirmed cases and the numbers of those who had died another number – those who were recovering.

This morning ritual was my way of feeling like I was in control over something that was obviously not in my control. I thought that if I just knew what was going on, I would be able to manage the chaos of my life and these times. But obsession does not yield manageability and did nothing for my ability to deal with the uncertainty that was caused by the bungled – and criminal – US response to this virus.

There was nothing I could do about those rising numbers even though I was doing my part to adhere to common sense guidance on public gatherings and personal behavior. The way forward through this awful thing was beyond my personal discipline. There was no leadership rising in the country to rally All Americans to work together and to contain this virus. In fact, the opposite was happening. To respond to a virus we cannot shoot to death – the former president actively promoted conspiracy theories and bad science. The ruling political party discouraged people from wearing masks and ridiculed groups that halted their public gatherings.

Rocky’s perspective helped me to admit that obsessing over the numbers was my way of personally trying to control something.

What I couldn’t control or face was the fact that, even with numbers, graphs, and stats, the losses were incalculable and could not be tallied. My effort to try to do so bordered on arrogance and ignorance, but it provided some relief from the reality of chaos unfolding before my eyes every day.

Thank you, Rocky. “A little child shall lead them, the prophets said of old. Thru storm and tempest, heed them, until the bell is tolled” (A Cradle in Bethlehem.)

We cannot calculate the loss of hope and genius those we lost took with them when their lives were cut short – and political indifference cut their lives short.

It angers me when Christians say, “Well this was God’s will. God is in control. If God didn’t want this to happen, it wouldn’t. This is all a part of God’s plan.” (However, the point is not my anger about that kind of trivializing and dismissing of the impact of selfish human behavior; the point is that we do to God what Adam did to Eve. “It wasn’t me; it was her!”).

God did not plan for more than half a million people to die in the US. (Lord, have mercy on the millions across the globe.)

God did not plan for countless others to be left to deal with the lingering consequences of the virus.

God did not plan for a generation of people to be left mourning the empty chairs in their lives.

None of this is God’s will.

We who dismiss incomprehensible things like a country refusing to rally to mitigate the impact of a virus on its population because whatever is the outcome of the virus ravaging its population is actually “God’s Will,” are often the people who refuse to take responsibility for the impact of our own destructive behavior – on other people and the planet.

We yell, “Survival of the fittest!” We pontificate on those who should “Sacrifice for the American way of life.”

What we will not say is, “I am greedy and selfish and don’t care if others live or die, because I still have what I want.” Even now with the availability of vaccinations, Texas and Mississippi won’t even hold enough grace to let people get protected before they throw open the doors and windows, making people even more vulnerable to the variants of this virus – about which we still have much to learn.

No – not God’s will. Instead, this was a most profound and telling demonstration of American spirituality. Americans worship capitalism and violence and these who have died have been the sacrifices made to those gods.

I am beginning to make room to sit with what I cannot control, and in my heart, I am crafting the liturgy that addresses the weariness of ambiguous and unrelenting grief.

January 6 is the day I would have been observing the Christian remembrance of Epiphany. (Yes, I know this means lots of different things to lots of different Christians, but I’m talking about me here, so remembrance.) But like everybody else, I was gripped by the scenes of insurrection unfolding in Washington, DC. Incited by the president, the loyalists he invited to rally with him became a terrorizing mob and stormed the Capitol building.

I’m sitting here in the wee hours of morning reclaiming space to ponder the Epiphany, and all I can think is the fact that as the violence was raging in and around the Capital Building, the president and his lawyers were calling senators – the same folk hunkered down under a table somewhere, taking cover from mob violence – urging the senators to delay the certification of the Electoral College results. He didn’t hear folks yelling in the background?

As the writer of the gospel of Matthew tells the story (Matthew 2), three wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem looking for a baby. They asked around, “Hey, have you seen the baby King? Yeah, he’s Jewish. We are not, but that doesn’t matter. We saw a star and we have come to pay him some respect.” 

King Herod heard about their inquiries and was afraid. Matthew says Herod was afraid as were all of the leaders and all of the people. So, Herod tries to get information about the baby’s whereabouts from these three men. He tells them, “y’all go on and keep looking and then come back and let me know where the baby is.” 

The three wise men go on about their mission and the star they had been following leads them to Mary and Joseph’s house. They offer the gifts they had been carrying for this baby, and my heart just swells at how I imagine the scene. I love a baby shower!!! The three men must have visited for a while. They stayed long enough to go to sleep and have a dream. (I don’t know if they stayed at Mary and Joseph’s house but shout out to Mary and Joseph if they had the bandwidth to provide hospitality for strangers with a newborn. I don’t imagine Jesus was any different than any other baby, despite your hallmark cards. My first baby screamed for three months. Solid. I never slept. I digress….) 

Of course, we all have questions about this story. Herod ain’t see that blazing star in the sky? And while I might buy that Herod was afraid, I’m not really swallowing the idea that all of the leaders and all of the people in Jerusalem were afraid about the same thing that had Herod fearful. My guess? They were afraid of Herod, not afraid of the news of Mary and Joseph’s child – the baby of their neighbors, a baby born to one of them, a new baby in the community. But Matthew doesn’t offer an interview with the man on the street, so….

I wasn’t there. But I am here 3 days after the 12th Day. And I know how leaders who rule by fear and the threat of violence scare everybody in the world. The fear is not respectful “awe.” It is the fear of power-hungry leadership hell-bent on destroying everything that does not yield to them. I wasn’t in Jerusalem, but I am here in the United States. I see how horrid, narcissistic, unfit, unstable, and violent leadership feeds on destruction. I see how this leadership has set the stage for a different kind of massacre. A virus that is ravishing the globe has killed 369,000 people just in the United States as of this writing. Instead of pulling out all stops to curb the loss of life, instead of calling on the country to work together to protect one another, instead of providing leadership that makes room for grief and lament so that people turn toward each other, with his delusional fears the president turned people on each other. Intent on staying in office against the will of the people, the president has set in motion a level of violence – physical and psychic – that is simply astonishing and yet, familiar. 

Death and collateral damage are the calling cards for this kind of leadership because these leaders are so full of themselves that they won’t even look up to see what others see – a star in the sky. 

Again – I wasn’t there. But I am here. The 12th day – “Epiphany” – is a reminder that the wise ones followed “revelation and insight” on a journey of honor. They went in search of someone intent on giving from their substance and their hearts. And practicing the journey toward each other, engaging in the practices of giving to one another from substance and heart positions us to see God in each other. I know that for myself.

Epiphany is also a reminder to pay attention to instinct and dreams. (Side note: since we are talking about a baby here, I’m gonna take the liberty to say — If your child says that someone makes them feel strange, if they say they don’t want to hug some adult or visit with somebody – listen. Please listen to them. When you do, you are teaching them to trust their own instincts over conventions and cultural norms that often put children at risk. If your child doesn’t want to hug Uncle Joe or Cousin Laura, why are you forcing it?) 

Okay – my point here is pay attention to your instinct and dreams. Pay attention to common sense. Out of an abundance of caution, not trying to be part of the set-up, not wanting to tip off the feds, not trying to upstage the plans of the Liberator before he’s finished teething, not wanting to be complicit with power or promote the agenda of empire — whatever you are feeling but are too afraid to say: follow your instincts. Go home a different way, in the other direction, far away from the leaders who don’t have it in them, don’t have the insight to “uncenter themselves,” leaders who don’t care enough to stop and attend to the extraordinary, whether it be the extraordinary deaths in the land or the extraordinary star in the sky.

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Matthew 2: 1-12 (NRSV)

2In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ²asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” ³When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; ⁴and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ⁶‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” ⁷Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”

⁹When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹²And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

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Racism is not a feeling.

Racism is not just something you are susceptible to if you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

Racism is not going to be dismantled by evangelizing belief in the same God who looks away as you demonize Black bodies, brutalize refugees and immigrants, erase the humanity of LGBTQIA persons, crusade against Muslims, diminish women…

Racism and capitalism and homophobia and xenophobia and every-other-religion-except-Christianity-aphobia and classism and sexism and ableism and adultism and all of their cousins live in the same building. The doors of their apartments are open to each other and they visit and fellowship with one another because their ancestors taught them to stick with family. They laugh at your attempts to fumigate their spaces with the very thing that feeds them: hatred. They set the family dinner table with your pronouncements and eat to their hearts’ content.

A thought: you should not be allowed to hold a job financed by the people if you don’t have a basic understanding of systemic oppression.

Another thought: Biblically – there will be no healing without justice. No reconciliation without repentance and repair. No fellowship and friendship dependent upon cheap grace. No beloved community and kin-dom without a radical revolution of values. You can’t get there wearing the same fashions that fly here.

In the name of Jesus the Black Christ.

The past couple of weeks have been painful ones for those who care about American race relations. On the heels of the slayings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I sought out someone who could help me make sense of the current moment.I turned to Emma Jordan-Simpson, the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
— Read on nynmedia.com/content/leader-leader-emma-jordan-simpson

Interfaith Day of Prayer – Prayer from Emma Jordan-Simpson
— Read on www.ucc.org/idop_emma_jordan-simpson_5_7_2020

“I woke up this morning with one of the songs of our ancestors on my mind:

I’m a rolling, I’m a rolling,

I’m a rolling through an unfriendly world!

I’m a rolling, yes, I am rolling

Through an unfriendly world.

O Sister, won’t you help me?

O Sister, won’t you help me to pray?

O Sister, won’t you help me?

Won’t you help me in the service of the Lord?”

Our songs tell us that we knew how to ask our kin for help as we were risking it all to make our way through to freedom. Our kin learned to listen for the sounds of the ones headed to Beulah, to freedom.

What does it sound like when our kin are asking for help today to make it through to freedom? What are the sounds our ears and hearts need to be attuned to if we claim to stand on the shoulders of those whose “vocation” was the Underground Railroad?

I can not hear these songs as just disembodied tunes with meaningless or otherworldly lyrics. And, I think my ancestors would caution me not to think that being able to occupy the same burning houses of the masters whose greed created a world dependent on the subjugation of people, any people, is freedom. Anybody in the business of subjugating is adding another brick on the walls that hold up the world white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, and slavery made. I ain’t free until we are all free.

I don’t want a world that just replaces those powers with their cousins. I don’t want my grandchildren’s world to look back at me, tracing the contours of the chains I placed on someone else.

I believe another world is possible.

So, this morning I woke up with a determination to keep on rolling through.

To pray – to keep watch in God’s direction.

To stay in the “service of the Lord” – the work of liberation.

To own my vocation.

I am the Underground Railroad.

“There is a lot of embedded symbolism within the narrative of the piece. The contours of the base represent the Maryland/Delaware Peninsula, where Harriet was enslaved, eventually escaped, and continued to return for her freedom raids. The dramatic step up/cut is the Pennsylvania state line, and they are stepping out of the slave states to an elevated freedom. The wind illustrates the peril of the journey but is also a metaphor for the intense opposition she faced. The dress is enveloping the girl, billowing protectively like a flag, and is meant to represent all of the legal protections afforded every United States citizen-a symbol of the future equality to come. Each hand signifies an attribute, Determination, Protection, Fear, and Trust. The Union military coat represents Harriet’s time in South Carolina raiding plantations and bringing the freed slaves back to Union occupied Beaufort.” (Artist – Wesley Wofford)

https://www.woffordsculpturestudio.com/#