Month: June 2020

a bacterium’s life
like every other
is fraught

resources resources resources
is the name of this game
grounding every other

eventually their gods
heard their cry
on-time delivery

and those teeny gods
inhabited clay
shaping sculpting

eventually a whoman
leapt claiming
self-sufficiency

while only a structure
for more bacteria
than its own cells

Claudia Schmidt has composed “My Quarantine Prayer” (https://youtu.be/VyL8Ai8lvzc). I expect that readers here will construct additional reflections on the significance of these days.

For me, the quarantine is an unhelpful image that gets in the way of looking at its importance—a threatening uncertainty which has multiple sources. The virus would not be so unsettling if leaders took it seriously rather than find ever smaller moments of using it to their advantage of a restrictive political ideology of me and mine.

Before politics was economics, favoring money over people. And before that, an attempt to avoid the sweat of my brow by the sweat of yours. And even earlier, an equating of ethical knowledge with death. And who knows what before one particular story.

These days, before being too definitive about cause and effect, it is helpful to remember that viral uncertainty set the stage for a different response to the predictable next police murder. The universalized threat that goes beyond any categorizing, including predisposed morbidities, set all at risk.

In such a pandimonious moment, a next callous death was finally acknowledged by those all too able to distance themselves. Suddenly, I can see my death in your death. It took an all-too-real threat to privileged White folk to set the scene for them to see themselves connected with folx of every sort.

Of course, all along the way, there have been prophets, community organizers, working in solidarity with oppressed peoples. Their language seeded the world with usable words and images that could easily be picked up and applied.

Thanks be for a pandemic and prophets working in tandem to set people free from structural violence, social and environmental. Blessings to all who died without knowing how they have assisted in bringing a better definition of public safety for individuals and communities.

In reading Ancient Mysteries by Marvin W. Meyer, there came these sentences:

In sum, the Olympians began to fall from glory for several reasons. Their destiny was linked to that of the Greek polis, which was no longer the basic political unit in the world after Alexander’s time.

A connection between politics, economics, and war has a long and sordid history. It should be noted that these entwine religion and philosophy as support structures. This is not to say there are straight-line connections or a fated outcome in their confluence.

There is recent news of a significant statue of Robert E. Lee coming down, days of growing protest regarding police violence, and the naming of a portion of 16th Street NW in Washington, D.C., as Black Lives Matter Plaza. Questions arise regarding the economic system of Capitalism being repositioned by movements exterior to it, events as large as those that left the structure of a Greek polis behind. The limits of repression and resources upon which Capitalism has flourished are larger than its desire to continue as a perpetual normal.

A system tied to the limits of slavery—overt, championed by Lee, or covert, championed by union-busing Kochs, or both, embodied by imperial divide-and-conquer insults by Trump—and dependent on ever-larger swaths of environmental destruction and rape of resources, eventually runs out of room to breathe. Slaves and wage-slaves revolt. Technological advantages can only delay the consequences of used-up resources for so long before they are starved by the same lack.

Though we are no longer in a stable economic world, a shift to what is next will be generations in the making. Right now, we are too close to Capitalism’s internal contradiction of separating money from people to see beyond knee-jerk reactions to its displacement as an organizing principle. Currently, we can only project, based on past falls of empires, that politics, war, religion, and philosophy will also change. This change has already begun and will further evolve in decades and centuries to come.

This perspective suggests that what has been described as an American Empire has been an Empire of Capital. There may still be a bit of life for Democracy if it does not become a cloak for another idol interposing itself between people.

a gift
is not a given

generosity
is not a limit

when either is true
neither can then be false

until then
smile and practice

reception
is no diminishment

blessing leads
toward blessing

Accompaniment is an integral part of a musical lexicon. There is a reciprocity of instrument and player, each testing the limits of the other. Without a written contract, both parties invest their time and resources to the other.

This relationship is a helpful one in days of protest. Multiple players need to know they can accompany each of the others in their tasks. By doing so, each amplifies the work of the others. Gifts and agency are added to the whole without a claim to be anything other than resources for a longer journey enhanced by the presence and engagement of everyone else.

Accompaniment goes beyond being an ally (still a role of privilege). It is ready to play multiple roles according to the need of the time. Accompanists know when to be still for another’s solo. To accompany also asks an ability to give a cue about what is coming next. There are also moments to carry a melody line and improvise when others cannot carry on.

Staying alert to the season of the collective work asks constant and consistent care for the whole. When the background is honored, the foreground is freed to sparkle here and dive to the deep there.

New occasions do offer new duties. To be ready for a next need takes a practice of perceiving how yesterdays have brought us to today, of anticipating how improvisation can lead to better living tomorrow.

Accompanying is not just a musical term, but a way of social change—a symphony of accompanists is a joy to behold.

I am pro
test
going beyond
mere measurement
a context
of engagement

A train leaves St. Louis at 2:43 PM with an average speed of 40 mph. At the same time, another train leaves Chicago averaging 42 mph. The distance between stations is 296.9 miles. At what time will they meet?

I am con
test
Chicago’s train is New York bound
St. Louis’ heads for San Francisco
to posit
is not to know

I protest the present limitation of rail travel in America. A lack of state-of-the-art light rail saved tax money to benefit “everyone” — giving more to those who already have more than more.

I contest the notion that current decisions cannot be different than those we have inherited. Our fear of the unknown does not have unfettered license to shackle every later choice.

For tomorrow’s sake, I
     Protest!
     Contest!

Storm systems have a variety of results. Last night’s storm brought us some enhanced sleet. It brought golf-ball-sized hail not all that far away. How far away? The same distance that Projects are from Palaces. The buffer zones of guarded gates and tinted windows do not increase the distance of interconnection.

Storm systems scatter debris according to the meteorologic and geologic conditions. Other natural disasters, such as earthquakes and plagues, follow this same general model of responding to and taking advantage of external realities. All these have rules yet unknown to us, but they are random only from a perspective of this moment.

Other storms have the potential of internal limits according to the reigning authority at the time and policies enacted or denied. The results of a capitalist economic system and military uniformity (efficiency behind assembly lines and dictators) seem not to have random outcomes. Public storms seem to always result in the poor being poorer and the rich being better off.

It is more difficult to see how public storms over discriminatory norms reduce the flexibility of common good to cover all within and add an extra layer of protection by strengthening the environment without. When such flexibility fails because of too many barriers and not enough bridges, a joyfully confident stride falters into a walker, a Lazy-Boy^®, and, finally, six pallbearers. The formation and decline of these storms are years and generations in the making and failing.

Part of the grief from falling apart is knowing how little it would have taken to resist and rebound from a destructive pattern. It would have taken more as time went on, and a lack of current exercise of good judgment, seven generations long, eventually ends in poor and then inadequate balance. Whether a little earlier or more later, the current cost is on the verge of being too high to rebalance connections.

As our public storm is still gathering force, may our liturgists plan a national dirge and language educators prepare next-needed second language curricula.

This past Sunday’s Zoom service, part of a month-long look at Sabbath, contained an intriguing aside about a “location of divinity.” That phrase was paralleled with the suggestion of a “location of authority.” The immediate context was having the listeners consider themselves as a “hero”, someone with agency.

Divinity and theology are often ungrounded when referenced. The addition of a source of authority to be exercised by ordinary people clarifies much. Divinity is not an either/or. It, like theology, cannot be grounded outside the realities of creation or the participation of people (hopefully people aware of more than their bounded self).

To connect divinity with authority begins to ask different questions than those based on call or servant or doctrine or hope. New questions can go beyond the usual limits of G*D being an endpoint, whether through theosis or incarnation.

More fruitful than some incorporation into a corporation divine or corporeal, is a question of interpenetration of (non)divine and divine. Is such a relationship intended to please some G*D? To aggrandize some Hum*n? Where does accountability go if there is a unification of sacred and secular under the aegis of the sacred? How might a question be asked?

Asking about Divinity and Authority comes to bear on a democracy, at least an intended or purported democracy. In some sense, a democracy is a response to a divine-right of kings. It seems that democracies also struggle with divinity—a divine-right of democracy. Eventually, there must be a reckoning with raising individual liberty above a common good. This temptation is clarified when the major operant in a democracy is not personal but is contrary to human life, turning it into a resource for impersonal capital to benefit fewer and fewer people in thrall to it.

At some point, it must be noted that the basic operating principle of democracy is transparent information. An ill-informed populace cannot function democratically without this transparency. In recent years, ever so slowly and then rapidly, “alternative” facts shut down critical choices. The alternative “weed” chokes out both reason and the experience of the marginalized. Voting patterns are broken and come to be the mechanism whereby an election confirms divinity upon one false messiah or another.

It isn’t easy at this time to see a clear path forward. Revolutions can circle back to a previous time on a wheel. Evolutions are notoriously sporadic and unpredictable in either scope or duration; results cannot be predicted. At best, we can try to clarify non-negotiable characteristics that might travel beyond divine-right and universalized authority.

I do look forward to the Sunday speaker offering further reflections on the locus of divinity as it appears to be a persistent category in human experience. Limits to divine-authority are worth investigating and experimentally applied. I’m also interested in the response of readers here—what locus of authority is active in your decision-making?

these days these times
warp and woof lives
so caught by routine
a retirement deposit here
a mail deliver there
a garbage pickup out there
time for a haircut
midmorning apple
a romp in the hay
dental checkup

overlaying basics
are embroidered touches
accenting color
surprising appearance
diving and surfacing
in pattern and out
loose enough to fray
tighter than fate
one thread
begs another

never yet time enough
for everyday flotsam
or a thing of beauty
to stand long
alongside eons march
each a vanity of breath
entering leaving
never before never after
in its time precious
sufficient

Pandora (all gifted and all giving) — her very presence a word of ironic malediction — was a creation of the full wroth of Greek G*Ds toward humanity for Prometheus’ theft of their fire. Pandora was deliberately sculpted by the G*Ds from clay to be a trophy like the Trojan Horse.  Once accepted, a mysterious Jar that the G*Ds sent with her would come into play.

And it came to pass: Prometheus’ competitive brother, Epimetheus (better at second-guessing than a first consideration), gives in to the temptation that was Pandora.

There are a variety of strands from which Pandora’s story came and into which it split. There are plenty of contradictory tales. In some tellings, it was Epimetheus who opened the mysterious Jar that came with Pandora, a container of disaster spoken of in the greatest of vague terms. Being made from clay also reflects on Pandora being an anti-’adam — unfortunately, contributing to the too-long history of patriarchy.

Among the gifts bestowed upon Pandora by multiple G*Ds is Hermes’ naming of her and adding the skill of persuasive speech through sly lies. It is tempting to allegorize the old, old story that everyone thinks they know and, compare the multiple disasters from the Jar with those of the Trump “administration” that idolizes hyper-Capitalism. There will be no putting the disasters already set loose back in the Jar. There is only entering a time of experimentation of a new political order and economic structure.

Looking at the question of “hope” still trapped in the Jar provides a more evocative image with which to work.

Easy hope or false hope was to have been the crowning disaster sent by the G*Ds — even worse than the punishment of an eagle daily eating the liver of a bound Prometheus. Such magical hope delays any current action against a multitude of plagues past its effective counter to each disaster set loose and cycling through seasons and generations.

Imagine what needs doing in today’s political and economic environment without any hope. What needs your engagement only because it rings true, regardless of how it sits with your inborn and developed proclivities? This arena of participation is a call worth attending to. May you add your life as a catalyst into the opportunities you have, small as they may seem. In such a way will the future of humanity take root — and spread its wings. The humility of hopelessness is a hero’s happiness.