March 21-21
Texts:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33
For Zoom video of teaching click here.
Let's start with a little exercise to get us all here in our seats. Feel your seat, feel your feet, feel your breath. Notice sounds, smells or tastes, colors or shapes in the room around you. Notice your thoughts, your emotions.
The title is "From Discomfort to Suffering to Creativity to Joy."
Verses that stand out for me:
Jer 31:33, "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people." This word comes to people in captivity,
Jeremiah 30:8—I will break the yoke from off his neck, and I will burst his bonds." 12: Your hurt is incurable, your wound is grievous.
Ps 119: 10, "with my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments.
Heb: 5:7-8 "In the days of his humanity, Jesus offered up both prayers and pleas with loud crying and tears, to the one able to save him from death, and he was heard...although he was a Son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered"
John 12:23-27 Translation: Walking the Good RoadHe answered them,
"It is time for the True Human Being (the Son of Man) to be lifted up to his place of honor"I speak from my heart. If a seed is unplanted, it remains only one seed; but if it dies, falls to the earth and enters the ground, it will then grow and become many seeds.
25 "The ones who love the kind of life this world gives will lose the life they seek, but the ones who let go of their life in this world and follow my ways will find the life of the world to come, full of beauty and harmony.
"Tell these Wisdom Seekers (Greeks) to walk the road with me. 25: Anyone who wants to serve me will walk in my footsteps, and I will take them to the same place I am going. If they give up their lives to serve me in this way, my Father will honor them."
The Time of Honor Has Come
A look of sorrow came over the face of Creator Sets Free (Jesus). "But now I am deeply troubled and in anguish!” he said. "Should I ask my father to rescue me from this hour that has now come? No! I came into the world for this time and for this purpose."
In light of the Hebrews and John passages, for me, the verses about "I will put my law within them" and "do not let me stray from your commandments" are about staying with the whole of Jesus' teachings, including suffering .
I knew nothing of Lent growing up. Raised as a Presbyterian, I grew up with a cross that didn't have the suffering body of Jesus on it. I was uncomfortable with thinking about Jesus on the cross. I learned to think that perhaps we (Presbyterians) had the superior way, to have the cross of the risen Christ instead of the cross of the human being, Jesus. I wanted to skip to the end of the story.
And, I didn't know much about the struggles of people different than me suffering in the world. I knew about it theoretically but not in my firstperson experience. How they might identify with Jesus' suffering. I mused as a 13-year-old, why was I born a white girl in the 1950s in the United Staes?
I thank Kip and the leadership team for your words of confession. It paves the way for some of what I mean to share today.
I learned about racism through my mother, who marched with MLKing. But I didn't have African American friends nor any other people different from me. I grew up in white schools, white churches. I often thought, I got a "good education" academically, but not in life. I missed out on the exquisite power of holding the suffering and joy together, as many African American and Latin-x churches do.
In my 20s, I learned about suffering from being sexually abused by my therapist, and then having memories of it happening as a child. And in my 30s, 40s and 50s, I learned about suffering from having had cancer. In my 30s and onward I learned that my mother's father was Jewish, and how his assimilating into mainstream Christian culture was his way to protect his family from suffering. I learned about alcoholism and other "isms" in my family.
Now in my 60s, I am learning about linking my suffering and the suffering of my ancestors to the physical body, and to racism. Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother's Hands opened my eyes to experiencing the body as the focus of suffering and trauma, especially the suffering of African Americans. He said to start with myself, learn about my own past, own my own pain. He gave this definition of trauma: too much, too fast, too soon, too long, and without the resources we need to help repair it.
I have felt connected to the suffering of African Americans because of my own. But I didn't want to listen more deeply to other people's suffering. I didn't want to see how my white privilege benefited me, insulated me—not from the suffering I've encountered, but from the dailiness of racism that I don't ever have to face, the "micro-aggressions" that wear down a body. In choosing not to see, I have wounded others. I've wounded people I love, who I feel like a sister to.
The messiness of making mistakes when being with people different than me feels awkward, uncomfortable.
I am encouraged by wise people on this journey to stay with the discomfort. Rev William Barber says don't be tempted by "Satan" — and by Satan he means, the temptation to give up when difficult things come. He says: If you're not feeling discomfort, you're not doing enough to threaten Satan's hold on the world.
As a White person, I have the option to pull back, to give up. I hope you can encourage me, and we can encourage each other, to stay with the discomfort. In the 12-step programs: Ignatian method turned into resentment, fear harm. Talk to a neutral 3rd party first about the issue. To Talk to people to process my mistakes, and don't re-wound people who don't have the safety of white privilege.
Let's take a moment to feel the body, where do I feel discomfort or suffering? Where do I find a resource, or hope?
Let's not pull back. Let's Keep on keepin' on, hold on! Stay with the suffering, and the promise in Psalm 30 is: Our weeping and our Mourning will turn into Dancing, (Psalm 30:11)
In my mission group, New Creation, we're looking at using our creativity to stay with discomfort, perhaps to be a prophetic voice. We participate in weekly "creative shares," each taking a turn to offer something we're working on.
My group inspired me to go deeper into my creative projects. I had an idea of using YouTube to publish a form of performance art. I started to get tutoring in how to make what Brooke named "meditative picture books" and then "meditative movies."
Some of you have seen the following "meditative movie" that I made last fall. It started with some insights I had in 2019, and continued to develop last year. My mission group, and a writing mentor, and an iMovie tutor, and a few trusted friends helped me to go deeper.
Meditative video: Ghost Ship; (click on the picture to play video)
This video of course is about me. It will not enlighten People of Color, they already know and have lived the facts I'm talking about, either personally or through ancestors. The biggest thing they or anyone might learn from the video is about my inner workings around race and trauma and the Ghosts being carried in my story.
Our church community has been unearthing our individual and collective Ghosts around racism, especially this past week, with the Community Day focusing on our racial autobiographies, and the event after church last Sunday that put into greater focus the problems we white people have of seeing our own micro aggressions.
I've made mistakes toward people I care about who are People of Color. I am humbled by this.
I have been afraid that sitting with discomfort will cause me too much suffering.
I've been embarrassed that I have been blind about assuming I'm right.
I've been embarrassed that I haven't seen that I have racial bias when I'm doing this.
The biggest thing I have learned from doing the video is perhaps about my own secret, mysterious side of this—my own Ghost Ship. I don't fully know even what that is, but I have had inklings:
I submitted the video to a multi-media poetry contest. Their critique suggested that the theme "Ghost Ship" could be more developed. I didn't have the wherewithal to change this video, but asked my Higher Power for guidance about "Part 2"—which has led me into my own ancestral history.
Some of you know Resmaa Menakem's book My Grandmother's Hands. The New Creation mission group offered a book overview of it during Advent. It is about dealing with racialized trauma in the body. I've been studying it lately to understand my own trauma and how to relate to People of Color around trauma.
When doing an exercise from that book, which Resmaa called, "Inviting the presence of an ancestor," I asked for an ancestor to visit me. The one who came is my Jewish great-great-grandmother, Rachel Goldberg. She traveled from Prussia (now Lithuania) in 1875 to marry my great-great-grandfather Charles Auerbach in a synagogue in Kalamazoo MI. She was committed to an “insane asylum” after her third child, and spent the rest of her life in the asylum. Her children, including my grandfather's mother Esther, were put in an orphanage until they were able to help with their father's business. I felt a lot of tension in the base of my neck when I was trying to connect with her.
I realized I had to find her through starting with my mother Margie, tracing her experiences first; then Margie's father Sam, and then Sam's mother Esther, and then Esther's mother Rachel. I needed to understand my mother's struggle to understand her Jewish side and all the paradoxes she struggled with, even to the last few days of her life. My grandfather Sam, in his last days, wept for his mother, from whom he cut off at age 16. Lots of traumas that have wanted to stay secret but that my mother started to open up about to me.
Resmaa encourages me not to stop with my stories, but to let the healing that comes from them lead me to be able to listen to YOUR stories, as well as your pointing out to me what I am missing.
People of color I'm learning from along the way that I want to name: Lea Gilmore, Jesse's friend and singer, who said in a recent singing workshop that Slaves gathered to sing, and the music would be such a powerful antidote to fear in the face of possible death on a daily basis. Her ancestral blood encourages her to sing her heart out! As if there is no tomorrow!
And Dr Kathy Bullock, whom I met two summers ago at a singing workshop: she taught me more deeply about joy in the midst of suffering.
Dr Bullock recently talked on her Facebook Page about African-American women fighting for voting rights over 100 years ago. Their theme was "Lifting as we climb." Kathy said: "Begin with yourself, empowering your self, and as we are empowered, we lift those of our community with us."
Kathy helped me see the joy that comes from completely surrendering to a deeper place in the heart when singing. Holding back my song, my voice, is something I was taught as a white girl. That isn't the way to transcend suffering. Go through it, with all the messiness of the body pain, the emotions, the things that actually connect us with each other.
The song Dr Bullock taught me and the group is called "Testimony." She heard in my voice the courage of suffering amidst having cancer. I'm going to say here what she says to the audience in the first part of clip because it's hard to hear the words. Dr Bullock talked about the song's theme, "So Glad I made it — I made it through." She invited the audience to think about a time in life when they made it through. And she said, if you haven't had these challenges, just keep living!” Now we go to the singing portion: So glad I made it.
Dr Kathy Bullock taught me to open my heart to singing at deeper levels. This is a song about One Day at a Time. We can only sing it for today; we don't know what will happen tomorrow.
Dr Bullock is my teacher. I am so glad we're all making it through, one day at a time, and especially grateful for my African-American teachers, Cliff, Bob, Torie, Brian, Gerald, Florence, Donte, Karen, Wesley, Helen, Reverend William Barber, and Dr Kathy Bullock. You've helped me be more willing to go through suffering to joy, instead of trying to skip to the end.
So, my friends, stay with discomfort! During this Lenten season, one day at a time. It's a good way to bring forth the creative. And, the fruits of our labor will be Joy. Jesus promises it.
Please sing with me: So Glad I made it, So glad I made it, I made it through, I made it through.