What to do now?

(c) 2004 The Center for Economic and Social Justice

The fourth of the Fourteen Precepts of Engaged Buddhism, as articulated by the Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh for the Order of Interbeing, is this:

"Do not avoid suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering, including personal contact, visits, images and sounds. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world."  

Over the past few years I've been doing increasingly more of precisely this, albeit, I must confess, primarily from the safety of my home.  Even so, I have had my head and my heart stretched wider than I'd thought they could be.

While I was still in my position at UUHQ, we were gearing up for a "common read" of The Death of Josseline:  Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands by Margaret Regan.  The stories she relates make all too painfully human the face(s) of the battle over illegal immigration. Principles and policies are exposed as really being very much beside the point -- human suffering on a scale nearly unimaginable (at least by me, then) is what's ultimately at issue here. How can you read stories like these and not take them in?  And having taken them in to your heart, how can you be the same?

About a year later, in the summer of 2012, someone turned me on to the book Take This Bread: a radical conversion by Sarah Miles.  This is the story of how a self-described "lesbian left-wing journalist" (and professed atheist) came to a deep connection to a religious/spiritual understanding she'd never known, in a Christianity she'd never imagined.  The vehicle for this was her work through the food pantry program at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco.  Her book is a beautiful spiritual memoir, and this dimension touched me deeply.  But she also provides a window into the world of urban poverty (at least as experienced by this woman, in that place, at that time).  Again, humanizing what can so easily be for so many of us something of an abstraction. And oh man, was it inspiring to see how love can be made palpable and what it then can do!

Near the end of that year came The New Jim Crow: mass incaration in the age of colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.  This one was not so much inspiring as enraging.  Alexander rather convincingly makes the case that our current system of mass incarceration -- largely synonymous with our "war on drugs" -- is an intentionally designed new strategy in an age-old effort.  Slavery maintained a very clear caste system in our country, based on race.  With the end of slavery, Jim Crow laws were enacted which perpetuated essentially that same caste system.  Once Jim Crow was overturned some new mechanism was needed, and the war on drugs was born.  She did not provide as many moving narratives, but her clear and convincing arguments made me see differently when I encountered people here in Charlottesville who'd been caught up in this system.

2014 started off with me watching the movie Dark Days, a documentary film by Marc Singer.  (This was quickly followed by watching the documentary short called Fragile Dwellings, based on the work of Margaret Morton, which was included as an extra on the DVD of Dark Days.  In quick succession, I then read Teun Voehoten's Tunnel People, and two of Morton's books -- The Tunnel:  the underground homeless of New York City and Fragile Dwelling, the print version of the short I'd watched earlier.) All of these tell the stories of some of the unhoused women and men who came to make their homes in a stretch of deserted Amtrak tunnel beneath the streets of New York City.  Once more human beings took root in my heart instead of simply finding more concepts in my head. "The homeless" had a more human face. 

This past month I read Tattoos on the Heart:  the power of boundless compassion, by Gregory Boyles.  Fr. Boyles -- known affectionately as "G" by the people with whom he lives and works -- tells story after story about the ways he has found God, and ways he has found to share God, in and with the gang youth of one of LA's most gang-ridden neighborhoods. It is astonishing to me that anyone's heart and psyche could survive the kind of ministry he's found himself called to do, yet perhaps not so surprisingly his testimony is that the "secret of his success" has been in his refusal to see labels and, instead, to be with these youth. His humanity meets their humanity, and they embrace each other.

And now I have just finished reading Finding God in a Bag of Groceries:  sharing food, discovering grace, by Laura Willis.  This time it's the story of rural poverty -- 'though again it's the ministry of a food bank at work -- and once more I've found myself looking into a world I could not have even fully imagined, so different is it from my own, yet finding there more of the "we" that is revealed when we let go of divisions between "us" and "them."

From undocumented immigrants in the southwest, to the urban poor in San Francisco, to people of color caught up in a (legal) system of oppression and dehumanization through the US, to homeless women and men making homes for themselves among society's refuse in NYC, to inner city gang youth in LA, to the urban poor in Tennessee -- it's been quite a ride. I've "seen" things, and been allowed to "listen in" to experiences so radically different than my own, than any I've known. 

And yet, what has struck me most is not the differences; it's the common humanity all of us share. One thread that runs through all of these books and films is that our guides into these "other worlds" recognize, witness to, and affirm what we Unitarian Universalists refer to as, "the inherent worth and dignity of every person."  (Often said as if we, alone, understood that phrase!)  Over and over again the message is the same one I preach so often -- there is no "us" and "them" ... there is only "we."

So a question rises up in me -- what to do now?  How can I -- and how can we as a faith community committed to ending oppression and affirming the inherint worth and dignity of all beings -- respond? That's a question I hope we'll all wrestle with, dance with, for a good long time.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Radical Hospitality

This is my sermon from September 25, 2011, delivered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church -- Unitarian Universalist.

[Listen to the Sermon]

Just a few moments ago we sang, “Come, come, whoever you are.”   Did you feel the energy in the room?  Those words may have come from a Sufi poem, but that’s our song, isn’t it?

(Singing)  Come, come, whoever you are
wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving,
ours is no caravan of despair,
Come, yet again, come.

That’s us, right? 
And last week we sang about gathering ‘round the “welcome table,” and how there’re all kinds of people and no fancy manners there.  Everyone is welcome.  We’re a welcoming congregation, after all, right?  Anyone is welcome here.  Everyone is welcome here!

That’s us.  That’s what we aspire to.  That’s what we aspire to be.  No caravan of despair – there are enough of those around us these days; a welcome table where everyone is invited.

Did you know that according to anthropologists you can tell a lot about a people – a community, a clan, a nation – by the rules they’ve established about eating.  Commensality.  That’s the word for it.  Commensality.  And more accurately it’s about the  rules for who can eat together, and under what circumstances.

When I was growing up my family and I were faithful watchers of the PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs.  The show depicted the goings on of the Bellamy family in Edwardian England (the people “upstairs”) as well as among their domestic servants, led by the indomitable Mr. Hudson (the people “downstairs”).  And oh you’d better believe that there were rules about who could eat together.  These people knew their place or, rather, their places since they most definitely did not share the same place.

And while I haven’t seen it yet (or, for that matter, yet read the book it’s based on), I’ve understand that the same thing comes through in the recent movie The Help.  There is a place for everyone, and everyone has their place.

I came across this concept of commensality in the writings of John Dominic Crossan, a Catholic theologian and perhaps one of the most well-known members of the so-called Jesus Seminar.  Crossan says that we can tell a lot about Jesus’ concept of the Kingdom of Heaven by looking at the way Jesus ate.  And according to Crossan, the way Jesus ate needs to be called “open commensality.”  (So, can I say that Jesus was an early proponent of, “open sauce”?)

Jesus ate with anyone. Everyone.  Tax collectors, prostitutes, and Pharisees.  The elite and the neglected.  Anyone who’d eat with him, Jesus would eat with them.  This, says Crossan, is what it’s really all about.  This is what that Kingdom Jesus kept talking about looks like.  All kinds of people at that welcome table, and no fancy style keeping folks apart.  Come, come, whoever you are. 

And we feel good, listening to this, because we know that TJMC is such a place. 

But what if you’re a Republican?  How welcome would you feel here, really?  Or if you’re a believing Christian?  Or an immigrant with rudimentary English skills?

I’m not asking these questions to try to make any of us feel bad, or to suggest that we’re a bunch of intolerant heathens (although a lot of us would probably resonate with the “heathen” part).  I ask these questions, and the myriad I could add, because I want to encourage us to stop.  To stop and look at ourselves as we are, and not simply as we wish we were.

Not everyone is welcome here.  There are a whole lot of folks who would feel downright unwelcome.  Who’d feel uncomfortable.  Out of place.  Wounded by some of the things we say and do here without even thinking, the assumptions we make.  And, to be brutally honest, that’s natural.  It seems to be human nature to feel most comfortable with folks who seem the most like you.

So this is exactly where the idea of hospitality comes in.  Anybody can welcome a friend into their home; anyone can make a member of the family feel welcomed.  Hospitality, though, is different, and it’s a lot harder.  A lot harder.

The root of the word “hospitality” is the Latin word hospes which means “stranger” or “guest.”  Even in Greek, the word for hospitality is philoxenos which means love (philo) of stranger (xenos).  The practice – the spiritual practice – of hospitality, then, is all about offering a welcome to the stranger, or The Other, the person who is not part of our circle.  The truly hospitable welcome table will have not only all the folks you’d expect to see there but the ones you wouldn’t, as well.  In Jesus’ day it was radical that he would eat with “tax collectors” and “harlots.”  I remember the day I was shocked to realize how often he ate with the Pharisees!  Hospitality – true, radical hospitality, the kind that’s worth our time talking about as a spiritual community – has to reach out to those beyond our circle with as warm a welcome as to those within it.

And there’s another dimension that etymology reveals or, rather, maybe it’s just an expansion of this first point.  The word hospes means “stranger” but in some circumstances it also means “host.”  In the same way, xenos means both “stranger” and, sometimes, “host,” so philoxenos means both “love for the stranger” and “love from the host.”  There’s a blurring of the lines, a dulling of the distinctions, when hospitality ripens in its fullness.  There is, as we heard in our reading a little earlier, an “anemic” form of hospitality – or, I would say, pseudo-hospitality – in which, “the host is always the host, the guest is always the guest, and there is no doubt in anyone’s mind who is in charge.”  There is a façade, but no real substance. 

This might be helpful in describing the difference.  (This image also comes from John Dominic Crossan, who was trying to describe Jesus’ open commensality.)  Imagine that you’re at home one evening when you hear a knocking.  You open your front door and discover a homeless family that’s recently been living under a nearby bridge with some other folk.  They tell you they haven’t eaten all day.  Do you:

a)      Invite them to go around to the back door where you meet them with some food?

b)      Invite them to go around to the back door where you invite them in to your kitchen for something to eat?

c)      Invite them to come in and join the dinner party that’s going on in your dining room?

d)     Invite your guests to take all of the food and beverages and go down to the bridge to share the party?

Let’s set aside for now the deeper systemic issues that are unaddressed in this example.  I know a lot of you want to go there.  I do too, honestly.  And I’ll admit both that I want to go there because I think we need to address those systemic issues, and because this other thing – this issue of hospitality – scares me.

Because, to be honest, I’ve got to confess that I kind of like the idea of keeping the host the host and the guest the guest and leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind who is in charge . . . especially if I’m the one in charge and the guests are the kind of people I feel kind of uncomfortable around.  After all, I get to reap the benefits of my hostliness (if I can coin a term).  I can feel good about my generosity, my hospitality, my inclusivity, and whenever things get uncomfortable I can ask people to leave and let things get back to “normal” for me.

A while back I posted an article on our congregation’s FaceBook page about another church – in Winnipeg – that had voted in 2000 to suspend its Food Pantry program because, and I’m quoting the headline here, “it is attracting too many poor people.”  A minister of this church is reported to have said, “It’s attracting a lot of street people that makes it uncomfortable.  It’s creating social unrest in the church”

Now, I have done some checking and it seems that this may be one of those things that fly around the web without taking the full context of the situation into account.  Be that as it may, as an illustration it just couldn’t get any better.  I do have some other ones, though:

I know of welcoming congregations that have gotten quite uncomfortable when people who were deemed too “flamboyantly” or “politically” gay started showing up.  And congregations that started to freak out a bit when their diversity initiatives actually started bringing in real numbers of people of color who wanted to do things a little differently. 

Let’s face it – as long as things continue to look and feel pretty much the way they always have, then diversity is a great thing.  As long as I get to retain my self-identity as host – and the whole backpack of privileges that go along with it – then I’m eager to welcome anyone as my guest.

But that’s not what it’s about.  Not by a long shot.  The call of the welcome table, the imperative of the spiritual practice of hospitality, is for me to step down from the seat at the head of the table and offer it to the stranger who is in front of me.  The invitation is for me to shed the roles and labels I’ve collected and to stand face-to-face with this other person in our common humanity.  That’s the Beloved Community.  That’s the Kingdom of God.  That’s the world we dream of.

And that’s really, really hard.  And scary.  Yet it can happen.

Earlier this month I took part in our monthly Food Pantry and I was struck by something I thought of as really beautiful.  There weren’t a whole lot of church people there as volunteers.  There were some, to be sure, but a lot of the volunteers were women and men, and even a child, who’d come to receive a bag or two of food.  These people were giving as well as receiving, as were the people from the church community.  In fact, it’d have been a challenge to a casual observer to say with certainty just who was from the church community and who was from the wider community because we were, in that moment, just one community.  There was a blurring of the lines, a dulling of distinctions.  Only “us” there.  I can’t wait to go back on October 7^th to experience this again.

(Singing)  “All kinds of people ‘round that table.  All kinds of people ‘round that table one of these days hallelujah.  All kinds of people ‘round that table.  Gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.” 

As we continue to “cultivate connections” this year let’s remember that it’s not just the plant that undergoes transformation.  The soil changes, too.  The entire ecosystem evolves.  Everything changes, and that’s just the way it should be.

In Gassho,

RevWik