Tag: Adrienne Rich

Set the Table with Love

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save.”

That’s a line from a poem by Adrienne Rich and I’ve been thinking about it this week and for this Maundy Thursday night in particular as Christians gather at the table of remembrance, the Eucharistic table of both memory and hope.

As Christians hear the story of Passover from Exodus this night and Jews are this week observing it, my heart is moved by all those ancient Hebrews who never made it out of Egypt, who died enslaved before Moses was even born.

I’m thinking about all the Jews and communists and gypsies and gay men who never made it out of Buchenwald or Dachau or Auschwitz before those camps were liberated, and my heart is so moved.

After this past year of pandemic anxiety, surely all of our hearts are moved by all we cannot save—by the more than 550,000 who have died just in the United States alone before they could be vaccinated, all those who are now so terribly ill.

This is why religion still matters, just a few of the reasons, in an age when so many prefer to be “spiritual” instead. Religion helps us mark time and name sacred space, just as God commanded Moses and Aaron to do at the first Passover—“this month shall mark for you the beginning of months,” God says (Exodus 12:1-2).

We human beings need such marking and naming to orient ourselves to each other and to the world around us; so many of us have felt so adrift in these days and weeks and months (how long, really?) of this seemingly endless pandemic precisely because of having so few markers for time, so few places to go for space.

For Christians, tonight begins the great three days of Holy Week—the “triduum,” as it’s called in Latin—and our worship continues unabated from this night until Easter morning. Tonight begins one extended liturgical celebration stretching over three days.

There is no dismissal after the Maundy Thursday service, nor after the Good Friday service, because these services do not end; the ordinary passage of time is caught up and transformed by the shared observance of the mystery of our salvation—the Table, the Cross, the Empty Tomb, all of it as one single arc of divine grace.

Christians also heard from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians tonight in which he reminded them that what he received from the Lord about the Table is what he handed on to them (1 Cor. 11:12-26).

That phrase—“handed on”—is what tradition is, what memory means for religion, the handing on of that which binds us together here and now and also to those who came before us and to those who will come after us.

For the ancient Israelites and for Paul and for us, these vital reminders are rooted in the importance of memory itself.

The kind of memory we practice as religious people is not just the opposite of forgetting. The memory Christians practice at the Table is in response to the violence of fragmentation and division; it’s a re-membering of what has been dis-membered and torn apart—the kind of recalling that heals and makes whole.

This then is what Christians might embrace about religion itself on this holy night: marking time and naming space at the Table; receiving from those who came before us the love Jesus had for his friends and for us; handing on to those who will come after us that same love that we dare believe can reunite what has been torn apart, that can stitch us together into a single body with many members, that might actually offer healing to a world of violence.

I cannot imagine doing any of this on my own. I must, by some unimaginable grace, “cast my lot” with others, the ones who share food, dream of love, and leave no one behind.

This is why I cherish now those words from the poet Adrienne Rich. Here is what she wrote:

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed.
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.

As Christians at the Table, as Jews gathered for a meal, as the lonely, the broken, the castaway, and the frightened, may this Passover week and these tender services of the Christian Triduum bathe us in the love that will heal us.

All of us.

Together.

Holy Solidarity: Lent & Liberation, Part 5

Trayvon Martin. Adrienne Rich. Shaima al Awadi.

I’m taking these names with me into the Christian Holy Week that begins this Sunday. I suspect that the first two names are far more familiar than the third. So here I offer some observations about all three and then why they help me to engage with Holy Week for the sake of profound social change.

Trayvon Martin

The blogosphere is bloated with important, scandalous, insightful, stirring, and stupid posts about this tragic event (and if you don’t what this about, read about it). I won’t try to add to the bloat here except to say this: I can’t remember the last time I was this disgusted by the so-called “criminal justice” system in this country. As many others have already noted, just imagine if Trayvon had been white and George Zimmerman black. In that scenario, and less than a century ago, Zimmerman would already be dead – lynched. (Just go back and watch the wonderful film Places in the Heart.)

White supremacy is a deep poison in U.S. history and culture. It won’t be extracted but by sustained force of will, honesty, and deep conversion.

Adrienne Rich

If I see one more obituary headline about this amazing woman describing her as a “feminist poet,” I’m going to run from my house screaming into the streets (much to the annoyance of my neighbors). So when’s the last time you saw a description of T. S. Eliot as that “white poet”? Ever see Ralph Waldo Emerson described as that “male writer”? I bet you’ve seen Langston Hughes described as an “African-American playwright.”

A standard-issue human being is white and male. Everyone else needs a label. Until that stops, justice will be elusive and human flourishing will languish.

Shaima al Awadi

Just last week an Iraqi immigrant and mother of five died from injuries inflected by a severe beating in her El Cajon home (in San Diego). At the scene there was a note warning the family to “go back to your own country.” El Cajon police said they are investigating the possibility of a hate crime. (The “possibility”? Really? Give me a break.)

So, you haven’t heard about this case? I hadn’t either until it leeched into my FaceBook feed nearly unnoticed (read some more here). Then I did some digging. Shaima al Awadi actually worked for the U.S. Army, translating, helping, consulting about Islamic culture. Where is the news media on this story? Where is our collective FaceBook outrage? Do we hear or see virtually nothing about this because she was a woman and also not an “American”? Probably. Sit at the intersection of white supremacy and male privilege and all this makes horribly twisted sense.

Shaima was beaten, apparently, with something like a tire iron. And she died from those injuries. How can any of us stand this? How can we go on living in such a xenophobic society, such a white supremacist, such a patriarchal society?

Of course, those are just three names, three human beings, among countless others few if any of us will ever know who endure the ravages of white male privilege every day. I can’t possibly try to “solve” all this. Who could? But here I’ll offer some brief reflections about why I find all of this important as I enter into Holy Week. I pray that this will inspire fresh ideas for action.

Christians will remember in this holiest of Christian weeks that Jesus faced a critical choice, quite literally a choice of life and death. He belonged to a rich and vibrant religious tradition that offered a number of options for his mission. He could have, for example, chosen the path of a Levitical warrior to liberate his people by force from Roman occupation. I say “Levitical” warrior because the culture of tribal warfare from which that biblical book arose was constructed on an economics of masculinity in which topping one’s enemies – with violence, if necessary – demonstrated covenantal faithfulness.

But Jesus chose instead to follow the path articulated by the Hebrew prophet Isaiah. In that book, the Levitical warrior becomes the “suffering servant,” and rather than topping one’s enemies, that servant leads all the nations instead to God’s holy mountain where they learn war no more and beat their swords into ploughshares (Isaiah 2:4).

In the gospel according to John, that choice is described as nothing less than the glory of God. Resisting the violence of imperial (read “white”) male privilege and choosing instead a deep solidarity with all those who are oppressed by such violence is, for John, the quintessential revelation of divine splendor.

In the light of that glory, recommitting ourselves to ending white male privilege is a recommitment to saving this planet from the ravages of imperial patriarchy. How could that not mark a week that Christians insist is “holy”? I should surely hope that Christians the world over would find that kind of path as marking our way toward Easter.