advent at the Illinois School for the Visually Impaired

A couple of days ago I took down the Christmas lights I had up in my room. Maybe a little strange for two weeks before the holiday, but it's not because I've suddenly lost my Christmas spirit. Really, before today I wasn't quite in the Christmas spirit yet. No, the lights were just decorative mood lighting in the room I stayed in for the semester at the Illinois School for the Visually Impaired, where I taught the last seven weeks. They came down with everything else I had hanging on my walls, like quotes scrawled out on pieces of paper or a giant poster of Peter Pan. I don't wanna grow up either, Peter, I thought.

For the record, I didn't actually think this. I'm not that melodramatic. But it fits, right? Part of growing up is constant change, of too many goodbyes, and the last year-and-a-half has already had enough of those. Last fall I lived in Indianapolis for six weeks, followed by a year-long tour of Illinois including Jacksonville, Freeport, Normal, Chicago, and then back in Jacksonville this past August. The moves have all been for school, moving from one teaching placement to another in a longer-than-usual-due-to-complications pre-student teaching phase. 

And I'm finally here. Finally packing everything into my little car for the last time before moving to Chicago to student teach (and then, hopefully, teach). I was supposed to be here a year ago when it was suddenly delayed. After a year of learning more about urban education, networking with Chicagoans through social media and a summer internship, and going through four different clinical placements, I feel more than ready. This is a gift I've been waiting for most of my college career, and I'm grateful for everyone who's invested in it.

So why hasn't it felt like Christmas?

While the last year has been the most life-giving year I've had on a personal level, it has been a year full of pain and discord on national and global levels, and I've found it harder and harder to disconnect myself from it. The anti-blackness that had become a national focus in the fall of 2014 has continued. Racism against Mexicans and other Latino populations has been given political backing by the consistent top pick for the republican presidential nomination, who has also triumphed Islamaphobia by proposing to block all Muslims from entering the country. Xenophobia has become rampant as we've barred Syrians from seeking refuge in the states. And gun violence has appeared in headlines for multiple shootings, most notably those at a Planned Parenthood clinic and a home for adults with developmental disabilities. This violence even hit in my own community last week when a woman was shot by her husband, both of whom I went to church with years ago.

If this world and this awareness of it are the gifts of adulthood, then no, I don't wanna grow up. 

No, it hasn't felt like Christmas to me. But it has felt like Advent, this period of anticipation of and longing for the coming of the incarnate Christ. This is more than putting up decorations or getting your shopping done. The Biblical anticipation of the Messiah "was in the context of oppression and injustice," a "groaning of creation" for the coming of the Creator, "the Word made flesh." Yes, I'm anticipating my indefinite move to Chicago and the purpose and relative stability that will bring. But I'm also anticipating healing and hope for a broken world that so desperately needs them.

And of course, like anywhere else, this school I've been at needs them, too.

The "goodbye" cards I made for my students.
They say "It's been so much fun teaching you, I'm going to miss you! - Mr. E."
in braille on one side and large print on the other. 

This morning we all made our way into the auditorium to see a nearby high school choir perform Christmas songs for us, as they have for the past several years. After they finished and filed out of the auditorium, the principal stood up front. "Since we have you all in here, I wanted to talk to you about something," she said. "Most of you have probably heard that we lost someone very special this week." Most of us heard yesterday that one of the aides had unexpectedly died of a stroke the night before. I had never met her or Nick (all of the names in this post have been changed), the student she had worked with for almost 15 years. "It's okay to be sad. It's okay if you didn't know who she was, and it's okay to still feel sad if you didn't know who she was."

"Did she go to be with Jesus?" a student asked.

"Yes, she went to be with Jesus," the principal responded.

"Is that why Nick isn't in school?" another asked.

"Yes, he was with her every day at school since he was 3," the principal said, trying to hide the quiver in her voice. "He's feeling very sad right now. He will be back in school once we find him a new aide and once he feels comfortable being here."

"We need to find Nick a new aide!" a small voice from a small first grader in the front row squeaked out, "Can Mrs. Thompson do it?" he said, referring to another administrator at the school.

We all let out teary laughter. "I'm sure she would love to do it," the principal said.

And this is what I have loved most about teaching at this school. Not witnessing my students "overcome" their disabilities, as is the popular narrative in the media. We prefer to view people with disabilities through our American lens, turning them into the ultimate "rugged individuals." While I love seeing my students grow in independence and face new challenges, these gains are always within the context of interdependence. These kids constantly think of each other, constantly look out for each other, constantly seek to make sure that everyone is being accommodated for and included. For the most part. There is still bullying and drama like every other school because these kids are still kids. People with disabilities are not psuedo-angelic, hyper-moralistic beings. They are people. But their limitations and the ways they are left out by society can, if it is fostered, make them more aware of the limitations of others and more intentional in their efforts to accommodate those contingencies. This interdependence is not something to be "overcome" but to be celebrated.

Once everyone's questions were answered, the music teacher spoke up. "Megan, can you play us something on the piano?" A high school student made her way to the piano at the front. "Do you know 'Amazing Grace?'" And she began playing. She played a short intro, and then the room full of students and staff began quietly singing along. 

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..."

An aide behind me started sobbing.

"...that saved a wretch like me..."

A teacher moved up a row and put her arm around a student who was crying.

"...I was once lost, but now I'm found..."

Several students put their hands on the back of another student who was crying.

"...was blind, but now I see..."

These students are blind, but they can see more than many of us can.

She went on to play two more verses, and then we stayed in the auditorium and sang Christmas songs together until it was time for lunch. We laughed and cried and clapped and sang, enjoying our time together after being reminded why enjoying our time together is so important. "Do you know 'Friends are Friends Forever?'" a student asked. The student at the piano did--apparently they sing this every year at graduation--and we all sang and cried and rocked together in gushy 80's cheesiness. 

And that, all of that, all of that, that's Christmas. I mean, that's Jesus, right? God bursting into our wounds and our weaknesses and our low places, somehow bringing joy and healing. Even when we are in need, especially when we are in need, the joy of Jesus can be found. "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." The love these kids show each other when they are in need, the love that recognizes they are always in need because we are all always in need, is the love of the incarnate Jesus, the love that comes into what is broken, what is needy, what is incomplete. And "when completeness comes, what is in part disappears."

This Christmas season, I anticipate both my move to Chicago and the love and justice of Jesus in our world. But I have a feeling that I've already seen that love and justice here. If only the whole world could have sung "Amazing Grace" in that auditorium with those kids, maybe there would be a lot less problems. Or maybe not. Part of growing up is knowing that singing a song together won't change the world by itself, although I'd like to think it can start to.

As we headed out of the auditorium, I finally felt like it was time for Christmas.

a sea of glass

In recent years, I’ve decided that a faith that comes easily to you isn’t worth keeping. If I told you that I was born into a strong Evangelical Christian home to two loving parents, who had both been born into strong Christian two-parent households, you may think my faith came easily to me. And maybe it did. My very name, Elijah, means “YAHWEH is my God.” Even my birth certificate contains a proclamation of faith.

This faith and this family was a happy one, for the most part. The Earth I was born into was created in 6 24-hour days, carefully documented in the first paragraphs of the Bible. This book, I was told, was God’s love letter to me, the only source of truth, the literal Word of God written through the personalities of several inspired authors. “The B-I-B-L-E, yes that’s the book for me!” I sang in preschool. I began helping with Cubbies, a weekly preschool program at our church, when I was in seventh grade. “I stand on the word, the word of God, the B-I-B-L-E. BIBLE!” I would sing along with the preschoolers. Years later I was the song leader at my grandparents’ church’s Vacation Bible School. The material that year was from Answers in Genesis, an organization that strongly asserts a literal understanding of the Bible, particularly the first 11 chapters of Genesis. “The Bible says it, that settles it. Simple as that!” I sang in front of 30 children under the age of 12. But at 19, that claim didn’t seem so simple.

The VBS at my grandparents’ church was an annual tradition, a time my cousins and I got to spend a week together without our parents around. It’s my cousin Sam—an only child—Trent and Brianna—brother and sister—and my little sister and me. When we weren’t at VBS we focused our time on an assortment of games and adventures. Our grandparents built their house on a large property in the country that’s surrounded by a line of trees and filled with a large pond amidst rolling wheat fields, a small paradise as idyllic as our view of the world. We ran for long hours under the hot sun around the pond, darting in and out of the trees and around our grandpa’s plots of corns and beans. We looked up from the deck or from blankets or from the paddleboat many nights at the expanse of stars that crowded into our sky to show off for us. Various forms of wildlife were hidden in the pond and in the hills and grasses in and around my grandparents’ farm. The pond teamed with catfish and ducks, and we would swim and fish and imitate the duck’s calls from the small dock. During the day we would stop in hushed awe whenever we spotted a deer, trying to keep our presence unknown. At night we could hear coyotes howling, close enough to excite us but not to scare us. And of course at the center of all of this was our grandpa and grandma, both strong and wise and wonderful in their own ways. It’s easy to be there and understand why God called his creation good.

Our questions and our explorations had always either been of fantasy or within this set reality, a reality that itself remained unquestioned. That is, until Answers in Genesis. “Do you guys really think it happened like this?” someone said. I don’t know who the instigator was, but all it took was one question for this program that was meant to breed certainty to begin breeding discussions of doubt. “Do you really think the Earth is 6000 years old?” “Do you really think dinosaurs lived alongside humans?” “Do you really think all of these scientists are wrong?”

"The Great Unknown" from The End by Lemony Snicket, drawn by Brett Helquist

“The Great Unknown” is personified, somewhat, in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events into a large question-mark-shaped sea creature that in The End approaches a group of characters. “In an instant they were gone,” we are told, “either swallowed up or rescued by that mysterious thing.” That’s how that week feels in my memory. Although each of us had been on individual journeys of deconstruction before that point, it was the first time any of us voiced our questions. And, no less, they were voiced in the very center of our young universe. The four of us and our universe suddenly felt much older than before we’d ever thought to question its age. “In an instant” that universe was gone, “either swallowed up or rescued by that mysterious thing,” and it felt like we went with it.

As a 13-year-old immersed in the all-encompassing world of Evangelicalism for Teens!™, my sister was too young for this odd week of too many Questions in Genesis and not enough Answers to have a lasting effect. But the rest of us were disconnected enough from that culture and had already questioned enough for this week to pull us further down a slippery slope with few footholds. The four of us have since been on our own journeys of losing and, every once in a while, finding our faith. These journeys are separate but similar, intersecting for holidays and our annual summer Cousin Week, which no longer includes VBS. Our time together is now spent on these big questions. We stopped talking about our fantasies that year. Learning and unlearning reality has proven to be enough.

In the creation myth of Genesis, the water on the Earth is separated from a layer of water in the sky by something called “the firmament,” an invisible dome placed high above the Earth. Many literal Biblical creationists believe the firmament broke during the Flood, providing the excess of water that covered the Earth in a drowning only Noah and those in his ark could survive. I was held under my own firmament of sorts, a carefully-constructed systematic theology meant to protect me from the chaos outside.

A depiction of the firmament

Ta Nehisi Coates writes that all of this chaos, “the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” Coates is of course talking about racism, an evil that I am not a target of, but the hatred of my queer sexuality brought a different form of violence upon my body. Queer theorist Elizabeth Grosz asserts that “the body is what it is capable of doing,” and while I don’t agree with that fully, I think I do believe that the body cannot be split from the things it does and desires to do that are life-giving. You cannot exist fully, in the open, without shame, before a god that tells you your sexuality is beyond redemption. “It is this split,” Grosz writes, “between what one is and what one does that produces the very possibility of a notion like ‘the closet.’” The firmament was my closet, keeping my sexual orientation pushed out of everyone’s view, including (as much as possible) my own.

The VBS that year had been only one occurrence among many that chipped away at the firmament until it broke and water and shards rained down and cut me to my core. My closet, my safe-haven, the gilded cage I called home was transformed from a still peace lingering above me to a crashing force coursing through me. I was unprotected, but instead of feeling hit by reality, I felt hit by the lack of it. The weight of nothing weighed down from above and within me, the dome compressed into a singularity at my center, and I was slowly sucked inward. As the pieces of my faux heaven were crunched together with the pieces of my avoided self, the only reality that formed was that of a sexuality and thus a body and personhood that were unwelcome in throneroom of God. I hadn’t done anything, but the distinction between being queer and acting on my queerness was evidently arbitrary. “Guilt was not my problem as I felt it,” writes Lewis Smeades. “What I felt most was a glob of unworthiness that I could not tie down to any concrete sins I was guilty of. What I needed more than a pardon was a sense that God accepted me, owned me, held me, affirmed me, and would never let me go.”

That summer in 2012 began a two-year dance with darkness. I no longer knew if God existed, or who he was if he did exist. I had feared Hell before, but the fear became ubiquitous to the point of tedium, the adrenaline of terror replaced with hopelessness and impatience for the day my inevitable eternal fate would arrive. The motivation I’d had for school the year before was slowly drained down the rabbit hole inside of me to a land of wonders I no longer had access to. The “once saved always saved” theology of my upbringing all at once seemed patently false.

“Is everything okay?” a professor asked me the spring semester of my junior year of college, a year and a half after Answers in Genesis. I was close to my lowest point. “I’m worried because of your grade on the midterm”—I’d been aware that my emptiness had affected my grades—“but I’ve also just been worried by how you’ve been acting. You seem distracted, like your mind is somewhere else.” I didn’t realize that not only my academic performance had changed, but also my demeanor.

How could I answer her question? I didn’t know how to say that my mind wasn’t on school because it was on thoughts of eternal damnation, or that I was mourning a being I wasn’t sure I existed, or that the only important things I thought I ever knew had been taken away, leaving nothing in return. The foundation of my soul had disintegrated to dust. But as these things go, I simply replied, “I’m fine.”

Looking back depression is an obvious word, but it wasn’t one I thought made sense for me. I equated depression with sadness, and I was not so much sad as hollow. Even my moments of laughter rang into a void that erased their meaning. But when the word was given to me by a counselor a couple of months later, it was more freeing than accusing. I watched a TED talk by Andrew Solomon on depression shortly after and it all clicked. “The opposite of depression is not happiness,” he told me, “but vitality.” More than happiness, I had lost my vitality in the face of the muchness of the nothingness of our existence and the muchness of the queerness of my own.

What I have learned is that the greatest beauty and greatest tragedy of the Christian faith is that God somehow entered into this chaos, this muchness, all of which fell “with great violence, upon the body” of the crucified Christ. In the midst of his torture, Jesus cried out: “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” If he spoke English, he would have said something like “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If he spoke Hawaiian Pidgin, he would have said something like “My God, my God, how come you go way an leave me ova hea?”

“Hey dude!” I was sitting in a circle with other junior highers from my church youth group in a homeless ministry in the inner city of Chicago. The woman in charge was recalling the prayer of someone who had come for a meal. I was struck by the use of such a casual title as “dude” for God. Are you allowed to say that?! seventh-grade me thought. The prayer continued to strike me in its informality: “This sucks!”

The book of Revelations describes a “sea of glass” in the heavenly throneroom. I’ve been told this is meant to represent the peace that comes in the presence of God, peace enough to make a raging sea as still as a pane of glass. And that’s probably what John meant. But I read that and see a sea of glass that’s been shattered, a sea as tumultuous as any, each swirling particle of water replaced with a shard of the world we once thought we knew. And this is the water we’re told we must walk on to get to the throne of God.

“Hey dude,” she recalled the second half of the prayer, “Thanks.”

What, though, is there to be thankful for? My cousin Sam wrote this for Thanksgiving this year: “I am loved, and I am loved above all else by a father who pours out mercy far greater than any torrential downpour” of water or shards “that I may have to endure. Ultimately, this entire symphony of highs and lows will mold together into one single drop. A drop that nourishes, a drop that heals.” Somehow Jesus let himself be severed from his Godship on the throne and instead walks on this sea of glass with us, walks over and through and within the broken firmament with us. “The Spirit that once hovered over the waters had inhabited them,” writes Rachel Held Evans, “Now every drop is holy.” Even as God leaves us “ova hea,” Jesus never does. The reality of his presence in this place promises the reality of his presence beyond this place, far beyond where any firmament could ever reach, and the joy we think we can only find in the muchness of that space can be found in the smallness of our inward temples. “If anyone is willing to enter into my private hell and stay there with me,” writes John J. McNeill, “then there are grounds for hope.”

"Encounter with Christ" by Newton D'souza

I found the Trinitarian God and the dying and rising Jesus not in churches but in the streets of Chicago, where I lived and worked and taught summer school the past two summers. I found him in the bodies of Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice. I found him in America’s black and brown bodies and neighborhoods, crucified by Jim Crow’s grandchild, mass incarceration. “The crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans in Jerusalem and the lynching of blacks by whites in the United States are…amazingly similar,” James Cone tells us. “The lynching of black America is taking place in the criminal justice system.” I found him in their little resurrections, in their joy that acts as resistance to the chaos that lands on their bodies with much more violence than it does mine, in the collective resurrection taking place in this movement insisting that, despite the way of things, black lives matter.

I found him in my students, called disabled by a world that believes in the myth of able-bodiedness. I see him in their frustrations, in the truth that is maybe more evident to them that, as put by Nancy Eiesland, “ordinary lives incorporate contingency and disability” and that “disability does not mean incomplete and that difference is not dangerous.” I also found him in their little resurrections, their joys, their resistance, the moments their bodies do not only get “in the way of creativity” but rather become “a conduit for it.” I see the Trinity in their strong sense of individual personhood within a network of trusting interdependence. My sometimes difficult faith has been enhanced by their sometimes difficult lives. “Because a difficult life is more complicated than an easy one,” writes Nancy Mairs, “it offers opportunities for developing a greater range of response to experience: a true generosity of spirit.”

And I found him in queer communities, who live in their bodies with their sexualities before God without shame, as they did in Song of Songs, as Adam and Eve did in Eden before they tried to know good and evil, tempted by a desire to control this wide and varied world. I found him in their continual creation, their taking part in the divine work of deconstructing our superimpositions upon the world and building a growing a more beautiful one. I found him in their love, a communal love that spans borders, bleeding grace into every place and to every person that are told they are not worthy.

These people show me Jesus because, of course, Jesus is not an idea but a person. “While we attempt to figure things out…the truth shows up in the form of a person. While we are sifting through the shards of glass on the floor, Jesus is waiting patiently at the door.” When I first read this statement by John Wilkinson in the fall of 2013, I expected this person of Jesus to show up as some detached experience of feelings, or as a moment of clarity, as a sudden recreation of the firmament. But Jesus comes not to take us away from the reality of existence, but to be with us as we take part in deconstructing what destroys and building up this unpredictable phenomenon we call life. Once firmaments and closets are deconstructed and all of our hidden and queer bits of life are brought into the open and melded into a whole, the process of deconstruction and wholeness—death and resurrection—rolls on.

The view from the back of my grandparents' house

My cousins and I were together last week, having big conversations in our grandparents’ paradise that seems much smaller than it once did, much younger than it once did in comparison to the vast and ancient universe it sits within. It had become less of a paradise, too, somehow tainted by the sad things of the world we never imagined could creep in. Even as our questions floated around our heads and through the branches of our ailing family tree, we found the presence of the Trinitarian God in our solidarity through uncertainty, in this being together even when a world unprotected by firmaments threatens to tear us apart. A speaker I saw once whose name I don’t remember proclaimed that “the foundation of the Gospel is that God is a community.” And here, amid deconstruction and because of it, God is found.

intersectional bodies and the hunger for justice

The main reason I started writing this blog last May was to grapple with this trendy word "justice." And quite often, I really still don't know what justice actually is. But I am learning more and more what justice is not.

One thing I know for sure is that justice is for all who need it. Conversely, I know that justice is not justice if it is only given to a few.

This incomplete version of justice has appeared repeatedly throughout history, when we have formed groups that are meant to focus on justice for certain groups of people, and only those groups. By doing so, we leave out many other groups.

When we fight for justice for a certain group of people and talk solely about the form of oppression that group faces as a whole, we ignore other forms of oppression that also work against that group just because they do not work against every person in that group.

This has happened in black liberation movements that--by solely focusing on anti-blackness and not also working against sexism--have been lead by black men and leave out the voices of black women.

This has happened in disability rights movements that--by solely focusing on ableism and not also working against racism--have been lead by white people with disabilities and leave out the voices of people of color with disabilities.

This has happened in feminist movements that--by solely focusing on sexism and not also working against racism--have been lead by white women and leave out the voices of women of color.

These are only three examples. There are numerous forms of oppression, numerous causes, and numerous people who are left out.

The exclusivity of all of these movements only work towards a partial picture of justice not because they exclude people who are white, able-bodied, or male. Insisting that these movements include those who benefit from the oppression they are fighting against doesn't make the justice that flows from the movements more all-encompassing, but less. When we respond to claims to justice for the downtrodden by claiming justice for those on top, we do not expand justice. We stifle it. Justice doesn't need to remember those who have always been present in our collective consciousness. Justice needs to remember those who have been absent. Jesus proclaims "good news to the poor," not to the powerful.

In the case of #BlackLivesMatter, a just response is not to see its exclusivity and say that #AllLivesMatter. A just response to the real exclusivity of the movement has been the hashtag #SayHerName, which brings attention to instances of police brutality against black women in a campaign that has largely focused on violence against black men.

This hashtag addresses intersectionality, the truth that we all hold multiple identities and group memberships, some of which may give us access to privilege while others hit us with oppression. As Audre Lorde famously put it, "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives." We are whole people, and any movement that ignores the multiple forms of oppression faced by individuals leaves them out entirely.

This does not go against the need to specifically name and work against different forms of oppression. To make justice a reality, we must have some level of focus. But this is, of course, why we must always work within community. We may be called to specifically called to work towards justice here, and others there. We are one body with many parts, and each of us has a unique role to play.

But we can never say that we don't need any other part of the body, no matter how weak it appears. "On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor...But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." (1 Corinthians 12:21-23a, 24b-26)

Even if our focus is on one form of oppression, we must always let ourselves be shaped by the other members of this body, particularly those parts we have too often viewed as "less honorable." We cannot let the perceived weakness of certain parts of this body be an excuse to ignore them, because the things we call weak that are truly indispensable. Power is not made perfect in the strong things of this world, but in weakness.

How we respond to our brothers and sisters facing intersectional oppressions will vary. Maybe we are in a place where we can truly act, or maybe we are in a place where the justice work we are already doing is the most we can manage. But at the very least we must suffer with them, honor them, listen to them. Justice is for all who need it, so we must always look for those who are left out and forgotten. Only then will justice really come forward.

the drugs of culture wars, social media, and power

Another week, another culture war.

This week my Facebook was filled with thumbnails of the French flag in the wake of multiple attacks by ISIS in Paris, which were followed by criticisms of the eurocentric responses to the attacks, which were then followed by debates about whether or not the government should be allowing Syrian refugees into the country, or how thorough the vetting process should be, and it continues and morphs faster than my basic-phone self can keep up with (I prefer basic phone over "dumb phone," thank you very much). Profile pictures are changed, blogs are written (clearly), hashtags are used, and we all feel a little bit better and a little bit worse for having participated. Sometimes part of us wants the injustice to end just so our online lives return to an elusive peaceful norm and sometimes we want it to spring up again so we can revel in the chaos, drawing battle lines around statuses and making our loyalties known with likes and retweets.

Social media is a drug, and the highs are even higher and lows even lower when a crisis is involved.  Maybe it's because we want to change things, or because we want to make sense of things, and maybe we just want to feel validated. That's not to say that people don't care deeply about justice. Many, many do. But each of us is barely a single person and none of us are quite whole, and our motives and desires are mixed and often mysterious even to the most self-aware. This is all of us, to varying degrees, at different times, in different ways. I believe that the vast majority of people want to see more good and justice in the world, but the world is a messy place and the meanings of goodness and justice are evidently not always self-evident. Justice is a trendy word, almost too trendy to be meaningful.

Despite their issues and ambiguities, modern conceptions of justice and social media crusades should not be left behind. Social media can act as a gathering place for oppressed and scattered voices and has been a powerful vehicle for the nation's biggest movement for racial justice since the Civil Rights Movement. Social media solidifies and amplifies our voice by giving us a platform and a virtual audience. For people who have been denied a platform, this is truly liberating, truly Gospel bringing. When used by those who have less access to other means of social engagement, social media can lift up stories and injustices that may otherwise be ignored and bring glimpses of a kingdom where "the last will be first and the first will be last."

But when this platform becomes the main platform that most people use to engage with social issues, those with power can perceive these echoes of equality as a sign that the roles have actually been reversed. And if you are first, a kingdom where "the last will be first and the first will be last" is not good news for you. The powerful see in these words a reflection of a world where their power will be taken away, and they feel their power must be defended. Statuses and tweets and likes and comments suddenly become infused with importance not because there is power to be gained but because there is power to be lost. This is nothing new; spaces claimed by those experiencing oppression have always been claimed by people who benefit from it,

And then in all of this are us problematic sometimes-white-savior-y people, who have largely been on the receiving end of privilege and see that that's injustice and try to use the increased power we have on this platform to lift up the voices that have been historically pushed down. And I tend to think that's a good thing (why would I be writing this if it's not?). But in a world where posts and power are seemingly so intertwined, changing our profile picture or tweeting a hashtag to support a noble cause can give us the feeling of having done something. But is this really a way to give up our power to the powerless, or is it a way to take power from them? Are we really just using the backs of the oppressed as stages from which to preach about their liberation? Are we "really seeking good, or just seeking attention?" (I couldn't resist the Wicked reference) I constantly hope this isn't me, but my motives are as mixed and mysterious as anyone else's.

Maybe the more important question is this: what do we do when there aren't hashtags? Do we risk? Do we serve? Do we struggle with others in their powerlessness? The answer to these questions won't always be "yes," but we must at least be trying. We must at least do the most we can to center the voices of the marginalized, to lower ourselves, to listen. Only then can our calls for justice be "Jesus-shaped."

I've talked about social media's downfalls, but here is one of its potential strengths. When used correctly, Twitter (and Facebook, but I think to a lesser degree) can become a powerful tool to invert our reality by maximizing the presence of voices that are scarce elsewhere in our lives. I'm being completely serious when I say that beginning to use Twitter for this purpose a little over a year ago has been one of the things that has radicalized me the most. As blogger Caris Adel noted, when I joined Twitter I was unaware that it would "up-end my life." The simple act of re-orienting ourselves around the stories of the oppressed through social media is Jesus-shaped enough to cause us to give up our safe worlds of protected power and begin the long and imperfect journey towards true liberation and justice.

mourning Tyshawn Lee

Image from The Chicago Tribune

[Image description: Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old African American boy, smiles at the camera.

He is wearing a blue collared shirt, a blue tie, a blue vest, and is sitting in front of a gray background.]

Yesterday, a nine-year-old boy named Tyshawn Lee was shot and killed in the Chicago neighborhood of Auburn-Gresham. I had been planning on student teaching in that neighborhood this spring, until plans fell through with the school (today, actually). This closeness causes me to mourn and to want to take action, but my distance leaves me clueless as to what action I should take. That's what this post is about.

This goes without saying, but needs to be said: this makes me sad. Heartbroken. I need to set aside any hope of being able to do anything about this situation because this murdered son's death speaks the same truth that Jesus's death speaks: "It is finished." This child is gone, and what more is there to do than to mourn?

I see this child, and I see others like him, and I see what is too often reduced to "black-on-black violence." And I am learning more and more just how inaccurate and dismissive that label is. I see that this is a community issue, a city-wide issue, a historically-precedented societal issue.

When I look at Jesus on the cross, I know that my hands did not hold the whips or the hammers or the nails, yet his crucifixion is the result of individual and systematized hatred, the same hatred that exists in our systems, that all too often appears in me. And although I wasn't there, I've played my part in killing Christ. Lord, have mercy.

When I look at this child, I know that my hands did not hold the gun, yet his murder is the result of individual and systematized hatred, that same hatred that existed in the systems that crucified Jesus, that all too often appears in me. And although I wasn't there, I've played my part in killing this child and all like him.

Lord, have mercy!

Image from the Chicago Tribune

[Image Description: a woman stands at an intersection 

holding a sign that says "Stop Murdering Our Children"]

Somehow I receive mercy, I receive grace, and I think "What am I to do with this?" Although I often don't know what an appropriate response is, I know that blaming this child or his family or his community would be snuffing out this grace I've been given.

And you know what, blaming those in power, or those who don't care, or those who don't understand would also be snuffing out grace. There are no easy scapegoats like police officers or politicians here. In fact, it is police officers and politicians who are being called upon to help. The killer in this case--an obvious and deserving target for blame--has likely been victimized by the prison industrial complex, by economic disenfranchisement, by everything being fought against by the Black Lives Matter movement.

The person (or people) who pulled the trigger is (are) fully to blame, but it's all tied together. We are all implicated. We've all inherited generational and systemic sin. Now what are we going to do about it? What does repentance look like?

This looks different for everyone. For me, I've been walked down a path for the last three years that leads towards teaching in the neighborhoods most affected by these crimes and these deaths. And I often don't know how to articulate why. I don't think anyone fully knows their own motives.

Part of my motivation, clearly, is that I'd like to think I can contribute in some way to making things like this happen less. Then I hear arguments in my head about how that I'm trapped in the white-teacher-savior mentality, and I'm reminded to guard my mind and my heart from that mentality whenever it appears, and I remember that to teach is to listen, and that maybe that's the most I can offer to these kids.

Jesus chastised Martha--who was focused on solutions, who was focused on tangibly serving him, who knew what she had to do--and praised Mary--who didn't know what she could do or what she could give rather than sit down and give her full attention to this would-be crucified King. (Luke 10:38-42)

Maybe my motivation is (or should be) less about what I think I can give these communities and more about what they can give me; no, not just what they can give me, but how they can fundamentally change me and shape me.

And when Jesus shapes our souls, Heaven meets earth, ever so briefly.

"what does the multiverse tell you about God?"

Via "Cosmic Confusion: Talk of Multiverses and Big Errors in Astrophysics" by Calla Cofield

[Image description: Appears to be a bunch of water droplets on a pane of glass, each with dots of light reflected inside.]

A couple of hours ago, the twitter account for a podcast called The Liturgists posted this:

Want to be on the podcast? Click the link and answer the question: "What does the multiverse tell you about God?"

The tweet includes a link leading to a website where listeners can record themselves answering the question. Their audio submission might be included on the next podcast. I'd never done this before, so I decided to try it out. I sat down to write out my answer so I wouldn't get caught knowing what to say, and got more inspired than I expected to, and wrote this. So here's my response to the question "what does the multiverse tell you about God?" (Warning: I'm not remotely a scientist—that's what Science Mike is for—so this is probably based on an extremely flawed understanding of what the multiverse even is.)

The multiverse tells me about God’s endlessness, about his vastness,
about the human hopelessness to ever reach all of infinity;
and yet somehow in the Eucharist
—when we take part in the resurrection of the dying Jesus—
and in the birth of stars and suns
—when we take part in the resurrection of dying worlds—
we are able to reach all of infinity.

It tells me that our human efforts at control are ultimately meaningless,
our small conquests and victories at the expense of others
are pure nothingness, not even vapors in the cosmic wind,
that the cosmic wind our vapors contribute to
are snuffed out in the unknowable expanses between unknowable worlds;
and yet somehow in the Crucifixion
—when our systems of terror killed Christ—
our sins do taint the infinite.

The multiverse tells me that no matter what human inventions
we use to subjugate, categorize, demonize
—like race and money and gender roles and letter grades—
no matter how far our manifest destinies take us,
no matter how many cultures or countries or planets we colonize and bastardize and bomb,
our little kingdoms can only grow so much and touch so many.

The multiverse tells me that this God we worship
does not and cannot fit into the lie of logic,
that our Enlightenment is only a dim spark
—less than a dim spark, for it is truly nothing—
and yet somehow, in the Incarnation
—when God became human, resurrected as human, lives forever as human—
he stepped into the restrictions of our logic and said,
“Let there be light.”

The multiverse tells me that no matter how far we fly
the Creator has birthed too much to ever know,
there is always more of God to know,
there is always more to discover and to love,
there is always more to worship.

I guess the universe tells me all of this.
But the multiverse just, well, multiplies it.

putting skin on the story

"Birches and Red Cardinal Small Fabric Mosaic Quilt" - Quilts by Ann Loveless

[Image Description: A picture of a quilt with an impressionistic image on it. 

White on the bottom half gives the impression of snowfall. Black on the top half gives the impression of a dark forrest. 

White and black vertical streaks give the impression of birch trees. A cardinal sits halfway up a tree just right of the center of the image.]

God,

what do i do with this body you gave me? what do i do with this skin you put on me?

what do i do with the ways people perceive my skin, the ways my skin marks me as the rightful winner in a story they don't even know they believe? what do i about the fact that others have skin that marks them as intruders into the narrative of my greatness?

what do i do if i know this story isn't true?

how do i live against a story that says i'm the hero without living into one that says i'm a villain? is it enough to steal from the rich to feed the poor, or is that just the creation of a new story in which I am still the hero? is the problem not that some don't have, but that "having" is given any kind of merit?

should i seek to change the story, or tell a different story altogether?

does my place in their stories even matter?

i'd like to think that i'm working towards a world in which my skin doesn't mark me as any character in any story other than one who is dead coming to life and one who is lost coming home, always coming home, in a death that promises resurrection, because that's how the Story goes.

for that is the story, Your blood in place of mine, Your skin instead of mine.

unless it's not. unless it's Your blood, so mine too. Your skin, so mine too.

Your blood and skin and sacrifice are perfect, but mine are shaky copycats, a child playfully acting out the greatest Story ever told, the play a testament to the story's Truth, the play somehow making it True, the Story instructing and instructed by my stumbling missteps as i stagger into understanding, into a death that promises resurrection, because that's how the Story goes.

but until then we have our skins and our perceptions, our falsehoods and our stones, our structures we thought could be home but only leave us looking up like they did at Babel wondering what it would take to reach higher, what good and evil we could know or life we could deny to bring us closer to godlike height in the heavens, not knowing that life is found in our fully human bodies entering into God-fearing love on the ground.

so with Your skin and our skin, Your sacrifice and our sacrifices, Your ultimate death and our little deaths, we find the hidden Kingdom brick by brick, seed by seed, hope by hope, this Tree of Life growing until the structures must fall before it, fall before You in worship, fall into a death that promises resurrection, because that's how the Story goes.