This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us

I just finished reading this book for the third time in the last two years. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read, by one of the best writers I’ve ever read. It’s beautiful. As I sat holding the book, closed, a sacred artifact in my hands, it struck me how significant a collection of words on paper can be. It’s one of the miracles of our shared human existence. Words. And stories. In seven years of being a father that’s been working on me. I marvel at it. Kids start to communicate and it’s miraculous. At some point they won’t stop speaking 😅. My two kids are doing this in two languages, which is its own brand of beautiful.

I’m trying to embrace what Cole Arthur Riley’s words are doing to me and for me. The book is inspiring, challenging, devastating, and beautiful. She shows a sacred attentiveness to life and shares her story as a liturgy. She takes fifteen chapters (Dignity. Place. Wonder. Calling. Body. Belonging. Fear. Lament. Rage. Justice. Repair. Rest. Joy. Memory. Liberation.) and weaves stories and questions and truth into a tapestry of humanity and depth. She combines personal stories and those of her family origins with selective passages from the Bible, brilliantly interpreted (e.g. God as the first mathematician and artist). She gives a voice to inanimate entities: [the ground says] “Yes, you were made in the image of God, but God made you of me” (7). She draws on the work of other authors sparingly but when she does it’s gold: Dr. King, Howard Thurman, Simone Weil, Toni Morrison. There are only 27 entries in the bibliography—each worthy of attention.

This books helps me to see more deeply and to feel more acutely.

Before getting to pieces of the book that challenge me to think deeply, I want to share a glimpse of her storytelling. The book is filled with visceral, heart-wrenching stories. I was on the verge of tears throughout. You hear her family through her writing. In her chapter on “Joy,” she narrates her father’s embarrassment at having food stamps, and how her uncle transformed shame into joy while buying groceries.

My father says they went cuttin up all through that store. And he’s cracking up as he tries to tell me about it now. When they finally got to the counter and my father’s shame reappeared, my Uncle Dave snapped out the book of food stamps and started plucking bills out theatrically. And what do we owe you? he said, as if he were prim and polished. With a cart spilling over, they expected to have to pay more than the stamps could cover, so when the woman said $185, they let their knees go weak and start cracking up even harder. The whole store turned to look at them, two golden-skinned boys hanging on to each other, play-punching each other in their bellies and letting the howls echo between them.

We’re talking about relief. It was food, and it was such a relief. But it was more than that, he says. It was fun as hell. And he’s still smiling.

It requires attunement to practice humor without violence. You have to acquaint yourself with insecurity, people’s stories, and the needs in the room to bring levity into their heaviness without diminishing their pain. But done right, humor can hold together seams under the harshest duress. (161-2)

There are a few sections that contribute specifically to what I’m trying to do with students in Peru, in an attempt to be better humans. It’s all about what we learn when we’re confronted with difference and diversity and how that tells us something deep about God and humanity.

Wonder includes the capacity to be in awe of humanity, even your own. It allows us to jettison the dangerous belief that things worthy of wonder can only be located on nature hikes and scenic overlooks. This can distract us from the beauty flowing through us daily.

To be able to marvel at the face of our neighbor with the same awe we have for the mountaintop, the sunlight refracting—this manner of vision is what will keep up from destroying each other (36).

In her presentation, “Wonder” includes seeing and naming evil. It is not naive or blind, rather, an antidote to despair:

To be human who resembles the divine is to become responsible for the beautiful, for its observance, its protection, and its creation (40).

In her section on “Belonging,” the following trinitarian reflection has direct implications for life in community that we learn through travel:

People talk about God as three distinct people in one. If this is true, it means the whole cosmos is predicated on a diverse and holy community. And if we bear the image of God, that means we bear the image of a multitude. And that to bear the image of God in its fullness, we need each other. Maybe every culture, every household, every community bears that image in a unique way (73).

Closing the chapter, on mirrors, faces, and inner life:

We need other people to see our own faces—to bear witness to their beauty and truth. God has made it so that I can never truly know myself apart from another person. I cannot trust myself to describe the curve of my nose because I’ve never seen it. I want someone to bear witness to my face, that we could behold the image of God in one another and believe it on one another’s behalf (81).

On justice and dignity:

To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us (134).

On sacred story:

Few would deny that storytelling is core to what it means to be human (179).

On rest as sacred liberator, active contentment and joy that still dreams, truthfulness and justice in remembering, holy rage, and beauty—you’ll just have to read it.

In the preface Riley says she wants to reclaim “a contemplation that is not exclusive to whiteness, intellectualism, ableism, or mere hobby. And as a Black woman, I am disinterested in any call to spirituality that diverges my mind from my body, voice, or people” (ix). Near the end of the book, she says “I hope any truth I’ve written unfolds slowly, encountering you first as what I, Cole, believe to be true in this particular season” (187).

Maybe that’s why I had to sit with it for a year and a half and read it three times. This will most likely be a yearly read for me. It’s good for my soul.

Cole Arthur Riley is the author of Black Liturgies on Instagram. If you’re not quite ready to pick up a book yet, you can follow her there.

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Everything Belongs: the Gift of Contemplative Prayer

“If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.”

Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

(From Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, quoted at the opening of the second chapter)

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I really, really like Everything Belongs. I like it so much because it’s good for me. It functions for me as a sort of mantra. I tend to live inside my head. I search for the right thing to think—constantly. And this book exists to remind me that I’m more than what I think and that life is more than the sum of our thinking. This book invites me to open my eyes.

My early faith and religious experience helped form my identity. But it wasn’t long before I was just trying to “get it right.” That’s pretty normal for religion, but it can also drain you of life. I fall into the same old pattern when I make my life and reading and search all about thinking the right things.

The fundamental premise of this book is that there is something deeper to reality, that our everyday distractions don’t let us access. “The [God question] is resolved in you, when you agreed to bear the mystery of God: God’s suffering for the world and God’s ecstasy in the world” (17). Everything belongs: contemplation and spiritual sight mean holding the tensions. It’s about learning to see and a readiness to learn. God is at work in the darkness and despair, so even the dark moments “belong”—don’t rush through.

Rohr says that “we live ourselves into new ways of thinking,” not the opposite (19). I wrote in the margin: “But also, sometimes, we think ourselves into new ways of living.” That’s from experience, where something I’ve read or a thought I’ve been challenged with has changed the way I live. It’s both things, right? And maybe Rohr is right; living is the primary way of formation.

On being human:

In other words, our journeys around and through our realities, or “circumferences,” lead us to the core reality, where we meet both our truest self and our truest God. We do not really know what it means to be human unless we know God. And, in turn, we do not really know God except through our own broken and rejoicing humanity.

This bit has special significance to me in light of how I’ve brought the question of what it means to be human to my HULA students.

Spiritual Sight and Liminal Space

The key to spiritual sight is the starting point that you’re already there: you are already in the presence of God. We must learn to see it. “Prayer is not primarily saying words or thinking thoughts. It is, rather, a stance. It’s a way of living in the Presence, living in awareness of the Presence, and even of enjoying the Presence” (31).

Rohr argues that “most spiritual work is readying the student” (38). That’s my starting point at HULA because that was my experience: you learn when you’re ready to learn. I was a late bloomer. I wasn’t ready to learn when I studied abroad. I barely learned when I was in college. It wasn’t until grad school, when I took a church history class of all things, that I was finally ready to learn, and everything started to connect. Then Katie and I got to direct Harding in Zambia in the fall of 2012, and that’s when I began to see more deeply. The students we traveled with as well as our hosts in Zambia taught me something important about what it means to be human. My three months in Zambia brought me into a liminal space. It was “voluntary displacement for the sake of transformation of consciousness, perspective, and heart” (48). That’s the key piece about what gives travel the potential to be spiritually formative. “There is another world, much bigger and more inclusive, that both relativizes and re-enchants this world that we take as normative” (48).

I went on to write a dissertation about travel as a spiritual practice, so I won’t say more about that here. But when I first read this section of Everything Belongs back in 2018, things clicked into place. It’s not only about travel, but my experiences of travel—from my first ventures to the US from Italy, to mission trips and study abroad and everything in between (aka, vacation)—have opened me up to be ready to learn. I’ll repeat, I was a late bloomer, so it took me until I was 24 to travel with humility and honesty, the two virtues Rohr argues are the “foundation of all spirituality” (48). Only then was I able to hear something beyond what I already knew. It’s good to have our fundamental assumptions questioned every so often. Liminal space gives you a pattern for living and learning that becomes a part of the way you see all things. And it leads here:

When we can see the image of God where we don’t want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own (58).

The Contemplative Stance and Being Whole

On contemplation, this was a gut punch, and really the reason I’m taking the time to write something about this book, and others that are my favorites. It helps me stop.

Only then, when you stop the parade of new voices and ideas, will you see the underlying and ever-recurring patterns. (76)

But being nothing has a glorious tradition. When we are nothing, we are in a fine position to receive everything from God. (77)

“Prayer heals our split from life itself. It heals our disconnectedness from the deepest stream itself” (87). This is why I need this reminder: I wake up early, make coffee and read and read. I go about the rest of the day and connect with people. I spend the evening with my kids and go to bed, and the cycle repeats. I need the practice of connecting to the deepest stream. Otherwise I’ll walk blindly through each step.

On coming to peace within the search: “Prayer lives in a spacious place” (90).

As someone said, “If you understand it, things are just as they are. If you don’t understand it, things are just as they are.” The mystery is to be ready to receive things just as they are and be ready to let them teach us. (90)

The Vulnerability of God, Holy Tears, New Life

On the vulnerability of God, “forgiveness is God’s entry into powerlessness” (134).

A few days ago, my four-year old asked me if I ever cry. I told him that of course I cry, and that it’s good for us to cry sometimes. And then he said, “But Dad, I’ve never seen you cry.” Touché.

It’s an important critique. Toward the end of the book, Rohr says that “weeping is a gentle release of water that washes, baptizes, and renews” (148). Tears are a gift, and the church would do better to grieve than to accuse, as we are more often known for doing. “A Christian is one who, along with Jesus, agrees to feel, to suffer the pain of the world,” and shed tears. “We need to take the low road of Jesus back to tears” (152). And in the liminal space—that sacred, in between space—transformation is found. The divine pattern of transformation includes failure, death, so that the God of life may bring about something new.

The contemplative stance is the Third Way. We stand in the middle, neither taking the world on from the power position nor denying it for fear of the pain it will bring. We hold the realization, seeing the dark side of reality and the pain of the world, but we hold it until it transforms us, knowing that we are complicit in the evil and also complicit in the holiness. Once we can stand in that third spacious way, neither fighting nor fleeing, we are in the place of grace out of which newness comes. Creativity comes from here, and we can finally do a new thing for the world. (171)

Following Jesus, then, is “a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world” (179).

It’s the path of grounded, embodied wisdom, where everything belongs.

Helpful Mantras

Here are a few of the mantras from throughout the book that I’ll leave you with:

God’s life is living itself in me. I am aware of life living itself in me. (57)

God beneath you,
God in front of you,
God behind you,
God above you,
God within you. (57)

You cannot not live in the presence of God.

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be. (62)

I recognize that I’m in a river that is bigger than I am. The foundation and the flow of that river is love. Life is not about me; it is about God, and God is about love. (79)

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Whether you’re coming from a place of faith rooted in a specific tradition, or you no longer consider yourself a person of faith, the following disclosure might be helpful: Rohr is a Franciscan universalist who looks for truth in all of the great religious traditions. He writes mostly from a Jesus-centered space, but he also argues that “the Gospel is not a competing idea. It’s that by which we see all ideas in proper context” (94). So he leans on Buddhism quite a lot, as well other perspectives well outside of Christianity. I find a lot of what he writes compelling; you’ll have to see for yourself.

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On Falling in Love with Twitter, Love Lost, and New Beginnings for Text-Based Social Media

I loved Twitter. For years I loved Twitter.

Twitter’s beginnings and my love for words

In 2009 I got a desk job and began to pay attention to the world of tech. It coincided with my first-ever Apple Keynote, headlined by Steve Jobs introducing the first iPad. By “first-ever” I mean the first time I watched (and followed the liveblogs)—I wasn’t actually there. I was hooked.

That’s also when I got my first Twitter account. In the early days, I would share a lot, too much, and of course I cross-posted it all to Facebook for good measure. Nowadays I usually check Facebook just for the Memories feature, and laugh (and cringe) when I see occasional tweets that made it over to Facebook that are plain embarrassing.

Sometimes, though, what I see on Facebook memories is nostalgic, like the early manual retweet days, when you would write your comment, then “RT @username:” and then copy someone else’s tweet. Beyond the @-symbol for usernames, the #hashtags (all common now, but gibberish to most folks at the time), and a code-language including RT, yfrog, and link-shorteners like ow.ly, it was fun to watch a social network like Twitter take off.

Then Instagram happened, and we Twitter users leveraged Twitter to bootstrap Instagram. And of course, Instagram became way bigger than Twitter ever would be, because generally speaking people like pictures more than words.

But I always loved Twitter. With the advent of Twitter I started paying attention to words. Twitter’s 140-character limit was originally designed because Twitter was built with the idea that a @username plus 140 characters could fit into an SMS message. While the need to forward tweets via SMS faded quickly, the 140-character limit defined the platform. It intrigued me. In the early years, we would tweet with such intention, trying to make every word count. I thought about how poorly I had written so many papers for my undergraduate degree, and how much better they would have been if I had designed each sentence with the care I put into a tweet.

As Twitter grew, it needed to drive engagement for the sake of its ad business, and so grew the cynicism and toxicity that Twitter became famous for. I didn’t see much of that, however, thanks to 3rd-party apps. Twitter’s early years had been built on a rich 3rd-party app ecosystem, where people like Loren Brichter helped define the platform. He invented pull-to-refresh and the app Tweetie (which gave Twitter the idea for its logo). Eventually, Paul Haddad built Tweetbot (see the memorial). As I write this, the iOS App Store just celebrated its 15-year anniversary, so these early Twitter apps coincided with a brand new platform that was interesting and good. One of the great benefits of using a 3rd-party app for Twitter is that you never saw ads. (Another great benefit was seeing Instagram photos inline). And when Twitter switched to an algorithmic timeline, Tweetbot allowed me to continue viewing tweets only from the people I followed, chronologically.

For more than 10 years, I checked Twitter every single day. And once I whittled down my follow count to 100, I read every tweet every day. Every. Day. A bonafide Twitter completionist. And I like to think that it made me a better person. Since I had never really read websites before Twitter (remember my desk job?), and since I was careful about who I followed, I used Twitter like an RSS feed for websites like Daring Fireball and Six Colors. I followed writers and thinkers from all walks of life. Once I realized my own white male myopia , I followed some amazing women and people of color. I eventually came to know and learn so much from writers like Clint Smith and Nikole Hannah-Jones.

I like to think that my daily practice of reading Twitter enriched my life and expanded my understanding of diverse humanity.

Twitter’s Self-Destruction

Then, early in 2023, Tweetbot broke. A self-important oaf bought Twitter, shut down 3rd-party access to its APIs without any warning, and took over ruining Twitter, completing a years-long journey. And just like that, my daily practice of reading Twitter ground to a halt. I stopped cold turkey.

That was really weird. I didn’t miss Twitter per se, because I was (and am) bitter toward the company. I had long since stopped posting to Twitter, other than the occasional recommendation or retweet. But I missed reading my favorite websites.

The solution? Based on Marco Arment’s recommendation, I downloaded Unread, an excellent, minimalist RSS reader, and added a few websites that I had continue to read after Twitter’s demise. But I missed the community element of conversation around big events, like, say, WWDC, or the serendipity of an amazing thinker, like Esau McCaulley, sharing something they had read.

Twitter taught us that, while it may not be for the billions, there are at least hundreds of millions of people that have room in their life for a text-based micro-blogging platform, and in Twitter’s absence I was missing that. For WWDC 2023, I downloaded Ivory and followed my favorite tech writers on Mastodon. The familiarity was amazing and the conversations around Apple’s announcements (especially Apple Vision Pro!) was awesome. But for better or worse, Mastodon’s federation design and plurality of instances are a barrier to entry that limit its appeal to a wider audience. It’s great for my world of Apple hobby, but the women and people of color that I followed on Twitter were missing.

So, in June, I started checking Twitter again, every so often. And…meh. So many ads. And only a handful of the people I wanted to hear from were still there. And it’s Elon Musk’s thing. So many reasons not to love Twitter. At that point I was convinced of Twitter’s demise.

Then, the week of the 4th of July, it happened.

No, not BlueSky. I did get an invitation to BlueSky in June, got my username and— sad trombone —no one was there either.

Threads and my Current Optimism

Enter Threads.

Another Musk Misstep™ and it looks like Mark Zuckerberg and the Threads team decided to move up the timeline. It grew faster than any platform ever has, with 100+ million in the first week. I’m Threads user number 512,647, and it’s been fun so far. There are some early Twitter vibes to balance the caution Twitter taught us to have over more than a decade of seeing humanity’s worst in that medium. Clint Smith, Bernice King, and Esau McCaulley are on Threads, as are friends of mine Steven Hovater and Mark Slagle. Sandwich Analyst and friend Ben Lamb, table stakes. The one writer who I miss from Twitter is Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project. I find myself reaching for Threads even before Instagram. The algo is wonky (because I’m in Peru, I think), and there’s not a ton of content, but it’s been good.

The fact that most of the tech community I followed is over on Mastodon is a plus; maybe I can wean myself off of my obsession with the world of Apple. And now that I use an RSS client, the websites I know I want to read are in a designated place. So Threads exists for me in this happy medium of connecting with people over words and becoming a better person by leaning on others’ curiosity and expertise.

The Way Forward

I know that Threads is owned by Meta, which makes it tainted from birth. It doesn’t have a chronological timeline yet and no 3rd party access either. But I’m hoping that, at least for a time, it can just be, and that those of us there (read in Coach Beard’s voice: 78 followers for me so far, baby!) can enjoy sharing life and learning through words on a screen.

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Expanding the Meaning of US American Patriotism

Esau McCaulley, in his latest column for the New York Times:

In 1852 Frederick Douglass delivered what may be his most famous address, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” This time of year, quotations from the speech dart around Black social media as a subtle pushback on uncomplicated celebrations of American independence.

Douglass wondered what the enslaved might say if they were called from the plantations to reflect on themes of liberty, justice and equality. How might their words differ from the prose of the free orators normally asked to comment on American ideals? There is a revolution in the reorientation of perspective, when the powerless are given space to speak. That hasn’t changed.

The way McCaulley projects Douglass’s words into 2023 is prescient.

This bit about this examination of history coming from a place of love for the US expresses a similar sentiment that Nikole Hannah-Jones and the 1619 Project have maintained throughout their work: that it’s out of love for the US that we’re calling the US to account for its history, to remember, and to do better. McCaulley:

Our country wants a certain version of the American story told and will laud anyone willing to tell it. But uncritical celebration is a limited and false definition of patriotism. Instead, recounting the full story of America and asking it to be better than it is can be an expression of love (emphasis mine).

I wrote about Frederick Douglass’s speech a few years ago, the first time I read all the way through it. And I noticed his use of 2nd person pronouns, when Douglass refers to “your forefathers.” I didn’t know this, however:

A decade prior, Douglass, speaking to white Americans, referred to the founders as “your fathers.” Douglass and other Black Americans were outsiders. In 1862, he took ownership of them, including African Americans in the grand narrative of American history. The “you” of the American Revolution and its principles became a “we” during the battle against the Confederacy. Speaking of the Union effort in the Civil War, he said, “We are only continuing the tremendous struggle, which your fathers, and my fathers began 86 years ago.” Because white Americans had been willing to suffer for Black freedom during the Civil War, we were starting to live up to the idea that all men were created equal.

While McCaulley emphasizes that the work includes much more than “simply [reading] more Black literature,” I would argue that reading is as good a place as any to start.

I humbly suggest, then, taking a break from watching the news, social media—whatever allows you to take a deep breath—and clearing your mind. Open your mind while you’re at it, and start through one of these books this week:

• Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
• Nikole Hannah-Jones (editor/creator), The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Or the book I just started reading a couple days ago (which has been in my queue since 2020):

• Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

These authors care(d) deeply about US America. Let’s expand our notions of patriotism, listen, and learn.

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About ten years ago, my brother Seth asked me how many of the people I followed on Twitter were not white males. It was a loving sort of challenge and incredibly important for me. That day I changed. I chose to start learning by listening to a more diverse set of voices. I loved Twitter for that opportunity. I guess it’s a good moment to mourn the dumpster fire Twitter has become, and look for a better future and work toward better spaces to learn from each other.

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The Dignity of Difference

A few years ago, I listened to an interview that Krista Tippett did with Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks for On Being. I listened to it again after his death near the end of 2020. Sacks’s questions about “making room for difference” and “seeing the image of God in one who is not our image” became guiding questions for my life in Peru, for thinking about dignity and difference in a world where George Floyd is murdered by police while the world watches, for the process of learning through travel.

One of the lines of the interview that sticks with me the most is about unity creating diversity:

All life, everything — all the three million species of life and plant life — all have the same source. We all come from a single source. Everything that lives has its genetic code written in the same alphabet. Unity creates diversity. So don’t think of one God, one truth, one way. Think of one God creating this extraordinary number of ways, the 6,800 languages that are actually spoken. Don’t think there’s only one language within which we can speak to God.

I began a doctorate program a few years ago and I chose to research the impact of studying abroad in Arequipa in terms of intercultural spiritual formation, with Sacks’s questions as guiding emphases. That is, spiritual formation in God’s diverse world must be intercultural, it must orient us toward seeing God in people who are different than us. Travel heightens the opportunity for that type of growth. It was only after I finished my research, writing the dissertation, and defending it that I had time to actually read Sacks’s entire book.

And I loved it.

In The Dignity of Difference, Jonathan Sacks goes big, taking on globalization, social responsibility, capitalism and the market economy, justice, education, ecology, forgiveness, and hope.

Every human should at least read the prologue to this book. In 20 pages, Sacks does more to center particularity and difference in a world of globalization and universalism than anything else I’ve read. He is inviting, open, and hospitable in his writing. He asks: “Can we make space for difference? Can we hear the voice of God in a language, a sensibility, a culture not our own? Can we see the presence of God in the face of a stranger?” (5). In a world of interconnectedness, new types of tribalism are “driving us ever more angrily apart” (7). He acknowledges the destructive role religious particularity has played in world movements, but calls on people of faith to “be an equal and opposite counter-voice in the name of peace” (9). Jonathan Sacks was a rabbi and writes from an orthodox Jewish context.

Faced with fateful choices, humanity needs wisdom, and religious traditions, alongside the great philosophies, are our richest resource of wisdom. They are sustained reflections on humanity’s place in nature and what constitute the proper goals of society and an individual life. They build communities, shape lives and tell the stories that explain ourselves to ourselves (12).

This is particularly interesting to me because I teach a class on wisdom and justice, using the Bible’s wisdom books (Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs) and prophets (Amos and Isaiah) as a lens for those explorations. What Sacks argues for here is how this ancient Hebrew understanding of wisdom and justice might lead the way in a global conversation that our world needs.

He asks about how we recover moral responsibility and ethical language “when the link between individual agents, actions and consequences has become so tenuous” in the global market? Sacks is for the free market—it “is the best means we have yet discovered for alleviating poverty and creating a human environment of independence, dignity and creativity” (14). “Difference is the source of value” in a free market world (14). But the market is producing unequal outcomes at an ever-increasing pace and must be framed in the context of biblical justice—tzedakah—to center human dignity. Education, Sacks will say, “is the single greatest key to human dignity” (15).

“Can we live together? Can we make space for one another?…Can we recognize God’s image in one who is not my image?” (17) In this new universal order of global capitalism, “universalism must be balanced with a new respect for the local, the particular, the unique” (20).

The glory of the created world is its astonishing multiplicity: the thousands of different languages spoken by [hu]mankind, the proliferation of cultures, the sheer variety of the imaginative expressions of the human spirit, in most of which, if we listen carefully, we will hear the voice of wisdom telling us something we need to know (20-21).

And,

We must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges…from the quite different process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act, and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own (23).

Sacks talks about the benefits of and problems with globalism, capitalism, universalism and particularity. He’s fair and level-headed, sober about the problems our world is facing. If you think about it, he wrote soon after 9/11, and event which underscored just how destructive our lack of understanding one another can be. “Inequalities within and between countries has existed before. What is new in our situation is our consciousness of it” (30).

My recommendation is that you read the prologue, and see if that sparks a desire to dig into the meat of the book. Bafflingly, this book is not available electronically (not on the Kindle Store, Google Books, Kobo). Enter Open Library, which magically has it available to borrow. Or just take my word for it, order it, and know that you’ll be underlining it from start to finish.

Speaking of the finish, the final chapter is solid gold, tying his entire argument together. I sent a picture of the final two pages to my family, so that they could read this closing parable about faith:

Many years ago I had the privilege of meeting one of the great religious leaders of the Jewish world. He was the head of a large group of Jewish mystics. I was inspired by his teachings and impressed by the spirituality of his followers. But I had a question about the way of life he advocated. It seemed exclusive. In its intense and segregated piety it shut out the rest of the world. Was there not—I asked him—beauty and value outside the narrow walls in which he lived? He answered me with a parable.

Imagine, he said, two people who spend their lives transporting stones. One carries bags of diamonds. The other hauls sacks of rocks. Each is now asked to take a consignment of rubies. Which of the two understands what he is now to carry? The man who is used to diamonds knows that stones can be precious, even those that are not diamonds. But the man who has carried only rocks thinks of stones as a mere burden. They have weight but not worth. Rubies are beyond his comprehension.

So it is, he said, with faith. If we cherish our own, then we will understand the value of others. We may regard ours as a diamond and another faith as a ruby, but we know that both are precious stones. But if faith is a mere burden, not only will we not value ours. Neither will we value the faith of someone else. We will see both as equally useless. True tolerance, he implied, comes not from the absence of faith but from its living presence. Understanding the particularity of what matters to us is the best way of coming to appreciate what matters to others.

Difference does not diminish; it enlarges the sphere of human possibilities. Our last best hope is to recall the classic statement of John Donne and the more ancient story of Noah after the Flood and hear, in the midst of our hypermodernity, an old-new call to a global covenant of human responsibility and hope. Only when we realize the danger of wishing that everyone should be the same…will we prevent the clash of civilizations, born of the sense of threat and fear. We will learn to live with diversity once we understand the God-given, world-enhancing dignity of difference.

In short, start with the episode of On Being (🎧 Overcast), then move on to the book.

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How to Be Grateful in Every Moment (But Not for Everything) →

Here are two quotes that I want to hold onto and think about. From this episode of On Being with David Steindl-Rast:

Mysticism is the experience of limitless belonging…The mystic is not a special human being. Every human being is a special kind of mystic.

And, when Krista Tippet asked him what he is grateful for now, what gives him hope in light of the world’s mess and despair:

Well, one thing I have already said that’s on a larger scale: looking back and seeing that all the most difficult experiences always lead to something new and even something better, if we trust.

In order to keep us going, it is enough to be grateful for the next breath, because it’s not to be taken for granted that I can take another breath. And if I think of the millions of people who have breathing difficulties, and here I can breathe — just to remember that. Just be grateful for the next breath.

(🎧 Overcast)

Marvelous Spatuletail →

I came about this hummingbird thanks to my 7 year-old daughter’s class project on flora and fauna endemic to Peru. From wikipedia:

The marvelous spatuletail (Loddigesia mirabilis) is an Endangered species of hummingbird in the “brilliants,” tribe Heliantheini in subfamily Lesbiinae. It is endemic to northern Peru.

Here’s a 1-minute clip of this bird in action.

What a world.

Pursuing Geography and Making Worlds →

This is a tremendous interview, and, somehow, the first time I’ve become aware of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work. Geography began to fascinate me over ten years ago as we drove through the uninhabited Zambian countryside with Harding in Zambia, only to come across a small village in what seemed to me like the middle of nowhere. This excerpt on the why of geography reframes a question I’ve been trying to engage for the last decade:

Studying geography and studying therefore, as I like to put it, not “where” is Nebraska, but “why” is Nebraska? We have the same series of questions and problems and excitement, which is that in organizing ourselves with one another, with external materials and the environment, humans make places. And they make them and enhance them and destroy them. And those places have relations to other places; some are antagonistic, some are different. And there are the various forces that we’re trying so hard to come to terms with today. Such as the forces of global capitalism, the forces of racial capitalism, the forces of patriarchy, and so forth, all have a spatial expression — or I should say really a series of spatial expressions that we should, must be mindful of if we want to change that.

All of these “-isms” are located in time and space which makes wrestling with them as important as ever.

Next steps for me? I want to check out some of the essays in her book Abolition Geography.

(🎧 Overcast)

“Life as Protest” and Opting Out of Idiocy-Induced Paralysis

Craig Mod on November 2, 2020:

I’ve written this before but I constantly need to remind myself of it, so, once again: A certain kind of work, lifestyle, mode of living — in and of itself — is protest. That is, work that is curious and rigorous is implicitly an antipode to didactic, shallow bombastity. It is inherently an archetype against bullshit. That to be committed to this work or life of rigor (be it rigor focused on “art” or, as they say in Japanese, sakuhin, or family or athleticism or whatever), and to share it with the world is to opt-out of being paralyzed by idiocy, and help others who may be paralyzed find a path back to whatever fecundity of life it is that they deserve.

I’ve held this belief in my pocket these past four years. Wrapped my fingers around it as needed. Along with sane, productive, brilliant friends, a therapist, and a loving partner, it keeps me from seizing up. Who knows what this week or month will bring, but please remember: The very act of living, moving forward, not seizing up, is a protest, and a damn strong one at that. And, shit, if our collective brains are, by chance, uncoupled from the eternal low-level Doom Vibe of Unkindness in Power, use that as a boost to go even further. Take that energy and run with it. It’ll be a gift more now, than ever before. You know what to do with it.

Craig Mod is my favorite writer and I’m so thankful for his work. Coming back to this three months later and I can’t help but be deeply grateful for where we are now, finally, with a new US president. Things are far from perfect and it was a mess to get to and through January 21. But Craig’s words inspire to continue working hard and offering that work as a gift to the world no matter who is in office.

How to Think About Black History Month →

Clint Smith, from the latest issue of his excellent, new-ish monthly newsletter:

Black History Month is a chance to remember those who have made enormous contributions to this country, but it's also an opportunity to remember that those contributions did not just come from major figures. They also came from millions of Black folks whose names we’ll never know. It's the stories of ordinary Black people, those still living and those who have passed, that I think of most when we reflect on this country's history. It’s the story of Frederick Douglass, yes, but also the story of the millions of other enslaved people whose voices we don't hear. It's the story of Dr. King and of Rosa Parks, certainly, but also the story of the millions of Black people across the country and across generations who fought for civil rights in their local towns, communities, and neighborhoods—the stories that didn't make the front page of the paper. It’s the stories that take seriously the impact that centuries of oppression have had on Black people, while not limiting conceptions of Blackness singularly to a history of violence. It is a recognition of all that Black folks have done and continue to do in spite of that violence. And perhaps most of all, it’s essential to remember, acknowledge, and commemorate the exceptional contributions Black people have made to America, but also important to remember that Black people don’t need to do anything "exceptional” to justify or legitimate their place in this country.

My freshman year of college—15 years ago (!)—was my first exposure to Black History Month. Honestly, shamefully, I didn’t get it. I didn’t see its importance.

But things change. You grow up. The world forces you to open your eyes. And the last several years have been significant for me in terms of my own growth and grappling with US American history and US America today. I owe a significant part of that growth and challenge to Clint Smith’s voice.

Endless Creativity

Sometimes I am in awe of the sheer infiniteness of the creative process. When I think about new songs being written, new genres of music coming into being over time, the sheer number of new songs in every genre under the sun, I’m overwhelmed.

Similarly, when I see authors I follow on Twitter celebrating other authors’ publishing days, I think—wow. We’re still writing books. It’s the same feeling when I get to step into a library. Humans are still coming up with new things to say. To sing. To paint. To sculpt.

To create.

It’s easy to get sucked into the never-ending spiral of the human capacity for evil. Today I take a moment to celebrate the seemingly never-ending human capacity to create. Thank you, creators, for showing us what it means to be human.

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Wil Gafney on Hagar and Smashing the Biblical Patriarchy →

Wil Gafney, writing at Bible Odyssey:

Hagar is perhaps more epithet than name, ha “the,” gar “resident alien.” She is an African (Egyptian) woman or girl of childbearing age held in slavery by Sarah (Gen 16:1). Was the Hebrew-speaking audience who first heard her tale (and those of us who follow) supposed to believe that her Egyptian name just happened to sound like a Hebrew expression labeling her as other? Should we imagine that her enslavers didn’t bother with the name she had been given and called her that epithet so much it became her name as far as they were concerned? However much agency Hagar has—and it is substantial—her story is an element of someone else’s story. So no one bothers to ask, learn, remember, or record her (true) name. Her story appears in Gen 16 and Gen 21:1-21.

Despite “Bible Odyssey’s” weird name and ugly website I just stumbled across, this is an excellent resource from the Society of Biblical Literature with world class contributors. Just goes to show how many resources are out there, at least for the English speaking world, easy to access, but unknown to me.

If you’re interested to read a bit more from Gafney, start here: Smashing the Biblical Patriarchy. She doesn’t glaze over the raw, provocative details (e.g. rape, incest, violence) that are somehow easy to overlook if you grew up with a childish fairy-tale version of the Abraham and Sarah story.

See also: this thought-provoking lecture for Evolving Faith: A “Willingness to be Disturbed.” (Overcast)

The Myth of the American Dream

D. L. Mayfield kills it. Her book is prophetic.

What do I mean by “prophetic”? First, a quick overview of the entire story of the Hebrew Bible.

God called a family and then a tribe to be different than the rest of the world, so that God could bless the world through this tribe. God freed a whole nation of enslaved people so that they could be a different sort of presence in the world, a sort of priesthood whose purpose was to bring the experience of the divine to every family on the earth.

Fast forward a few centuries and this people became an empire. They abused their power in order to enslave others to build a temple to the God who liberates enslaved peoples—all under a religious façade. In the following centuries a group of people rose up from within this nation and articulated the first clear vision of social justice in human history. They called oppressive kings to account. They said you can’t worship the God who liberates while you are actively oppressing others. Their goal was to get this nation back on track with the original mission: be a different kind of tribe in the world so that the world can know what God is like. This was the prophetic imagination, calling power to account for the sake of wellbeing.

Back to the book: Mayfield’s voice in this book is prophetic in challenging the faux-religious mythology that surrounds the founding of the United States of America. She challenges the current narrative of US exceptionalism that is only exceptional for some.

Her empathy shines through her bristling critique. She’s not just interested in deconstructing the myth. Her life and relationships are hinging on being able to reconstruct, to build something new. She’s asking Christians to love their neighbors, especially the global neighbors who have sought refuge within the US.

Those who have grown up in Christian evangelical circles in the US will identity with Mayfield’s story. She is deeply uncomfortable with the state of Christianity in the US, especially the last four years. This discomfort moves her to action. Those who see this particular expression of US Christianity from the outside will come away with more history behind the hypocrisy.

From the introduction:

The myth of the American Dream not only baptizes the actions and desires of the privileged but also places the blame of inequality on those who are already disadvantaged, instead of turning the focus on changing the unjust systems.

In this book I will consider the narratives lying beneath the surface of so many easy answers that both American culture and American evangelicalism have given to the problem of suffering in an unequal and unjust world. I will attempt to show what it has been like to learn to practice the discipline of lament and how I am being changed by my relationship to people who are exiles from the American Dream—those who have no way to win or who have been excluded from the very beginning. I will share how I have tried, and failed and keep trying to live in opposition to what I’ve been told (even by the church) is best for me. The more I try to follow Jesus, the more I realize that if the gospel isn’t good news for the poor, the imprisoned, the brokenhearted, and the oppressed, then it isn’t good news for me either (6-7).

The book is divided into four parts: affluence, autonomy, safety, and power. I’ll share a favorite passage from each.

On the White Savior Complex (in part 1, affluence):

The people in my neighborhood who have experienced forced migration don’t need a hug from a strange woman. What they need are good neighbors. They need people to live next door to them, to send their kids to school with theirs, to vote for policies that protect instead of harm them. They need people whose lives are intricately bound up with their flourishing (18).

From part 2, autonomy:

Someone’s kids have to attend the worst school in your city. In your mind whose kids should that be? I think our answers to that question reveal a great deal about how deeply the American value of autonomy has been lodged in our hearts. We will fight to ensure that our kids get the best, and we try to forget about everyone else—unless perhaps, every once in a while, there’s an opportunity for charity, to give back, or to “love on” that fits our needs and maintains the status quo of the hierarchy (and makes us feel better, to boot) (77).

Mayfield tells the story of the school her kids go to. She wanted to show how she intended to help the school out. And the busy principal pointed out that there were a lot of good things happening at the school. There were already a lot of good families there, and her family was welcome to be a part of it.

The book is filled with stories that are challenging and encouraging. Mayfield is raw and honest about her attitude, privilege, and preconceived notions. She asks questions that are thought-provoking and step on your toes. But you welcome her to step on your toes because you know she’s had her toes stepped on too.

On the illusion of safety and what true peace would look like (part 3, safety):

Aisha made it to safety, just barely. She had to flee her town when it was set on fire, when people targeted her city due to their ethnicity. She has one badly damaged book of photographs, pictures from her wedding where she should look gorgeous, radiant, full of possibility. But instead the photos are warped almost beyond recognition. Still, she shows it to me one day because it is all she has. The day she shows it to me is a day that Donald Trump is holding a press conference about the need to build a larger wall on the US-Mexican border. I think about walls as metaphors, how the problem isn’t the concrete or the steel being used to secure a border but the reasoning behind it. Everyone wants to be safe, both the people who voted for the wall and people like Aisha. Who should we listen to the most? Who is truly in danger?

I think of Aisha and her son. Her son, born in a new land, one where her mother cannot visit. And yet she gave him a name that means “peace” as an act of defiance. Do we really want safety? Or do we want true peace? As Aisha and countless prophets and poets in the Scriptures will tell us, there is no way to guarantee safety in the world. The only way to move forward is with righteousness—true justice and equality for all. Then, and only then, will we ever experience a measure of peace that will ripple forth into the next generations, reminding them that they once were the ones in need and could be again someday (122-123).

Finally, on power and empire and myth:

I see the tendrils of these viewpoints in my own mind. Today I can see fractures both big and local in the American evangelical church, and still I won’t believe in an ending. American evangelicalism will live on, it will weather the storm of attaching itself to the pursuit of power at the cost of loving their neighbors. It cannot end. This stubborn thought remains, and the quiet belief behind it is where the real power of empire lies: America, and more specifically White evangelical expressions of Christianity in America, cannot die because it is inherently blessed by God. This is ingrained in my brain, where this vicious myth has taken root and made itself true. This is how empire always works, by convincing us there is no other path forward except the one where we are always victorious. And this is how the narrative of empire is working, even now, in my own heart and soul and mind.

It isn’t that I am anti-American, not really. As James Baldwin said, “I love America more than any country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” Empires are complicated structures; no matter where we live on this earth, we live with some sort of relationship to empire—and we need to figure out how to live as disciples of Christ right where we are. As a middle-class White American female, the dominant culture of the United States has been pretty good for me, which is important to articulate. I am someone who benefits from the empire at work around me, which means I have a spiritual and moral responsibility to interrogate the narratives that surround me. I need to seek out those who have experienced exodus and exile, and I need to contemplate what life beyond or in spite of empire might look like: contemplating the end of how everything always has been and supposedly always will be. There is nothing in Scripture, nothing in Jesus, that says my proud and terrible and interesting country is particularly blessed, has some special favor, has some special reason for existence (145-146).

Thinking back, maybe most of the book is devoted to deconstruction. It’s hard to get through that when the mythology is so ingrained. But the epilogue, in particular, shares beautiful stories of something new:

All of these people find they are changing, shifting, as their worlds expand outward. It looks a lot like the joy of welcoming a new baby into the family—the gift of the unexpected, the birth of new possibilities.

There’s the librarian who sings the name of each child at the weekly story time, a silly little song that repeats the name of the child over and over again and makes the children all beam with happiness. He tells me he sings this song not just as a way to learn their names but as a way to combat the negativity they might hear in their own life. He tells me studies show that saying a child’s name in a positive tone eight times a day can help undo the damage of only hearing their name when they’re in trouble for something. I think about this, about a man in a small library’s multipurpose room, singing and clapping and saying each child’s name with love and joy, his own little ministry of naming (191).

Beautiful.

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My one pushback to this book would be questioning Mayfield’s authenticity. It only came up once, when I asked myself: Can anyone really be so bound up in God’s vision for the marginalized that they can’t be content until that vision becomes a reality? Of course, I can’t answer that because I don’t know her.

I will say, from following her on Twitter for the past year (that’s the next best thing to actually knowing someone, right?), she lives and breathes Black Lives Matter, she’s always asking questions, she calls power to account (especially white Christian power), and she’s not afraid of tear gas.

That’s the type of person I’m willing to listen to.

---

I mentioned earlier that one of the marks of a good book is the reading list you come away with. Well, here’s my list after this one:

• Willie Jennings - The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race
• Lisa Sharon Harper - The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right
• Martin Luther King Jr. - Strength to Love
• Oscar Romero - Scandal of Redemption: When God Liberates the Poor, Saves Sinners, and Heals Nations
• William T. Cavanaugh - Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire
• Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
• Randy S. Woodley - Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision
• James H. Cone - The Cross and the Lynching Tree
• Brian Doyle (ed.) - A Sense of Wonder: The World’s Best Writers on the Sacred, the Profane, and the Ordinary
• Walter Brueggemann - Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile

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The Warmth of Other Suns

This book is fantastic. It was one of those books where I finished, and then I just lay in bed for half an hour, looking up at the ceiling and letting it soak in. I couldn’t read anything else yesterday because I was still just thinking.

I knew little about the Great Migration before reading it. And reading about changes to the landscape of the US throughout the time period—from World War 1 (1914) through the Civil Rights Movement (around 1970)—there are so many connections to today’s world. This is an important book.

Isabel Wilkerson makes this engaging. It’s a history book that reads like a novel: narrative nonfiction. She tells the story of three individuals and their families who moved to the North, escaping the Jim Crow South, in three consecutive decades: Ida Mae Gladney left Mississippi to go to Chicago in 1937; George Starling left Florida to go to New York (Harlem); and Robert Foster moved from Louisiana to Los Angeles. The narrative rotates between these three stories, their lives in the South, the terrifyingly uncertain journey North (or West), and their struggles to make a life. Wilkerson also zooms out throughout the book to give big picture analysis and details.

Heart-wrenching. Emotional. Enlightening. Striking.

It’s long—600+ pages (book length is always obscured on the Kindle. Why is that?). But if you get a chapter or two into the lives of each of the main characters, you won’t want to put it down.

This tweet by Nikole Hannah-Jones—not about the book but still related—captures my thinking throughout:

You ever stop to think what you might have done with your life if you didn’t have to spend it fighting against racism or trying to overcome it?

The suppression of human flourishing because of racist human oppression is devastating. To fight against its effects is the work of a lifetime.

Here are some of my highlights to give you a taste of the book. Big picture:

It was during the First World War that a silent pilgrimage took its first steps within the borders of this country. The fever rose without warning or notice or much in the way of understanding by those outside its reach. It would not end until the 1970s and would set into motion changes in the North and South that no one, not even the people doing the leaving, could have imagined at the start of it or dreamed would take nearly a lifetime to play out. Historians would come to call it the Great Migration. It would become perhaps the biggest underreported story of the twentieth century. It was vast. It was leaderless. It crept along so many thousands of currents over so long a stretch of time as to be difficult for the press truly to capture while it was under way. Over the course of six decades, some six million black southerners left the land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly every other corner of America. The Great Migration would become a turning point in history. It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched. It would force the South to search its soul and finally to lay aside a feudal caste system. It grew out of the unmet promises made after the Civil War and, through the sheer weight of it, helped push the country toward the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s.

And:

Its imprint is everywhere in urban life. The configuration of the cities as we know them, the social geography of black and white neighborhoods, the spread of the housing projects as well as the rise of a well-scrubbed black middle class, along with the alternating waves of white flight and suburbanization—all of these grew, directly or indirectly, from the response of everyone touched by the Great Migration.

The three protagonists:

Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Foster, and George Starling each left different parts of the South during different decades for different reasons and with different outcomes. The three of them would find some measure of happiness, not because their children had been perfect, their own lives without heartache, or because the North had been particularly welcoming. In fact, not a single one of those things had turned out to be true. There had been sickness, disappointment, premature and unexpected losses, and, among their children, more divorces than enduring marriages, but at least the children had tried. The three who had come out of the South were left widowed but solvent, and each found some measure of satisfaction because whatever had happened to them, however things had unfolded, it had been of their own choosing, and they could take comfort in that. They believed with all that was in them that they were better off for having made the Migration, that they may have made many mistakes in their lives, but leaving the South had not been one of them.

Each section opens with poetry or excerpts from other Black authors. Here are two that stuck with me:

The lazy, laughing South
With blood on its mouth.…
Passionate, cruel,
Honey-lipped, syphilitic—
That is the South.
And I, who am black, would love her
But she spits in my face.…
So now I seek the North—
The cold-faced North,
For she, they say, is a kinder mistress.
— Langston Hughes, “The South”

And:

That the Negro American has survived at all is extraordinary —a lesser people might simply have died out, as indeed others have.
— Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family

If you aren’t ready to dive in yet, start by listening to Krista Tippett interview Isabel Wilkerson for On Being (Overcast):

Go to the doctor and they won’t begin to treat you without taking your history — and not just yours, but that of your parents and grandparents before you. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson points this out as she reflects on her epic work of narrative nonfiction, The Warmth of Other Suns. She’s immersed herself in the stories of the Great Migration, the movement of six million African Americans to northern U.S. cities in the 20th century. The book is a carrier of histories and truths that help make sense of human and social challenges at the heart of our life together now.

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Renata Flores, Quechua Rapper, Inspires →

Renata Flores came across my radar when a former student saw an article about her in the New York Times. Jason Kottke writing about her is my gauge for her getting traction in the US:

Quechua is an indigenous language family spoken by millions of people in the Andean region of South America, primarily in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. It was the main language of the Inca empire and today is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language in the Americas. In her music, Peruvian singer/songwriter Renata Flores combines modern forms like hip hop, electronic, and trap music with native instruments and vocals sung in Quechua.

Peru’s 1975 constitution recognized Quechua (and Aymara) as an official language in Peru. Even so, many families in the city aren’t up front about speaking it because of the historic discrimination Quechua-speakers have faced and still face to this day.

Rosa Chávez Yacila, for Vice:

It’s very common for many Quechua speakers to not teach their children or grandchildren the language because they consider this knowledge as a burden. To explain the shortage of active bilingualism in Peru, the linguist Virginia Zavala uses the concept of “linguistic ideologies,” which are the ideas that people have about languages. For example: French is the language of love; German sounds rough; Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish are similar.

Quechua, similarly to other indigenous languages, is associated with poverty, rural life, and illiteracy. These ideas have been shaped by history and society to the point that people hold on to these beliefs as if they were universal truths. And these “truths” are deeply embedded in their conscious thought process. Value hierarchies also exist with languages. Some are “worth” more than others.

The end result is that many native Quechua speakers believe that using Quechua in public is unnecessary after learning Spanish. Either by shyness or shame, they reserve their maternal tongue for private spaces and intimate conversations.

My hope is that artists like Renata Flores can start to change this. It’s a beautiful language that preserves a fascinating history and culture. Maybe her traction outside of Peru will help her gain even more in Peru. Enjoy:

“A Brief Crack of Light Between Two Eternities of Darkness” →

Novelist Ben Dolnick, for NYT Opinion:

Here’s something I used to think about, back in the before-times: A clause set off by em dashes is like dropping underwater while swimming breaststroke — just a quick dip before popping back to the sentence’s surface. A parenthetical clause is more like diving down to the pool bottom to pick up a coin. And a footnote is a full-blown scuba dive — you have strapped on equipment and left the surface behind and you had better, after going to all that trouble, see something interesting down there.

How was it that I had never noticed that this entire taxonomic system of authorial interruptions took for granted that readers would enjoy being plunged into a medium in which they couldn’t take a breath?

John Gruber:

Simultaneously an astute observation on writing and a spot-on assessment of our collective moment.

Back to Dolnick:

But then I happened upon a line by Nabokov (the author, incidentally, of perhaps the only truly famous parentheses in world literature):

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

This majestically depressing sentence worked on me like fresh water in a vase of lilies. At last, the true absurd hopelessness of things, laid out in flawless prose!

“Let’s begin your history lesson” →

Erica Buddington, in a Twitter thread to end all threads:

This #thread is for those of you struggling to comprehend that the recent murders are just a fraction of racial violence in the United States. We are protesting for #GeorgeFloyd #BreonnaTaylor, #AhmaudArbery AND hundreds of years of oppression.

Let’s begin your history lesson.

Powerful thread, 100+ tweets with dates, plaques, pictures, and commentary running from the 1829 Cincinnati Riots to the present day. Additional resource suggestions (books, podcasts, documentaries) start here.

(Via NextDraft)

“The Pandemic Has Turned Us All into Gardeners” →

Christopher Ketcham for Outside:

For a city boy like me, born and raised in Brooklyn, where I had spent most of my adult life, this was all very new. Once you get your hands in soil—really get dirty with it, feel it under your fingernails—there’s a change in perspective, and you’re someone different. You've opened the tiniest of windows onto the ecological reality of the forces that sustain human existence, the biogeophysical relationships of water, sunlight, air, earth. Quite suddenly, what seemed mysterious quotients—say, the balance of phosphorus, nitrogen, carbon, and potassium—become commonalities of understanding and, eventually, of wisdom. The plants that depend on all those factors in harmony rise up, or they don’t.

I’ve been channeling my inner gardener these days by following @reb.lettuce.

(Via NextDraft)

File This Under “Why History?” →

Michael Wright, in a May issue of his excellent, inspired weekly letter Still Life:

Art and architecture hold symbolic and social weight. They don't just show us stuff from the past—they make claims on our choices in the present. A gilded film theater made to look like a cathedral from the past makes a religious claim on us now.

Likewise, sculptures of confederate generals make claims about how a state government envisions its relationship to history and the people it governs. All of these artists (and others like Kehinde Wiley and Titus Kaphar and Glen Ligon) can help us see how easy it is to construct histories that rarely tell the whole story. And if we learn to look past the gilded facade, we can begin to see larger histories we share.

Through a series of life circumstances and opportunities I find myself every spring teaching Latin American history to a group of US American university students. My journey to appreciate history has been a long one, mostly taking place after college. I love the challenge inherent in posing the question “why history?” to my group as we experience art and history and how “they makes claims on our choices in the present.” I will definitely be pulling this back out next spring.

If you haven’t already, sign up to receive Still Life in your inbox every week, and be delighted with a weekly dose of poetry too:

[…]
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

—“Beannacht” by John O’Donohue

Thoughts on Frederick Douglass’s 4th of July Speech, 1852

Frederick Douglass delivered this speech to an abolitionist group in Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852. Need a refresher on Frederick Douglass? Here you go. Below I share some lengthy highlights, but the entire speech is over 10,000 words and would have taken longer than an hour to deliver. It’s remarkable. Profound. If you haven’t yet, read the entire speech.

Recently, a few of Douglass’s great-great-great-great-grandchildren read some of the speech in a beautiful piece for NPR:

I came across this speech two years ago, and have been coming back to it occasionally. Douglass’s hopefulness at US America’s youth—that the US was young enough in 1852 to change—tugs at my brain today. Is 244 years-old still young enough to change? I hope so. That this speech is not yet a relic of history, bearing testimony to another time, but is still a prophetic word spoken in 2020 is devastating.

After a fair greeting, he launches in to a speech that seems to point to the usual elevation of the Independence movement, except for the stinging use of the second-person plural possessives, not first-person like you might expect:

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom.

On the US being young (and thus, hopefully still impressionable):

According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny?

The heart of it, US American slavery:

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

And:

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Prophetic:

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and with out hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation-a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons, and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea' when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”

One final section, going to the heart of it, condemning the hypocrisy of lauding liberty abroad but not working toward it at home, and finally, pointing out the hypocrisy in the Declaration of Independence:

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation—a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen, and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against the oppressor; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a three-penny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare before the world, and are understood by the world to declare that you “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain in alienable rights; and that among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

Perhaps that’s enough for now. Now let’s let it sink in.

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See also:

Text inspired by Douglass’s speech, performed by Daveed Diggs (via Kottke):

And, James Earl Jones reads excerpts of the speech, for Voices of A People’s History of the United States: