Abolition and the Wild Goose Festival

Howard Zinn’s analysis of the abolition of slavery quoted in the previous post knocked me on my ass. I’ve heard several analyses of what brought slavery to an end and why, but I wasn’t prepared for this one. Thus, my one word commentary–DAMN!

Zinn’s A People’s History is the first history text I’ve ever undertaken of my own volition to read from cover to cover. It is an emotionally difficult book to read by myself. It’s actually depressing at times to see how much we think of as new or breakthrough that just isn’t. As a nation, we’ve been on the same treadmill for a while in regards to many things. Every once and a while we’ll jump off, pick the treadmill up and relocate it, but I’ve had to accept that much of that movement is lateral. For instance, the run up to the 2001 US War in Iraq was in broad strokes identical to the run-up to the US Mexican War of 1845.  In similitude, post-Revolution American cities saw their own Occupy movements silenced with the same authoritarian prerogative being exercised now.

So too we see in the instigation of the US Civil War a pattern and purpose that has since repeated itself time and time again. Zinn continues his insight, “With slavery abolished by order of the government–true, a government pushed hard to do so, by blacks, free and slave, and by white abolitionists–its end could be orchestrated so as to set limits to emancipation. Liberation from the top would go only so far as the interests of the dominant groups permitted. If carried further by the momentum of war, the rhetoric of a crusade, it could be pulled back to a safer position. Thus, while the ending of slavery led to a reconstruction of national politics and economics, it was not a radical reconstruction, but a safe one–in fact, a profitable one.”

In light of Zinn’s incisive analysis, the failures of American societal integration and other attempts of sub-set diversification since all make sense. Diversification fails when it is managed so as to be “orderly” or “non-offensive” or “fair” to the already privileged because these purposes smack of the very fear and prejudice and preservation of power that diversification is meant to overcome. To abolish the tyranny of inequity, one must also abolish the purposes for which that tyranny was established: one must die to them… daily.

This brings me to the Wild Goose Festival. Ours is not the first attempt to make room for everyone to celebrate a common hope in faith, music, art and social justice. What may be distinctive, however, is that we have caught in the wind two course correctives from our lead goose, the one we’re chasing. One is that the festival is not ours alone. The other, that at its best the festival will privilege those routinely (historically) underprivileged at other such gatherings.

The implication seems pretty straight forward enough: extend ownership of the festival to those routinely underprivileged who are most committed to making room for everyone else. But once articulated, it dawns on me how seldom this is done. Most often those privileged within a particular construct try to accommodate others without abdicating power (power is privilege; privilege is power), which creates a tokenistic dynamic that inevitably breeds resentment, alienation and contention.

Now, I am not naive. Un-privileging the previously privileged will almost inevitably lead through resentment and contention as well, even for those of limited privilege in the old construct, because at least initially there is a lot of uncertainty about one's place in anything new--no one wants to risk and end up losing ground. The traditionally privileged within any construct have historically used this angst among those of limited privilege to sew seeds of doubt about the wholesale dismantling of an established order. Ask Gabriel (Prosser), Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and John Brown how effective it is. Ask Gandhi and King. It works like a charm. And because there are so few examples of social orders or organizational dynamics not built upon oppressive inequities--because there are so few who have risked such a radical (to use Zinn's term) restructuring of thinking and practice as that advocated by Jesus (what would he know?)--those of us who have reason to believe something better is possible postpone it until some distant point in an idyllic future, when happiness and peace will subdue us against our wills and not be dependent upon our good-faith energies toward maintaining it.

At the chance that my sardonic commentary in the last sentence has missed its mark, let me be clear: I don't buy it. The beauty of an earth made new costs more than some flimsy wish for a picturesque future bought and paid for by someone else's heroism. For all those mindful of such things, yes, I'm making a very theological statement (everything we do or say makes a theological statement). "Jesus paid it all" to create the possibility of "a new heaven and a new earth," but we too must give back all we accumulated under the old order to live into the new. That starts now with abolishing the structures of inequity we've tried to preserve for fear of how vulnerable a new order might leave us. So don't be surprised when you see increasing numbers of women, people of color, queer, interfaith and differently-abled participants in the crowds and on stage at WGF next year and for years to come. And get this, although they will likely be open to all respectful inquiry, their invitations in large part will be to speak about something other than being women, people of color, queer, interfaith and differently-abled.

I know! That may sound all wild-and-crazy, even unsafe, but then again, it is no tame goose that we're chasing.

DAMN!

“The United States government’s support of slavery was based on an overpowering practicality. In 1790, a thousand tons of cotton were being produced every year in the South. By 1860, it was a million tons. In the same period, 500,000 slaves grew to 4 million. [How's that for workforce efficiency: 1000 times the output for only 8 times the investment!] A system harried by slave rebellions and conspiracies (Gabriel Prosser, 1800; Denmark Vesey, 1822; Nat Turner, 1831) developed a network of controls in the southern states, backed by the laws, courts, armed forces, and [the unabashedly articulated] race prejudice of the nations’s political leaders.

“It would take either a full-scale slave rebellion or a full-scale war to end such a deeply entrenched system. If a rebellion, it might get out of hand, and turn its ferocity beyond slavery to the most successful system of capitalist enrichment in the world. If a war, those who made the war would organized its consequences. Hence, it was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, not John Brown. In 1859, John Brown was hanged, with federal complicity, for attempting to do by small-scale violence what Lincoln would do by large-scale violence [just a few] years later–end slavery.”

-Howard Zinn, “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom,” A People’s History of the United States

Darkwood Brew Rocks!

Had a blast on Darkwood Brew last night. If you’ve never seen it, you should check it out. It’s an online talkshow at the intersection of christian faith, pop culture, social media and good music. It’s a great touchstone for folks whose faith is evolving into you don’t know what yet, but you are looking to know you are not alone.

Hope: A Pessimist’s Guide, Part 7: Beauty from Darkwood Brew on Vimeo.

Why Nature & Narrative Infest Everything I Do

“Nature [and story are] uniquely [generative and] regenerative.” One shapes us from the inside-out, the other, perhaps, from the outside-in, but it’s hard to tell which does what.

-adapted from Robin Moore, professor of landscape architecture at North Carolina State and head of the Natural Learning Initiative

WTF

Here’s a different contextual example of what I was talking about in the previous post.

You’re out on a date, wanting to impress.  You take a walk in the park on a beautiful 80-degree day–just warm enough for some ice cream.  As big, fluffy, multi-scope clouds float by, you enter a small parlor brimming with people who had exactly the same idea.  You and your date decide to share a combo cone, and while s/he runs to the restroom, you step to the counter to order.  Your eyes dance with delight as the attendant presents you with the grandiosity you have ordered, a frozen monument to the big impression you plan to make with your date. 

As you turn from the counter, catching sight of the open-mouthed astonishment of your now biggest fan,  some guy rushing to the counter bumps you from behind and your sweet treat ends up here:

Would your first reaction be something to the effect…

“What the f@#k are you doing, dude?”

or

“Why the f@#k would I ever have or need that much ice cream?”

The difference between those two reactions are the stories that inform them.

Training Hearts, Minds and Hands

If you think it doesn’t matter how we tell our stories of faith to our kids, consider this. The Book of Revelation in the Bible offers an apocalyptic glimpse of one possible future in which people carry the mark of the dominant cultural system in either their heads or their hands. The difference in the two metaphors is nearly self-evident. To be marked in one’s head is to be intellectually or emotionally committed to a way of being. To be marked in one’s hand is to be committed to the embodiment of a way of being, regardless of actual belief in it. It’s quite a brilliant piece of imagery on John the Beloved’s part. With just a few words he encapsulates whole volumes of what it means to endorse in thought or deed a most treacherous system that preys on life itself, like a cancer eating its host alive. I grew up in a denominational tradition that made a lot of this story as diagnostic of those very other than myself. What I’ve come to find is that the power of this story is that it indicts us all.

As an educator, I have worked most of my adult life with Gen-Y babies. Even though for a while only a few years separated me from the my students, there was much that separated me from their generationally unique sense of self. For three things, they knew nothing of a world without personal computing, without the democratization of information or without virtual realities. But there has always been something else which I couldn’t quite put my finger on before now–something quite different, yet strangely familiar. See, I used to think it was simply that theirs was the first American generation to know not just legally but intuitively what it meant for all humans to be created equal. I believed that in them lie the promise to transform our nation, maybe even our world, into that which could “rise up and live out the true meaning of its [life-affirming] creed[s].” And I still do.

But my experience of Ys and, now, Millennials in general has seldom lived up to these lofty pronouncements. That may be in part because, as a teacher, I’m always probing to find a sustainable motivation in my students. Its not enough for me to have simply transmitted the required information. I want to know what students have learned will have meaning for time to come, and I’ve struggle to see that. Sure I’ve taught long enough to have had students come back and tell me that our time together really mattered, but regardless of their choices–many of them extremely commendable–I’ve remained concerned on their behalf. And its only fairly recently that I’ve been able to begin to articulate my perpetual disquiet. What has concerned me about even church-going, socially responsible, generally productive adolescents I’ve watched grow into adulthood is what I’m currently describing as a deep, abiding, albeit enlightened self-interest that seems indifferent to the fundamental hypocrisy between all they “know” and how they often choose to live.

Now that’s heavy. Moreover, it could easily sound like a needlessly cynical, yea even typical, blanket criticism of the next generations–but it’s not. It’s a lament for a way of being in the world that my and my parent’s generations breathed new life into post-WWII and continue now to respirate. Whatever our children are, we raised–are raising–them to be. So if indeed they unconsciously labor to maintain component structures or whole systems of inequity even as those who believe in something different, it can only be because we haven’t bequeathed to them a more beautiful story.

As I remember, similar assessments were made of my own crack-baby, gang banging, high school drop-out, teen parent teeming Gen X.  Neither I nor most of the people I know fell in these categories.  The universality of a description doesn’t always matter.  What matters is that the description inclines us to acknowledge that something is a little off.  Whatever it is, it manifests across all demographics, not just with “those people” over there. One can’t say it’s nothing when kids in my neighborhood who despite historic disadvantages believe in their innate equality, but many of whom then take that truth and the opportunities bought with blood by their predecessors and choose to live in the most morally, intellectually, emotionally and socially impoverished ways. One can’t say it’s nothing when kids of privilege are too convinced of the innate equality of all, but collude uncritically or without sense of agency with a status quo that continues to privilege them over others. And vice-versa. In great irony, this generation has elected the first African-American President of the US and helped sponsor unprecedented disaster relief and social revolutions in foreign lands from their smart phones, yet they have been unable or unmotivated to subdue the corporate dictators and warmongers who exercise ridiculous power over their and others’ lives and politics. In the mist of this cacophony of similar strivings, what seems missing is a story of how and why one might attempt anything other.

My point isn’t to prove my particular description of this generation of young people right. My point is to substantiate the need for more virtue-rich stories. If John the Revelator was anywhere near right, part of the remedy has to be training heart, mind and hand to work in concert with one another. As simplistic as it may sound, story does that. It gets down in us and shapes us from the inside-out in ways that we may only be beginning to be able to articulate.

So I invite you to join me at the Children, Youth and a New Kind of Christianity gathering happening in Washington, DC, next May: where we’ll be sharing more true, more just, more lovely, more–just plain better–tellings of the stories of our faith in the hopes of inspiring a generation that can live up to all its promise. I’ll be collecting many of the stories shared and would love to hear yours–particularly if you disagree with my aforementioned assessment. Some of the best stories come out of divergence. I look forward to seeing you there!

Silly as a Goose

You may find me silly, but speaking about story and storytelling at the Wild Goose Festival in June was one of the highlights of my year. It was already amazing to be a part of hosting the festival, but to have fellow goosers want to talk about telling better stories was absolutely exhilarating!

My talk (below) inspired in me what I’d love to become a syndicated column in which I push back against some of our most treasured Western myths—like “everyone functions according to her/his own self-interest”—by reminding readers of the more beautiful glimpses of possible found in the stories of scripture.

I’m Raising My Children to Present Themselves Like This!

You have to hear this interview. This child is only 17! I know grown folks who don’t conduct themselves with as much poise and self-awareness. You go, Mariah Stackhouse!

Why Some People of Color Might Not Have Come to the Wild Goose

I have a confession to make. I didn’t do all I could to get Black folks out to the inaugural Wild Goose Festival. Even as one who had some small say in decisions being made, I was ambivalent about spending what little social capital I may have (my street cred is suspect to say the least) on an experience that could have easily turned out to be culturally inaccessible. You see, not many will try dry goose twice, no matter how good the recipe.

I had a hard enough time convincing my own wife, Leslie, that though we might end up being the diversity (which is a tough row to always have to hoe) we wouldn’t be outsiders (prop or addendum). I’d like to attribute my initial reservations to a pastoral sensibility, but it could have just as easily been cowardice. God only knows. It seems one thing to have a personal calling to transgress boundaries and to hold space, but that’s not a mission you just throw others—folks you love—into haphazardly. My new friend David LaMotte rightly noted that those people of color who do often risk being agents of future are wearied by the exercise because over time so little changes. The supposed gains seldom seem worth the cost.

Still, despite the minimal representation of people of color, as my brotha Anthony Smith noted afterward, the Wild Goose turned out to be the most soulful new kind of faith (is that the right descriptor?) gathering I’d ever been a part of. That assessment may not rate as much for some, but it’s hUGe. For the first time, we (notice I’ve numbered myself with you) approached an ethos that is perhaps culturally accessible to more than folks who dig white-folk stuff. (I know, I know. There are those squirming in their seats thinking, “He’s always talking about race. That’s his problem.” No, the problem is you have no earthly or heavenly idea how difficult it is to seek a more hopeful future with folks who even the most enlightened of whom sometimes? think they can quietly hold onto power and privilege, ultimately tell others to get over it and then somehow deny that as an exercise of power and privilege. And please don’t go misappropriating King to me. Need I remind you that King wasn’t a hero to the vast majority of Americans until someone killed him, giving you the opportunity to twist his words to justify leaving things substantially the way they’ve always been. Could anything be more convenient?) I made a joke in my talk at the Geo-Dome Sunday morning that over the weekend I heard songs of my heritage offered up in ways that were totally foreign to me (you might have had to be there: we had a great laugh about it). In retrospect, I must admit, I also heard versions of those songs and songs from other traditions as well that deeply resonated with me. To use some uber-heady, emergenty language (’cause that’s my tribe, one of many represented at the festival), it was quite the liminal moment.

Nonetheless, the people of color who did show up weren’t enough to fill the Psalters‘ bus, which may not be a bad thing, because in the mist of all we got right we also got some significant things wrong: things that if given a more diversified audience may have cooked our Goose, labeling it as a white-, liberal-, privileged-, Christian-only affair for years to come. Of course, none of this would have been true, but once you’re branded as such, what can you do? There are a lot of ways to frame our shortcomings. To put it in a nutshell, we were thoughtless about a few things—particularly our iconography and our optics. The problem with nutshells, however, is that they don’t acknowledge valiant efforts made to the contrary. So I shall.

Gareth, Jacob, Laurel, Michael, Topher (staff), Mike, Karla, Ian, Joy (board)—all of whom I’ve grown to love and appreciate—as well as all the volunteers and all the contributors could not have done more to create hospitable space. If there is anyone at fault, it is I for not finding a way to communicate what I now realize to be truer than I knew before: Hospitality suggests ownership, and no matter how hospitable we are, we can’t invite people to our attempt at a new kind of justice, spirituality, music and art and expect them to be equally excited about it. As long as it’s ours, it falls pray to the same cultural captivity that Professor Soong-Chan Rah so poignantly argues is the persistent state of the church at large even in a post-colonial era. There’s nothing “new” about it. So when my Asian, Hispanic and First Nation kin see a promo touting that “Americans from all over” are coming but none pictured look like them, or when my Jewish, Muslim and atheist kin are told they should bless each other with the sign of the cross or the Eucharist, or when the most prominent pictures my children see of people that look like them are kids starving in Africa, or when recovering fundamentalists feel inhibited to confess their honest reservations about sometimes frightening new freedoms, or when the showers aren’t configured in a way accessible to the disabled, or when we reach pass the iconic, inclusively-colored, most familiar representation of geese to find an image of the Holy Spirit as pure as the driven snow…

it all seems too familiar—not very new at all. Simon Levin, a Jewish brotha attending with his interfaith family, put it to me this way, “You have to move beyond extending invitations to extending ownership.” That shouldn’t be too hard, but hard or not, with the grace of God and you, our fellow flockers, we will.

Like my brotha Richard Twiss said, “At least now we have a frame of reference.” When you know better, you do better. By confessing where we’ve missed the mark, not rationalizing it, we free ourselves from the captivity of ignorance (we also obligate ourselves to responsibility). The mere fact that Leslie enjoyed herself and our kids are already planning for next year tells me this bird will fly. (I love that Celtic metaphor, by the way.)

The thing about a wild goose is that you don’t have to start with a bird in hand to know that if you persist… in doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly… one day you’ll catch her, and it will have been well worth the chase.

How Long, Oh Lord? How Long?

Sometimes I’m overcome with a since of futility when I am reminded of just how long so many have been fighting the good fight in my home, America. It is undoubtedly the arrogance of youth that inclines a man to believe that the struggle must have just begun in earnest with his rising awareness of it. But as naive as it is for one to think that he has stumble upon a way of thinking or seeing or acting that will make all the difference, what other hope could inspire us to fight on when confronted with the brilliance and tenacity and courage with which so many more gifted than ourselves gave blood, sweat and tears with little substantive gain?

Hear now the irrefutable genius of Emma Goldman as she, in 1908, deconstructs the lie of patriotism. Goldman was neither the first nor the the last to hold a mirror up so that America could better see herself warts and all. Despite Goldman and many others’ best efforts, American patriotism–as celebrated today more than any other–is still the rallying cry and justification for all manner of evil in the world. How long, oh Lord? How long?

Sandra Oh reads Emma Goldman, “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty” (1908) from Voices of a People's History on Vimeo.

The 4th of July can only be a day of lament for me. Particularly amid the disorienting reawakening of my call to ministry. I want to give myself wholly again to the struggle for all things true, just and beautiful, but my emotions about it right now are chaotic.

These songs are helping me make emotional sense of it all.