Hope in Direct Action

A couple of days ago I got up at the usual time, got dressed, put on my NYS Poor Peoples Campaign T-shirt, and got on the L to Union Square to meet up with a nonviolent army going to DC to make good trouble. “You only get what you’re organized to take,” it says on my shirt. The bus we ride is named Panoramic because of its big windows. I see the sunrise as we roll through the Garden State. The sun is my Advent candle. We all have our vaccination cards and our masks. This is only the second time I’ve been outside the city during los tiempos de la Corona. I generally don’t like to leave New York, or even my apartment, even when its not a plague year. Kelly is our bus captain. She and I are the only people from Middle Collegiate Church on the bus, but we also belong to the Freedom Church. Freedom Church is a Zoom gathering started by the Kairos Center shortly after the quarantine began. It is live-streamed on Facebook Sunday evenings. Both Middle and Freedom Church practice public theology, social justice work, protest, lobbying, reminding people to vote, petitioning.I think of this activism as liturgical practice. Marching in a protest against a war, or against police violence, against evictions, or for abolition of prisons, for environmental justice, and for the lives of black people, are ways of celebrating our faith that another world is both possible and necessary. This rally is an Advent celebration. As Rabbi Heschel said, we pray with our feet when we march in protest.The Kairos Center was founded by Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who also co-founded the new Poor Peoples Campaign with Reverend Doctor William Barber. At a recent Freedom Church gathering she reminded us that John the baptizer was calling on the crowds to change their way of thinking and to understand that another world is possible. John called on the crowds to join a revolution, and this is what Jesus joined when he was baptized.

I first saw Bishop Barber speak at Riverside Church in 2017 on the 50th anniversary of MLK’s speech against the Vietnam War. In that speech King made clear the connections between the racist system in America and America’s imperialist war abroad. It was at the 2017 service I became aware that the movement King led half a century ago is having a revival and at the same time saw that I had to be part of it. I imagined a beam of light was shining on me. Like I was called, or something.Not long after I had a chance to see Bishop Barber again at Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village. I was impressed with the congregation and Rev. Jacqui Lewis’ gospel of revolutionary love and started coming to every Sunday celebration.

Our bus got to DC on time, which meant earlier than most groups, and they were still setting up the stage and sound equipment. Rob Stephens was standing there overseeing it all. We hugged and chatted for a couple of minutes. Rob was a minister at Middle Collegiate when I joined in 2017. Before that he worked with Rev Barber in the North Carolina NAACP. I got to know him when we both got arrested for disrupting the Senate. I had responded to Rev. Jacqui’s altar call for volunteers to fight McConnell’s attempt to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. As the Senate was about to vote we stood up in the gallery and shouted, “Kill the Bill, don’t kill us!” It is my only arrest, so far. It was my baptism into the Movement.

Now Rob works full time as an organizer with the Rev. Dr. William Barber and the Poor Peoples Campaign. I told him I had come with Captain Kelly's bus. I mentioned her getting arrested with him a couple of weeks ago. He said all the arrests have become a blur. 

The rally was well organized. Speakers from thirty three states spoke for one minute each, giving what Rev. Barber called their CNN statements. The organizers kept things moving and the witnesses, who were poor or "low wealth" (I'm going to start describing myself as 'low wealthy'), gave well-honed messages about the situation of the American underclass, something like 140 million of us.The purpose of this action is to pressure Congress and Biden to pass critical legislation like the For The People Act and Build Back Better before the end of the year. “Get it done in 21!” After the speeches we marched, two by two, to a nearby intersection and took over the street. There is a lot of singing in the Poor Peoples Campaign, especially old and new freedom songs, sung in the streets. This Advent protest is what I imagine the original Jesus movement to be like, something like the demonstrations and disruptions and civil disobedience of the original Holy Week that led up to Jesus’ arrest. 

Anyway, hundreds of us surrounded the seventy two who had volunteered for civil disobedience. We were in the street until the first warning from the Capitol Police and then we retreated to the sidewalks and sang freedom songs and cheered on the seventy two who defied the police orders and stayed in the intersection. Rev. Liz and Rev. Barber and Rev. Rob were among those arrested. Barber kept preaching through a mic as they were handcuffed and taken to tables for processing. He even told the police they should quit their jobs. The Capitol Dome was nearby. He told the police what must have already been evident to them. We weren’t a criminal, violent, anti-democracy insurrection like the January 6 mob. We are a nonviolent army fighting to protect for democracy against voter suppression and against the big money interests who control Congress.Middle Church’s building burned down a year ago but the fire hasn’t stopped us. The first time I came to Middle was to hear Rev. Barber speak and I remember he began his talk by saying, "It's always good to be in The Middle -- in the middle of everything, in the middle of the street…”

And here we are.

Get happy.

The violence with which you defend the existence of a god is a measure of your fear that the god does not exist, reads today’s misfortune cookie.

The people who want a state religion have no faith. They believe that throwing stones will make them be without sin. They need their religion to be enforced by laws and a canon. The Ten Commandments in every classroom and courtroom. A manger scene in front of City Hall. In the holiday aftermath the corpses of Christmas trees litter the streets.

Season’s greetings!

Earth bows to the invincible Sun.

Sol Invictus. The revolution can’t be stopped. Next equinox I’ll be 68. What have I learned from 68 revolutions and many many moons?

To everything a season. A time for every purpose under heaven. A time to throw stones and a time to gather the stones you’ll throw later.

At the end of the longest night the sun rose, as expected, at 7:17. The earth bowed, so we all bowed — “my lord”— and we are bathed in its fire and reborn. The earth is aware, because we are aware, that the night is long and the days are short, but now that is changing. It’s a nice system we have here, but the solar system won’t last forever, and one day there will be no sunrise and there will be no day. The universe arises, abides, and ceases. The chaos and radiance of the universe is spilled across our sky, across everywhere. The universe is aware, because we are aware.

In the last two revolutions we were taught that human breath circulates around and throughout our planet, carrying information and viruses. The viruses colonize us. They don’t kill all of us because they need us to live. They torture and exploit us.

I’m looking at a book about Albrecht Durer and come upon a painting of a depressed man. The depression is drawn in the lines in his face. His body is slumped. His head is supported by one hand, elbow on knee. The other hand is on a flat surface, palm up, holding implements of flagellation. His melancholy is sanctified by a crown of thorns. Christ as the Man of Sorrows is the title. The text describes an image I can’t see that is drawn into the gold ground. An owl attacked by daytime birds. The terrors of the day sometimes attack sleep. You wake up exhausted, and feel the stress in your facial muscles, in the lines in your face.

I take a photo of the image and post it. A crowd gathers on Facebook. 

Meditate on this, your lord of great compassion.

If you are so enlightened, why aren’t you filled with joy? someone asks. 

Can’t a bodhisattva experience suffering?

Don’t you think this painting is really a self-portrait? He is literally beating himself up and I don’t know what his hang up is.

“Look on the bright side of life,” I sing. Are you some kind of Happiness Fascist?

Don’t put THIS Christ back into Christmas. We want the happy infant, not a messiah with a mood disorder.

O child of Buddha Nature! Meditate on this, your meditational deity, your archetype deity. Not as a material thing, but as an image appearing like the reflection of the moon in a puddle. Don’t be distracted.

Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you. Don’t hide your face from me, the psalmist sang.

The universe will wear out like a garment and the Creator will throw it out. And what costume will you wear to all tomorrow’s parties?

Our days pass away like smoke.

A couple of weeks ago the brother of a friend died.

A few days ago the son of another friend died.

Neither death was Covid. 

Last night I had a long conversation with someone who got the virus early on, before everything was shut down. She saw the temporary storage facilities on her street that were quickly constructed to store the bodies. The bodies were stacked on shelves. She got very sick and still doesn’t have her sense of smell and sense of taste back. Some people were still telling her it was all a hoax or media hype. She can’t talk to these people any more. She is tired of all that.

We are weary, exhausted, by the virus, and by the perpetual war on consciousness.

Resilience! New York is resilient, we say. We’ll have to muddle through somehow, over the rainbow — so shout Hallelujah, come on, get happy, we sing. Get ready for the judgment day.

 

Stones will be thrown.

A few weeks ago I get up at the usual time, a few hours before dawn, and see the moon out my window and think, “Well, now I have to take a picture of it.” 

The moon is full but it is dark and I think it is veiled by a cloud but there are no clouds and then I remember someone said there would be an eclipse.

Moon keeps time.

Sun keeps time.

Winter solstice is next week.

The revolution of the Earth cannot be stopped.

Today, at the usual time I crawl out of the primeval crud of sleep and dream to write these words.

 

I can’t really tell you — whoever you are — who, what, HOW, I am — although I can say WHERE — 

I am as always — in a life raft somewhere in the limitless ocean of being, the limitless chaos of becoming, in an inflated vessel adrift on the surface of the mirage of life.

I am making marks on the fabric of the boat that I am not even sure are words. 

Neither do I know what to make of these metaphors I’m mixing.

My mind lifts my body off the couch and pushes it out the door to get groceries.

My body is a life raft for my mind.

My mind pulls my body back inside and throws it back on the couch.

I take pictures of the sky and post them, as if no one else looks at the sky.

I write words in a notebook and digitize them, as if no one else has any words.

Later I read the words and they make sense but have little value.

I read what I wrote and it is like being in a laundromat and discovering all the coins in my pocket are Canadian.

Sunday I’ll put them in the offering plate.