Advent Austerity

 

That which we seek may not show forth today
—perhaps this is a hidden blessing.

 

Moon and stars light the night skies,
making way for bright sun / cold morning.

 

Masked faces pass one another silently,
like quiet and distant ghosts.

 

Solitary cyclists ply their courses,
weaving between pedestrians with care.

 

Fisherfolk, in shorebird form,
bide their time, lying in wait for canny nourishment.

 

People prepare humble meals at home,
created with simple ingredients to hand.

 

Come nightfall, all creatures
retire to their respective nesting places.

 

Thoughtful quiet descends.

 

There is a measure of,
if not peace,
acquiescent composure.

 

The tension between oppression and freedom
is bridged by self-control,
wherein this condition apart 
is allowed to uphold fragile integral nature,
very like the deliverance depicted in any miracle play.

 

If we were not so self-conscious
within our self-regulated austerity,
we might yet hear the song
of the hummingbird's dream,
might feel the earth’s hum in our bones,
might awaken to the nascent answer
of the riddle of our existence,
then tattoo it, as a reminder,
on our opened-ever-outward palms, 
ready to accept and to give blessing,

as the journey rolls on.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

photo by Rick Lewis for Bay Nature magazine, April - June 2016

"Freedom Isn't Free"

The title is a well-worn phrase used by a retired military officer and gentleman that I know. He uses this phrase every Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. He uses this phrase when military remains from foreign wars are returned to U.S. soil. He uses this phrase whenever he is commemorating the passing of a colleague or commanding officer. My friend is fourth or fifth (maybe even sixth) generation U.S. Army, second generation Special Forces (his dad was a member of the very first SF unit), in addition to which he has served in emergency management, is a historian, and a musician with a fine baritone voice and a huge repertoire of songs from what you’d call the Great American Song Book (everything from sea shanties to Oregon Trail, Westward Expansion, military and cowboy songs, etc.). Like all of the fine military folk that I have known, he is unfailingly kind to every person and ever at the ready to help fellow citizens, family and friends, be they near or far.

 

“Freedom isn’t free.”

 

I write this commentary from semi-lockdown in my home during a pandemic that threatens the lives of millions, in this country and abroad. Fortunate I have been to be a temporary worker in a county social services agency when the crisis hit. I have been able to continue to work, as my work was categorized as “essential.” We are managing. My colleagues and extended family in the music world, to a great extend, have suffered financially during the lockdown. So many legions of others, in various walks of life, all over the world, continue to suffer under the necessary privation that this health threat continues to pose. For those in the very lowest income brackets, daily life is a test that seems helpless and hopeless.

 

In the wake of the 2020 U.S. election, in which the incumbent has been decisively defeated (according to the electoral college vote count), there is grave uncertainty: The incumbent is unwilling to concede, claiming that the election was systemically fraudulent without providing any evidence, and is fanning seditious flames among his fans and followers, while stepping away, largely, from the growing needs of the yawning crises (of which the pandemic is only one) and his duty to the people he was elected to serve. The people he was elected, in 2016, to serve are the people of our nation. All of the People. He was elected to serve us.

 

Well, yes, we have been served. We have been served sarcasm, lies (in the thousands), contempt, nepotism, pocket-lining, money-laundering, influence peddling, a long list of rights continue to be hobbled, and the rollbacks of protections (physical and environmental) continue… In short, within the span of three and a half years, we have been served up a litany of woe. Eric Alterman, writing for The Nation, says: “[W]e must also grapple, sooner rather than later, with the heart of darkness in this country that has inspired tens of millions of fellow citizens to support this evil miscreant.”

 

If you look closely at the election results, both from 2016 and 2020, it is evident that these races have been close. What is the divide? I will make the most obvious and facile divide; the country is divided between rural matters and city matters. Note: I did not say “red state/blue state;” that is one of the most false equivalencies, ever, next to “North/South.” What we face in this country is a two-economy system, both of which are underserved by so-called “free market” capitalism. We could find more adequate names for these two systems, but for now I will call them, “Town-mouse” and “Country-mouse,” evoking characters from a story by Beatrix Potter. The reason I choose these names is to clarify that what we face a culture conflict, one that is actively primed by political elites, on “both sides of the aisle,” in order to consolidate power and pork, to divide and rule, and – most importantly – to under-serve and under-represent their constituents.

 

This is the story of the city-folk pitted against the country-folk. Never would I given this much thought, had I not be queried by a young, gen-Z coworker, who saw me engaged in reading on my lunch break. He was curious; what was it that captivated me so? Actually that particular book was philosophy, specifically an historical exploration of subjectivity, beginning with the rise and development of various schools of philosophy extant in the first and second centuries. (This may seem like minutiae unrelated to my commentary, but it is not.) 

 

My young friend’s interest was piqued. “Could I read it when you’re done?” 

 

What could warm a book maven’s heart more?!

 

Well, I came back the next day with several books, including two books of essays by Wendell Berry. Perhaps best known to American readers as the author of the poem, The Peace of Wild Things, Mr. Berry, who hails from rural Kentucky, is a farmer, an activist, a poet, a teacher and – although it does not say so on his Wikipedia page, a philosopher– and I would posit that he is one of this country’s pre-eminent philosophers. My co-worker read Berry’s The Way of Ignorance, and then we talked about it a bit. He said, “Well, there was a lot of farming jargon in there, stuff that I didn’t understand. But, I sort of skipped over the terminology, and once I got into what he was saying, I was, like, yeah. It made me think about things differently. I mean, I’m an inner-city kid, and I have absolutely no idea what it is like to be in the country, and what the issues are that people face, there.”

 

And there it was, in a nutshell. He got it. This is the crux of the matter, the heart of our national existential crisis. 

 

Since the dawn of the industrial age, our nation has increasingly been divided by city issues versus rural issues. As population growth caused cities to spill over into suburbs and industry to infringe on the wild places, increasingly, our politics has certainly become “us vs. them.” In part, I think people have put unfounded faith in their elected representatives. The electorate has been trained to believe that their elected representatives are really working on their behalf – that is, that they are truly representing the desires and needs of the people who elected them to office. 

 

Average citizens forget that industry lobbyists have a lot of money to grease the wheels of what capitalism wants. Whether we live in the city or the countryside, you and I do not have that kind of influence; as a result, our needs are left wanting. Oh, there’ll be a carrot dangled near election time, but once the election is over, the carrot evaporates into thin air. Meanwhile, if policy is made that people don’t want, the excuses fly, the fingers point, and those on the “other side of the aisle” become scapegoats. But, trust me, the scapegoats are a fiction .

 

We have a two-house legislative branch that is supposed to serve the people.  There are always claims of a shadow government. Yes, I believe there is a shadow government, and that shadow government is called capitalism. Capitalists always have millions of dollars to throw around, in order to get to the head of the line in terms of service, but they never seem to have the money to pay you or taxes. Billions of capitalist lobbying dollars are spent in order to do the wrong things for the economy of the people. I’ve said for decades that if we just paid average people what they were worth and gave them access to healthcare and services that are based on actual cost of living indices for each region, it would be less costly than all the lobby money poured forth to keep people from such. If there were to be an equitable system of government, we should get rid of the lobbyists, shouldn’t we? Instead, we have enshrined them in a law that states a corporation is a person. Well, actually, We the People did not do that, but our shadow government did, with the help of your elected representatives and the Supreme Court! 

 

We are manipulated by our shadow government (capitalism) into thinking “other” is the problem. Some of our representatives are career politicians who know all to well where their bread is buttered; these folks are millionaires. How did they amass such fortunes on government pay? This is an old story, but somehow, we don’t want to take at the face value what is thrust at us every single day in the news cycle by a person who has no values beyond “me, myself and I.” 

 

But we are irresponsible if we abrogate our duty as citizens to be for each other. One of those duties is to respect the rights of others. I’ve seen so much bashing and smashing and slamming in the media that I am bruised by it. Are you feeling the same thing? 

 

There is an economy that is good for Town-mice, and there is an economy that is good for Country-mice; both need to be honored and served. That we have been taught to believe – and some of us actually do believe – that some are better than others, that some do not deserve to be treated equally, this is a moral outrage and crime that must end. 

 

Freedom isn’t free. I need you and you need me. 

 

Right now, we’re all spitting and clawing at each other, and not just lobbing pejoratives (such as “libtard” or “ever-trumper”), which is bad enough. My brothers and sisters on the left are just as apt to be in an echo chamber as my brothers and sisters on the right. Mutual disrespect is rampant. The right to peaceably assemble is being trampled by extremists of all stripes. Crimes are being committed unabashedly. Law enforcement is trigger-happy; as one victim’s mother put it, “We called the police for help, not for an execution!” People are not being given due process. Racism has gone from undercurrent to in your face. The hydra of rabble-rousers that follows the peaceful protests grows, in turn followed closely by opportunistic looters. I see reckless abandon and mutual disregard, everywhere. The trash dumped by the side of the road is a message that says, “I don’t care!”

 

Where is our national moral compass? Where has it gone?

 

Never has its lack been more evident than during this pandemic, where people cry “my rights! my rights are being infringed!” when they refuse to adhere to the most basic health and hygiene guidelines. Is it really so constraining to wear a mask or to wash your hands? The news is full of stories and the hospitals are filling with people who have declared the right to flagrantly disregard health directives and put others, as well as themselves, in danger. Some, sadly, have gone to their graves. Humans really haven’t evolved much since the pandemic of 1917; the same grievances were aired then.

 

Well, guess what, folks? We live in a collectivist society. The old adage (difficult to attribute) reads, “Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.” An individual is not a self-sufficient island, completely free to act at will. This is what we as a society fail, time and again, to understand, to equitably legislate, and to live. 

 

FREEDOM ISN’T FREE! 

 

Freedom is not a ticket to a free-for-all, do-whatever-you-want lifestyle. Freedom is where we hold ourselves and each other accountable to the ideals laid out in the Constitution. Freedom is responsibility to self and to other. 

 

As a nation, we need to gather together around this truism that Freedom Isn’t Free. We need to understand the costs of discipleship to what has been unprincipled, and the heavy cost of deceit. We need to have some difficult conversations about economies – those that are good for Town-mice and those that are good for Country-mice. Repairs are needed. We need to legislate in ways that make sense, not money. We need to mend our nation In the end, it is not “us versus them,” is it?  

 

We ultimately all want the same economy: worthy work, decent pay, sufficient food, adequate shelter in a nice setting, clean water, access to healthcare and protection against criminal activity or invasion. There are costs for all of this. We need to recognize those costs and be willing to share them. 

Anything less is un-American.

  

Of Time Before Time After

A flutter of wings at my ear,
a pointed gaze of greeting
— all at once, a welling memory,
a time of knowing soul before words,
a completely other kind of knowing,
offering clarity to this experience
only from within sleep and dreams.

 

The amplitude of such interiority,
speaking as if from shadowed recesses,
is perhaps all that remains of that time,
all this time after time,
time filled with learned speech,
this a wholly different way
to perceive and filter experience.

 

The hummingbird,
having partaken of the offered nectar,
turns to me once more, as if to say,
“Yes, friend; we were there together,
remember?”

 

Such deep remembrance
renders planned trajectories irrelevant
to what is possible
when you look up,
reach out,
let loose and—
like the beautiful bird
—fly.

  

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

 

 

***

Memory is an astonishing attribute of mind and consciousness. 

 

This bit of writing is an attempt – in so many ways unsuccessful – to indicate an aspect of mind that I remember vaguely from my pre-verbal self in infancy. This memory is triggered every so often; last evening, what triggered it was reading this very brief passage from a lecture given in February of 1982 by Michel Foucault (published, with many other lectures delivered at Collège de France, under the title “The Hermeneutics of the Subject”): 

 

What is it to be free? asks Seneca. And he answers: To be free is effugere servitutem. 

I followed the footnote to see the more complete quote from Seneca’s Natural Questions: liber autem est qui servitutem sui (to be free is to no longer be slave to self).

And, somehow, that moment is when a recollection came of this moment I would experience before sleep, in the age of my infancy. What I remember is the sense that it seemed not so long a time before when understanding was easier because I was unencumbered, that is not enclosed, in the awkwardness of an untrained body. I can remember being put to bed, and being sleepy, and questions forming in my mind that were not tied, really, to language, as we who have words understand and experience language. My questions were about my daily experiences, about the things I did not understand. These would roll forward like an ebbing tide. Answers would flow back. The answers came in a form I cannot express; they were lengthy, precise, all at once simple and complex. Such answers would calm me and allow me to relax into sleep, but they were real answers that informed me; I recall that each night, the questions were always different, the answers were always new—like an onboard learning system, if you will.

 

Once I had attained language skills, this pre-language fell away—and I can viscerally recall feeling it recede, feeling it slip away, as it was no longer needed. Now that I had words, I could speak them to people, and get answers in that way. I can remember still reaching in my mind for that other kind of knowing, always on the way to sleep, and sometimes would still get responses. 

 

I cannot remember anything describable about this pre-verbal knowing, except that it was, and that I remember it because I experienced it, and the memory remains a part of my consciousness. In these moments when I remember it, I sometimes wonder if it remains a latent aspect within, and if perhaps I will encounter it again, in my latter days.

Morning Meeting

        for my friend K.N.M.

 

Standing in the cool morning air,
in consideration of self and solitude,
a sudden joyous flutter distracts;
another self’s beating wings brush by,
for there will be sweet nectar
to imbibe in the bye and bye,
but first, a turn and a level gaze.

 

So pointed a greeting,
subject to subject 
—for we are each subjects
within a realm, a paradise,
sharing a language of wonder
whose name we cannot know,
but by all reckoning must be Life.

 

This shared gaze opens a window,
through which the bumblebee flies,
casting us only a sidelong glance;
engagement would only tarry
the work of bud embracing
on which all creation depends,
so to our tête-à-tête we are left.  

 

This wordless meeting draws me
to recall a nearly forgotten music,

a tune perhaps heard by us both, 
even if only in such waves and echoes 
as still radiate from the first such encounter,
which might well live on in fluid eddies
as the song of eternal return.

 

This mutual gaze cannot last,

for this, our singular moment, it must end;
this language we live
cannot abide the invariable:
all moments must transcend,
capitulating to the music and meter of next,
to the changing changeable.

 

We know one another only by sight,
and to that degree, perhaps not at all,
but the blessing that we have delighted,
to look and to see, with equal curiosity,
sharing the light of the same sun,
must have changed us, in ways we’ll surely discover
within the cocoons of our solitary dreaming.

 

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

 

Dividing Division

Once to ev'ry man and nation comes the moment to decide,


In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side;


Some great cause, some great decision, off'ring each the bloom or blight, 


And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

~ James Russell Lowell

Within the past week, I was reminded of this text by my friend Suzanne, who said of it “If we get beyond the obvious sexist language, there is a pointed message for every believer, a call to social decision and activism, even if our efforts do not end well. It is a powerful, discomforting hymn, and seems very apt for this moment.” A few days later, this same friend made the following observation: “Some of my Christian friends believe that Christianity is under attack. It is. From itself.”

Humanity, in general, and the United States particularly, has not been in such upheaval since the H1N1 pandemic of 1917-19, which was on the heels of WWI. The uncoordinated response of our civic leaders in the United States could be addressed here, but that is part of a larger discussion I’ll save for another time. What I find profoundly disturbing is the poor example set by mainstream christian church leaders, particularly of the mega-church variety, in how to address the pandemic – to the point, pastors seem to prefer large maskless, in-person crowds, rather than the safer live-stream or even pre-recorded services.

When some congregants are challenged with regard to going about maskless, they claim this is self-determined choice made “in faith,” adhering to “the will of God.” Pastor Tony Spell, of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, LA, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying “We feel we are being persecuted for the faith by being told to close our doors.” I’ve seen posts on Facebook – and have actually heard regular church-going people say in public – that being forced to wear a mask is (1) an act of “faithlessness”, (2) “surrendering to fear” and (2) “an assault on my constitutional rights.” In a letter to the editor of a newspaper, one writer declared, “If we fall in love with Jesus, God will heal our land.” 

Interestingly, citizens of the United States wrestled with these same issues during that H1N1 pandemic of one hundred years ago. Unfortunately, average citizens of the nation today don’t seem to have learned much in a hundred years about how to deal with the threat of viruses, despite all of our scientific advances. But, what seems worse is that great masses of citizens have not learned, in all that time, that self-determination and secular freedom cannot overrule public health orders, and neither can they overcome a virus. A virus is not an idea. You can’t argue with a virus. A virus is not a terrorist plot. A virus has no religion. If faith was indeed the medicine needed to eradicate the threat, I feel sure that the virus would have been eradicated in an instant, or maybe never have presented, at all. That the virus is still rampant means that people need to engage whatever critical thinking ability they might have, look for real solutions, follow advice from epidemiologists and act responsibly in public settings. A virus is not a political tool, but the presence of this one is certainly being used to polarize the masses, to profit from suffering, and to sow doubt and fear. 

The attitudes recently displayed in my greater community, the disdain for rules imposed on the religious and non-religious alike, have made me think long and hard about my dealings with the general public and my understanding of my faith, and how frequently my understanding seems at odds with what I see acted out in public, particularly by those who identify as faithful christians. In the past few weeks, I've realized that I have thought on these matters much over the years.

I think it started in the 1970s when, as a youth, I remember being disturbed when I noticed Ichthys (fish) signs appearing in the windows of businesses in the town where I lived. Even as a naive youth, I felt there was something off, something fundamentally wrong with this. The signs seemed to telegraph the message, “we cater to Christians.” This seemed to me to go completely against the teaching of Jesus, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” This seemed to me to go completely against the teaching of Paul from Galatians 3, where he says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Time has marched on since then. Today, it sometimes seems to me that the greater mainstream modern christian mission is intent on a type of control that is anything but reflective of that fruit of the spirit, listed in Galatians 5, self-control. The mission is now about mass control of the public and the marketplaces, dictating what people can be and do, as well as what they can't. Those christians that engage in exercising this control at the political level are using secular freedoms and contortions of the law as tools to accomplish these goals. Such goals have nothing to do with being responsible, honoring freedom, human rights, individual personhood or – do I have to say it? – with honoring God. These goals have been lobbied long and hard the halls of our local municipalities and state capitols, and now they seem to have been installed at the very pinnacle of our government, through a figurehead who is anything but godly. 

A political minority is now in the process of reversing decades of modern human progress. Biblical scriptures are being used to return America to the way it was a hundred years ago or more, to deepen systemic racism and implicit bias, to allow the “free” market to tell us what we need (and deliver it at the highest cost to any people on the face of the earth), to dictate what people can do with their bodies (without offering public support for the policies imposed), to tell people how they must define their personhood, and at times suspending their rights. Scripture is being used to divide and rule. People are being told on the one hand that their lives are self-determined (via their Constitutional rights) and on the other that they must live by faith (via their religion). That “results may vary” is beside the point; if you don’t succeed, it’s surely because you lack faith or don’t work hard enough. 

But it is patently incorrect that the church universal is a “by faith only” institution. For one thing, the exercise of religion by faith alone is fatalistic, is it not? Declaring all circumstances and situations to be “God’s will” is asserting that results (good or bad) are inevitable. This is not what scripture is intended to teach; if this were the case, we might as well bury our heads in the sand and give up. But if Jesus taught anything, it is that we must never give up, especially not in the face of hardship. 

All that I have said above is merely a prelude for what I will do next, which is to unpack a portion of Mathew, Chapter 10, from my understanding of it. [And I apologize if it seems like I am leaping around; but all that is written in this essay seems related and cohesive to me.] In this section of Matthew, Jesus has empowered the disciples to heal and has commissioned them to go, first, into the Jewish communities to preach and heal. They have been told not take anything with them, to seek the hospitality only of those willing to offer it. Jesus tells them to use their judgment and inner wisdom in their encounters. Then he says, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword,” and then he enumerates a list of “divisions.”

Of all the passages in this complex gospel, I have considered this one much over the years. For a long time, I thought this uncharacteristic of Jesus. But over time I have come to a different way of thinking. What has Jesus been preaching, since Chapter 4? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For Jesus, the kingdom of God is here, but people are not living it—for myriad reasons, but primarily because their hearts and vision are not properly aligned with a few vital truths. Predominant among these truths is that social equity is mandated within the kingdom; no one is better than anyone else, or worse—unless they act in a way that does not respect the rule of law and the individual. 

When Jesus talks about dividing people from family or other groups, I’m fairly certain he is talking about separating people from ways of thinking and understanding that have been promulgated by custom and culture, ways of being that are rote, formulaic, even work-around rather than genuine, practical or direct. What specific results of this cleaving are possible? I believe the cleaving intended to separate people from ideas of caste and class, wealth and poverty, strength and weakness, so that individuals are understood based on who they are and how they act, rather than based on an assigned label, to be treated formulaically according to some custom or rule. 

The first time we hear “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” it is delivered (in Chapter 3) by John the Baptist. John’s message is no less violent than when Jesus talks about bringing a sword, but the resulting message is the same. “Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.. Even now the axe is laid on the root of the trees; therefore, every tree which does not bring forth good fruit will be cast into the fire.”

After years of thinking about these passages, the meaning that they hold for me now seems so uncomplicated. John and Jesus sought to divide us from the delusion of division.

To divide us from divisions, what could that mean? Well, I think that is about making us whole, healing us for the work of the kingdom. What is kingdom of God like in such a case? It is a place – even a political system – where everyone has personhood, place, and role, where every challenge and need is appropriately met, at a shared cost. As Martin Buber wrote in I and Thou , “All real living is meeting.”

And so, I return to the sentiments expressed by James Russell Lowell, from whose longer poem, entitled “Verses Suggested by the Present Crisis” (published in the Boston Courier on December 11, 1845) the hymn text quoted above is derived. A later verse proclaims:

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,


Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,


But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,


List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,

—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

 And still later in the poem:

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;

Shall we make their creed our jailor?  Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of today?

And with these thoughts, I conclude by proclaiming that the sword continues to be wielded, “the soul is still oracular,” and “the kingdom is at hand.”  I hope that mainstream christianity will find its way out of the wilderness it has created for itself and for all of us.

I personally believe that every moment is alive for new and thoughtful choices, always ready for healthy repentance and renewal, if one will allow oneself to be divided from division.

But, please, do not be divided from your facemask, at least until the pestilence is gone.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

Foresight 20/20; A Commencement Address for our Graduates

Parents, Friends and Neighbors, we stand here today to honor our 2020 graduates. 

It cannot go without saying that 2020 has been a strange year. I don’t think any of us was, nor could have been, prepared for the sudden arrival of a pandemic. Our lives have been turned upside-down. The norms and expectations of everything, including and particularly celebration, have been curtailed. The globalized economy has collapsed like a house of cards, and the highest levels of leadership have proven themselves to be insubstantial, even unfit, but certainly unready to meet such a crisis where it needs to be met – often treating this environment as though human needs are not an integral part of it.

Suddenly everything came to a halt, and we were mainly limited to being at home, really only going out for essential procurements or essential work. It doesn’t take long for people, so used to social commerce, to become bored, isolated, sad. On March 18^th, I awoke from a dream and these words lingered from it, so I wrote them down and gave them a title: 

Together, Alone

We hike along a way
we’d usually share abreast,
but right now, we each move
together, alone.

The distance is forced and,
as two pendulums in motion would,
we try to match our steps,
try to meet in mind,
mindful of the gap.

A contagion we can’t see
threatens to separate us;
to divide and conquer
by means of infection
is the metaphor of this age.

This disease might save us,
if we could embrace a truth
writ large by the threat:
we live webs of intersections;
as we go, it is together, all one.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

A year of promise begun in the Fall got the wind sucked out it in February and March. To borrow a book title from Judith Viorst, for many students this has been a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad” year. It is of little consolation that a year such as this is not unprecedented in the history of our nation and our world.

In 1918, the world, already in the grips of World War I for a full year, was hit by an avian H1N1 virus that came to be known as the Spanish Flu. Troop movement is thought to have been the primary means of spreading this virus, and there were three primary waves of infection. Then, as now, public heath officials recommended the wearing of masks, proximal distancing, and quarantine as the primary methods by which to slow the spread of the disease and allow it to play itself out. 

In his commencement address to the 1918 graduating class of the University of Indiana, Mr. Rough and Ready, Theodore Roosevelt, nine years out of office as our 26^thPresident, said:

We need institutions of technical teaching, of technical learning in the country; but in my judgment, we need more the institutions that teach broad, cultural development, which this nation needs more than it needs anything else. We need the kind of learning acquired not because it can be turned into money but because it is worth so much more than money.

Let [each person] remember that no nation ever yet amounted to anything or ever will amount to anything if it consisted simply of money-getters, and if the trophies and proofs of its success consisted merely in the symbols of successful money-getting. The money must be there as a basis, but by no means as broad a basis as most of the very successful… among us have made it in their lives. [Money] is only [a] foundation, and the foundation is worthless unless upon it you build the super-structure of the higher life, the life with ideals of beauty, of nobility, of achievement of good for the sake of doing what is good, the life of service and sacrifice in any one of a hundred lines, all directed toward the welfare of our common country.

I hope it isn’t trite to say that though this year has been tough, we’ve all learned that doing good, in the simple way Roosevelt defined it, is something that can be done by going to work or school, or even by staying at home—doing the best we can, whatever any specific circumstances demand. We’ve seen what works, and what doesn’t work has been unmasked– as façade or out and out fraud – for all to see, if they are willing. We’ve learned that “Being together, all one” is part of our social contract, an act of cooperation we agree to do as a group even if we are self-isolating.

--

That you have arrived at this day is not, per se, a miracle. You’ve been nurtured and encouraged by parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers and coaches, ever since the day you were born. But that you have arrived at this milestone is an accomplishment—your accomplishment, a result of your hard work. Even, sometimes, boredom, contributes to growth, being the parent of invention.

You’ve spent so much of your life in school but, let me just say, school’s not over, yet – life is what some would call “Continuing Education.” I’m sure you’ve survived any number of “group projects”, during your time in Middle and High School, even College. When asked why students thought they were being given such assignments, at least 85% percent respond, “In order to lower my GPA.” As hated as these exercises are, there is a point to them; they are short experiments in the realities of cooperation. In these “controlled” experiments, the group you end up with must work together to produce a result. You get to choose who you hang out with at lunch and after school, but you mostly never get to choose who is going to be working with you on such assignments nor in any job setting. You and several or a bunch of others are thrown together to solve a problem and deliver a report or a product. Some members of the group have skills; some can organize, some are smart but flaky, while others might be excellent at avoidance all together. You have to find someone willing to take the thankless lead, and then together you have to plan meetings, benchmarks and goals, and each person has to agree to Do Their Part. This is nothing less than a social contract. Sometimes the results aren’t that great, but you can breathe a sigh of relief when your presentation is over, even if you were up until 2am making the PowerPoint presentation because you had to wait for one of your partners to email the data and another partner to email the text. This is a microcosm of real life; we all muddle along just like this, and every such experience offers an opportunity to observe people, and this contributes to your developing critical thought process. One thing you learn is that even people with the best of plans encounter issues that can cause them to change course. If there’s one rule of thumb you can live by, it’s this: Everything takes four times longer to accomplish than you think it should, from simple chores on up. And yet, there is art and grace to be found in all of this, and joy.

Perhaps, during our shelter-in-place, in our quiet meditations, we have made some important observations. Perhaps we’ve been able to breathe cleaner air. Perhaps we have been able to actually hear the birds singing without the continuous hum of traffic and construction to dampen their songs. Perhaps we have been able to see the moon and stars more clearly at night. Perhaps we have discovered – and maybe to our surprise – that a lifestyle of rushing around and being artificially busy is not required in order to live fully and productively. Perhaps we have thought about how much energy – personal energy, as well as resource energy – is wasted when everything and everyone is constantly turned on and in motion. Perhaps we have concerned ourselves with how isolation might be impacting others, because we know how deeply it has impacted us. Perhaps we have observed that all are not treated equally or based on truly demonstrated merit. Perhaps we’ve finally heard and identified divisive rhetoric and platitudes, and been upset by them. Perhaps, in thinking about all these things, we have thought of solutions to certain problems. 

What ideas have you had during this time that you think are worthy to pursue? Ideas that can help us do more than just muddle along? Such ideas are the capital on which every former society has been, and any newer society, can be built. 

In the words of a Fleetwood Mac song from my generation:

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Don't stop, it'll soon be here
It'll be, better than before
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone

Right now, we are still in a bit of a holding pattern, waiting for the pandemic threat to be “yesterday,” and some of us marching to demand greater social justice. As difficult as it is to be missing out on shared celebrations with your peers, I hope you realize that you are experiencing history first-hand, and that this moment is but a spring-board to the next phase of yours and all our lives. You are on the ground floor, and everything goes up from here. In the parlance of business, disruption is the fertile ground for innovation. Carpe diem, seize the day! This historic moment contains the seeds of opportunity that you and all your classmates can cultivate toward holistic and positive change so desperately needed in our world, changes that don’t treat humanity as if it is detached from the environment or subservient to money, changes that honor individual personhood. 

As we slowly return to a “new normal,” I hope that you will be able to safely rejoin your classmates and extended family in celebration of your collective achievements, and that those celebrations will be all the more fully experienced and cherished because of the crisis we have lived through. 

In the meanwhile, we congratulate you and the entire Class of 2020, and hope that the springboard of current events will catapult all of you to success in the fields of your choice, with the best wishes and continued support of all of us. We are confident that you and your generation have and will further develop and employ critical discernment, and with it the capacity to concentrate on those issues pertinent to the “common good,” and we have high hopes that every new construct you have imagined can be realized to make the world “better than before,” where each person has a place and a vital role. You have heard the phrase, “20/20 hindsight” – it is our hope that you and everyone in your generation will look on the year 2020 as a challenge to look ahead, to make leaps forward and to lead, leveraging your knowledge of the past and, now, new perspective and energy toward building a better, safer, more loving world for us all, a world with just a touch of 20/20 foresight.

Best to you always, 

Elisabeth Eliassen
your neighbor and fellow citizen

© 2020 by Elisabeth Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

This address is for all students who were unable to partake of a commencement gathering with their fellow students and families. I wrote this specifically for a young man, a neighbor, who grew up with my kids. I want all our graduates know that they are special and that they live in a special time, and that they can shape the world. I pulled out the more personal comments directed toward our young friend, but the message is the same for all.

Covid Pentacost

Grief walks the streets, masked.
Isolation is summer’s undesired shield
from the hum of bees,
of birdsongs,
of joy.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

Injustice walks the streets, armed.
Legal structures and strictures shield
ideologies of subjugation;
they rule with impunity,
sparking outrage.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

A virus propelled by breath runs unabated.
Much needed conversation is stifled
—not to mention song,
medicine the spirit
longs to feel.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

Gather, all ye in the village squares,
mourn that capture by all such restraints
as leads to the stifling of breath,
sending, untimely, more men of color
to meet Jesus in Paradise.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

Fire beetles, light the night,
signal the elusive dove to morning flight,
and when comes here the sun,
rain upon us a fire for righteousness.

Transform these hearts of stone
into the living hearts of compassion;
Make us to speak only justice,
to understand the language of love and no other.

Let not the riotous soul go unheard,
that stands by with help for all humanity;
strengthen us to bring comfort and blessing
to every neighbor, in these times of trial. Selah!

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

We live in dangerous times. People who should be leaders are fomenting unrest for political gain. Innocent people are caught in the crossfire. Some sworn members of that profession intended to “protect and serve” abuse their power.

I am reminded of Ezekiel, Chapter 7, a description known as “The End Has Come.” At the very end is this line:

“I will deal with them according to their conduct,
and by their own standards will I judge them.”

As bleak as this seems, there is much to hope for. There are good and compassionate and loving people in every place.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

Love truly is the answer, and the only one.

This is It: Commentary on Episodes 1 through 4

The average reader of that corpus of literature Christians call the New Testament don’t realize that John the Baptist was as powerful a figure as Jesus. John and Jesus were the charismatic leaders of parallel movements, each drawing very large followings. It is possible that John’s movement had more followers than that of Jesus. 

For the sake of my rendering of gospel narrative, I allow the conceit that the two are “cousins,” according to infancy stories in Luke.

Seen through a modern lens, John’s wild appearance and messianic preaching suggest someone on the spectrum. His ministry, from what we know of it, is centered in repentance and renewal as preparatory to the arrival of the kingdom and a final judgment: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2) John’s sacrament was for the remission of sins, but more than that, it was a personal self-healing, a confession, a turning back to the holy one, a rebirth to new ways.

Jesus accepted the sacrament, and then made it integral to his own movement. 

What leaps out to me from the scriptures is that each man points to the other and asks, Are you the one? And by that, each one means Elijah, returned. 

Another interesting thing that leaps out to me is that there was never a suggestion that the parallel movements merge. John went his way and Jesus went in another direction. 

I find it possible—and this is pure speculation—that officials might have been concerned that the movements might merge, particularly because the texts suggest that the two groups maintained contact. Already, the great throngs of people who could be swayed by preaching presented a threat of uprising; a broader coalition of the disenfranchised would have raised the level of such a threat. 

The great difference between John’s ministry and that of Jesus is that only John could administer the sacrament. So, the movement would have died whenever John died. Executing him while he was in prison—and any excuse would have done—was an effective and quick way to destroy his movement and disband his crowds.

By contrast, Jesus gathered a group of willing disciples—a move that I can only think was strategic. He put the sacrament of baptism front and center in his own movement, but he empowered his disciples to offer it, as well as to perform healing. This ensured that the legacy of John would live on, and also made this movement an official target, once John’s movement was ended.

An additional similarity between the thought of John and Jesus has to do with trees bearing fruit. Trees and fruit are metaphors, I believe, for physical and spiritual self-care; how well we tend to ourselves is reflected in the mental choices we make and physical actions we take in the world. How do we tend the tree of our soul? The tree that is not well tended will bear rotten fruit or, worse, no fruit, at all. The ministries of John and Jesus make it plain that such a tree is only useful as fuel for the fire.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

Read them again:

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-1-at-river.html

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-2-who-are-you.html

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-3-finding-purpose.html

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-4-blessing.html