Monday Miscellany

Guerra, McMillian, Ghormley, Cuss, Brooks, Fujimura

So many helpful gifts now.

Like Jon Guerra’s recent “Jesus” album release, for which I See the Birds has been daily bread for me.

Also, John Mark McMillian’s affectionate reawakening that feels so familiar.

And I really love this one, especially the choral parts that remind me of Simon and Garfunkel’s Save the Life of My Child:

I’m glad to see that my friend Justus Ghormley is on Substack. He is a “Theologian, musician, artist, and gardener who works in prison for the sake of Jesus's love.”

Steve Cuss has a gracious article in CT about Church hurt going both ways. He writes by putting the best construction on the ‘other’s’ actions, and recognizing the unrealized power dynamics at play in so many relationships and encounters.

It might surprise congregants to learn most pastors feel more vulnerable than powerful. When I was a young pastor, a particularly harsh critic would exaggerate his case in meetings. I thought he was being dishonest. Maybe he was, but over time I realized that because he felt a power imbalance he would overstate his case to match his perception of my power. This also can help explain the tendency for gossip. Some people gossip because they are emotionally immature, but others do it to power up. Feeling weak, they form a team to offset their perceived power imbalance. Too often, that team quickly becomes a mob.

I listen to everything David Brooks says and read nearly everything he writes. What a pleasant surprise to wake up this morning to his thoughtful article (gift article linked here): I Should Have Seen This Coming.

The history sketching “two kinds of people in our movement back then, the conservatives and the reactionaries,” helped make some sense of my own history, mostly spent in political and ecclesial conservatism. The more timely interpretation of our current political leadership as not so much working class versus elite, but elites versus elites is insightful, and must be considered as once again the working class will continue to pay the price in lower life expectancy, whose children “by sixth grade…in the poorest school districts have fallen four grade levels behind those in the richest.” These folks who experience higher rates of social isolation and addiction and despair are again forgotten, not just by the left, but by the right.

The hopeful conclusion also feels personal, as Brooks writes, “Even now, as I travel around the country, I see the forces of repair gathering in neighborhoods and communities. If you’re part of an organization that builds trust across class, you’re fighting” the forces currently at work. Across class. Across the aisle. Across town. I watched hugs, prayers with unction, and shared eucharist between brothers and sisters in Christ yesterday who are fiercely different in political conviction. This is a very challenging place to be, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Makoto Fujimura’s reflection on Beowolf’s border-walking mearcstapa in his Culture Care has felt vocational during this last wild season in our society:

Mearcstapa is not a comfortable role. Life on the borders of a group—and in the space between groups—is prone to dangers literal and figurative, with people both at home and among the “other” likely to misunderstand or mistrust the motivations, piety, and loyalty of the border-stalker. But mearcstapa can be a role of cultural leadership in a new mode, serving functions including empathy, memory, warning, guidance, mediation, and reconciliation. Those who journey to the borders of their group and beyond will encounter new vistas and knowledge that can enrich the group.

So, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Matthew 6.26