how deep we mourn

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself struggling with all of the violence that comes up in the news over and over again.  How so much of it is related to the deep injustices that folks my age and my color were raised to think we’d gotten past.  Racism is dead!  We’re colorblind!  We have people of all sorts of different colors in different positions… we elected Obama!

First, I remember 2001.  And lots of people told me I needed to be scared of people who are Muslim.  Turns out that’s not good – I’ve met and loved lots of folks who celebrate the Islamic faith – my next door neighbors, students I taught in my classes.  Good, hard working, thoughtful and giving people.  I learned more about the tradition, and found beauty in the words of the Quran.

Then 2008 came.  And lots of people lost their jobs and livelihood.  I was told over and over again not to be scared.  And yet we lost 8.8 million jobs, and there’s another 7 million who have just thrown in the towel.  And so now there are even more people hoping that their fast food job will be sufficient, and hoping that when things got better, they’d get better, too.  They haven’t.

And then came the deaths.  Trayvon Martin.  Eric Garner.  Michael Brown.  Tamir Rice.  And those are the ones that get the most airplay.  And so many more young black and brown boys not getting the opportunities they deserve.  AND PEOPLE HAVE BEEN NOTING THIS FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS.  And if we’re honest, even longer.  But again, we are in an era of new thinking!  Civil Rights!  Colorbindness!  And equal justice for all… of a specific color, or of a particular profession.

And yesterday, two NYPD officers lost their lives from a man who felt it was his place to dispense his own version of justice.  And I mourn and find myself as angry at this as I do every single other circumstance in 2014 that has led to this general disarray.

Amos was a prophet in a time of incredible prosperity in Israel.  It’s one of my favorite books of prophesy (in part because of one of the best slams in all of Scripture), because of this:

Amos 5:18-25

Let Justice Roll Down

¹⁸ Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
    Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light,
¹⁹     as if a man fled from a lion,
    and a bear met him,
or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,
    and a serpent bit him.
²⁰ Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light,
    and gloom with no brightness in it?

²¹ “I hate, I despise your feasts,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²² Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
    I will not look upon them.
²³ Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
²⁴ But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

²⁵ “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? ²⁶ You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves, ²⁷ and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

Repeatedly, Amos calls out those who thought they were living a faithful life through loud and showy displays of piety.  God saw it all as sham, and Amos made sure that they knew it.  God (and I believe this is the actually the official commentary) did not give a shit about anything people were doing – the fattened calves, the songs, the things that were part of the law that was guiding the people for years that God commanded… any of it.  So everytime some white kid wants to protest because it’s a chance to tell a story to their kids or that they’re “just trying to do some good” and making sure folks see it and doing any of it as a form of worship?  My guess is if it’s not attached some deeper sense of Justice, God doesn’t care.

God cared about justice.  For the poor.  For the oppressed.  For the innocent.  For the ignored.  For the folks who no one really liked.  Otherwise, everything the people of Israel were doing was simply noise and distraction.  And this was not meant to be a violent, vigilante justice, but one that brought peace.  It’s why people were called to leave wheat for the poor and foreigner.  It’s why debts were supposed to be cleared every seven years.  It’s why Jubilee exists.

Justice is not fear of whole people because of the few who may do wrong.

Justice is not excusing the few who may do wrong because they are wealthy or powerful or supposed arbiters of justice.

Justice is not vengeance.

I write this because I’m a tired, disillusioned man.  I was raised in a promise that things were better, and that we were better.  It isn’t and we’re not.  And I have a son that I watch playing with pure joy, surrounded by love, and I think how I’m going to protect him while showing him that he needs to do what he can in his own way to seek the betterment of those who were not protected.  And in spite of all of this, I believe even more in a God who deeply loves this world and wants the justice of Amos to roll mighty through the land, overwhelming and sweeping away structures that cannot withstand the flood.

I write this because I all too often lack the belief of shalom, but still hope it in day after day.

Maybe you do, too.  And to the folks who do – please keep walking.  Don’t let any of this stop you from your current Emmaus.  There continues to be so much that God will teach and show, and Jesus is with us despite our inability to see him.  We know the story, and we need to continue to tell it to everyone walking with us.

Because on days like today, I need to be reminded of the story.

boston, babies, brokenness

For those of you that have known me for any extended period of time, know that I for as long as I can remember, my primary occupational desires were to be a husband and a father.  This isn’t to say I haven’t had multiple other aspirations, but rather that through all of it, I felt those aspirations should give way to a family.  When Lindsey and I met and married, we both shared that interest.

In August, we found out that were pregnant!  And it was by choice!  I ran such a range of emotions – excitement, fear, expectation, hope, and most of all love.  I was going to be a dad!

We had decided to be very open from the beginning of our pregnancy to be able to have a community around us no matter what.  We used our wedding list as a guide – if you were someone that was at our wedding or we really wanted to be there but couldn’t get you there, you were likely close enough to tell about the little blueberry swimming around.  We told our church, too, knowing that they often provide us our support – they are a major part of our community here in Columbus.

A few weeks went by, and it was time for the first ultrasound – a chance to see my child for the first time.  I was giddy, and I don’t use that word often because no one should call themselves giddy unless they really are – it’s embarrassing.

We sat in the examination room and waited for the tech to come in and start.  For those of you have never seen these early ultrasound exams… let me tell you that they look amongst some of the most awkward experiences ever.  Anyway, we waited as the tech moved her wand, and before long we found our baby.  We waited for movement and heartbeat.
They never came.

Apparently, the baby was two weeks too small.  The doctor suggested that maybe we miscounted our cycle and that we come back later and try again.  When we did, it was the same result.  No movement, no heartbeat.  Our first child, who by then had recognizable limb and organ development, had died.

As I’ve reflected on that time in our life together, the part that is most difficult is the fleeting time we got to share with whoever that child was.  The extent to which I interacted with my first baby was on a screen in a sterile doctor’s office 25 minutes away from my house and three hours away from the rest of my family.  I don’t know anything more about that child, and when I look to this week, which would have been the week of delivery, it’s what haunts me the most.  Many of my contemporaries are having children, and while I celebrate their joy, I can’t help but think about my first baby.  I don’t know how that child would smile, or how it would play.  I don’t know anything except what it looked like on an ultrasound.

This is certainly a rough week.  With the events of yesterday and my heart already heavy, I feel like I cannot connect my words to my heart.  As I was reading many responses on varying social media outlets, I felt that I wasn’t the only one.  Some folks exhorted us to not rush to judgement, others tried to provide moments of levity, and finally others just avoided the topic altogether, no doubt in a conscious effort to demonstrate social media is not the appropriate space for commentary.

I tried to find something to summarize my thoughts, and I found a poem by ee cummings.  I posted it yesterday on Facebook, and want to share again:

in spite of everything
which breathes and moves,since Doom
(with white longest hands
neatening each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds

-before leaving my room
i turn,and(stooping
through the morning)kiss
this pillow,dear
where our heads lived and were.

As I get older, and as I try to understand why this world continues to spin itself away from justice, I feel like it’s not right for me to tell anyone that they shouldn’t be pissed and want to punish someone – it’s a reasonable reaction, and reasonable people will realize soon that it’s not the right approach.  I’m also not going to try to make light of the situation – so many friends wanted Lindsey to move on after our miscarriage.  It happens all the time, they’d say.  That is cold comfort when it’s your child.  So no, you have a right to be as upset as you want, and mourn how you want.

I can’t ignore it either.  So instead, I just love my wife more.

I tell you that I love you, too, and that yep, this world is shitty, and it’s not fair, and why would someone do this I know I know I know, but you are loved.

The gospel is love in its full and mysterious weight, and it doesn’t require explanation or reconciliation.  It’s sometimes simply remembering to kiss the pillow I slept on with my wife, and carry on determined to love more, even when I deliver it with complete and total imperfection.

make lent easy in five simple steps

“Pomegranate looks like any island of upscale consumerism, but deep down it is based on a countercultural understanding of how life should work.”

Maybe I’m just an old man, but I find myself disagreeing here for the same reason I get tired of the: OMG LENT IS SO HARD THANK GOD I HAVE (fill in the blank) TO MAKE IT SO EASY. Pomegranate in Brooks’ article is responding to our consumer-driven needs; adherence to rules is secondary.

Our need to be medicated by convenience is embarrassing at times. When did things like Orthodoxy and Lent become about the minimum amount of effort? I’m not saying we should flagellate ourselves in the name of piety, but I’m not really impressed that you’re making it through your Friday fast because you found some kick-ass recipe for barbeque sauce that now doesn’t make the “I’m showing how Godly I am by swallowing down vegan food I wouldn’t do normally” fast feel so difficult.

At that point it’s just the law, and it’s not the Spirit. Pretty sure Jesus wasn’t a fan of that.

And lest any of you get prickly because you’re guilty of it – I can stand right in that line, too.

Link to NYT Article

jesus at 29

I wonder what it was like for Jesus at 29.

Right on the verge of starting a brief but history-bending career as the rabbi of all rabbis, did he question what he was going to do?  Did he keep telling himself that eventually he was going to go down and visit cousin John and get baptized?

Did he second guess getting in the carpentry trades?  His dad’s business paid the bills, sure, but was it fulfilling?  Was it something to wake him up before the sunrise with excitement, or just a job?

Were mom and dad worried that he wasn’t going to settle down, take a wife, and continue the proud lineage of the greatest kings if Israel?  They remembered the visions, but they were so young back then.  Lots of travel back then, it could have been exhaustion or bad food.

He’s got to feel like he’s been made for something more than what he’s doing now.  He heard the stories.  He knows it’s only a matter of time; just keep studying and learning, eventually it’ll happen.  It’ll all make sense.

And when it does, the world will respond in kind with exponential parts adoration and hatred.  Reviled by his peers, but celebrated by raca – the worthless.

But for now, he’s one year removed.  A few hundred sleeps more from awakening the Kingdom.