Tuesday Evening
Yea and verily, am I the slayer of mosquitoes! ‘Tis true! I am sitting outside throwing the ball for the dog while I write this. There are many mosquitoes. They are bothering me. But, what else can you expect when there has been a lot of rain and it’s August in Virginia? One must be realistic about these things. And it is important to realize that this is the kind of stuff that killed the earliest colonists.
The mosquitoes, not the dog.
I am pondering the DNC, Warnock’s homily, and what it means to have hope in the future. Eschatological hope is not the same thing as political optimism. Yet, many of us conflate the two. I mean, I certainly don’t, but others do.
That was supposed to be funny.
In all seriousness, there is something of the eschatological in the rhetoric of the Christian left. I consider myself to be a member of the Christian left in the United States. As I have equipped before, I am left of Jesus. And yet I want us to be cautious. We cannot equate political power with the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven, and its existential realities in this world, are political. Be sure of that. But, political power is not the same thing as God’s will. The religious right makes that mistake all the time. Let’s not do the same. Please?
To do justice, love, mercy, and to walk humbly… To love one’s neighbor as one’s self and to love God often falls apart when it is married to political power.
And yet, in this world, it takes political power to affect change. For example, the end of chattel slavery in the United States, I like to believe, was in accordance with God’s will. But the means by which it came to be was not the will of God. It may have been our only recourse in this fallen world, but that is not the same thing as the will of God.
“Beneath vine and fig tree we shall live, shall live in peace and unafraid.”
This is an eschatological vision. This is also a potential result of the utilization of political power. The question that so many have asked over the years is this: is political power only ever violent?
I don’t know.
What do you think?
Two things:
1. I loved the theme of joy running through speakers comments at the DNConcvention. It was real joy, never at anoyone's expense. Well, almost never.
2. There's politics, and there's power. Jesus was politically astute in turning the other cheeck, forcing the person to deal with him as a person by using the right hand, not the left which was reserved for toilet uses. Or when he would walk through a crowd who would have torn him apart, Francis was politically astute managing the relationship with the Bishop and the Popes very carefully. Other mendicants similar to him were excommunicated or imprisoned. Jesus and Francis had little power, liittle wealth, but they finessed their way through the crowd of politics. I think we have to do the same this election. Politics is worked through relationships. Political power is worked in spite of relationships. It uses force rather than love or persuasion.
What disappointed me was not including the voice of the nearly forgotten Palestinian people. Other than their voice, and the Native American voice, most voices were heard in beautiful politics--relationships with one another.
I also didn't like the call to ensure the US had the "most lethal force". Isn't there a force less lethal that would work well enough? a "lethal enough force"? It lack rhetorical power and therefore lacks political power, but if I go you to think about it, then it works in the realm of politics.
All that being said, I know whom I am going to support in this election, and it gives me joy.
I very much appreciate @Rick Bellows discernment between politics and power. As for hope/optimism, i’ve been reading Marianne Moore’s poem “the hero”. her two qualities of heroism are non-optimism and love:
Tired but hopeful -
Hope not being hope
Until all ground for hope has
vanished; and lenient, looking
Upon a fellow creature’s error with the feelings of a mother - a
woman or a cat.”
Optimism when i look back on mine tends toward spiritual bypassing and/or ambition. Hope is some other thing and does not require optimism at all.
And lenience? What can i do with that without getting pissed off? Not indulgence, but responsibility?… acceptance of humanity if not kinship? Ugh. Its hard but i can see the point.