All of us or None

I finished The New Jim Crow a couple of weeks ago. It’s a powerful book and, even though I know why I put it on the back burner, I can’t believe I didn’t get to it before now. I’ve heard the book’s main argument over the years, of course. Anyone aware of institutional racism in this country has, I hope. The war on drugs has essentially created a new Jim Crow system and the evidence for this is compelling. Ten years after its publishing, I think it’s safe to say that The New Jim Crow has cemented itself as an essential read for those who want to look our nation’s problems squarely in the eye and seek to solve them. 

The book’s ending has been rattling around in my head for weeks. Well, really one phrase: All of us or none. There’s a prison activist group that’s taken that phrase for their name. There’s an Emma Lazarus quote to the same effect, though for a different context and different audience: Until we are all free, we are none of us free. 

Now, this is not a new idea. It’s not a particularly western idea either; I don’t care to count the number of sermons I’ve heard about ubuntu, a Bantu term popularized for us white people by Desmond Tutu’s theology. We are all interconnected. We know that for a certainty. And when one of us hurts, we all should feel the effects. Humans are social creatures and this planet is one interconnected system. I am because we are. All of us or none. Simple. 

Simple, but difficult. Simple, but exacting. Because many of us who are in most ways free, we don’t always understand that our freedom, our comfort, our convenience, rests on the imprisonment of others. In the United States, our anglo freedom has always rested on the imprisonment of others. We have always been, and still are, too ambitious to do much of anything justly and sustainably. In our rush for our freedom, we have crushed the freedom of others. 

It is daunting to imagine the work and sacrifice needed to set each and every human free, free from poverty, free from discrimination, free from all that prevents us from living life and life abundant. It is daunting to imagine how to set the Earth free from the ways we have bound it. But the work is necessary; the sins of racism will continue to claw at us until we are torn apart. The use and abuse of our planet will result in catastrophic effects for us unless we begin the healing now. Poverty will spread like the disease it is until our world is a waste. 

But more than that, more than all of that, more than the fact that those of us who are free are still imprisoned as long as anyone is imprisoned, is the heartbreaking fact that any are imprisoned in this world of abundance and glorious diversity. Why aren’t our hearts perpetually breaking for those who are bound tight by poverty? Why are we outraged by all acts of racism, not just the obvious ones? Why must we be reminded over and over and over again that people are people and that we are none of us free until we are all free? 

If we Christians are to be anything like Jesus, the one who proclaimed release for the captives and the year of the Lord’s favor, then our every thought, action, and organization should be shaped for freedom for all. 

And can we imagine what the world would look like if we did that? If every tiny country church was committed to freedom from poverty, freedom from addiction, freedom from discrimination, freedom to be who God made each of us to be? I fully believe that if we made that our mission, our way of life, our way of being in this world, then groups of ten or twenty or thirty would reshape the communities they’re in. And once you’ve been freed, truly freed, then what in this world would stop you from freeing someone else? 

Imagine a denomination committed to freedom. Even a denomination of a few dozen churches fully committed to freedom would be able to make a noise, to lobby for or against legislation, to hold public servants accountable, to be a voice advocating for a more just government on each and every level. That’s the slow work of the Social Gospel, I admit, but I am frightened by anything that moves faster than that. Maybe that’s a fear I need to be freed from myself. 

All of us or none of us. I feel this deep in my bones, a fundamental truth that has been hidden over the years with layers of self-absorption and acceptance and a numbing fear of change. Now that I’ve unearthed it, though, why would I hide it under a bushel? Why would I allow it to be dimmed when it could transform how we live with one another? Why would I keep the gospel to myself? To preserve an organization? To save someone else’s feelings? 

That’s not what Jesus did. 

And a seed that was planted in me, though it has had to fight through rocks and weeds to grow, has finally started to sprout. Maybe I do genuinely want to be like Jesus. 

Maybe it’s time.

Applications

I'm applying for scholarships for the fall and it's a weird feeling. I feel like I should be applying for grants and putting forward a proposal because that's what real people do, isn't it? As adults, we have reached a stage where we no longer need to be judged on the positiveness of our attributes but on the content of our ideas. I hate to regress from that, but I know that what I need to do most of all right now is work on honing my own knowledge and sense of self and in that quest I will, of course, be willing to step into the scholarship arena with students who are "strongly encouraged" to have "a teacher or advisor" read over their essays before they submit them, as if I wasn't the person to whom most of these students would be turning to read over their essays. 

At the same time, I'm a little stumped at how to answer some of their questions, such as "What does the United Methodist Church mean to you?" in 300 words or less. I decided to go back to a tactic I used for my Exploration responses and share all the false starts and alternative directions I could have taken this essay with you all here. God has blessed me with the ability to spit out a thousand ideas, but left me alone to find the tenacity to follow through on any one of them. I'll figure it out before the application's due, I'm sure, but in the meantime, at the very least I'll get some jokes out of it.

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Q: What does The United Methodist Church mean to you?

A: We were talking about Methodists the other day and I told that old joke that pokes fun at Baptists: "The difference between a Baptist and Methodist is that a Methodist will say hey to you in the liquor store." I believe strongly in both the literal and metaphorical resonances of that joke. 

A: I used to tell people that there was a cot in the choir room for me, the implication being that I was involved in so many church things, I'd need a place to take a break. I used to be a pathological liar, but the heart of the sentiment remains the same. When I get involved at a church, I get involved at a church. 

A: Through every storm I've weathered, the church has been there for me, sometimes as a conduit back to the God who promised me strength I could not find and peace I did not feel and sometimes just as a community of people whose love I could depend on at the end of the day. 

A: I've said it before and I'll say it again: I enjoy committee meetings. 

A: I've drawn out the Wesley Quadrilateral for multiple groups of friends.

A: My heart feels a little lighter when I'm singing a Charles Wesley hymn. 

A: I did not know what it meant to sing lustily until I moved to Scotland, but now the Instructions for Singing at the beginning of the hymnal make so much more sense. 

A: I know the Great Thanksgiving by heart and was delighted to hear the Anglicans use practically the same words, even if their wine was actual wine. 

A: I function really well within systems and boy, does The United Methodist Church have a system for you!

A: Listen, there are many things that I don’t know but one thing I do know is that I long to be a part of something bigger than myself and that longing becomes very acute when I read about my friend working on her ordination papers. 

A: Have you ever seen Diary of a Mad Black Woman? It’s a little bit formative for me, I admit, but there’s a speech that Orlando gives where he’s explaining to Helen how he knows that he loves her and he says, “I pray for you more than I pray for myself.” By that logic, the great love of my life is the Church. I pray for it with a passion that I am rarely able to muster up for anything else and I am unsure why that is, but I know it to be true.

A: The United Methodist Church lets me be authentic in my faith, which is my one great desire. I want to come as I am before the Lord, with all my doubts and fears and questions and frustrations, and I want to be renewed in my trust of God and my faith in the Christian story. There is such grace here, a sometimes maddening ability to pull in people with different points of view and different dogmas and unite us through song and deed. I have a deep-seated belief in unity as our only way forward in this world and I believe that The United Methodist Church gets that right most of the time. 

A: Let me sing to you the song of my people. *Takes a deep breath* Oh for a thousand tongues to sing

A: When I went to college, the choir at my new church met for rehearsal at the same time as marching band, so I joined their bell choir instead. This was not odd to me.

A: I have a tendency these days when I find something that I absolutely adore to set that book or idea or website or TV show down, lean back, and say, “Shit,” because I know that I will now be driven to dive into this book or idea or website or TV show and I will not come up for air for days. There is a consuming fire to my love that requires a kind of wonderful abandon, a loss of control that my rational mind objects to with a resigned vehemence. If I were more colorful in the sixth grade, I may have had this reaction to my confirmation. 

A: A friend of mine was talking about church shopping and she complained about how, when she went to a Methodist church, she couldn’t really tell what they believed. I had to restrain myself from responding, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” I understand her critique, but I love the words, “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In everything, charity,” so much that I could get them permanently inked onto my body. I see my friend’s frustration as evidence of an outworking of a greater good. 

A: I remember being at my grandmother’s funeral and listening to the pastor list off the days of the week and the reasons my grandmother had for being at church on any given day and sitting back and thinking, “So that’s where I get that from.”

A: When listing my extracurricular activities for college applications, when I was a shorter person with more spunk and less existential dread, I didn’t know where to put all my church activities because they never felt like volunteering positions or clubs or sports or anything like that. Church was what I did. It was who I was. I felt like I needed another category for it. "Activities That Formed You As A Person, Even When You Weren't Really Aware Of It, And Maybe Point To A Vocation That You'll Deny For Years To Come" might work.

A: There was a phase in my life where I thought I was going to move to LA to be a TV writer and while I would not be upset if that was a dream that turned out not to be deferred, I think it’s telling that the first spec script I wrote was about a young lady pastor running a church. Re-reading that script is a fascinating look into my personal theology. The ending is something so personal, I’m amazed I wrote it down and then showed it to other people. After a Sunday of activity after activity, the pastor finds herself drawn to the empty sanctuary in her church. Walking in, she thinks about her place in life and in the church. 

GINNY (V.O.)

I didn’t come here to fix people. I didn’t come here to make saints.  I didn’t come here to be a saint. 

Her eyes travel upward past the all the accoutrements of the chancel to the ceiling of the sanctuary. 

GINNY (V.O.)

I came to listen.

She stands up and walks, arms crossed, to the aisle, standing in front of the entrance to the chancel, centered in front of the altar. 

GINNY (V.O.)

God is… complex. Difficult.  But not the church.  All my life, the church has been here for me. More than friends, more than family, it’s been a community, one that loves and supports me. Why wouldn’t I want to give myself back to that? 

She stands still for another few moments, eventually closing her eyes and dropping her arms to the side, palms open, clearly waiting for something. Nothing happens. She peeks one eye open, then the other. She stares at the ceiling for a second more, then shrugs her shoulders and sighs. Somewhere out in the night, a car door slams or an siren goes by or a loud group of friends walk by, talking unintelligibly and laughing. It pulls her back and she walks to the door, pausing for a second with her hand on the chancel light switch.

GINNY (V.O.)

Oh well.

She flips the switch and we cut to black.

GINNY (V.O.)

There’s always next week.

A: What does The United Methodist Church mean to me? I’m not entirely sure, but I believe it to be something profound, something I keep coming back to, and something for which I can praise God for bringing into my life. It’s something I don’t know how to quit, so I may as well lean into the dance and see where it takes us. I’ve read The Christian As Minister. I know the wealth of options here. I’m ready to start actualizing some of those dreams.